In the Classroom
Going to the Mountaintop

You learn a lot about yourself while journeying along a rugged mountain trail through the Catskill Mountains. In September, a group of executives headed into the hills of New York state with Wharton professors for hiking and climbing, in the first of a new series of Wharton Leadership Ventures programs. After classroom work in the morning, the participants broke into small teams to tackle challenges on the trail. As teams struggled together with tough choices and even tougher mountain paths, they gained insights into their own leadership and those of others who had very different experiences on the same trails.

The Climbers’ Dilemma

Each team of eight had to select a trail to reach a common destination. At one juncture, where all the trails required hikers to scramble down a cliff face on a precarious wooden ladder leading to a deep rocky crevasse, one group simply forged ahead while another turned around and chose another route.

For Joe Daquino, vice president and group publisher of The Affinity Group, his group’s decision to avoid this crevasse became a pivotal learning moment. They realized afterward that their overall motivation for finishing the hike began to decline after turning around.

"Later that afternoon we talked about our decision," he said. "We discovered that we did have choices. One of them would have been to split the group, with the ones that wanted to climb the crevasse going forward, and the ones who felt apprehensive to take a different route. We discarded that option at the time because we wanted to do everything as a team; but the result was that no one experienced a satisfactory outcome."

So the next morning before breakfast, his team — all eight — returned to the crevasse and went through it. "I learned that it is important to explore all options when faced with a decision," Daquino said. "And more importantly, that it is just as essential to discuss the aftermath of a decision. More can be learned during the debrief." Since returning to his workplace, Daquino has begun using a debriefing process following every major meeting.

Rewriting the Rules

Yet no matter which path they chose, the journeys led to similar experiences. Members of all three teams, for instance, learned through the weekend’s activities that silence doesn’t always mean agreement.

"When faced with the crevasse, some in my group were very vocal, and others were quiet," said Daquino. "The assumption was made that the quiet people were probably not motivated one way or the other about the issue, and we assumed they would agree with any decision. We were wrong," he said. "They had strong feelings about the issue, but for whatever reasons, felt that the group environment sent a signal that their opinion didn’t matter. At our company, we had a rule during meetings that silence equaled agreement. It became obvious on my return that this rule needed to be re-written. I make it a point now to underscore at every meeting that all voices that want to be heard are heard."

Leading From New Perspectives

During the hikes, team members took turns as trail leaders and practiced leading from the front, middle, and back of the groups. When change management consultant RS Moorthy’s group leader made the decision to avoid the crevasse, he was at the back of the group and couldn’t even see the cliff. "We accepted the decision of the leader, as he was concerned for the overall safety of the group; we trusted him. Situations like this are common in organizations, where despite your personal opinion, you have to make a team decision," Moorthy said. Switching leadership positions on the trail helped him see how different perspectives require different skills. "When I was at the back of the group, I worked to keep people’s spirits up, to keep them going." He also needed to delegate navigation responsibilities and to depend on others up front to let him know the condition of the hikers he couldn’t see.

The groups even ventured on the trail in the dark for a hike guided by a naturalist. "We learned to be interdependent on each other and how to develop other senses, like our hearing and smell, in such extreme conditions," Moorthy said. "Gradually, even in that 1-hour hike, our ears became more receptive to sounds and our noses to different aromas of nature which we might not otherwise have paid that much attention to. In the current uncertain global economy, as leaders, we continuously need to develop a wide range of applicable skills and acquire new knowledge to be successful."

Spring 2003 West Coast Venture Planned
Another Wharton Leadership Venture is being planned for April 8-11, 2003, on the West Coast. Wharton Leadership Ventures will return to the Mohonk Mountain House in New York State in September 2003.

   

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