Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Mountain Outdoor "Leadership" Session


During the 4th week of school we had one of those "leadership activity" days where we spent 8 hours outdoors in the snowy mountains of Switzerland, about 30 minutes drive from Lausanne to work on team-building and leading during tough situations and all that kind of stuff.  While our groups of 7-8 people worked through the tasks of the leadership games (such as creating a 20ft wide equilateral triangle with rope while blindfolded or navigating a 5-stage ropes course with all 8 people on one lead rope) the coaches filmed us so that later we could see how we reacted during tense situations. After dinner we had to review the videos and discuss within our team our emotional responses both during the actual tasks and after seeing the video. My group started at 8pm and finished at 1:15am, making it an incredibly draining, long, Wednesday. The videos were remarkably interesting and funny to watch, however, especially the blindfolded exercise, and for many days afterwards I found myself laughing out loud when I remembered the best bits.
The day after we started class a half hour late, at 8:30, and the extra thirty minutes of sleep was extremely welcome. We spent the whole day discussing our experiences from the outdoor exercises, in three different kinds of sessions – one with just my teammates, one with my teammates and our coach, and one as a presentation to the rest of the class. In the afternoon we had to give written and verbal feedback comments to each of our teammates (both positive and negative), so after a marathon session of hearing critical comment about ourselves and giving critical comment to our colleagues the emotional exhaustion emanating from the dungeons was palpable and distinct.
That night around 50% of the class headed to the White Horse for release.

The 90 of us awaiting instruction.

Warm up exercises.

In this exercise we had to cross a "minefield."  They gave us 3 poles, 1 piece of rope, and a large bucket of water and told us to move ourselves and the water across the forbidden "minefield."

We look like we're hoisting the flag at Iwo Jima.

Stephanie is an avid rock climber so she was sent across first.

This exercise was a ropes course.



We were only about 6ft off the ground, but we lost points if any part of our body touched the ground.

Stephanie was the anchor.

This was the large snowball I'd ever rolled in my life.

Warming up with hot food.

Reviewing the video at the end of the day.

Good laughs.

No comments: