Leadership Roundup
Published in FirstMonday magazine, by Sarah Sekula
In the quest to corral new talent and teach them the ropes, training with a twist is gaining ground. Right here at home. And in far-off places.
It’s an unseasonably warm morning at the Crescent J Ranch when Frankie Price arrives. Her silver spurs squeak like a metal gate opening and closing.
She not only looks the part of an expert wrangler — wearing snakeskin boots, a red bandana and a handmade leather belt — she is. She’s been roping and riding for more than four decades.
My experience, on the other hand, amounts to carnival-style, miniaturepony rides and the occasional guided ride with nothing more thrilling than a mosey. And, I certainly have never rounded up a herd of 1,500 cattle, as Price does daily.
Hang in with me — this all ties into leadership training.
I hop onto Cabellis, a chocolate brown Cracker horse. With a quick nudge of my thighs, we’re off trotting through palmetto fronds, skirting around swampy banks and dodging cypress trees (some so close together that Price yells, in her thick Southern accent, “Watch your knees!”). Next, we stop at a pasture filled with cattle, including mothers with calves and 1,200-pound feisty bulls, who don’t seem at all interested in moving.
That is, until Price cracks a bullwhip. Pow! Before I know it Cabellis and I are helping control a bobbing sea of bovines.
The point here is this: I put myself outside my comfort zone, which is key when it comes to leadership training.
“When you go and experience something like this, you develop new brain patterns,” says Suzie DeBusk, president of Leadership Safaris, who uses cattle drives as part of her training courses.
“By putting people into situations where they are uncomfortable, it forces them out of balance and into a state of disequilibrium,” says DeBusk, who has trained hundreds of Fortune 100 managers across the globe. “This encourages them to be more open emotionally and accepting of some of the feedback we give.”
Rough and Rugged
The adrenaline rush of a horseback ride is exactly what the 53-year-old leadership guru lives for. In fact, she’s taken 15 horseback riding excursions to Africa over the past 16 years. In 2005, she launched Rockledge-based Leadership Safaris and began leading CEOs, managers and executives out of the boardroom and into the most unlikely places, like Kenya.
“I wanted to take people on safari and make it more than just a tourist experience,” she says. “Once you are out of the capital city of Nairobi, you are struck by how truly wild it is. You realize that to walk outside of camp, you no longer have the skills or abilities to survive very long. There are elephants around every bend; there might be a lion hanging out behind the termite mound. You are no longer at the top of the food chain.”
The carefully planned 10.5-day excursion includes a week of training on the Sosian Ranch and the Maasai Mara National Park. Plus plenty of physical challenges to build leadership skills.
“They are not able to use their status or life/work roles in the way they might normally throughout any given day,” she adds. “When they are put into these situations, it forces them to drop their defenses. Their role as boss, CEO or manager doesn’t help them out here.”
Leaders-in-Waiting
Whether it’s on a rigorous cattle drive or in the office conference room, conducting leadership training is critically important for any organization. Add to that the current economic conditions and the fact that baby boomers — who hold most major workplace leadership roles — are nearing retirement, and it’s even more crucial.
“As businesses operate in these times of upheaval as well as opportunity, a lot more attention should be given to analyzing an organization’s leadership,” says Dirk Gorman, author of “The Gang of One Analysis: Assessing Your Managers’ Leadership Abilities.”
Consider this: By the end of 2010, boomer retirement will have robbedAmerican companies of 18.5 percent of their full-time employees, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
“We have to look to the youngest and soon-to-be largest generation in the workforce [millennials],” affirms Nick Tasler, TalentSmart director of research and development.
For more than a decade now, TalentSmart researchers have been devoted to determining what exactly constitutes a high-quality leader. “What we’ve discovered,” says Tasler, “is that emotional intelligence quotient, or ’EQ’ — the ability to recognize and manage your emotions and those of other people — is the single most important skill of a successful leader.”
Other Kind of Smart
It’s important to assess leaders at all levels, especially at the top, simply because the further up in an organization you go, the less likely you are to receive candid feedback.
After hair-raising activities, such as the cattle drive, DeBusk sits participants down for a discussion about EQ. The three-hour workshop includes an emotional-competence curriculum, covering such fundamental skills as self-awareness, self-control, reframing and self-talk.
“The upper-level executives have profound ‘aha’ moments, primarily in the emotions area,” says Mary Schneider, Leadership Safaris’ chief learning officer, who has trained leaders for global companies like GE Capital and Toshiba Business Solutions. “A lot of managers think they are doing a great job every day and don’t have a clue as to how they come across to others.”
Believe it or not, EQ questions don’t focus on feelings. Instead, they are about behaviors. In the end, they test things like self-reliance and optimism, which are both closely linked with success.
Surprisingly, studies show that raw intelligence accounts for only 20 percent of a person’s achievement. The remaining 80 percent is emotional and adversity quotients, among other factors. Such quotients relate to how people respond to life’s events, or the capacity to respond productively in times of stress. So, while your IQ may put you in the game, it does not determine the way things go from there.
Allure of Africa
Face it: We tend to be very poor judges of what we are not good at. This is definitely the case for those who have performance problems at work.
And it’s exactly why a 360-degree assessment can be so handy, says DeBusk. When she takes executives into the heart of Africa, she uses this type of comprehensive assessment paired, of course, with the safari of a lifetime.
A 360-degree assessment, in which you receive anonymous feedback from peers and supervisors, gives a clear direction of areas that could use improvement. “It can be a real kick in the teeth for people because we never know how we are perceived,” says DeBusk. “People need a challenge that puts them in a really uncomfortable place, mentally and physically.”
Case in point: During the trip, DeBusk asks participants to maneuver an open-top Jeep Wrangler through unforgiving terrain. She recalls one time in particular when it was more difficult than usual.
There it was, she describes—a three-ton female elephant (roughly the size of a Hummer) with four young offspring.
The driver stopped the vehicle. Everyone stared in awe. But suddenly the massive creature flapped her ears and trumpeted, as a warning, or mock charge.
Seconds later, it was a full-fledged chase. DeBusk wedged herself between the spare tire and the cab of the Jeep, to avoid being bounced out. The enraged elephant was gaining ground when DeBusk saw the ravine. “Had she caught us there, she could easily have flipped the vehicle as we were no match for her size.”
Fortunately, the driver started banging his fist on the roof of the vehicle. That did it. The elephant stopped.
Beyond the unexpected chases, other daily events are equally foreign. During the program, participants ride camels, jump from the top of a waterfall and spend time alone in the wilderness.
After each invigorating day, the group takes a breather and discusses lessons learned on safari and in real life, as they relate to leadership attributes of self-awareness, accountability and fortitude. For instance, do you respect other people’s opinions? Do you interrupt people mid-sentence?
“We help people understand the feedback and the natural process of emotions they are going to go through,” says Schneider. “I had a manager tell me early in my career that my energy could bowl people over. I hung around in resistance for a while. I got to acceptance and said, ‘How can I work on this?’”
Take Action
Placing yourself in a situation where you are no longer in complete control and having to rely on a guide to help you find your way is a big stretch for many people. “Africa offers such a great opportunity for growth and expansion,” DeBusk says.
However, the tax-deductible trip comes with a hefty $12,000 to $15,000 price tag, depending on whether participants opt for side trips to Kenya’s other national parks and/or the Seychelles Islands.
While such adventurous training may not be feasible for most people, there are other options that can be just as enlightening. For one, the cattle drive is a reasonable $325. Or, go online and visit www.EQUniversity.com. The Web site offers an EQI test for $149. You’ll receive an assessment (about seven or eight pages long) and participate in a 30-minute confidential telephone consultation with a trained professional.
If you find there’s a lengthy list of areas to work on, never fear. Emotional intelligence can be improved over time. Consider this: emotional literacy programs are even being taught in elementary schools now, complete with role-playing exercises and a set of diagrams breaking down the components of different facial expressions. Just like trigonometry or French grammar, the skills are teachable.
All in all, practice makes perfect. Just like riding a horse.
