Day 3, still plugging away at the orientation portion of the residency.

Global Markets and Institutions (GMI) and Culture, Civilization and Leadership (CCL) have taken the majority of “class time” so far.  I’ve enjoyed the classes so far; GMI fits my Econ background perfectly, so I can just focus on the discussion rather than worry about the concepts, and CCL looks to be set up in a very fun manner.  Yes, there’s a bit more academia in the CCL class than I am used to, but if we don’t know the conceptual frameworks, the “fun” will just be leisure rather than learning.

The real fun of the day was Outward Bound, a nature/outdoors program that provides opportunity to bond with teammates and learn about dynamics of groups.  By my count, there were six major events:

• The “bungee” test.  Each team needs to fit through a circle bungee cord as fast as possible, competing with the other teams.  This was an interesting exercise; to start, two teams were joined together, which in our case made 11 people try to be “the leader”.  After the competition, our guide highlighted this fact, and offered that to get through the day, we better pay attention to behaving as a team, not a collection of leaders.  Our team came in 3rd place I believe, and I must say the highlight of this event was my teammates trying to pull the bungee cord through my crotch, instead of waiting until both of my feet were inside of the hoop.  Thanks for the memories guys!
• The Cave.  Pretty self explanatory, each team needed to go through a man-made cave with only one headlamp and a map.  Plenty of places to make a wrong turn, and plenty of crevices to squeeze through.  Our team did pretty well, considering several circumstances:  1)  We’re adults, not kid sized, 2) There are several claustrophobes in the group (myself included), and 3)  There were too many people inside the cave. For whatever reason, there was this lingering other group that clogged up the (small) space inside the cave.  While we didn’t finish the course, we had our first instance of instantaneous leadership with Sarah declaring that it’s okay for the team to not finish, as we had already achieved the goal of pushing our individual boundaries.  I came out of the cave looking like I’d been through war, sweaty and bleeding.  No tears though! ;0)
• Feed the Astronauts.  The third event of the day was a logic puzzle, with a twist:  no paper allowed!  With just a minimal amount of information, we were to determine which astronaut liked Chinese Food, and who was the ‘Engineer’ Astronaut.  After 20 minutes, neither team got the answer, but we learned an important lesson:  when given a handicap (no paper), you need to find an alternative.  Our group is very logical, but perhaps not very spatial, and it showed in our approach in solving the problem.  The lead here was Jig, who organized the laminated pieces on the ground while each of us gave input.  Ben the tour guide suggested that perhaps we should’ve tried to “assume” a role each, and organized that way.
• Rock climbing!  Never done this before, man-made wall or otherwise, and I can say I quite enjoyed this event.  All five teammates tackled the wall with various success.  Chris S. reached the highest point, but all of us clearly pushed ourselves to our physical limits.  Myself, I pushed hard enough to pull a muscle in my neck/upper shoulder.  (I’m getting OLD!)
• “Blind Chess”.  This was a cool concept, with not so great execution.  Basically, the team got broken up into three groups, with two teams competing.  Each of the three groups had a different job:  chess piece (me and Chris), relayers (Jig and Todd), and the “blind organizer” (Sarah).  There were technical difficulties with the radios, the chess pieces had no idea what was going on, the other team was moving around, and the event was pretty much shot.  However, in this failure, there was still plenty to learn.  First, we recognized that anarchy arises in an information vacuum (Chris and I started moving around in the board, even though we didn’t know the rules).  Second, without communication, all is lost.  And finally, Sarah can’t read a map, so someone else will have to navigate next time!  :o)
• Building the raft.  The quintessential team building activity. Unfortunately, due to the chess game getting messed up, we were running out of time and the guides showed us how to build the raft. But we still needed to assemble it, do two runs of six teammates on the raft in a relay race.  To be honest, I don’t remember who won (not us), but it was great fun nevertheless!  I managed to not get too wet, while simultaneously splashing the hell out of everyone else with my paddle. You’re all welcome!

All in all, the entire journey took the majority of the afternoon, 12:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.  After getting cleaned up, a few classmates and I went to a nearby dim sum restaurant, then the team reconvened to finish the Botswana case for GMI.  A long, but productive (and fun) day!

At this point, a lot of you readers should have WordPress accounts now if you’ve been commenting on the CCL blog.  I’d love to hear some other experiences (from either section, for those of you who aren’t in my section) and a quick leadership lesson you learned during the experience!

Related Posts:

• Military Leadership- Sean Bode- Integrity
• A Hitchhiker’s Guide To Team Feedback
• Competing with China
• DukeGEN Multi-City Networking Events: November 16th-18th
• CCL comes to a close, but not before we film Russia