What?

Score orienteering, in the form that we use it, is an outdoor exercise in working together as a team to develop and execute a strategy.

We use small areas with good paths. No compasses or advanced navigation skills are required.

Teams earn points by navigating to check points on a course marked out on a map and/or satellite photograph.  Each check point has a different value reflecting its distance from the start/finish and how easy or difficult it is to find. They have unique letters which are recorded onto a team card. Teams can split into sub-teams of 2 people minimum (one aspect of a wider Risk Management Plan) to cover as much of the course as possible.

Here is the rub.

Teams are given a fixed time to achieve as much as possible after which penalty points escalate rapidly.

The test therefore is really about developing a strategy and executing a plan to maximise return on the skills of the team and a fixed investment of time!

Want to know more about how we can support you and your team? Call/message 07776 153428 or email dave@freshairleadership.com 

Why?

We use score orienteering in our leadership team programmes for a number of reasons:

• It is fun!
• It is a great way of switching up the energy during the day.
• The learning insights that emerge are strongly anchored to what is always a highly memorable experience.
• It engages everyone, whether fleet of foot or less so (as there are check points near and far), with a premium placed on the thinking and strategising that happens (or doesn’t!).

With good facilitation, it provides a memorable way into discussing team function. This, and other experiential activities we employ, are not vehicles for judging anyone’s performance. They are simply ways into carefully facilitated discussions.

• Psychological safety. Did team members feel included, safe to learn, safe to contribute, safe to challenge?
• How collaborative was the strategising, decision-making, and planning experience? How did people feel about what they experienced of their colleagues?
• What did colleagues notice about their team roles preferences (after Belbin). Who were the strategists, planners, resource managers etc? Did anyone feel left out?
• How well did participants appreciate the difference between the plan (the map) and reality (the ground). How might this apply back in the business?
• How were choices and trade-offs made in seeking an optimum route in an environment that presented opportunity and risk?
• How were team members employed on this task? How were skills and experience canvassed and used to best effect?

Where?

Here is an example of a control sheet we give to teams (showing map and satellite photo variants). In this case the area is around the House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow.

How?

On a safety note, events such as these need a thorough risk assessment and risk management plan. When we organise these, we use staff who are experienced and qualified outdoor leaders (through Mountain Training UK) and first aiders, and a risk management process which has been externally audited.

Can we help you?

Our core business is helping business leaders develop highly effective teams. This post about score orienteering is just one example of our experiential approach.

Want to know more about how we can support you and your team? Call/message 07776 153428 or email dave@freshairleadership.com 

Have you noticed how easy it is to jump to a wrong conclusion!? You are convinced you are “right”. Yet others are convinced they are “right” too!

The Ladder of Inference (after Argyris, C., ‘Overcoming Organisational Defences: Facilitating Organisational Learning’) provides a way of visualising how you go from experiencing an event to making a decision.

It reinforces the value of self-awareness around how we experience the world and the assumptions and biases in play. A note of caution, however. Models don’t claim to be “right” but they do offer a way into understanding a topic.

• Starting at the bottom of the ladder, an event happens which we take notice of as an experience. We sometimes refer to these as “facts”.
• Because of our many different biases, not least around how we experience the world through our different senses, we can’t experience the “wholeness” of an event. Rather we end up with a personal sample.
• We interpret what our sample of the event means by applying our assumptions, often without considering or even being aware of them.
• And from this meaning, we draw conclusions.
• Over time, and the multiple similar events which we interpret in a similar way to reach similar conclusions, we develop beliefs.
• Armed with these beliefs, we take actions that seem “right”.

The speed of this process is such that it can appear that we  “jump to conclusions”. Without pausing to reflect, check the data, consult with others, and engage in critical thinking, it can be easy to jump to the wrong conclusions and make poor decisions.

How to use this?

Use the concept of a ladder to challenge or validate your own and other people’s views on a subject. What exactly are the “facts”? What biases and assumptions are in play? Could different conclusions be reached and different decisions made by inquiring into the event more fully and re-framing our assumptions?

Whatever, it is good to talk things through. Always.

Have you noticed leaders who are anxious and confused around when to listen and when to act?

I wonder if some leaders are being overly influenced by the never-ending stream of books on leadership. Added to which is a lot of energetic chatter on platforms such as LinkedIn.

These talk of psychological safety and models such as servant leadership, compassionate leadership, distributed leadership, and more.

Written as if they are cosy, accountability-shielding concepts, set in a single, unchanging, operating context.

They talk to the need for creating environments and setting examples which enable everyone to feel included, able to learn, encouraged to contribute, and ultimately to constructively challenge the status quo. And that is good.

Very few talk about context, confidence, accountability, and action.

Context, Confidence, Collaboration

I have watched leaders nervously ask questions hoping to promote a discussion with their team or a wider staff group.

Their body language and eye contact, and their verbal hesitancy, fluency, and volume convey a lack of confidence in what they are saying and doing. They defer in a way that signals a hope the discussion won’t be difficult. They aren’t really clear about the purpose of their engagement, other than a vague notion of it being a good thing to do.

They are acting out someone else’s leadership model. Not very convincingly.

Confident and competent leaders sense the context and consciously choose to “communicate at” (i.e. my point of view), “consult with” (i.e. still my point of view but I will give you a shout), or “collaborate with” (i.e. how do we create fresh insight together?). These leaders have at least 3 modes of context-relevant engagement.

Less confident, less competent leaders will feel uneasy about any engagement. At best, they will cling to the comfort of control that “communicating at” or “consulting with” offers. Fearful and adrift.

Highly confident, less competent leaders won’t just cling to these two modes, they will stick rigidly to them with relish as it is all about them, their control, and sense of power. Fearful and attached.

Confident and competent leaders artfully create powerful questions, model active listening, and facilitate a dialogue. They are passionate about achieving a higher collective outcome, and detached from any sense of a personal starting position. They let go to let come. Passionate and detached.

Action, Accountability, After-Action

Confident leaders and their teams will have worked out why (context), how (modes of engagement) and when (time is so important) they must converge on a decision and take action.

No confusion or dithering.

There will be levels of trust that enable constructive challenge, commitment, and mutual accountability.

No “my way or the highway”.

And they will continuously review and adjust their decisions and courses of action.

No “fire and forget”.

All in the service of the higher collective outcome.

Passionately detached.

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If you are interested in learning more about dialogue or how we can help you and your team become even effective in your world get in touch. Email us at info@freshairleadership.com or call +44 7776 153428.