The first in a series of January blogs about Resilience.

Lying in bed at 3am this morning listening to the wind howling through the open bedroom window, and snuggling deeper into my winter duvet, took my mind to a place of gratitude.

I wondered how hard life might be for communities and individuals without the comforts of solid shelter, plentiful food and warm bedding.

I will probably spend most of the day inside – warm, fed and watered. And if I venture out it will be a quick dash, covered and under a hood pulled down as far as it will go…. isolated from everyone and protected from the elements. Winter.

An alien sense of reliance

Then my thoughts meandered to considering how I will withdraw from my community once business, work and socialising are done. Today. And most days. Shut in behind my doors and curtains, with my wife, isolated again, supposedly self-sufficient.

Thoughts of how this might be considered alien to some people around the world… not to have to co-operate on a daily basis to gain the basics of life. This strange notion that we are free from needing others. How easy to forget that we are group beings.

It’s not fluff, it’s stand-out stuff

This is what we do. We craft Resilience programmes which encourage connection, collaboration and community.

Nothing fluffy. Nothing beige. Our impactful work starts and finishes where it matters most for our clients – in the workplace, boardroom, sports field, or expedition.

Yet we are passionate about the power of communal living and outdoor experiences as part of the developmental journey.

Connecting, collaborating, and creating community is a forgotten part of who we all really are. And so we help groups discover common purpose, new ways of thinking and acting together, and huge untapped internal resources.

So often I hear that these experiences are the stand-out moments of people’s year, even their lives.That’s what gets me out from under my duvet.

Dom
Dominic Rudd
Director of Adventure Programmes
The Fresh Air Learning Company Ltd

Walking in a place of ancient wisdom
Less reflective and thematic than recent blogs, this one is a simply a short collection of some memories from my recent Himalayan trek. They may inspire you to trek there too!

Our Sherpa guides! Simply wonderful. Unassuming, polite, endlessly willing and always smiling. Knowledgeable and so skilful. And full of stories of personal ascents of Everest and other major peaks.

And our porters! Amazing too. Hard working and always smiling. Carrying big weights, and magically always at our destination before us! How humbling to have these people in our service.

Laughter and stories

So much laughter! On the trail, and in the evening in the dimly lit tea-lodges. The laughing banter of new friendships and the mortal belly-aching combat of “shit-head” – a card game known to trekkers across the world.

Island Peak base camp. “The temperature inside the tents is a balmy -18 Celsius. The less good news is that the temperature outside the tent is -28 Celsius!” Top tip – if the joining pack advises you to get a sleeping bag rated at such-and-such a temperature, then do as suggested. You won’t be sorry!

Our 360 Expeditions (www.360-expeditions.com) leader Rolfe Oostra and his climbing Sherpas – Boleh, Phurba, and Mingma. These people are incredibly accomplished in their fields. They have serious big mountain experience and, in Rolfe’s case, global expedition experience. Their capacity to lead our trek was unquestionable. Moreover they had really big adventure stories to share with us all. I would have paid the money just to sit on a grassy bank and listen to these. The trek was a bonus! The whole experience was a huge privilege.

Surprises

A few surprises: the home-counties housewife who found her forte at altitude, and the experienced climber who slowed right down. Food surprises: menus at every overnight stop, and always the availability – at an increasing price – of beer, mineral water, choccy bars, Pringles and bog roll!  And electric surprises, too. Recharging facilities using UK 3-pin plugs all the way up. Mobile telephone coverage just about everywhere, and wi-fi too! Good thing or a bad thing?

Ancient wisdom

And then there were the quiet times, really quiet times, when people had to dig really deep. Steep slopes, thin air – four little words, but a world of personal challenge. But not private challenge as everyone was incredibly supportive and understanding.

And a final riff repeated from a recent blog:

Nepal. Big-mountain views and river-roaring gorges; empty blue, cloud-less, vapour trail-less skies; silent glaciers, distantly rumbling avalanches, soft melodic yak bells, and laughing evening card-playing trekkers; “ting”ing prayer wheels, smiling “Namastes” from trackside-playing children; cold dry air reaching down backs of throats; warm, aromatic, tangy, restoring lemon tea; new friendships and a deep sense of being in a place of ancient wisdom.

Dave

Dave Stewart
Director
The Fresh Air Learning Company Ltd

Where to spend your leadership development money

Spending three weeks in the Himalayas recently, I got to know a group of leaders really quite well. Expedition leaders, company directors, charity volunteers. All fantastic people achieving lots with their lives – for themselves and many others.

Sharing miles on foot, meals on seats, and too many beers gets you close. Being in the spiritual presence of majestic mountains, suffering altitude together, and sharing a pee-spot over a 2000ft gorge gets you even closer.

All of them were “imperfect”. Blind spots, prejudices, intolerances, and more.

I wonder, counter intuitively, if this might explain, in part, their growth and effectiveness as leaders.

Happy skins

Not for them some ten-point model of good leadership, or a Covey’esque list of effective habits. Not for them a set of aspirational standards against which – if so minded – they could spend time, money and energy to meet.

My trekking mates were successful people because they had discovered what they were really good at, what others really valued, what really worked. They knew who they were. They were happy in their leadership skins.

The HvL (Holes versus Length) Scale of Leadership Effectiveness

As one of them put it, “I am not spending time and money to fill in potholes. There will always be potholes. Lots of them. Bigger than my budget.”

“I want to build a longer road so I can enjoy the journey, get to places and do stuff! I will build on what I know I am great at.”

So, using the HvL model where is your current balance of leadership investment? Is it working for you? Does it feel right?

What might happen if you slid the cursor away from hole-filling and edged it, maybe even recklessly zipped it towards road lengthening? How does that feel, and does it get you to where you feel more like you want to feel? Where is the real leader-you on this scale? What are you doing to find your place and be the best you can be?

Dave

Dave Stewart
Director
The Fresh Air Learning Company Ltd

Why 17kgs and a rubbish sleeping bag are just plain wrong!

It was awesome in a hundred different ways. My senses were kicked awake from the off. I could not help but feel fully alive.

Nepal. Big-mountain views and river-roaring gorges; empty blue, cloud-less, vapour trail-less skies; silent glaciers, distantly rumbling avalanches, soft melodic yak bells, and laughing evening card-playing trekkers; “ting”ing prayer wheels, smiling “Namastes” from trackside-playing children; cold dry air reaching down backs of throats; warm, aromatic, tangy, restoring lemon tea; new friendships and a deep sense of being in a place of ancient wisdom.

Would I have had the same wonder-full experience if I had just turned up? No preparation? No acclimatisation? The wrong kit? Unsuitable clothing? Unfit?

Shaping the conditions for success

Do you know people who can just turn up and “play live”? They seem blessed with improvisational skills. They work in-the-moment, pulling insights and knowledge from nowhere. Or people who plan to the “Nth” degree?  All options are considered, planned for, and then stacked and packed. And checked again.

Well, where I was in the Himalayas, no amount of just “turning up and playing live” would have kept you warm during the night when it was -28 degrees Celsius. A fellow trekker had a rubbish sleeping bag and had a lot of very cold, sleepless nights. I had a great bag and slept brilliantly.

In other respects my packing was rubbish though. I packed too much. Some poor porter had to carry stuff I never used. I wasted time faffing around in the mornings and evenings looking for the stuff that I did need. “Must do better.”

Choiceful balance

So, maybe the learning here is around reflecting on what needs to be done to create the conditions for success. Malcolm Gladwell notes in his book “Tipping Point” that most gifted people have spent up to 10,000 hours becoming gifted!

We all need some preparation it seems.

I know that I am going to spend more time at the front end of the big steps and journeys I take in the future.

What do you need to be at your best – as an individual, a team, an organisation? How do you balance planning, preparation and execution? How might we help shape your success?

Dave

Dave Stewart
Director
The Fresh Air Learning Company Ltd

This week’s guest post is by Mike Noel Smith.

I was recently flying to Hawaii but had a stopover in Chicago O’Hare International airport. With a few hours to kill before my connection, I wandered around before finally settling on a restaurant nestling in amongst many other food outlets.

The waiters all seemed under pressure to serve their respective tables, rushing around looking flustered, but mine seemed happy to stay a while with me at the table and talk. I found out he was actually the owner of the restaurant, so in some ways, he was leading the way as well as finding out at the ‘coal face’ what his customers were saying and thinking about his business.

I asked him how he felt he was doing and he replied by saying that in his competitive market he needed to make the effort – constantly. He had 4 Golden Rules that he sought to apply every day in order to stay in front of his rivals, and they were:

Improve – always aim to get better (excellence is good enough)

Observe – talk and watch the people you work with and your customers (and most important listen to them)

Connect – treat everyone with respect (make them feel ‘special’)

Adapt – uncertainty is the new ‘norm’ today so be prepared to be nimble and flexible at all times

I thought about what he said and started to apply that to my interactions with customers and clients. It made an immediate impact as I started to win more business but more importantly, it helped me to retain the clients that I already had.

Although they are simple ‘rules’ to follow, they have to be diligently applied and constantly reviewed with self-feedback as well as customer review to see if you are hitting the nail on the head each time. One client, for example, a high street bank even asked me to run a workshop as part of their graduate employee induction programme, to stress the importance of the application of the 4 Golden Rules.

As such, that interaction with a waiter in an airport restaurant has led to new business!

Mike Noel-Smith is Director of Special Projects with Fresh Air Learning. He is a writer, motivational speaker, rugby coach and former military leader. His qualifications include Level A and B Psychometrics and Mental Toughness (MTQ48) administrator. He is also a Master NLP Practitioner.

This week’s guest blog is by Helena Clayton.

This week a client, Tom, and I had a meeting. Given where we were working (a place with lovely grounds, close to the gorgeous St Leonard’s Forest in East Sussex), the mild weather and the fact that Tom had some walking boots in his car, I suggested we do something different and have our meeting while strolling in the forest.

We set off, my client somewhat nervous as he knew there were some tricky things we needed to chat through. How would that work without a table, paper and pen to jot down our pearls of wisdom? It was disconcerting for him to leave behind the comforting constraints of indoor work, but without them our meeting was transformed for the better.

I have come to trust in walking to help with having some great and sometimes difficult conversations. Walking alongside someone, rather than being eyeball-to-eyeball, I find I have courage to ask questions that I might otherwise bottle, maybe because I’m nervous about being too direct.

I’ve found the natural pace of walking – striding ahead one minute, the next pausing to navigate a muddy puddle or chat for a few minutes with a dog walker – supports a more natural conversational flow and reminds us that we are two human beings rather than two ‘Heads of Procurement’ (or whatever). Our conversation and walk progressed together, each improving and shaping the other.

At one point, Tom suggested we get off the path and bust through some scrub to go back a different way. Not only did we laugh about the fact that he seemed less worried about the environment now, we also had an interesting (and productive) conversation about how our joint project might benefit from going ‘off piste’.

A mountain, local park or even a seemingly ordinary town centre can be much more than a setting, it can be a defining force in your conversation: for us, the last of the autumn colours provided a glorious backdrop and we turned to each other again and again to say “wow.” We created shared memories that I know will stand our relationship in good stead for the future.

Neither of us knew whether we’d lost any pearls of wisdom without our pens and paper. What we did know was that we had a great meeting, and would be doing it again soon. Take a conversation for a walk, and who knows where you might find yourself?

Helena Clayton is Director of Executive & Leadership Development Programmes with Fresh Air Learning. A former director of an international management development consultancy, she is now a coach, facilitator and consultant to leaders and top teams across the public and private sectors. Her qualifications include an MA in Leadership and Learning and a Post Graduate Diploma in Consulting.

This week’s guest post is by John Peter Wilson.

Did you ever find yourself daydreaming at school only to be brought harshly back to reality by the sharp tones of the teacher? It probably followed that you then felt guilty for not paying attention to what was happening in the classroom. It seems that we live in a culture where letting our minds wander is considered a bad thing and we are encouraged to keep our minds always focused.

Yet, daydreaming doesn’t just happen when we are young. Have you ever found yourself staring into the distance and realised that for the past five minutes or so you have been lost in a dream world thinking about something which is really close to your heart? What took you there? Why did you fall into this reverie when you should have been thinking about something else or doing something more urgent? The short answer is that your deep inner feelings surfaced and drew your attention to things which were important to you. Brain imaging technologies show that our brains become highly active when we relax and daydream.

Too often, when we catch our mind wandering we hurriedly close the door on those positive thoughts and return to the immediate needs of everyday existence. But are we allowing ordinary mundane concerns distract us from a deeper and more meaningful life in which we can achieve so much more than we are presently doing? If the answer is, ‘Yes’, then we should listen more carefully to the dreams and then figure out a way of actually achieving them.

“Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.”
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) author

Dreams can be achieved and there is much evidence that some of the most influential discoveries and achievements known to humankind began with a dream. Perhaps the achievement originally began as the faintest notion of an idea which slowly grew and was eventually brought to fruition.

But there is a difference between those people who dream and are successful, and those who merely fantasise. Those who remain within a fantasy and never practically try to reach their ambitions are mostly deluding themselves and living in a never-never-land. But, and it is a big BUT, dreaming is a very important part of the process for reaching our desires and objectives. So we should not feel guilty about letting our minds wander to the things which are important to us. Sit back and enjoy the virtual journey around your dream world and then make it come true.

John Peter Wilson, is an academic and author. His most recent book is the inspirational ‘Dream: Your Life, Your Future’. www.dreamfutures.eu.

Where do you stand on the management of hopes and fears?

“And Number 1, the most dangerous airport in the world, is Lukla.”

So spoke the presenter of the TV documentary. My wife was horrified. And then came news of the tragic crash of a Lukla-bound aircraft out of Kathmandu.

Add to this an awareness of the effects of altitude, the likelihood of temperatures 20 degrees below zero, and YouTube clips of Island Peak’s 20,000’ summit ridge.

Same journey, different take…

In contrast I am thrilled by the prospect of my Himalayan trek. From Kathmandu to Lukla by air, then on foot up the Khumbu valley to Everest Base Camp, and finally the climb of Island Peak. And back to Lukla again. Eighteen days of amazing new sights, sounds, tastes and smells; and an embodied aliveness that comes from movement through awesome landscapes.

More than kit and training…

I have been training in the Brecon Beacons, the Lake District, and the Scottish Highlands – enjoying each day in the mountains for itself and for its future purpose. I have been building up the kit I need, carefully balancing need, luxury and weight. With 2 weeks to go, I am pretty much packed and ready.

But of course, any big journey is more than just kit and training.

How yelling out an adventurous “yes!” can save you from a life on the sofa

“Never did I think I would be dancing to an AC/DC tribute band in a salsa club in Cusco!”

So posted a friend of mine on Facebook.

A handful of years earlier she had been living something of a routine corporate life. Several adventurous “yes’s” later she is an accomplished expedition leader, with successful trips to the Andes, Africa, and Nepal to her name. She is loving life.

The answer to how is yes…

Peter Block’s book “The answer to how is yes” shines a light on how lives can be transformed when people step away from a seemingly automatic “no, because etc…” response to new possibility.

Many people of course don’t really recognise the word “possibility.” Their brains take them to a place of difficulty, obstacles, risks, upheaval. Of implementation. Of reason. Away from passion and dreams.

The outcome? Life on a sofa. As a spectator.

Try this…

If you would like to move off the sofa, try saying some little heartfelt yes’s and see where they take you.

Say “yes” first and work out “how” later.

Then try some bigger yes’s, and see where you go.  Look back.

How distant does that sofa look?

What will be your Cusco salsa bar moment?

Dave

Dave Stewart
Director
The Fresh Air Learning Company Ltd

How are teams defined and developed where you work?

It struck me that I am a multi-role participant in a wide range of changing teams. Sometimes in a leading role, sometimes in another.

On-site teams, distributed teams, and virtual teams; intra-organisational teams, supply chain teams, and wider societal teams; fledgling teams, mature teams, and fading teams; great teams, not-yet-great teams, and maybe-never-will-be-great teams.

Dynamic and connected

It’s easy to draw a line around some teams and say they are discrete entities with defined tasks. But they all exist within a web of relating, purposeful doing and wider contextual influences. None of these teams are static or exist in isolation. And different people will define and categorise them in different ways.

Design and emergence

How much thoughtful design goes into this notion of teaming I wonder?

And when deliberate design is not appropriate or possible, who is creating or noticing emerging game changing conversations and creating the notion of team and fresh purpose around these?

How easy and common is it just to stay within existing budgetary and organisational boundaries and team as you have always teamed? Shifting the proverbial deck chairs as it were? How much vision, courage and persistence is needed in your organisation to shift budget and boundaries to re-
define collaborative effort?

Connecting conversations

When your organisation invests in team definition and development, is it polishing an antique or turbo-charging a new set of connecting conversations that will create something great? What is the guiding philosophy and design?

Dave

Dave Stewart
Director
The Fresh Air Learning Company Ltd