Better Leading Through Log Crossing : Program for Execs Is an Adventure

It’s a sign of the times

You’re walking on coals

Sharpening stones

To improve your business acumen . . .

--”Exhuming McCarthy”

R.E.M.

On Friday, Bob refused to do the “trusting fall,” the simplest exercise of the three-day Executive Edge course. It was not a good start. Executive Edge is designed to promote better management and leadership skills by challenging participants. They pay $595 to camp in the woods near Julian, challenging themselves on a rope course high in the trees, climbing sheer rock faces, sleeping on the cold, hard ground, missing their favorite television shows.

Operated jointly by Del Mar-based Aquarius Adventures and UC San Diego Extension, the course features a lot of hugging and group bonding. Each day begins and ends with a group song. Three or four times a day, the participants gather in a circle, assume karate stances and simultaneously punch the air, shouting, “Yes I Can!”

Early in the program, though, Bob decided, “No, no I can’t.”

Wouldn’t Take the Fall

During the first day of the course, participants were asked to fall backward off a 2-foot-high log into the arms of fellow campers--the “trusting fall.” Bob, a balding retail store manager, about 5-foot-5 and carrying more than a few extra pounds, bounced up on the log to do it, but backed down 30 seconds later. He was the only one of eight Executive Edge enrollees not to take the fall.

A few minutes later, during “processing,” the time after each exercise when the group sits together in the woods and discusses what they’ve learned--and how it applies to their business lives--Bob’s refusal was analyzed. After discussion about what his hesitancy really meant in terms of his business life, Bob acquiesced.

“OK, let’s do it,” he said.

He got back up on the 2-foot-high log. A counselor stood by his side talking to him, encouraging him. After a few minutes he fell backward and was caught.

“How about a ‘Yes, I can’ for that?” said an ecstatic group leader.

Six hours later, Bob was asked to climb a 30-foot rope ladder suspended from a tree, walk across a 20-foot stretch of a foot-wide log, shinny across a two-wire bridge and slide down a 50-foot rope hanging on a trapeze--while connected to a safety rope.

“No way,” said Bob, whose real name is not being used here. He wouldn’t even put on a helmet to try the ropes. An elderly woman, one of Bob’s co-workers, put on a helmet and made it halfway up the rope ladder before she quit. She was the only other participant not to make it through the obstacles.

Bob shrugged. He felt bad, but there was no way he was going to do it. He was the type of guy who didn’t climb the Jungle Gym when he was in elementary school, and he wasn’t about to start now.

That night, after the leadership seminar, Bob opened up and talked about his problems with the course. If participants were supposed to improve themselves by meeting and overcoming challenges, he said, “What am I to derive from not going across the log? I know I’m a good manager and I guarantee this won’t change my attitude in the workplace.”

Some members of the group said they admired his courage in refusing to do something he obviously didn’t want to do. Others said his refusal made them uncomfortable, and they openly wondered why he didn’t even attempt to climb the tree.

“We all build scotomas for ourselves,” said Debi, an exercise physiologist from Louisiana, sending everyone scurrying for dictionaries. Scotomas are blind spots in a person’s field of vision.

Debi was always the first to prod Bob into talking about his reservations.

“What is important is not what we feel about it, but that you’re comfortable,” she said.

A program staffer said there is usually at least one participant in every session like Bob, someone unable or unwilling to push himself to the degree the course requires. In a sense, the program was designed for those who are unaccustomed to challenging themselves and asserting themselves both physically and mentally.

“It is not our expectation for everyone to do everything,” Lanny Goodman, president of a Del Mar-based business consulting firm and an Executive Edge staffer, told the group. “It is expected that people challenge themselves to the level that it is important and meaningful for them so they can be more effective as managers in the workplace.”

The 3-year-old course was organized by Herman Gadon, director of executive programs for UCSD. A soft-spoken, deliberate man in his his mid-60s with a doctorate in industrial economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gadon led most of the “processing” sessions. “You’ll make the translation of what (the course) means to you,” he told the group. “I feel strongly that we give people the opportunity to learn. It’s up to them what they do with the opportunity.”

Bob attended the course at the urging of his boss, a satisfied Executive Edge graduate. His boss had asked Bob and three of his fellow store managers in the company to attend the program and picked up their enrollment fees.

Each of the participants had different reasons for attending, and different goals.

Randy, in his mid-20s, a quiet, low-level executive with a pool equipment manufacturing firm, was there to work on his self-confidence. Angela, a demure pharmacist, didn’t have any serious business-oriented goals, but she thought it would be fun. Debi, who is working on her second master’s degree, was there to pick up some pointers for programs she is designing.

Tony, a robust man in his mid-40s, said he was there to check out the program for his computer company and was hoping to get something out of it for himself. He said he tended to ride his employees a little too hard and found it difficult to accept their ideas.

“I heard it was like boot camp for executives,” said Tony on the first day.

It proved to be more like summer school for executives. They were roughing it, but not in a whatever-happened-to-civilization kind of way. All meals were served in a comfortable two-story bunkhouse, a 10-minute walk from camp. There were showers and electric outlets for hair dryers. There was also a YMCA camp over the hill with fields, parking and thousands of screaming kids.

The minimal hiking and tree climbing were reasonably strenuous, but only to people who, like Bob, had not regularly exercised in years. The course takes a holistic approach about becoming a better executive, with lectures on nutrition and leadership. Each participant had a complete physical before the course and and blood pressure and pulses were monitored throughout the weekend by Howard Hunt, an exercise physiologist and chairman of UCSD’s physical education department.

Hunt designed the purposely bland meals and led the nutrition seminars, saying things like, “Blood lipids tell us a great deal.”

Getting Down to Basics

Nutrition information was kept simple, and it clearly hit home with many of the participants, who acknowledged their junk food habits. The message was basic and clear: eat better and live longer.

“What they say is pretty generic, but I’ve got to be careful,” said Debi. “A lot of people don’t know these things, and they’re important to reiterate.”

The course began on Friday morning with simple exercises, such as the trusting fall and a “mindfield” exercise, in which the group members, tied together and blindfolded, were asked to work together to find objects strewn across a field. By Friday afternoon, members were assaulting the heights of the rope courses.

“Fear robs you of energy,” Gadon yelled to one participant, who was hesitating halfway up the rope ladder suspended from a tree. “Fear makes you less efficient at a task, and it’s that way on the job, too.”

Over and over, the group was asked to work together to solve problems. In one activity, the group was divided into two teams and told to build rafts to navigate a small lake.

The leaders removed themselves from the exercises, forcing the groups to work out their own problems, to literally sink or float. Natural leaders within the group, extroverts such as Debi and Tony, found themselves pulling back, allowing others to take control. Most organizational meetings turned into free-for-alls, as the members attempted to assert themselves.

“The whole idea is for them to take their own initiative and not be led around like sheep,” said Bart Berry, the president of Aquarius Adventures, the group that leads the outdoor activities.

An active rock climber and kayaker, Berry attempted to set a strong pace for the group. He gently chided them to push themselves physically, to walk faster, to try the high-altitude ropes course, to take the nutrition lessons seriously.

“Sometimes its the kick people need to start eating better and to get in better shape,” he said, bringing up Bob as an example: “He’s 42 and he looks 55.”

On Saturday afternoon, the course became even more challenging. As Bob and Barbara, his elderly co-worker watched, the group paired up. They were asked to cross the same foot-wide log suspended between two trees--blindfolded, with only their partner to guide them. Later, each climbed a tree to a small platform about 30-feet high. From the platform they were asked to dive out to catch a trapeze suspended in the air.

The physically slight Angela surprised everyone by volunteering to be the first up the tree.

“I came here specifically to work on my self and my own problems,” she said later. “But the feeling of camaraderie and support was something I can’t underestimate.”

Randy, too, found himself doing things he didn’t think he could do.

“I realized I do have fears--maybe I never admitted that before,” he said.

Much of the discussion Saturday night, though, centered on Bob, who had not attempted any of the activities. “To me, Bob was a motivation,” said Tony. “He understood his limitations. He showed a lot of guts in not worrying about what the other guys were saying.”

Everyone was looking forward to the course’s grand finale, a morning of rock climbing and rappelling on Stonewall Peak, a few minutes south of Julian. But it was not to be. A rainstorm Saturday night forced the postponement of the final day’s activities.

Bob was disappointed, but not crushed. It had been an interesting weekend for him. He hadn’t done any of the strenuous activities, but he obviously enjoyed being part of the group.

“I’m glad I came, although I wasn’t aware of the magnitude of the heights,” he said. “I think it is a great program with a number of positive things to impart to people. It brought out some things in me I wasn’t aware of.”

He didn’t overcome his fear of heights, but he said he did overcome his fear of water during the raft exercise.

“I liked the camaraderie of everybody,” Bob said. “Even though I didn’t accomplish many of the things, I enjoyed seeing them accomplish them, and I was happy for them.”

He also realized that he was out of shape and vowed to work on his eating and exercise habits.

“Maybe I ought to give it a few months and try to get over some of my fears and give it another shot,” he said.

Three weeks later the group gathered again to make up the rock climbing part of the course. After a few awkward moments, everyone fell into the same friendly trail talk and rekindled relationships established three weeks earlier. Few had noticed any profound differences in their lives since going through the course.

Tony had cut down on his sugar intake, and though he said he was still tough on his employees, he was delegating more responsibility.

An eye-to-eye confrontation with a co-worker proved to Randy that Executive Edge had left its mark on him. “I talked and people listened,” he said. “I don’t always do that.”

Irene, one of Bob’s co-workers, thought she had cut back on her drinking since returning from the course. But she hadn’t noticed any real changes until she was asked to give a talk at a business meeting, usually a fearful thing for her.

“I don’t like to get up and talk,” she said. “When it came my time to do it, instead of concentrating on what I was going to say, I remembered going across that catwalk. ‘If I can do that, I can do this,’ I said to myself. The fear lessened for me.”

Irene and Angela were the first ones to climb the rock faces.

Bob was there. “I came because I wanted to,” he said. “At first it was because I was goaded to, but I did it because I wanted to.”

Bob put on a helmet and made it halfway up the easiest climb before quitting.

“I feel good,” he said. “I have the feeling that if I were to come back I could go further. You have to crawl before you can walk.”