Successful Leadership Without Formal Power

On Thursday, March 7, we had a vivid outdoor session of successful leadership-Leading without formal power. It was well organized and provided me with an opportunity, through which I was able to experience what leadership should be and also how could I apply what I have learned to the business context in the future. Following in the essay I will mainly deal with two parts. The one is related to the outdoor session regarding to what specific issues our team have met during the outdoor activity, how we managed it and what are the key learnings. The other part will focus on what should the successful leadership look like and what should a leader do in the business context for my perspective. It might not cover all perspectives of successful leadership, but I think those key learnings I will describe are highly related to my experience during the class and are the results of my careful consideration.

Since the rules of the outdoor activity are pretty much clear, I will just skip to describe them and jump directly into the main challenge we have met on the way to our target, how did we react when we were faced with these challenges, what were the reasons why we met these challenges and the key successful factors regarding to why we found our target in the end. The first part will be unfolded according to this order.

The main challenge

According to our strategy, we have planned to take the strings on the left side as our references. We counted the number of them and also decided on when we would change our direction after some certain string by counting. But as we were on the spot, after counting on some strings, the head of our team, the leader forgot how many of strings he had counted and made a totally wrong direction in contrast to our original plan and he made a turn to the strings on the right side of the field before KC Forum. Though I could feel that we were in the wrong way, since we were restricted to communication, I had no idea of how to adjust our direction.

How did we react facing the problem mentioned above

The first reaction of our leader was that he chuckled for several times, though abandoned, but it was a clear signal for us to know that we had a problem at that time. The leader then stood for a while and then chose a different direction, from which we came to the wrong place, and moved very slowly until we arrived at the place where we originally were and touched the strings on the left side of the place in front of KC Forum. Then the leader just restarted counted on the strings as before. To make sure he would not miss any strings, I could feel that our leader had completely slowed down on counting and were more careful of our position. He also passed signal to us that we should be in a vertical position to the string line, at that time I did not get the meaning of this kind of signal, but afterwards our leader said it is more easy and more precise for him to count the number of the strings. It took a very long time after we finally reached a dirt slope, through which we can enter into the target clearing in the forest. Then I knew that though we had been lost for a fairly long time, but fortunately in the end, we have come back to the right track and can move according to our original plan. Our efforts paid off and we finally find the target in the clearing.

Why we meet this problem during the activity?

The main reason why we lost our direction is that, we relied totally on our leader and let him count the number of the strings alone. We have ignored that he might lost his mind or be faced with whatever problems, which lead him to forget about the number. The second problem is that the leader is the first one to conduct the onsite research and the rest of us provided him with other supplement information afterwards. But this is inefficient because the leader did not have another chance to verify information the other group members had provided to him, thus coming up the possibility that the leader might understand the information in a wrong way. The better way to avoid the problems might be: Firstly, let the other team members involved in counting the number of the strings and also build a mechanism of communication through which team members could know how many strings they have counted so far in order to keep the right direction. Secondly, regarding to the on-site research, the team leader should be the last one to do it rather than any other of the rest team members. In this way, the team leader will get all the information of the on-site researches already done by the other team members and can also verify the information and make final strategy.

Why do we succeed in the end?

Though we have made a big mistake during the activity, losing the wrong direction and getting obviated from our target, we finally managed it. There are also several reasons accounting for our success.

Firstly, we have come up with a measurable