Learning to “Fly”
April 23, 2009
Taking a well-earned vacation made it easier to develop some fresh ideas to a nagging problem.
When you’re trying to find a creative solution to a challenging issue, sometimes the answer can be found in a place where you hadn’t thought to look.
Over the past year, I had been thinking a lot about how I could add more value to our leadership programs, how to better demonstrate the concepts, and how to add a team-building component to help the groups work together more effectively. As I worked on this in my normal environments of home, work, and client sites, I kept coming up with the same ideas.
When my family and I took a trip to Club Med in Sandpiper, FL, recently, I was able to free my mind from the normal routine and explore some new directions and insights.
The Club Med family villages are great places for a family vacation. There are activities for everyone. The children have a great time in the Kid’s Club, playing tennis, golfing, sailing and even participating in a circus show. The parents are also free to participate in a variety of sports activities geared towards adults; and Club Med provides GOs (Club Med staff) to provide instruction in all of these activities.
One activity that our entire family enjoyed during our vacation was the flying trapeze. This is not a swing that you might find hanging from a tree in your backyard, but a regulation-size flying trapeze like you would see in a circus.
During the course of the week, you can learn how to climb the ladder (no small task for some people) and step over onto the platform. There a circus GO would help you grab onto the bar of the swing, step off and “fly.” You then learn how to pull your knees up and link them over the bar to get in position for the catch. Once you’re able to do this, a circus GO on the opposite swing will grab onto your wrists and actually catch you as you’re swinging. This is an exhilarating and amazing experience to say the least!
What I began to notice as I watched people learning the trapeze was how the circus team seemed to know intuitively how to instruct each person individually depending on their level of readiness to perform this activity.
When a person was willing and interested, the circus team took a more hands-off approach and offered more general instructions. “Climb the ladder until you reach the net, turn around to the other side of the ladder, climb up to the top, and step over onto the platform.”
When a person seemed nervous and apprehensive, the circus team gave very specific instructions on performing individual parts of the process. “I can see you’re a bit nervous. Just climb up six steps until you’re even with the net, then we’ll take it from there.
And even though I was on vacation, I couldn’t help but notice that their approach to leadership, in the broad definition of influencing people’s behavior, was similar to the approach we teach in our leadership programs. This, of course, led me to thinking about how I could incorporate this example of leadership into my teaching.
The result is a new program I developed called “Learning to Fly.” This three-day leadership retreat combines the fun of a Club Med trip, the excitement of the flying trapeze, and the practical value of our leadership training and Eight Rings™ programs.
I had been thinking for some time about how to enhance the effectiveness of our leadership programs. Once I got on vacation and stopped dwelling on the problem, the concept of using the trapeze for a comprehensive leadership retreat presented itself fairly easily.
When you’re facing a challenging problem, or you simply want to get some fresh ideas, try a change of scenery or a new environment. It can be as simple as getting up and taking a walk around the office or as complex as a six-month sabbatical. Once you learn how to relax your mind, the ideas can begin to “fly.”
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