Goodbye comfort zone!
The best learning doesn’t always come from courses, textbooks, and on-the-job training. Craig Sisterson talks to three lawyers about life-changing experiences at Outward Bound
Almost fifty years ago, then Governor General Viscount Cobham travelled to the remote area of Anakiwa in the pristine Marlborough Sounds to officially open New Zealand’s own Outward Bound School. A run-down guest-house had been converted, thanks to tireless work from many groups and individuals around the country, into the New Zealand base of a worldwide organisation that fosters “the personal growth and social skills of participants by using challenging expeditions in the outdoors”.
Since then, many thousands of people from all over New Zealand, and beyond, have travelled to picturesque Anakiwa to learn something about (even find) themselves, and develop as people; and not just young people at the beginnings of adult life. While Outward Bound still runs the popular ‘Classic’ 21-day course for 18 to 26 year olds, it has also developed several other courses for people of all ages and abilities, including the 8-day Navigator Leadership Programme, which is designed for working professionals.
No matter what stage of your life or career you find yourself, Outward Bound has something to offer – life lessons taught in a classroom without walls. “To really make a difference, you have to be pushed out of your comfort zone,” says long-standing Outward Bound Facilities Manager Vic Koller. “To actually learn, and really, really understand what you’re capable of, you have to be pushed to your limits. And I don’t think you’ll achieve that in a classroom… there’s more to [life] than that; I think you have to feel it.”
Simpson Grierson Senior Associate Donna Hurley certainly felt it when she attended the Navigator course in 2008. In the middle of winter. All the “normal things” like sailing, tramping, early morning runs and swims, and the famous ‘Solo’ were still done at that time of year, says Hurley, with the colder weather and water temperatures merely adding an extra layer to the “out of your comfort zone” experience.
Why go?
Hurley says that, although she hadn’t really considered Outward Bound before the opportunity to attend the Navigator course arose through an annual employee scholarship run by Simpson Grierson, she is extremely glad she went to Anakiwa - it broke up what had become a nicely comfortable life. She was successful, but on cruise mode. “I think I was probably at a stage, both personally and professionally, where I was looking for a bit of a challenge,” says Hurley. “I was coasting – work was going along quite nicely, home and everything was going along quite nicely, but I was sort of sitting back in my little comfort zone, thinking ‘I really should crack the whip and get on and try and do something a bit different’, and then the opportunity came along.”
Fellow Simpson Grierson Senior Associate Matt Conway went the following year, partly as a result of Hurley’s enthusiastic endorsements. “Having looked through the material on the Outward Bound website about the [Navigator] course, and having talked to Donna, there was a sort of ‘100 per cent, it’s brilliant’ type recommendation, so I had no hesitation,” he says. There was another inspiration too; Conway’s mother did an Outward Bound course about ten years ago. “So I thought, if she can do it, I’d better make sure I can.”
In contrast to Hurley and Conway, Sam Holden of Bell Gully attended a full 21-day Outward Bound course in his final year of high school. “I did the Mind, Body, Soul course when I was 18,” says Holden. “I’d heard about it at a careers day seminar… and just sort of spontaneously thought it would be a really cool thing to do. I guess I’d always been interested in outdoor activities… but also it’s quite a formative age, and I wanted to challenge myself a bit, and put myself out there.”
Whataya want from me?
Whatever type of Outward Bound course you attend, you’ll definitely be challenging yourself and putting yourself “out there”. Even those who are outdoorsy and very capable physically will find the course challenging, says Conway, because Outward Bound is designed to test and stretch each participant’s own limits – physical, mental, emotional, and social – wherever those limits might be. “With everything we did there was always a mental component that always pushed you beyond your comfort zone, no matter where your comfort zone was, and that was the point of it I think. Regardless of what level you are at, you will be required to do something that freaks you a bit – which is actually quite fun really. Because you know that chances are you’re not going to die, or be severely injured, but your brain doesn’t necessarily know that, when you’re trying to compute whether you should step off that ledge.”
The Navigator Leadership Programme combines workplace-focused classroom learning with outdoors experiences that emphasise those lessons, such as pushing beyond your comfort zone, and realising your true capababilities. Designed to “help people manage their own performance, bring about change, and influence others”, the Navigator course is open to anyone 23 years’ old and over who has at least three years’ fulltime work experience. Workstyles testing and 360 degree feedback reports to assess leadership behaviours and provide a clear development plan combine with interactive leadership workshops with top business facilitators, and team and individual challenges in the outdoors where participants “manage real consequences which require effective leadership, teamwork, and communication”. Hurley says that, although she would have got some benefit from the assessments and workshops no matter where she’d done them, it was the combination with the outdoor challenges that really drove home the lessons, and made them sink in and stick with her long-term.
“The classroom component is focused on looking at what your own workplace situation is, what position of leadership or responsibility you’ve got, and how you can develop that to be more effective, and enjoy it more, and be more useful to those who are working with you and for you,” says Conway. “There’s a really good mix of indoor and outdoor, and what they tend to do is structure the indoor and the outdoor, so you’ll learn a principle … and then you’ll actually use the principle … there’s a really, really useful direct relationship between the two.”
Conway particularly recalls how the instructors pushed him, beyond what he thought were his own limits, on the high ropes course where he was initially fairly confident compared to some of his fellow participants. “I was on this high platform where you needed to jump from one to the other, and the instructor was watching me as I was jumping across, and he said ‘well, that looked a bit easier for you – try doing it backwards, try doing it with your eyes closed, try straddling them and then doing a 180’, and that kind of thing. So they keep pushing you until you get to a point where you say ‘okay, that’s enough’. And then you just have to try it anyway. Even if you find something ‘too hard’, they’ll break it down into smaller, easier steps, like ‘if you were going to do that, what would you do first? And then what would you do next? Where would you put your hand? Where would you put your foot?’ And then … suddenly someone has made it, without realising.”
With a little help from my friends
Situations such as the high ropes course, while personally challenging to each individual, also help develop teamwork and camaraderie among the ‘Watch’ – the group of around a dozen participants who do the course together, says Conway.
Outward Bound not only gives you more confidence, but also an ability to interact positively with a wider range of people, says Holden. “It gives you a better ability to be able to relate to people, because on Outward Bound you’re stuck with the same group of people, and you’ve got to learn to adjust, and learn to compromise. I definitely think that a lot of those traits that I apply in my work, I would have started to develop there.”
The range of backrounds, and physical and other abilities on the course, really helps participants to learn and develop, and increases the benefit of the course, says Conway, who in fact had an injured participant on his Watch, meaning his group had to really pull together and encourage each other. One activity where the teamwork really shone through was during the sailing modules, which use old-fashioned cutters. “It was just such a brilliant illustration of teamwork, because they don’t have a modern flash boat that you can sail with one person – the whole point of it is that you actually need everyone in your Watch working together to make it sail, and that was really good.”
I, alone
While one great benefit of Outward Bound, says Holden, Hurley, and Conway, is the social and team-learning aspects – a time comes for everyone where they have no one to rely on but themselves; the legendary Outward Bound ‘solo’, where participants are left to fend for themselves in the bush for two nights.
“It is just a surreal experience,” says Holden, with a chuckle. “It’s three days with no method of keeping time, a very small bag of food, and left entirely to your own devices. The first night is fairly tough because you’re by yourself in the middle of the bush… there are new sounds, like possums attacking your bag, trying to get your food. And I think the hardest thing, or the most interesting thing, is that rarely in your life do you ever have a period of time such as three days, where you never even see another person. You’re just totally in your own bubble. And I think it allows you to grow.”
Hurley certainly took some key ongoing lessons from her wintery Outward Bound solo. After several days of little sleep and bad weather, she arrived at her campsite as the sun was going down, and it was starting to rain. Her first shelter attempt was a shambles, guaranteeing a wet night.
“I was at that stage, where I could have gone either way,” she recalls. “I could have gone into the foetal position and given up and crawled into this little shelter and got completely wet and cold. But I honestly think that because of what I’d been through, you get to a stage where you realise that you can push yourself, and that you can take some risks, and do more than you thought possible. So, I thought, no bugger that. This is ridiculous, I’m not spending the night in this, and I got the torch out, and in the dark, and in the rain, I put up a brilliant shelter – well, I think it was brilliant… Rather than just succumbing and giving up, I stuck to it, pulled the whole thing down and started again.”
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
It was experiences like that that have stuck with Hurley the most in the months and years since she completed the course. “I think that flows through into the professional side of things as well. Not accepting second best, in either your personal or your work environment.” Hurley credits Outward Bound with giving her a much greater awareness of her abilities, and the confidence that she has the ability to “step up and take a few risks”.
Holden says that, although Outward Bound won’t really change your personality, it will give you a lot of perspective, more confidence and self-determination, and a better ability to relate to a wide variety of people in a variety of situations. “For example, at the start of last year, I went over to Africa, and worked with the UN at one of the War Crimes Tribunals,” he adds. “And I think that the process of just deciding to do something totally different, just getting out of your comfort zone, I think that approach was born from the Outward Bound experience.”
Conway emphatically endorses Outward Bound as the most “worthwhile, productive, and intense course” he’s ever been on. For him, it has changed the way he does things both at work, and in the rest of his life. “At every point along the Navigator course, you’re constantly being surprised by [things you’ve never done before] – and you have that instant decision to make: do I freak out here, do I say I can’t do it, or do I just step up and get on with it and find out in time that it was actually fine, and it just required a bit of mental toughness? [Now] I definitely notice that, whether its work or anything else, that you’ve constantly got to make that decision; do you see this as a challenge that is going to beat you, or as a challenge you’re going to beat?”
For more information on Outward Bound, including the Navigator Leadership Programme, please visit www.outwardbound.co.nz
NZLawyer magazine, issue 135, 30 April 2010