All adventurers experience ups and downs.
In fact, a good description of leader yet uncommon to the western world could be “one who has learned to truly experience the ups and downs.” One time I was in the Wisconsin north woods with some university students and a few guides. I was with the group as a graduate assistant of sorts. It was December and the semester had come to an end. This trip was the final exam and a rite of passage for the few upperclassmen who had stuck it out. This was my first time in the north woods and boy was it cold. There are many things I will submit myself to as an outdoorsman, but the cold is my Achilles.
On our excursion, we were navigating around frozen lakes trying to reach certain mapped points. The class had done little research on area, a fact that was growing clear to the leaders. As the days rolled on we realized that having to skirt the lake was adding hours to our journey. We heard the stories that if you were to travel the ice too early in the season but none of us had any idea if that was the case. Walking through the thick snow and frozen marsh around the lake was disheartening. Every step was colder. The nights were the worst. We would build fires you couldn’t feel and stand on half pieces of sleeping pads to put distance between ourselves and heat sucking ground. We would discover upon our return that daily temperatures were an average of 6 degrees while nighttime was down to -20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Moral was sagging, people were becoming discouraged and quiet. Few people were willing to venture their ideas and they were being graded on their ability to work as a team and accomplish their objective.
The great attribute of good leaders is that they recognize the symptoms of disheartening long before followers. Our leader, Hule, pronounced “Huley,” was an ox of a man. Gritty, wild, and kind. He had intentionally taken the role of an observer for the sake of our experiential learning on the trip. He was taking notes on our styles to help us during times of reflection and group processing. Because we were used to him in the role, we had forgotten to ask him for advice when we were running out of options. Now to be clear he never said we couldn’t ask for his help it was we who had grown accustom to his silence.
By the edge of the lake again, we had finally hit our wall and could not go any further. It was in this low moment where Hule ran with his full pack, jumped, and planted himself firmly on the thick winterized ice pack of the lake. The moment was silent. To be honest, I was furious. I thought it was so insensitive of him to scare us like that and jump on the lake. We were down, wore out, and out of options. But my frustration turned to peace when I realized what he had done for us. His years of braving the winters and working in the cold had given him the wisdom to know when the ice had hardened. He also showed us the importance remembering to ask for help. He was a resource, but so often in leadership situations we forget to ask for help. We are of the mind that we should be able to figure it out ourselves. This is the liminal phase, the phase of our leadership stretching, where all of our skills and knowledge have met their threshold and a guide must walk us to the new area. This is the upside of down.