Written by Kate Dernocoeur, this article appeared as a feature article in the February, 1984 issue of Ozark, the in-flight magazine of Ozark Airlines.
If it’s a jungle in the executive suite, a wilderness survival course may be just the training you need.
At the start of our Colorado Outward Bound School (COBS) corporate course, the instructor had us name the group. Marva McCarty suggested an Indian word for “beautiful land”: Iowa. Our common tie was that all but one of us was a businesswoman from the Des Moines area. Who knows what the squirrels at the Leadville, Colorado base camp thought when they heard us chanting our newfound slogan: “Io-WA! Io-WA! Io-WA! WA! WA.” It was to become a real morale booster—and whoop of victory—as we tested our individual and group mettle on trust falls, the cold plunge, vertical rock cliffs, the Ropes Course, the Wall and. ultimately, 14,433-foot Mt. Elbert, Colorado’s tallest peak.
In four rapid-fire days, the ten of us would discover more positive things about ourselves—and about the capabilities of others—than we’d ever learned at seminars in stuffy conference rooms. The lessons remain vivid in the memory. They have stuck with us. When a business challenge tries to overwhelm us, we remember. . . .
EB. White, training consultant for Resources, Unlimited in Des Moines, says three months after the experience: “I was out running today, thinking how I’m so tired of being poor, of being in business for myself, of making all these decisions. . . What happens when that occurs is that I remember the most significant piece of the experience for me—the endurance of climbing that mountain. It was one step in front of the other till we got to the top. We didn’t focus on the far goal. We just looked right at our feet and the small steps and the beautiful flowers.”
We weren’t the only Midwesterners willing to try this novel corporate training approach last summer. Eight men and two women from the Des Moines-based Iowa Bankers Association also made the trip. They, too, discovered the vivid mental lessons to be learned from physical challenges.
Although Outward Bound has traditionally focused on young people, its educational philosophy translates well to adults. The corporate concept was born when Roy Yamahiro, formerly a trainer at Martin Marietta near Denver, recognized Outward Bound’s potential value for people in business. “People have a lot of creative talent, but that’s beaten out of them by the time they become adults,” says Yamahiro. “When people are free to be more creative, they become more creative for the company.”
For most, the rock climb and the peak ascent have the greatest impact. Climbing a 100-foot cliff symbolizes the climb up the corporate ladder for many participants. It renews their willingness to rely on others—both the person holding the rope and coworkers at home.
Patsy Sampson, former dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Drake University in Des Moines, voiced one quite common lesson. “When I started the rock climb,” she remembers, “I got up four feet and was paralyzed until the instructor came up beside me. He didn’t say anything about trying harder, but simply said, ‘I think I see a handhold six inches away.’ From this, I learned, ‘Don’t look 150 feet up, just look for that next handhold.’ "
Marie Wilson, director of human resources for the Iowa Bankers Association, found that climbing the mountain was most instructive. “If I ever put myself into something the way I did into that climb . . . wow! Those rocks pale next to what that mountain was like. I wanted to quit three feet up. But if I translate that to work. there’s no telling what I’ll do.” What she did, in fact, was go home and win a seat on the Des Moines City Council last November. Memories of Outward Bound helped carry her through the tough campaign, her first.
“I kept thinking about that mountain so often,” says Wilson, “because a campaign is like that: it doesn’t stop. You look over to the next thing you need to handle. Just keep doing what you have to do next. You put one foot in front of the other until you reach the top."
Other Outward Bound activities also include inherent lessons. At the Wall, the group problem-solves together to get everyone over a fourteen-foot-high wall without any equipment. It requires real teamwork. The Acid River puts time constraints on that teamwork: with three lengths of board, a string and deceptively-placed cinder blocks, the group has to cross an imaginary acid river in fifty minutes.
The Ropes Course is an obstacle course set in the treetops. It's scary for many people, so negotiating it successfully provides a meaningful sense of accomplishment.
“Confronting fears—of risk, of heights, of failure—is only one part of the problem. Success in the face of high risk translates back to the marketplace.”
Sampson, fifty-one, was on her second round at Outward Bound. She wanted to go back “because it changed my selfconcept. If I'd taken an Outward Bound course when I was younger, I’d be president of the United States by now!” Instead. she recently accepted the presidency of Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.
She also went back to COBS because of some unfinished business: the first time, her fear of heights got the best of her on the Ropes Course. The second time, with the help of two “mentors” ahead of and behind her, Sampson finished the task.
Has Outward Bound helped her in her job as Stephens College’s first female president?
”I’m sure that three days don’t go by that I don’t think of that experience and how it relates to what I’m doing. It’s almost a daily thought. The main thing it helps me with is when I feel overwhelmed. If you saw my desk right now, you’d say there's no way it could ever be cleaned up. But I remember putting those feet in front of each other and taking little baby steps getting up that mountain. I keep thinking ‘Of course I’m going to get through it.’ ”
Confronting personal fears—of risk, of heights, of failure, of aging—is only one part of the program. At appropriate intervals, the participants talk about the lessons learned from the various exercises and apply them to the corporate setting. Success in the face of high risk translates powerfufly back to the marketplace. This “processing” helps solidify the impact of the overall experience. Tom Killeen, assistant vice-president in charge of 150 employees for Chicago’s Federal Reserve Bank in Des Moines, learned that “when I do a good job, I pat myself on the back. I don’t need somebody else to tell me. That’s new since Outward Bound. . . it’s self—rewarding. It makes a person grow, and aren’t we all trying to grow in the world today, regardless of what business we’re in?”
Outward Bound instructors (who routinely receive high marks from their pupils) have to be able to guide their students—physically and mentally—without really leading them. That subtle difference is what keeps Outward Bound from being a glorified boot camp. Instructors also have to be technically capable. The program does involve real risks. Outward Bound is fanatical about safety though, and as a result, has had no serious injuries occur in the last six years of instructing 18,000 students.
“I am deathly afraid of heights," admits Vince McCarty, a financial consultant for Shearson/American Express in Des Moines, “but I didn’t worry about it there. I knew that if I did something stupid and fell off one of the logs thirty feet up, nothing would really happen. They are very safety-conscious."
Many older, deskbound, sedentary people are initially concerned about being able to complete the program. While Outward Bound is rigorous, you don’t have to be an all-star athlete to sign up. You just need to get into reasonable shape, which anyone can do in the weeks before going to Colorado.
“I was never an athletic person,” says Des Moines-area realtor Roberta Joura, forty-seven. “You have to prepare for this. It’s part of the anticipation of going. It’s part of the whole project."
Despite similar fears, White found in the end that “there wasn’t anything that we did that required physical strength. The mountain required endurance. You can endure a lot if you're doing something that appeals to you."
People who honestly feel physically limited can make a “contract” with themselves to achieve a personally challenging goal. Instead of climbing the entire mountain, for example, they can decide to aim for an intermediate point.
Joe Neri, of Martin Marietta, has witnessed a secondary benefit of the COBS program. “Many people come back with a greater sense of well-being and start to take better care of themselves,” he says. “A healthier work force leads to a more astute work force, and that means less lost time.”
Joura signed up for Outward Bound because she was bored, she says, and in a rut. “I decided that if I can accomplish this, I’ll be able to go on,” she commented beforehand. Not only did she accomplish it, but she's gone on, as many do, without the cigarette habit she had when she arrived.
Reactions to Outward Bound are invariably more glowing than glowering, but the program doesn’t work for everyone. According to Yamahiro, who is now with Federal Express in Memphis, some people are already self-aware and self-assured enough that the sense of accomplishment nurtured at Outward Bound loses its impact. Some wonder whether the cost justifies the lack of tangible results. Others feel the exercises are too risk-free because of the excellent safety systems. Some have said the activities don’t always translate readily to the business world because, as one participant says, “You know in a matter of a few minutes if a decision was good or bad,” unlike the world of business.
One thing is for sure: Outward Bound is not the place for people who don’t want to be there. People at Martin Marietta, which has sponsored 643 people so far, have to “petition” to attend the course by writing a letter explaining why they should be selected. (Last year, Neni said, 230 people applied for 144 slots.)
An original skeptic of the corporate course concept is now one of its staunchest allies. As a traditionalist, Eric Malmborg felt the growth process generated by Outward Bound could not be adequately sparked in less than the usual twenty-three days. After witnessing several corporate courses, he was convinced and has now taught more of them than anyone else. He has even witnessed significant team-building in a six-hour minicourse.
It’s hard to quantify Outward Bound’s benefits: renewed morale and motivation, enhanced self-confidence and selfesteem, better teamwork and interpersonal cooperation, a sense of greater productivity and willingness to take risks. The empirical evidence doesn’t quit; as Cindy DenAdel, a vice-president for Iowa Title Company in Des Moines, says, “I would have planned to do this even without corporate support. You get back what you give—no, you get back more than you give.”
One independent report investigating the impact of Outward Bound on people in business showed a long-term benefit at Martin Marietta of significantly reduced attrition. While company-wide turnover in 1981 was 8.4 percent and 6 percent among those who took only the in-house “Managing Personal Growth” seminar, for those who took both the MPG seminar and Outward Bound, the attrition rate was 1.7 percent.
There is a trend, according to Reola McLeod, Outward Bound’s director of corporate development, for companies to utilize COBS as the “outdoor lab” for a larger training program. Whether a course stands alone or not, though, McLeod works intensively with each company to determine the best way to achieve its particular goals.
So far, she says, no two corporate courses have been alike, although they are generally based on one of four elements, or a combination of them, such as team building, executive renewal, career development and leadership.
While most corporate courses are conducted at Outward Bound’s Leadville base camp and focus on the lessons of the mountains, some utilize the messages of the rivers and their rapids, and are located in western Colorado and Utah. In custom—designing each course, McLeod helps companies decide which location is most appropriate.
Individuals who cannot entice their corporations to offer a custom-designed course can still sign up for the “Reaching Your Management Potential” open enrollment course. Cost for all courses ranges from $85 to $125 per person per day, with a normal length of four to five days. McLeod reports that the 1984 calendar is filling rapidly.
On the last morning, after having slept “solo,”—alone on the flank of the mountain we had climbed—the Iowa women reconvened with “totems” that we had found to symbolize the Outward Bound experience. Marva McCarty had the words to link a personal view with professional aspiration: “I have a pinecone because, on the way up here, I kept noticing little six-inch pine trees and was amazed at their tenacity. We’re all growing and changing. We all start as something small and insignificant—but look at what we can become!"
“I would encourage professional people to do it because you will come back different,” vows DenAdel. “You will come back changed, and for the better. I don’t think I’ll forget what it was like to be there, and if I do, maybe it's time to go again."