Course Syllabus
MGMT 5325
ADVENTURE-BASED LEADERSHIP SEMINAR
ALBERS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS
SPRING QUARTER 2017
Class Meets on Tuesdays
*Note additional $435 materials and facilities fee
When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness
of the unknown, we must believe one of two things will happen – there will be something solid
for us to stand on, or we will be taught how to fly.
-Claire Morris
INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION:
Name Phone Number E-mail Address
Bill Weis (206) 296-5691 billweis@seattleu.edu
Hartley McGrath (206) 245-6999 hartleymcgrath@gmail.com
Carly Cannell (206) 541-0049 cannellc@seattleu.edu
Office/Hours: Pigott 506 Anytime by appointment.
Class Listserv ABL17@seattleu.edu
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COURSE SCHEDULE:
Date: Time:
March 28 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Just bring your body, dressed in old clothes, and expect to get dirty and to get organized for the remainder of the course. This is an important meeting for everything we do to follow, so please be there. Select your GFE groups (pairs and triads).
Turn in all waivers and medical information forms – signed.
Assignments for April 4:
Be sure to carefully read “This Isn’t About Getting Over the Wall” and be prepared to engage in “beta testing” of your first GFE next week. Meet with your GFE partner or triad members and identify (find or invent) and develop your first group initiative problem. Be sure to use this first week productively! This is your time to find, create, test, and perfect your first initiative problems – and to be ready to beta test at our next class meeting..
April 4 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
You will be beta testing your first GFE problems within your large GFE group (11 total members). When you formally run the exercise you will be leading it with the other large GFE group. For example, if you are in GFE Group A you will be facilitating your GFE problem with members of Group B. You will be beta testing within your own group to make sure your problem is ready for the actual facilitation with the other group.
April 11 6:00 – 7:15 GFE beta testing
7:15 – 9:00 Facilitate the first GFE #1 in both groups
(See the detailed schedule – e.g., Triad #1 will run their GFE with pairs 7, 8, 9 & 10 in Group B; Triad #6 will run
Their GFE with pairs 2, 3, 4 & 5 in Group A)
April 18 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Continue Facilitating the first round of GFE’s (see detailed facilitation schedule)
Climbing readings are due to compilers on May 2
April 25 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Complete the last 2 GFE problems (see schedule)
Pass out T-K Conflict instruments in class
Review expectations for climbing readings
Update tent accommodations progress
May 2 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Beta Testing for 2nd set of GFE's
Hand out the T-K Conflict Instrument
Preparation for Day on the Challenge Course
May 7 (Sunday) 9:00 am – 3:00 pm Meet at T & L’s challenge course
(at Bastyr University)
In addition to spending some time climbing on our high course and giant’s ladder, you might want to meet with you GFE partner or triad to prep for your second round GFE to be done at our Leavenworth. Be sure to eat a hearty breakfast before arriving at the course. We will be busy for up to 6 hours. And be sure to bring a sack lunch.
May 9 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Introduction to Conflict / T-K Instrument
Be sure your climbing reading has been transmitted to the booklet compiler
Get ready for the retreat
Friday, May 12 through 1:00 pm on Friday until
Sunday, May 14 1:00 pm on Sunday
We will begin our activities promptly at 1:00 pm, so allow yourselves enough time to get to the group campsite, pitch your tents, and be ready to roll by 1:00. Be sure you’ve eaten a good lunch. The weekend will be spent rock climbing, facilitating initiative problems, participating in initiative problems, and engaging in the Leading Through Conflict and Beyond seminar – as well as in surviving in tents and exchanging profound wisdom around the camp fire!
May 23 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Debrief retreat experience.
Wrap Up Conflict Seminar
Turn in papers
Closing Party
I m p o r t a n t N o t e:
For every class meeting, please wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothing that will almost certainly become muddy, wet and well worn. We are planning to be outside, rain or shine, so you should have a number of clothing layers with you (e.g., T-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, wind-breaker, long pants, perhaps long underwear bottoms, RAINGEAR, etc.--dress warmer than you think you should!). There is a $435 “Materials and Facilities” fee to cover the costs of room and board at the retreat, meeting room rentals at the conference center, course books and handouts, materials and equipment usage on the challenge course, rock climbing equipment and shoes, and compensation for additional instructors and facilitators.
R a t i o n a l e:
The modern manger is confronted simultaneously by a diverse workforce, greater challenges within the organization, and an increasingly chaotic business environment. Techniques for management that were effective in more stable systems are becoming less applicable, and a new range of skills, appropriate to the new circumstances, is emerging. Instead of knowing a few new facts or practices, the modern manager needs to become more responsive in working with others, more creative in coping with challenges and finding solutions, and more adept at synthesizing various inputs and taking future-oriented actions.
The Adventure-Based Leadership class offers an opportunity to shift beyond the workplace and academic spheres into a learning laboratory setting. This learning opportunity does not take place in isolation, but is supported by strong background training in leadership skills (goal setting, team building, effective communication, risk taking, problem solving, and trust building), as well as an appropriate grounding in the outdoor environment that serves as the course “classroom.” Participants will be asked to experiment with and practice various roles necessary to an effective, high performing team.
“To venture causes anxiety,
but not to venture is to lose oneself.”
Soren Kierkegaard
L E A R N I N G O U T C O M E S:
The goal of this course is to introduce participants to experiential education by asking them to "live the model." Student objectives are:
- To experience the impact and realize the potential of an adventure-based training program.
- To gain new perspectives on leadership, follower-ship and team effectiveness.
- To understand and value the diversity of work styles within a team.
- To become aware of her/his personal-effectiveness, strengths and blind spots.
- To develop and enhance effective group-facilitation skills.
- To develop and enhance effective coaching skills.
- To improve ability to apply human relations skills to workgroup settings.
- To work together with a group of peers to enhance professional development.
I divide the world into three classes: a few who make things happen; the many who watch things happen;
and the vast majority who have no idea of what happens.
We need more people who make things happen.
- Nicholas Murray Butler
STUDENT RESPONSIBILITIES AND EVALUATION:
- (10%- 15% of grade) Attendance and Participation in a course of this nature are essential. Participation means contributing and interacting with the group and following all guidelines set forth in the Full Value Contract. Additionally, preparation for each session with analysis of assigned readings and thoughts on the experiential process will be expected throughout the course
- Short Reflection Papers: (45% - 70%: see % of grade intervals below)
Please combine all 5 papers into one document, and post this composite document to Canvas on or before May 23.
Written reflection is an important exercise for maximizing the learning value of experiential activities. It serves as a means for understanding, articulating, interpreting and relating learning experiences to other aspects of our lives (transference), and is most effective when done soon after the experience. Written reflection is a highly personal activity and should draw from personal experience, feelings, perspectives, and interpretations. It is not a process of logging events and activities, but one of reflecting on your personal experiences and reactions to those experiences. Grading of the papers will reflect level of depth and personal growth content. We are asking for 5 short (1-3 pages, single spaced), papers as follows:
Paper #1: (5% - 10% of grade) 1-2 page paper on what I learned from planning and leading my 1st initiative problem and how this will inform my approach to planning and leading the 2nd initiative problem.
Paper #2: (5% - 10% of grade) 1-2 page paper on what I leaned from planning and leading my 2nd initiative problem and how this would affect how I would plan and lead future group problems.
Paper #3: (5% - 10% of grade) 1-2 page paper discussing and offering personal interpretation of your analysis of your Thomas Kilmann Instrument. This is your chance to benefit from focusing thoughtfully on the outcome of your T-K results. Are there conflict modes that you are over or under using? What are the implications for how you move forward? Will you revise your approach and your relative use of “modes” in working with conflict in the future?
Paper #4: (15% - 20% of grade) 2-3 page paper on your leadership lessons from climbing together: What I learned from climbing with my colleagues (high course, giant’s ladder, rock climbing), and from helping my colleagues climb. We are climbing together to learn together. Approach our climbing activities with serious learning intent. We are not climbing to climb; we climb to learn.
Find a poignant reading on climbing, one that speaks to you, and append it to the end of your climbing reflection paper. That will prepare you mentally to approach climbing together as a serious learning activity. We also want a copy of your reading turned in prior to our doing any climbing together. And we want a copy transmitted to the “compilers” who will collect all of the readings into a class pamphlet. Here's the format you should use for your reading: put the reading first and in italics, followed by the author’s name in bold, the source document for the reading, your name as submitting the reading (these last 3 items justified to the right, as illustrated below):
You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down. . . . So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. In climbing take careful note of the difficulties along your way; for as you go up you can observe them. Coming down you will no longer see them, but you will know they are there if you have observed them well.
There is an art of finding one’s direction in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
Rene Daumal
From Mount Analogue
Submitted by Bill Weis
The truth is that part of the essence of mountain climbing is to push oneself to one’s limits. That is not to say that you deliberately try something you know you can’t do. But you do deliberately try something which you are not sure you can do.
Woodrow Wilson Sayre
From Four Against Everest
Submitted by Bill Weis
I believe that courage is all too often mistakenly seen as the absence of fear.
If you descend by rope from a cliff and are not fearful to some degree, you’re either crazy or unaware. Courage is seeing your fear, in a realistic perspective, defining it, considering alternatives, and choosing to function in spite of risks.
Leonard Zunin
From Contact: The First Four Minutes
Submitted by Bill Weis
Paper #5: (15% - 20% of grade) 2-3 pages on what I learned from the Conflict Seminar.
Please combine all 5 papers into one document, and post this composite document to Canvas on or before May 23.
- Group Facilitation Exercises (GFE): (25% of grade) One goal for this course is to prepare you to be effective group facilitators. You will have an opportunity to demonstrate your group facilitation skills by working with a team of your class colleagues to plan for and facilitate two group initiatives. Your preparation for these initiatives, as well as your facilitation of the problems, will demonstrate how well you have developed your group facilitation effectiveness. The full assignment is explained below. Be sure that you submit your GFE problem write-ups before facilitating your problem – give them to the instructor who is observing your GFE facilitation.
GROUP FACILITATION EXERCISES
- T H E SELECTION
The assignment for your small group is to create a half-day (approximately 4 hours) experiential training program, comprised of two initiative problems – and any warm-up SAGS -- suitable for use with a group of 10 to 14. Think about the group problem-solving issue(s) and individual issue(s) that you want your initiative exercises to address (e.g., communication, trust, support, decision-making, leadership, teamwork, delegation, ethics, quality control, etc.), and create or find group problems that you believe will bring up these issues in the group.
While there are no hard and fast criteria for effective initiative problems, we believe some of the most effective problems offer the following features:
- Upon explaining the problem / task to the group, it appears to the members to be nearly impossible to accomplish (or it quickly takes on this aura after a few trial-and error attempts and failures).
- The task cannot be accomplished without the full cooperation and concentration of every member of the group -- hence full group “buy in.”
- The task creates initial frustration and ultimately demands a group planning and execution process in order to proceed successfully (again, group “buy in”).
- Completion of the task (either successfully or with less than total success) sheds light on the value of a high-functioning team -- a sense that, in terms of effectiveness, the whole really can be greater than the sum of the parts. Completion of the task should move the group closer to being an effective team.
- Through thoughtful, guided reflection, the members of the group can relate the experience of the group in working on the problem to their experiences with other groups -- at work, in community or campus service, in other group efforts. Ideally, the initiative problem provides telling metaphors that are isomorphic with life away from the course and the immediate problem.
Your group should take care to specify very exactly the problems, the rules the group must observe (e.g., sighted participants may not talk, every “touch down” entails the loss of one lifeboat, any “touch” requires a complete or partial restart, whatever), and the safety precautions (e.g., no leaping over the rope). Be sure to consider all the possible questions that participants might ask (e.g., are we allowed to hang upside down?), and attempt to specify an airtight problem so that “revisions” of rules need not be made during the activities.
This assignment will have to be planned and completed outside of class. We expect that all group members will participate fully in this project.
- T H E E X E C U T I O N
Your GFE group will be allotted one hour to set up your first problem for the participant group to address. Within that one hour the following must be completed:
- Set up and run a SAG (optional) (5 minutes)
- Set up (frame) the problem for the group. (5 minutes)
- The group will work on the problem. (20-40 minutes)
- Process / debrief the activity. (10-15 minutes)
- Exchange feedback with the group
(on your performance and on their performance). (10 minutes)
Use whatever materials, supplies and infrastructure you need (e.g., ropes, balls, hoops, platforms, lumber, cargo nets, etc.). If you want to run a SAG before framing the group problem, be sure to budget that time within your one hour.
For the second problem you will be allotted 90 minutes total to frame, run, and debrief the problem, and receive feedback on your performance.
- Set up and run a SAG (optional) (5 minutes)
- Set up (frame) the problem for the group. (5 minutes)
- The group will work on the problem. (30-50 minutes)
- Process / debrief the activity. (10-15 minutes)
- Exchange feedback with the group
(on your performance and on their performance). (10 minutes)
III. T H E D O C U M E N T A T I O N
Please turn in short documents including the following:
- The names of your initiatives
(E.g., The Crocodile Crossing)
- A description of your initiative
- The type of group your initiative would work with
(E.g., MBA skill- building class, intact work team, one-day educational seminar)
- Period in your program that you would you use it (as an opening exercise, at the end of the day)
- Diagrams or drawings (if they would be helpful)
- The objectives of your initiative
(E.g., increase trust or communication, problem solving, nonverbal communication, comfort zones, paradigm shift)
- The rules of your initiative
(E.g., How long do participants have to hold their breath and what are the consequences if they break the rule.)?
- The tools or props you will use (e.g., rubber chickens, hula hoops, desks or chairs)
- Safety considerations (spotters?)
These written descriptions need not be lengthy. However, they should be thorough and complete, such that another facilitator reading your documents could set up and run the initiatives. If you have questions, please contact one of the facilitators. Give the write-up for your GFE exercise to the instructor who is observing your facilitation.
Loose Notes on the GFE Help Session
Primer on Framing, Facilitating, De-briefing
Framing
Thorough -- What exactly is the task? What specifically are the rules?
Be really clear!
Anticipate questions – anticipate exceptions (“what if ….”)
Fantasy scenario verses a contrived workplace metaphor?
“Project Adventure” extreme – frame the metaphor
Let participants dress their own metaphors
Facilitation/Observing
Remove yourself? Be there and be intrusive?
Resist side talking with co-facilitators
Resist intervention – except for safety
Interested but passive observer
Note what’s going on with individual participants (e.g., withdrawal, anger,
frustration, engagement, etc.)
Remember:
It’s OK for the group to “””fail”””
It’s their process.
It’s not about the immediate task at hand.
They don’t need to feel elated when it’s over – they can fee
disappointed, somber, frustrated.
Processing
What happened? So what? Now what?
Open-ended questions (avoid being too specific and looking for a specific
answer – or sounding like you’re looking for a specific answer)
Be patient – and be comfortable with silence.
Use people’s names and ask specific people for input to the process where
appropriate (“Sara, how would you recap what just happened here?”
“Hank, how about you? What did you see? Experience?”
Resist short-circuiting the energy – let it run. Don’t be “owned” by your list
of processing questions that you wanted to cover. Let it go.
Get to the “now what” part and encourage transference to other venues.
General thoughts – pitfalls!
I know it hurts – but let your group struggle, get into trouble, even go to
a dark place. You didn’t lead them there – and they need to look
at how they got there and what to do about it.
Don’t be driven by your “stories” about people. This is hard – but it’s
important. I’ve been saved many a time by my more-savvy co-
workers.
Be Patient!
Silence is OK ---- Even good at times!
Take a risk to take it deeper. The potential gain exceeds the potential loss.
Be interested in what’s happening. Care. Show you care. Do care!
Give up control when you can – it’s not your experience or your process.
“This wasn’t about getting over the wall.”
Let the above quote be a guide to everything you do as a facilitator, because
nothing we do is about getting over the wall, or walking effectively on cables,
or groping around with our eyes closed, or completing your ICE task
effectively, or figuring out the “right” way to do the problem.
I have learned the depths of strength and trust that are present in me and my fellow man. I shall try to remember that any of my neighbors or fellow workers could have belayed the climbing rope for me or given me his hand when I was slipping off a steep slope.
I may forget, but I will try to remember. Outward Bound Student
Submitted by Bill Weis
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Last updated on 3/30/17 (on Hartley’s Birthday !!!)
Course Summary:
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