“Leadership consists of character and being invested in the interest of others.” look after her four-year-old twin boys while engaged in this grueling regime. But what happened next brought Camus, literally, to her knees and transformed her thinking about being a leader in organizations, particularly when times are tough. You see, in Borneo, things were very tough indeed. There was much uncertainty, for example. The finish line was not disclosed, so the team literally did not know where they were going. Each segment of the race was also kept secret until they reached the previous checkpoint. Team members had to learn new skills, such as map and compass reading, and how to travel at night, because there were 12 hours of darkness every day. They had to manage with meager resources — in this case, food and water — and members who were under extreme stress. (Burnett predicted the team had 0% chance of completing the race). These two things, combined with scrutiny (one billion television viewers), 14
LEADERSHIP
were ripe for meltdowns and burnout. Add in injuries and extreme humidity, dehydration, leech and beetle bites, cuts, scratches, swollen and bleeding feet and debilitating exhaustion, and you have the worst possible scenario. “Teams can be extremely fit, but do not finish (or succeed) because they can’t handle it when everything falls apart,” says Camus. “When the pressure gets high and the situation goes wrong, what do you do?” FROM BORNEO TO BOARDROOM
What they did in Borneo is what we can do in the boardroom. And it might be worth paying attention to Camus’s team, who was the only all-rookie team ever to complete the Eco-Challenge. To put that in perspective, elite Navy Seal teams have never completed an event. First, the four-person team set “rules of engagement.” They would be “hard on issues, and soft on people.” The question would always be: how do we improve the situation now? There would be no blaming or whining.
VOLUME 15 ISSUE 4 | YOUR WORKPLACE
Finally, once a decision was made, the whole team was committed to that direction. “Leadership consists of character and being invested in the interest of others,” says Camus. When she broke her wrist, the team paddled harder, carried her pack and attached themselves to her by a bungee cord, so she could lean on them as she traversed the jagged path of a limestone ridge. To succeed as a leader you need to “surround yourself with incredible people who bring out the best in you, who believe in your brilliance,” she adds. When she was close to quitting (this was dangerous territory; if one team member bails, the whole team is disqualified) she was greeted at a checkpoint with a big stack of papers. They were 300 emails from home, including a particularly poignant one from her dad, filled with encouraging words and messages of pride. That was enough to motivate her to move forward and to spur on her team. To elevate performance you need to cultivate relationships and build trust; technical knowledge is not enough. When another team member was at the breaking point, he was reminded of his capacity, his importance to the team and that this was “a bad moment in a big race.” “But it is very difficult to do this when you are so frustrated,” Camus admits. “The heaviness of the silence can be profound.”