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Do Outdoor Activities Really Improve Leadership Skills? (Examples, Pros & Cons)
Will you believe me when I tell you that going on a camping trip with your team will considerably improve your leadership skills, and you’ll return to the office a more effective leader? I know this to be true after 12 years as an Army Officer. It won’t be about finding the perfect camping spot, pitching the perfect tent, or catching the biggest fish. These seemingly irrelevant tasks all work together in training you on proper planning and execution — valuable skills essential in the workplace.
Outdoor activities like camping, hiking, and sports can help improve your leadership skills by exposing you to unique scenarios where you must plan, assess risks, and make snap decisions for your team. You’ll emerge from these experiences as a more well-rounded, empathetic, and effective leader.
Stick around to discover how relevant and profitable outdoor activities can be for your team and your quest to improve your leadership skills continually. We will discuss what benefits experiential pursuits offer your business, how they can help develop your core leadership competencies, and some ideas on the kinds of outdoor activities you can plan for your team. Let’s start!
Are Outdoor Activities Really Helpful for Leaders?
Some leaders, mainly traditional figureheads, avoid outdoor experiential activities for their team, thinking these wastes time, effort, and resources. Many employees shy away from these, too, because they see these activities simply as obligatory opportunities for them to connect with their team and build rapport through games.
They’re not entirely wrong. What comes to mind when you hear, “We’re heading out next week for some team-building activities!” How do you feel when you hear someone say, “Next Monday will be packed with fun because we’re all going to spend it outdoors for some team fun!”
Do you jump up for joy and can hardly wait for the auspicious day to arrive? Or are you among the many people who cringe when you hear these words? After all, you already know what to expect.
- Relay games that supposedly nurture teamwork.
- Blindfolded activities that foster trust within the team.
- Open forums where everyone can share their thoughts about each team member to fortify relationships.
Are these team-building activities genuinely practical? Or do they force people into spending time together without accomplishing what they were designed for?
The key to a genuinely productive outdoor team-building activity is the element of risk. People must feel that something is on the line — their safety, sense of fulfillment, or even the idea that they can accomplish an extremely challenging feat. For an outdoor activity to be truly successful, it has to be challenging enough for people to want to get in on the excitement.
Consequences of Disengaging from Outdoor Team Activities
Relevant outdoor activities benefit leaders and the team by providing creative opportunities to establish trust, respect, and better interpersonal relationships. For leaders, outdoor activities are great venues for enhancing core competencies such as decision-making, problem-solving, and risk management.
Choosing not to take advantage of all the benefits extended by well-planned outdoor experiential activities exposes your business to these risks:
Higher Employee Turnover
Boredom from monotony, a lack of excitement, and the inability to connect with the rest of the team can lead some employees to consider greener pastures.
When an employee quits, expenses of the turnover of roles and responsibilities, separation pay, lost business opportunities, screening of potential candidates, and the hiring and training new employees accumulate.
The average cost of replacing an employee is about $6,000. Imagine spending this much on restoring standard workflow within the team when you could spend this amount on more productive pursuits.
Poor Performance
When employees are unhappy and unsatisfied with their jobs, efficiency suffers. They are more inclined to be lackadaisical and deliver mediocre work. You may start noticing increased absenteeism, missed deadlines, and abandoned tasks.
Decreased Productivity
High employee morale and motivation translate to better engagement and collaboration. All of these result in increased productivity for the business.
If your employees are uninspired and bored at work, you will soon see your numbers in company sales and new clients plummet because of your team’s lack of drive to aspire for progress.
| Consequences of Disengaging from Outdoor Team Activities | Description |
| Higher Employee Turnover | The inability to connect with the rest of the team can lead some employees to consider greener pastures. |
| Poor Performance | When employees are unhappy and unsatisfied with their jobs, efficiency suffers. |
| Decreased Productivity | If your employees are uninspired and bored at work, you will soon see your numbers in company sales and new clients plummet because of your team’s lack of drive to aspire for progress. |
How Outdoor Activities Can Help You Become a Better Leader
Imagine planning the logistics of, say, a camping trip for your team. You’ll have to consider the most suitable venue, the appropriate tools and equipment to bring, the transportation arrangements, food, water, safety, and even provisions in an emergency.
Will it be worth all the effort, time, and money required to complete a successful activity? Will you essentially send your team to a purely recreational pursuit where they’ll gain more than better rapport and camaraderie? Will you waste your precious time bonding with your team when you could be more productive by staying in the office and dutifully accomplishing your tasks?
Outdoor activities, provided they are challenging and exciting enough, can help you become a better leader by placing you in situations that demand careful planning, precise execution, and fast decision-making. All the skills you hone and the experiences you acquire in outdoor activities can easily translate into how you function as a leader in the workplace.
All the skills you hone and the experiences you acquire in outdoor activities can easily translate into how you function as a leader in the workplace.
Here are eight competencies you can sharpen outdoors and bring into play in your daily work life as a leader:
Whether verbal or non-verbal, your communication skills will be tested outdoors. From the planning stage to the preparation phase to the actual day of the activity, practical communication skills will be pivotal in ensuring that the event is a success.
Things won’t always go as planned, and as a leader, your team expects you to make the best decisions to keep them safe and secure.
3. Decision-making
Outdoor scenarios help you think on your feet, assess situations, and make decisions beneficial to the team.
4. Problem-solving
Your ability to strategize will be tested in outdoor scenarios where you often have to think out of the box to develop the most innovative solutions to problems at hand.
Disagreements, friction, and altercations will undoubtedly arise in any outdoor setting, especially when people feel outside their comfort zone. As a leader, you will be responsible for keeping the peace and arriving at amicable solutions to the most pressing disputes.
6. Coaching
Influential leaders are keen on bringing out the best in their teams. Outdoor activities can help you pinpoint each team member’s strengths and weaknesses so you can better guide them in achieving their full potential. You can delegate responsibilities to those you deem best suited for specific tasks.
7. Adaptability
It would help if you were quick to react and adjust to unexpected scenarios in which you might suddenly find yourself. Sometimes, being able to adapt fast is crucial to survival. It would be best to be flexible, reactive, and prepared to face positive and negative developments.
8. Resilience
Outdoor activities can be immensely challenging, requiring you to recover from setbacks quickly, maintain a positive outlook, and strive to move forward with your team. All these are crucial in the workplace, too.
4 Practical Outdoor Activities To Improve Leadership Skills
Spending time in the great outdoors is a surprisingly enriching way to improve your leadership skills while having fun, enjoying nature, and engaging in physical exercise all at the same time. Having skin in the game is crucial because direct involvement allows you to influence outcomes and achieve your precise goals directly.
Spending time in the great outdoors is a surprisingly enriching way to improve your leadership skills while having fun, enjoying nature, and engaging in physical exercise all at the same time.
Your leadership skills will be tested and sharpened so you can effectively employ them straight from the wilderness to the boardroom. Here are some outdoor activities you might want to try:
1. Organize a Camping Trip
Camping trips are great venues for leaders and employees to take a breather from the humdrum of office work to recharge and focus on building better interpersonal relationships among themselves.
As a leader, it’s an excellent opportunity for you to put your planning and execution skills to the test. Looking for a suitable campsite, setting up camp, preparing meals, and being equipped to handle sudden weather changes are all part and parcel of your responsibilities in spearheading such an activity.
2. Go Hiking with Your Team
Hiking is a great way to learn more about how you can make decisions and work together as a team. Traversing challenging terrain will help build your team members’ physical and mental fortitude, encouraging them to be more collaborative and supportive of each other.
In leading your team, you must assess your planned route, study the terrain, figure out how to overcome obstacles and inspire your team to push forward despite difficulties. You must study and visualize your course, always with the end goal in mind and taking advantage of smaller objectives. After all, hiking is also about enjoying the little pleasantries you find.
Stop by a lake, pause to admire the landscape at a strategic location, or take a rest by a scenic field. It’s a great way to teach your team that it’s not always about the destination — how to get there also matters.
3. Play Team Sports
When your team plays sports, they can creatively put their communication skills to good use. They can also polish their collaboration, teamwork, and analytical competencies under extreme pressure.
As a leader, playing sports is an excellent opportunity for you to enhance your motivational skills and inspire your team to get out of their comfort zones and deliver beyond what’s expected of them. It also helps you focus on developing a higher level of emotional intelligence — a crucial factor in effective leadership.
Heightened emotional intelligence makes you a more well-rounded, empathetic, and proficient leader. For instance, through sports, you recognize that failures are part of the process and do not indicate the outcome. They should be utilized as learning experiences to help further fuel the drive to reach the goal.
4. Set Out to Discover Adventure Sports
Adventure sports will allow your team to develop higher trust levels among themselves. It will also allow them to explore something completely new and daunting yet exciting enough to make them want to try.
Adventure sports also provide exhilarating experiences perfect for leaders with a natural inclination and thirst for victory. Thrilling activities like skydiving, whitewater rafting, and rock climbing provide excellent thrills from which you can learn to assess risks, make fast yet sensible decisions, and remain composed even under extreme pressure.
Adventure sports also provide exhilarating experiences perfect for leaders with a natural inclination and thirst for victory.
For instance, rock climbing teaches you that preparing ahead is critical to safety and success. Invest in good quality gear, plot your route, and be open to changing your course. In business, the same concepts apply when it comes to investing in the right tools and the best people and mapping out sound business plans for the team.
In this TED talk by entrepreneur and trekker Arjun Majumdar, he shares his insights on how an outdoor activity such as trekking has a significant impact on the mind and body.
Final Thoughts
The skills crucial to surviving and enjoying the outdoors are also essential in the workplace. By embracing outdoor activities, you can seamlessly incorporate your learnings into your leadership roles in the workplace.
The feedback loop between decisions and the consequences of your actions is much shorter outdoors than when you’re in the office. This makes experiential activities highly effective in enhancing your core leadership competencies. Problem-solving, risk assessment, and decision-making will all be tested and used to get your team efficiently to the end goal, translating to transformative benefits in the workplace.
When you’re ready to explore the wonders of outdoor leadership, book a call with us! We can help you hone your skills and achieve your full leadership potential.
Sources
- Outward Bound: What Does Outdoor Leadership Really Look Like?
- Corporate Compass: Building Leadership Skills with Corporate Outdoor Activities
- Adventure Works: 5 Outdoor Leadership Skills That Can Help You Succeed in Any Career
- Research Gate: Evaluating Outdoor Experiential training for Leadership and Team Building
- LinkedIn: Why Camping Is Awesome For Teams
- Forbes: How Hiking Techniques Can Help You Reach Your Business Goals
- Business Today: Management Lessons Business Leaders Can Learn from Sports
- Retail Capital: 5 Extreme Sports and How They Can Make You a Better Leader
- Sancus Leadership: Discovery Call
- Sancus Leadership: Beyond Passive Communication: No Misunderstandings! (For Managers & Employees)
- Sancus Leadership: The 3 Views on Truth at the Workplace: Resolving Conflicts
