Outdoor Team Training simulates a workplace “survival situation” evokes answers to questions like these: What are your innate abilities? What are your strongest senses? How do you act under pressure?
In a physical sense, the experiences in something like the LC Ranger program bear no resemblance to workplace situations. The parallel is the mutual experience of limited resources, a common objective, and a lot of pressure to get a job done. I’m going to tell you a little about the LC program as a way of preparing you for the exercises in the book. I want to shift your thinking away from the more traditional approaches to corporate training so you come into the exercises with a combat mentality—aware of your friends and enemies, committed to the mission, and vigilant about your timetable.
In brief, I take people into the woods of Kentucky. I provide camouflage outfits to wear, prepackaged military meals to eat, an uncomfortable place to rest, and a paintball gun to protect food, shelter, and body.
Four days of missions involve some compelling objectives, for example, if you don’t take the supply tent, you don’t capture your food for the day. The point is to send people back to their workplace with a new perspective. I get people to look at their coworkers and realize: “I know you the way I didn’t know you before. It’s not that we bonded or had a good time together, because at different points, we were miserable or happy separately. It’s that I know how to work with you. I might not like you any better, but when it comes to work, I know how to work with you to get something done.”