This is a guest post by Paola Perversi, a new Chinese University of Hong Kong MBA (Class of 2015), sharing her experience at the Outward Bound Exercise, which is one of the pre-term activities.
Twelve people, three days, two nights, a total of six hours sleep, 20 bruises, 200 mosquito bites, five litres of water carried in your backpack. Welcome to the Outward Bound life!
When I was told “you’ll leave for a three-days journey during which you will learn about setting your goals and working in teams", I imagined something like a school trip, with hiking, singing and eating marshmallows together around a camp fire.
I was wrong. Outward Bound Experience (OBE) is for tough people.
Our course was focused on four points: leadership, team roles, problem processing and goals; all the activities are correlated among them and they are all related to the job world. That is why OBE changes the learning process: it’s not about books and theory, it’s about learning through experience in an environment outside of our comfort zones – just like in the MBA Jobs world.
Our class was put into groups of eleven or twelve people. Each group was named after a person who changed the world, such as Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. Our group, however, decided to change the name to FèngHuáng, which is the mythological Chinese Phoenix, a symbol of high virtue and grace
There was nothing graceful about the learning process. In fact, it was brutal. No beds, no bathrooms, no tents, no comforts; just hours of hiking, kilos of mud, litres of sweat and millions of mosquitoes. I must admit that I asked myself so many times: “Why I’m doing this? Why is my school so cruel to me? This is my upper limit, I can’t go further."
But I had my teammates. I had help from them, and I gave help to them. After getting through the MBA Admission process, I learnt so much from them.
I think it is best exemplified by the raft project. We are told we are survivors and we must build a raft out of plastic barrels, bamboo and rope, and paddle it to safety - Outward Bound's base camp, where we will have a hot breakfast and are able to take a shower after three days of camping and hiking and running!
We had to choose two leaders to direct the raft's construction and organize the survivors. The leaders also set the rhythm of the paddling. They must learn how to paddle themselves and make sure everyone paddles in the same direction and with the same movements.
What if a team member stops paddling? The teammates have to paddle harder to share the load and the teammates motivate him or her to achieve the common goal. What if the leaders don’t consider the features of the team and set too fast a rhythm? The team will not be able to follow them.
What if the raft is built with weak knots? What if each of the team member paddles to his own rhythm? What if the destination – the goal – is not clear?
These are all factors that all team-mates, including the leaders, had to consider. These are all factors that had to be dealt in real-time if we were to arrive safe and sound to our destination. In the end our team was successful: we paddled for two hours and made it in time for a well-deserved, hot breakfast.
Thank you to the strongest teammates who charged their backpack with the heaviest supplies. Thank you to the weakest, who arrived to the end. Thank you to those who couldn’t swim, but who still jumped from the jetty. Thank you to those who shared their candies with everybody; when I was struggling, a candy was such a treat.
The sense of achievement you get when pushing to your limit can’t be expressed with words. The point where my limits were settled is now my starting point, I know that with passion, struggle, sweat and a team that works together, I can go further. To the quote by the American theologian Karl Paul;“aim to the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky”, I would add “with a little help from my friends", as The Beatles sang.
Thank you team FèngHuáng…let’s fly high together!