The Rafting Lesson
During the month of September 2010, I had the opportunity to join some fellow university students from my leadership program to take a rafting trip in Paris, Ontario. Our team, “The Scotch on the Rocks” was so aptly named due to our constant inability to avoid colliding with rocks during our rafting expedition. Luckily, nothing was damaged and no one was lost at sea, errrr…river…but there were several highlights of this experience that I would like to share with all of you.
I highly recommend the book, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead. This book explores 7 main triggers that lead people to the state of Fascination, or rather:
“It’s when you become lost in a moment, losing track of time and the world around, completely focused on a person or message. When you fascinate other people, not only do they focus on you and your message but they’re also more likely to believe, care about, and retell your message.” (Hogshead, xvi – xvii)
I will not illustrate all 7 examples of fascination from this book, but there are 3 specific examples that I wanted to point out that best illustrate the leadership lessons I learned from this rafting trip.
Trust: Arguably, I will say that this is the most important concept of leadership. At various points of our trip, our rafting guides would point out random places in the river that from my perspective, I would deem “SOL (S*it Outta Luck) spots. If your raft hit those current areas, you ran the risk of being royally screwed. Of course, as novice rafters we pretty much ran into every SOL spot available throughout the trip. The result? I had to volunteer on numerous occasions to jump off the boat into the river and push us away from the rocks OR we became assaulted with tree branches and other forms of nature from the river’s edge like we were Persians crashing into Spartan spears in the movie, 300.
The moral of the story here is that trust is measured by comparing our expectations against deviations; or rather, if something happens that is consistently similar to our expectations then we are more likely to count on it. (Hogshead 176) Our guides explained in depth what the obstacle was and what would happen if we ran into it. As such, we listened closely to their advice and did our best to follow it because they created that foundation of trust through their experience and teaching. As leaders, it is important to give people these tools to allow them to independently learn from their challenges.
Alarm: According to Sally Hogshead, people take action at the threat of a negative consequence. In marketing, this strategy is utilized through limited time offers (if you don’t buy now, you miss the deal). In leadership, alarm is a method of influence by illustrating impending challenges to followers. I have found many times that leaders hide upcoming disasters to avoid blame, especially if the leader was not prepared for them. However, in a seasoned leader, the use of alarm can be effectively utilized if it is accompanied by proper organization and preparation. Our guides demonstrated this through SOL spots but my leadership team took this a step longer in a more interesting way. At some point in time, our team started lagging behind other rafters. However, we recreated the fascination of alarm by spreading the negative aspect of “being last” and all the taunting that we could expect from that title. This brought a new found sense of both motivation and innovation. We developed a system that I would call the “100 strokes” system in which we all counted out 100 strokes in unison together and then rested for 5 minutes before repeating. This method was extremely effective in not only being an enjoyable and motivating way to continue the long journey but it also allowed us to pass several of our opponents on the trip.
Power: This concept of power is not necessarily about title or authority, but rather a method of influence. In a positive way, power can be used to motivate while the reverse of the spectrum is intimidation and force. However, one aspect of power illustrated by Sally Hogshead that is very relevant to leadership is the controlling of environment. If a leader is able to control the basic elements of a situation, these subtle controls can act as an effective influence tactic. In leadership situations, we all hear the “keep a positive attitude” spiel that everyone says. But to control the environment means to fully enforce the message you are trying to convey through any external means. So for our rafting trip, enforcing a positive attitude meant that even the slightest negative thought or perspective such as the trip being too long, people getting tired or the challenges we faced was responded to immediately by positive encouragement. If someone seemed to be on the verge of complaining, the negativity was simply not allowed on the boat. It was quickly replaced with something positive. When people were too tired to paddle, others took the initiative to keep paddling and refused to quit. In the movie, “The Replacements”, Keanu Reeves illustrates the comparison of quicksand to consistent failure. My question to you all would be, if you were in that situation then how would you respond and deal with that fear?
Anyway, those are 3 aspects of leadership that are synonymous with the book I read. I am looking forward to everyone’s harsh criticisms and inspiring insights. 
Cheers,
Kris Diocampo
“Policies are many. Principles are few. Policies will change. Principles never do.”
- John C. Maxwell
