CHAPTER ONE

From the Wilderness to the Workplace

Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles of life—facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and, in the process, discovering our own unique potential.

—John Amatt, author, adventurer,
and founder of One Step Beyond Worldwide

In a classic Outward Bound wilderness trip, a group of strangers come together to immerse themselves in nature. They create community, achieve milestones, experience peaks and valleys, and then disperse to reenter their everyday lives. Instructors and course directors typically let participants know at the end of the trip that they are just beginning their Outward Bound journey. They have become Expeditionary Leaders and must discover for themselves how they will affect the world.

Outward Bound uses the wilderness as a means to midwife new possibilities about how we can show up in the world. The experience of an Outward Bound expedition gives participants the tools for bravely facing the wild unknowns in their daily lives. A perfect example of taking the philosophies of Outward Bound into a completely different context is offered by Michael Welp, a former Outward Bound leader and the cofounder of a consulting company called White Men as Full Diversity Partners. Michael’s company does transformative work around inclusion and diversity, a core value of Outward Bound. With his partner and cofounder Bill Proudman, also a former Outward Bound leader, he has moved from exploring the natural wilderness to diving deep into the metaphoric wilderness of white privilege.

“We came to the conclusion that we needed to find a way to teach white guys about diversity,” said Michael, who holds a PhD in human and organizational systems development.

There are a lot of white men in leadership, and it’s not sustainable for the minority group to be teaching the majority. So we decided to take a risk and put white guys in a room for three and a half days and have them focus on themselves.

What does it mean to be white and male and, for many, also heterosexual? What do we not know that we don’t know? Do we have culture that others assimilate to? Do we have privilege and systemic advantage? And what is our responsibility with each other to educate our group about that?

It turned out to be a transformative and life-changing “expedition” for the white men who participated. Michael explained: “We just took out the wilderness component that pushes people to grow, and put in diversity as the messy arena that you do the leadership development and human development work in.”

The skills Michael developed at Outward Bound are at the core of his $4 million business that is effecting change in the world at multiple corporate levels. But Michael says the biggest changes he sees occur within the people who attend the programs.

“They start off thinking we’re helping other people with their issues—women and people of color—but they end up having these massive changes within themselves. They discover their culture and how to get free of it, they find the freedom to step out of it.”

Just as Outward Bound did for Michael, so does his company give each individual the skills and the personal transformation to birth his or her own impact on the world.

The journey of Eduardo Balarezo also reflects how Outward Bound principles can lead to a powerful impact in the wider world. Eduardo took Outward Bound to Ecuador in 2006 and served as the group’s president there for five years. A serial entrepreneur, Eduardo emigrated to the United States in 2012, launching the social retail enterprise Lonesome George & Co. to benefit the Galápagos Islands. He also launched the Academy of Agents of Change, a unique educational approach based on Outward Bound principles and social entrepreneurship.

Lonesome George began as a brand that sold T-shirts and other lifestyle apparel. Eduardo committed 10 percent of the brand’s revenue to funding Outward Bound programs and leadership programs for park rangers and other workers at the Galápagos National Park.

Eduardo figured, “Since I had done this with my team, why not do this with the national park and provide them with a better understanding of teamwork, leadership, resourcefulness, and respect for others and everything I knew that came from Outward Bound?”

Lonesome George was not the only new idea to come from Eduardo’s Outward Bound experience. Through the Young Presidents’ Organization, Eduardo was selected to organize a Latin American Center focused on multiple bottom lines (people, profit, planet). He had close to a hundred executives from around the world come to Quito, Ecuador, and delivered a three-day program that used Outward Bound methodology. Most recently, Eduardo launched Mind Shift Impact, a transformational consulting company based on Expeditionary Leadership principles.

“These different experiences with Outward Bound made me realize how potent Outward Bound is. They gave me the courage to leap forward, to say, ‘I’m going to do this. I’m going to start my social enterprise. It’s going to use multiple bottom lines, and I’m just going to go for it.’”

Rue Mapp, the founder of Outdoor Afro, which connects African Americans with experiences in nature, agrees that the values she learned through Outward Bound are a huge part of her work developing African American leaders.

It’s not about how many people I can get outside who look like me, but how many leaders can we cultivate in the outdoors. It’s about cultivating leaders, not getting people outside. The outdoors is just a tool.

How does that leadership translate into other areas of their lives even if they don’t take the outdoors on as their career? How else can those opportunities serve them and their immediate sphere of influence?

In a proud moment today, we are sending off a group of eleven people who are climbing Kilimanjaro. I don’t know what kind of impact it will have on their lives, but I know they will be changed forever. Just like I was changed forever through my experiences. And then when they go back into their community, through their own interests, they’ll decide the types of events they want to lead.

The Birth of a Philosophy

During the beginning of the past century the world was going through extreme upheaval. The majority of human culture in the Western world was moving from an agrarian to an industrial focus. As Kurt Hahn, a young German-born Jewish educator, watched the challenges of the transition, he identified what he called the six declines: fitness, initiative, imagination, craftsmanship, self-discipline, and compassion.

In 1920, he began the Schule Schloss Salem school in Germany with the intention of countering these declines. He placed service to others and compassion at the forefront of his instruction. He believed learning should be conducted experientially—through doing—with an emphasis on serving the greater good of society.

This approach to education was quickly threatened when Hitler and the Nazis rose to power. Hahn then founded the Gordonstoun School in Scotland, based on similar principles. Its alumni include Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

As World War II erupted, Hahn was asked to develop a training program to increase the survival rates of merchant marines whose ships were being sunk by German U-boats in the North Sea. He designed an intense experience to help individuals rapidly overcome adversity and to support and trust each other. This program became the blueprint for Outward Bound.

Thomas James, dean of the Teachers College at Columbia University, explained that “Hahn likened himself to a midwife” when creating new educational institutions. “He sparked ideas for new endeavors and then left much of the development and maintenance to others.” Thomas is considered one of the most knowledgeable educators about Outward Bound and its impact in the world. A veteran of several trips himself, Thomas also uses many of Outward Bound’s principles in his leadership at Columbia.

This idea of midwifery—giving individuals the skills to birth their own impact on the world and then letting go and allowing others to lead—has not only created generations of Expeditionary Leaders but also allowed Outward Bound itself to “midwife” a wide range of programs that share its guiding principles: to serve, to strive, and not to yield.

These principles, which it originally promoted through wilderness expeditions, are now experienced through a wide range of organizations, such as EL (Expeditionary Learning) Education, an offshoot of Outward Bound that focuses on taking Hahn’s vision into schools and school systems, and Outward Bound Professional, which partners with companies and nonprofits to transform work environments. Regardless of the population demographic or the location of the program, Outward Bound and its offspring remained committed to Hahn’s legacy of moral purpose.

Former instructors and participants like Michael, Eduardo, and Rue are the “children” of Hahn’s midwifery philosophy. They demonstrate how the principles of Outward Bound can be applied in many different environments to create a better and more inclusive world. The other Expeditionary Leaders featured in this book are also the products of this unique and inspiring approach to leadership—an approach that begins with a deep commitment to service.¹

1. For more biographical information, visit KurtHahn.org.