Trauma could forge the mettle that a leadership role demands

Remember where you were during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks? You probably recollect your exact location, the people you were with, the first person you checked on, and also the minutest of details about that event. And yet, you probably struggle to remember where you were last Tuesday. Why can we remember the tiniest details of a 15-year-old event, but not what happened last week? The answer is trauma. Memories, experiences, lessons and relationships forged during ‘traumatic’ events are far stronger and longer lasting. Evolutionarily experiences of traumatic events are hard-coded into the brain to ensure their retention for the future. This phenomenon offers a powerful tool for developing leaders and exponentially increasing organizational ‘speed of trust.’

At a strategic level, leaders are expected to deal with ambiguity, take calculated risks, have an ‘ownership’ mindset, be decisive and inspire teams. This requires them to have a high tolerance for uncertainty, make courageous calls (often with incomplete information), possess an indefatigable drive and lead with personal example. There is also an essential quality that the leadership of any organization must have as a team. And that is a high degree of ‘speed of trust’ between them, failing which even the most competent leaders will expend their energies fighting internal political battles rather than external market wars.

Taking a leaf from lessons that the corporate world has imbibed from the armed forces, these and many other competencies are being honed using adventure-based experiential training by several futuristic organizations. These range from modest cycling treks and outdoor camping to ambitious adventure programmes like months-long sailing voyages to the North Pole and back, and motorcycle and off-roader expeditions to remote areas. The design of such programmes is based on four foundational principles of leadership development and experience-based training.

The first principle is that qualities like courage, the ability to take calculated risks, getting out of one’s comfort zone, etc, are fungible, implying that if a leader is capable of overcoming fear of the unknown in any area, then her ability to demonstrate courage and self-confidence in other areas also rises sharply. This construct is evident in the stories of personalities like Serena Williams, J.K. Rowling, Yuvraj Singh and Franklin Roosevelt, who each battled serious health problems—ranging from acute depression and cancer to paralysing polio—and emerged stronger from their traumas. Closer home, you might have noted the dramatic boost in confidence of a person who has done a half- marathon for the first time in her life.

The second element is that traumatic experiences create strong authentic bonds. Trauma induces fear, and it is in fear that we feel vulnerable. And that is when we are our most genuine selves—stripped of all facades. Think about it this way. Let’s say you give a colleague a lift from office one day. You learn something about him during that journey. If you decide to car-pool with that colleague every day, you will know much more about him. But if you were caught with that person in a 16-hour traffic jam during a natural disaster like the Mumbai floods, then you may know the most intimate of details of his backstory. His fears, aspirations, dreams and his authentic self. It is an irony that most leaders in corporate settings spend more waking hours with their colleagues than their own families, and yet know only their ‘resume’ story—an embellished version which obfuscates the real backstory of the human behind the title. Speed of trust can only develop between colleagues who know each other far more closely.

The third principle of team dynamics is that while leaders might be able to ‘fake it’ in meeting rooms, their true character emerges when they are under duress. We can all be cool, calm and composed during serene times. But it’s only during acute trauma and chaos that true mettle emerges. The values of walking the talk, sacrificing for the good of the team, supporting the weaker ones, inspiring the demoralized and displaying courage to withstand physical adversities can only be demonstrated in testing times. Fakes cannot survive experiential training.

Lastly, leaders must constantly be learning and growing. The quintessential mono-myth of ‘The hero’s journey’ underscores the importance of an arduous path that chisels the hero into her transformed version. Take, for instance, the 12-year vanvaas (forest banishment) of the Pandavas in the epic Mahabharat. It’s during this difficult time that they learn valuable life lessons and build character. Bhim, the strongest, finds that he can’t move a monkey’s tail, Draupadi, the queen of five warriors, is forced to work as a maid, and the ultimate alpha Arjun is compelled to live in the guise of a woman. The hero is forced out of his comfort zone by adversity and it’s adversity that strengthens him.

There’s this cliché about how a pearl is made by the discomfort of a grain of sand that enters an oyster by accident. There is no reason why pearls can’t be made by the deliberate insertion of discomfort. As a matter of fact, that is how pearls are cultivated in labs.