education – Venture Beyond

Jack of all Trades, Master of None- Is the polymath the future of Leadership?

“Jack of all trades, master of none” is an often heard phrase related to people have a broad understanding and ability in a lot of activities, but not a specialist in any.

It suggests that although a person can be good across a range of domains they cannot be a master of all of them.

Leadership can often be a place where you have to draw on all your knowledge and skills, making you feel like a “jack of all trades”. You need a broad breadth of knowledge and interests to draw on that enable the creation of the conditions for people to thrive, set the vision, understand people, and do the practical elements of actually leading people. These skills and attributes develop through your experience, training and development, influenced by your personal characteristic and approach to learning. But do you really master all of them?

Or is it even important to do so?

The ancient Greeks called those who mastered a great range of subjects “Polymaths”, people like Aristotle, who wrote extensively and expertly on subjects as diverse as astronomy, anatomy, geography, geology, physics, meteorology, and zoology.

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The term comes from two Greek words “Poly” meaning many, and “Mathma” meaning a unit of Knowledge.

Throughout history we have utilized the term to describe great people whose expertise stretches across many knowledge domains; Leonardo De Vinci (Math, Art, technology, invention), Alexander Von Humboldt (geographer, naturalist, explorer, philosophy, politics and science), Paul Robeson (acting, civil rights, athlete), Theodore Roosevelt (Hunter, explorer, politics, naturalist, statesman) and even Steve Jobs (technology, Business, media),

These people not only have a breadth of knowledge and interests, they also have developed a significant depth of knowledge about these subjects. Araki (2015, 2018) identified that Breadth and Depth are the two most identifiable elements of polymathic behaviour. But the key element that really stands the polymath out, is their ability to seamlessly integrate all their domains of expertise. Being able to transition between one and another, creating links in their knowledge and seeing easily how they can help each other in practice.

Already a lot of leadership training involves the development of skill across a range of domains, in the Military for instance it ranges from the practical, to historical, to geographical, strategic and application of skills, but does it lead to expertise or integration of these skills combined at a high level?

Would the encouragement of polymathic behaviours in future leaders benefit their ability to be more agile, gaining greater understanding of all their interests to a level where they are able to integrate the knowledge into better planning, decision making and development of those they lead. Think about a sports team leader, who understands strategy, or can see the pitch in the context of historical battles or past games, or who can relate easily to changes in society or individuals because their interests have been allowed to stretch and include counselling or psychology, politics and sociology?

It could be useful to develop a leader’s knowledge pool to include the arts and philosophy alongside traditional subjects, allowing them to follow their own interests, helping them to think more polymathic, integrating a broad, depth of knowledge into their practice and ensuring that future leaders can be imaginative and decisive.

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Bruce Lee was attributed to the quote “ Fear the man who has practiced 1 kick 1000 times, not the man who has practiced 1000 kicks, once!” which suggests it is better to become a master of one thing rather than mediocre at many. But why can’t we work hard at becoming a master of more than one? Practicing 1000 kicks, a thousand times? If we are interested and dedicated we can develop skill in many domains, as proved by De Vinci and many others, in fact Bruce Lee himself mastered a number of different martial arts while devising his own. Jeet Kune Do was his life’s work, but grew from his great knowledge and dedication of lots of practical martial arts, philosophy, techniques and influences, in fact it integrated his knowledge across many domains, using everything at his disposal to create something new, in the manner of a true polymath!

Historical figures can provide the inspiration for change, but over the centuries we have come to appreciate the artisan, just checkout the resurgence of artisan bakers, baristas and brewers, but is it now time to learn from the polymaths, to create a new style of a more responsive integrated leadership and learning?

Remember, Aristotle taught Alexander the Great, teaching him across a range of domains of knowledge, encouraging polymathic behaviour in him, allowing him to see the connections between subjects and integrating them in his thinking….and look what he managed!

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References:

Araki, M. E. (2018). Polymathy: A new outlook. Journal of Genius and Eminence, 3(1), 66-82

Araki, M. E. (2015). Polymathic leadership: Theoretical foundation and construct development. (Master’s thesis), Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Banter!- The key to elite team performance?

People seem to talk endlessly about leadership in work places, society, and sport, but what about teams, surely it can’t all be down to leadership ….. Can it?

In the UK we are currently immersed in a general election campaign, where a bunch of power seeking “leaders’ are trying to convince us in a variety of ways, nefarious or otherwise, to vote for them and their team!
So it seems timely to look at some tricky issues around leadership and team work,

Recent team performances like England and South Africa’s finals appearances in the rugby world cup, have got us talking about team work, what about Japans amazing run in the same competition, the crushing of the seemingly invincible All Blacks, a team that has been the epitome of team work in elite sport for the last 10 years, or what about the amazing USA women’s football team becoming back to back world champions during the summer, or England’s Cricket team, outside of sport what about the top teams in business, Google, Java and historically Ford Motor Company and Disney?
All these team have and are creating greatness in their own arenas and prompt us to think about whether its teams or leaders who make the magic happen?

There is always the argument that is the combined factors in the make up a team that make the magic happen, or the old adage of “teamwork makes the dream work”, but surely its leaders who set vision, build the team drive it forwards, celebrate with the team when they all succeed?

This supposes that the team just follow what the leader sets for them, the players are just tools of the leader to achieve their aim or goal?

Looking at rugby coaches for example they build teams that match their vision, during the game they sit in the box passing tactical insights to the players, moving the chess pieces on the board and then celebrate when it all works out!! But is it this simple? I would suggest that its more complicated than this, to be an elite performing team requires individual players in that team to forge their own paths, to become the best at their specialised area, to know everything about their co-workers, work out where their skills sit and to commit to making the team work, they may place trust in a leader to set a vision but they need to commit to that to enable it to become reality, they have to take individual feedback and team discussions on board and amend behaviours and attitudes accordingly.

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But a team needs to find its own identity and the ability to give crucial feedback to each other for the good of the team’s development so that it can succeed at its task.

I’ve been involved in a number of teams throughout my career either as a participant, player or colleague, as a leader and observer and as coach and trainer, all pushing towards achieving goals, whether that was on expeditions, undertaking military missions, in sports teams and in training elite athletes. In all of these environments and team I have noticed a number of common elements that when in evidence alongside more traditional team behaviours have helped ensure that the high performing teams have met their goals or have created a professional winning atmosphere and mind-set.
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Some of these behaviours that I have witnessed in high performing teams, and personally enjoy in the teams I work in are-
1. Comradeship – A critical component in teams. It engenders trust, safety and support, the concept that you are in it for each other and you will “die” to protect the person next to you!
2. Banter– lots of good and generally appropriate banter (not bullying) in a team means that they are comfortable with each other, that they can keep the atmosphere light, though when it really matters they can focus when needed. A bit of gentle sledging of each other can also ensure humour in the work place, kindness and demonstrate that people can smile with each other, and at themselves.
3. Family – Teams that consider themselves a family ensure that they develop their own identity and values, ones that they hold themselves accountable for and to, they commit to tasks and each other, protecting and nurturing each other.
4. Fight for Cause– Having purpose bonds people and therefore the team together, it means that they can face testing circumstances knowing that they have a joint mission and end goal, and give it meaning and importance.
5. Leaders across pitch– having many leaders, not just the main one but others who might be experienced, senior people who exhibit leadership skills and values throughout a team or organisation can lead to a supportive team, who can pick up issues throughout the mission or work and keep people on track, and develop the weaker or more junior members. They know what needs to be done, what good performance looks like, how to keep people focused and moving forwards.
6. Honest feedback– teams that have confidence in giving, and receiving honest feedback always strive to do better, sometimes it seems brutally delivered, but carefully selected honest feedback delivered in a strong way is highly effective. This isn’t rude or bullying, it can be fair, equitable and clearly given to improve performance or review mistakes. No one learns if the feedback is week, in content or delivery!

High performing teams need more than just a good leader or a loose approach to team work, they need a deeper bond, a connection, a focus, a reason to keep pursuing excellence. In modern workplaces teams need more than just a financial or transactional incentive to push further, making people part of a team, immersing them in the comradeship, giving them a goal and reason to come to work, supporting them through key leaders throughout the team, having honest conversations about performance, and keeping the environment fun and in good humour can lead to developing and maintaining the organisation or teams excellence.

If you want to find out more about teams that I think adopt and live by these behaviours look at the All Blacks (check out the book Legacy by James Kerr), or Google the Royal Marines “ Commando Spirt” mantra and Corps Values, these give great insight into organisational cultures of excellence.

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If you or any teams or individuals you know that might benefit from working on developing their own values and behaviours put them in touch with me and I’d love to help them work on developing their own high performance!

info@james-dyer.org

Inclusion in Adventure

I read a lot about inclusion in the outdoors these days, and sometimes I find that it is not presented in the most positive or even inclusive way.

I just wanted to champion some people and projects that are doing amazing work (https://womensadventureexpo.co.uk/ https://www.loveherwild.com/ http://www.equaladventure.org/ http://outdoorafro.com/) to name a few, and to add my 5 pence worth to this wide debate.

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The adventure challenge today is not so much about climbing the highest mountain or the physical exploits of personal endeavor and hardship by super fit individuals but much more it is starting to challenge the status quo of “who” is being included in this!

The need for “adventure” and exploration to become more inclusive is paramount.

As a broad society , made up of all types of people and cultures the challenge to adventurers, organisations and those that follow is to become more diverse in outlook, thinking and practically.

The challenges may be culturally, accessibility, social or even prejudice, but the sector and those of us in it must try to understand the “why” and well as the “who” and work really hard and a broadly as possible to understand the “how”, to ensure that the outdoor sector, how ever broad it is, is as inclusive as possible.

We need to explore and break down how other cultures see the outdoors, as well as looking critically at all our relationships with it, this needs to be historically, culturally and practically, we need to understand how all cultures and groups of people see the outdoors.

In modern Britain we see the outdoors as a good place to go, a place to explore and be adventurous, to challenge ourselves physically and that it is acceptable to go into the outdoors and gain some positive benefits from it, educationally or personally. But this wasn’t always the case. In Victorian times the mountains were seen as evil places, where dragons and demons live. One of my favorite mountains is the Cader Idris in North Wales, even here mythology from the 1700’s said that its is where the devil played cards with sabbath breakers on Sundays! This was how the Victorians saw the world, and it wasn’t till later when a few drug- addled poets and early botanists started to describe the mountains differently, and change people perceptions of them did they become more acceptable places.

But how do other cultures explain their relationship with the wider environment, and if they are then part of a migrant diaspora, how do they relate that to their new environments?

We need to understand what the barriers are or have been to people to access or go into the outdoors, disabled people have potentially avoided places due to rough surfaces or an in- ability to engage with the environment from a mobility perspective, people on low incomes cannot get to remote or outdoor places, some people view of the outdoors is that it is “NOT” for certain types of people (LGBTQ/ Transgender). But what other barriers exist for people that stops them engaging, is it attitudes, cost of clothing and equipment or not seeing enough people “like them” in the outdoor literature or on the media?

Even I’m not that sure I relate to Ben Fogle, Ran Fiennes or Ray Mears, and I am a white (nearly) middle aged male!!!!

We need real change drivers, adventurers, leaders in the industry, communities and through our media to change and develop our thinking of inclusion in the outdoors.

The western, white, middle class male-centric approach, with all its history, culture, outlooks and educational approaches must be challenged to find out ways to make the outdoor and adventure relevant, welcoming and open to change so that all can be represented at its broad church!

Education or Travel?

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Counting down the last few days before the next expedition!

The living room is filling with stuff sacs and kit again.

And the list of jobs in my diary are gradually getting ticked off!

Its that time again to be heading off on the next expedition.

This time I head to the mountain kingdom of Nepal, the home of the highest mountains on Earth, and some of it friendliest people.

Nearly 20 years ago I led my first overseas expedition, this first expedition leadership job was for a group of 16 young people, it was a development expedition, aimed at building teamwork and leadership, as well as personal and social skills amongst the group.

Since 2000 I have led many expeditions like this, expeditions that I refer to a “Educational Expeditions”, and although I think that every expedition has a developmental purpose, I really feel that leading these style of expeditions for young people have many important outcomes and potential for change.

Young people having an opportunity to travel in this way can achieve so much, they embark on a journey that allows them to recognize their strengths, find out who they want to be, to touch the world, find out first hand what it is about, how it works, and develop their own ideas about a changing and often confusing world.

They develop their confidence, build resilience and motivation through engaging with physical and mental tasks, working in local communities, trekking in remote landscaped or undertaking scientific studies.

Personally, they get to find out who they are, what they like,what their views or values are and to have first hand experiences of the world. This important educational experience can lead to live changing decisions or to confirm the choices that these participants have made. Directing their futures and possibly influencing the future of their communities and the wider world.

This is education not just travel!

In the current world, where a new nationalistic politics is emerging, where neo-liberal policies are seriously impacting on the planet, the ongoing search for corporate profit and weakening governments which lead to environmental degradation, increased poverty and more conflicts , it is more important than ever to introduce Young people to both themselves and the world, these young people will be the future decision makers and voters, and the more they understand about the world and have personal contact with it, I hope will help them become better global citizens with more personal investment in helping create a better future.

So, in my mind my job on these ” Educational Expeditions” is to facilitate this experience, challenge and push the young people to look at themselves and the world differently. It is a crucial role to play and one I feel really privileged to undertake.

Over the next 3 weeks my team of 16 year old will go on a personal and social journey, immersing themselves in the communities they will travel through, but also challenging themselves to find out who they are, their values and their interests, with the hope that they will return home different, having been through a unique experience.

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Some of my teams initial thoughts about what they want to see and achieve on their expedition!

We arrive in Kathmandu on Sunday after a pretty long flight, and after a day or so in the City we travel to a village, where we will be based for a while, undertaking vital projects, both construction and educational where we will be actively involved with the school. We will be delivering purposeful projects that benefit the local community (by improving their educational facilities) as well as the young people on the expedition themselves, through their engagement with the remote community and the projects that they will plan and deliver themselves.

Ill post again about the trip later in July…..