Now that I have summarized the events of our trek, some reflection is in order. I acknowledge that my perspective today might be very different from my perspective in a couple weeks, months, or years. The most valuable thing I gained from the trek was a wealth of experiences to ponder. For each new challenge I face in school or at work, I will have a relevant situation from the backcountry to apply. As time passes, I might see those backcountry scenarios from a new perspective, but the raw material of photos, blogs, and memories will remain.

While I am expecting some of my conclusions to change with time, one takeaway that I hope stays constant is that I am capable of learning and applying practical skills in unfamiliar situations. I often undervalue my ability to follow instructions, make quick decisions, and learn new hands-on techniques. I am a perfectionist, and I hold my work to an unusually high standard, which sometimes makes me discouraged when I am required to act without time to consider every facet of a situation. Vipul even admitted in my evaluation that he had his doubts about me on the first two days of the trek. However, by the end of the course, I was fully comfortable using any piece of equipment. Vipul shared some very kind words about my growth in my evaluation.

I owe this success to my positive, persistent attitude. I repeatedly stressed to Vipul and Gaurav that I never wanted them to stop giving me feedback on what I was doing wrong. It might take me longer than the average human to learn something, and I might ask an excessive number of questions, but I will never relent until I have mastered a skill. Keeping a smile on my face made it easier to fail and still stay engaged.

I also extended this positive attitude to my relationships with others. During this trip, I realized that there is a large disconnect between how I perceive myself and how others perceive me. Several peers agreed that based on our pre-departure meetings, where I shared that I am typically a dominant personality in groups and that empathy and harmony were in my bottom three skills on the Clifton Strengths Inventory (this is true, I’m afraid), they thought they would not like me very much. However, they all found that I was one of most agreeable and personable people on the trek. 

Receiving this feedback highlighted a recurring theme of the trek; self-awareness. I noticed that any time a conflict arose in the group, the cause was typically that the individuals involved were not attuned to how others see them or how their actions will affect other people. I enhanced my self-awareness by developing substantial relationships with everyone on the trek, which deepened my understanding of the values, experiences, and tendencies that motivate others as well as myself.  

This relationship-building relates to a strength in my top five of the Clifton inventory: Individualism. Instead of using my Achiever personality on the trek, I decided to prioritize Learner and Individualism. I wanted to absorb and observe as much information as I could. In the backcountry, where I am fairly unskilled and the whims of the environment reign supreme, it would be foolish to try to control everything. 

By approaching leadership from the perspective of a learner, I discovered that I could lead without being the person who talked the most and the loudest. Since people trusted me on an emotional and logical level, they respected my opinion on issues facing the group. For instance, I would never be the first person to raise a solution when we lost track of a trail, but if consulted, I was trusted and respected. 

I found that this quiet brand of leadership was conducive to a successful trek. If any decisions were patently wrong in my eyes and if the stakes were higher, I might have intervened more often. However, I was able to lead on the sidelines by connecting to people emotionally while ensuring that the team was making safe decisions. This approach was also conducive to transformational leadership, another theme of the trek for me. Transformational leadership emphasizes the skills and experiences developed by a group as opposed to achievement of a stated goal. I plan to talk about transformational leadership quite a bit in my final essay for this course.

After this course ends, I can continue my trajectory toward stronger, more transformative leadership in a few ways. First, I have found that my eagerness to learn and gather detailed information has given me the confidence to act as a leader in complex situations. Maintaining this proclivity for fact-finding will be important. Second, I want to continue my focus on the emotional aspects of leadership by searching for feedback from others about how they felt in various situations. I attribute much of my progress in emotional intelligence to reality TV shows like Survivor, as it is crucial to hear how others may perceive certain actions in diverse ways. Developing an awareness of personalities and feelings will serve me well. 

Finally, I want to focus on taking my time as a leader. One major realization I had on the trek was that no one was forcing me to make decisions quickly unless a major safety concern was at large. We so often put pressure on ourselves to act rashly when a calmer approach could be more effective. While I want to avoid exacerbating my existing penchant for perfectionism, I want to give myself and my followers the grace of having more time to think and deliberate. If this principle worked for ten days in the backcountry, it will probably apply in the frontcountry, too.

Stay posted for my next blog post about our upcoming cultural visits in Delhi and Agra!