Leadership the Outward Bound Way: Becoming a Better Leader in the Workplace, in the Wilderness, and in Your Community

Dynamic and effective leadership skills-from the organization that has spent decades helping people discover their own potential to lead. Outward Bound has been teaching leadership internationally for more than sixty years. In the United States alone, some 700,000 people have learned life-changing, transferable leadership skills and strategies through Outward Bound experiences.

You don't need to summit a mountain to learn these invaluable skills. Now anyone can benefit from Outward Bound USA's collective wisdom and experience, as articulated by its top leadership experts. Leadership the Outward Bound Way introduces readers to the fundamentals of good leadership: communicating effectively, building trust, building teams, overcoming fear, taking risks, and making decisions. The book explores how these leadership basics can be applied in different areas of life-in outdoor travel and recreation, in the office or the boardroom, and in community work or volunteerism.

The text is punctuated by accounts of real-life events during Outward Bound programs, call-outs of key points and helpful tips and case-study exercises. This leadership approach is based on a teaching method developed at the Harvard Business School that challenges and informs readers about how to respond to real-life leadership situations.

In addition to the foreword by former U.S. President JIMMY CARTER, contributors to Leadership the Outward Bound Way include the following:

JOHN RAYNOLDS, former Navy frogman and CEO/president of Outward Bound USA, addresses the leadership skills involved in making any trip into the outdoors successful. BOB GORDON, president of Outward Bound Professional, and CAROLINE BLAIR-SMITH, course director and writer/editor of Outward Bound publications, reveal how you can lead others in ways that encourage good teambuilding, high performance, and effective change management in a professional environment. JOAN WELSH, former president of the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School and founder of several non-profit organizations, explores how you can effectively impact your community through volunteerism. Case Studies are provide by JIM GARRETT, Director of the Outward Bound USA's National Service Initiative. MARK GERZON, codirector of the Global Leadership Program, puts Outward Bound's leadership development techniques and philosophy into a global context.