All I Need to Know I Learned at Camp

As a project manager, my job is to effectively lead our team through constant change: to assess the situation, identify possible outcomes, weigh the implications, and recommend a solution. This triage approach is a leadership skill I learned not in a well-attended professional seminar, but as a sandal-clad camp counselor.

In college I was a counselor for an “extreme adventure” camp. My fellow counselors and I spent two weeks writing a camp curriculum and learning the ropes (literally, in the case of the high ropes course) before our first week of campers arrived. As could be predicted, nothing went as planned that first week. It rained the day of our planned bike ride. The river was too low, forcing us to portage our canoes through mosquitoes and mud. Campers were hungry well before we’d reached the drop point for our snack supplies.

Like the emerging leaders that we were, my co-counselor and I doggedly pushed on with our scheduled activities despite these setbacks. By the end of the week we’d managed to squeeze in some fun, but the primary feedback from the campers’ adult chaperone was that we were inflexible and difficult to work with.

At first I was offended. “Hey,” I thought, “you asked me to write and learn this curriculum, and then you want me to just drop it when the chaperone says so?” However, I had to admit that sticking to something that wasn’t working hadn’t been much fun for me, either. Luckily for my personal development, I got a chance to repeat the entire situation the following week.

This time instead of insisting we’d canoe come hell or no water, I spent a few minutes considering alternatives. Maybe we could set up a skills course in a nearby lake and skip the river. Maybe we could set up a low ropes course for the kids who couldn’t handle the high ropes.

It’s no surprise that the feedback was far more positive the second week. Only one of the five days had gone as planned, but campers and chaperones alike claimed it was a fabulous week and they’d be back next year.

The experience has informed how I respond to change in my work. If you’re halfway into a project and the client decides the proposed solution isn’t actually what’s best for them (the river is more mud than water), there’s no point longing for what should have been. It’s best to draw on your inner camp counselor: Lead your team through that change by separating yourself from your attachment to the original plan—especially difficult when you created that plan—and proactively look for solutions.