Footprints on the Mountainside

Isabs is an important part of my life now. I find that I believe in the process of development through T-Groups and the ISABS methodology more than any individual facilitator there, and I would like to become a certified trainer with them.

I have finally taken my first step in that direction when I completed my “Phase A” which is the first part of their professional development programme which leads to the certification of behavioural trainers through the T-Group methodology. This is the only kind of certification available for T-Groups in India.

The programme was full of insights and shifts in myself, as well as the way I see things. Strangely, the more I accept that my emotions and experiences are the property of the group and a part of our learning, the more I can acknowledge them and look at them freely and learn from them.

This Phase A comprises of two labs of the usual length and was far more eventful for me than all my previous labs. Part of this is also because I was far more ready to understand my behaviours and experiment with shifts that could lead to changes I desired. This readiness and acceptance of what I was, as I was led to me flowing and changing freely with very little stress.

I may or may not eventually write about my learnings, but they are an inseparable part of me now. I am living by them.

I am just back from another ISABS lab. This is the second time I did my ALHP. This event was very special and very different in many ways.

This was a low budget initiative aimed at making ISABS and the T-Group processes accessible to sections of society that cannot afford the high budget programmes that usually happen in resorts and are willing to live in basic comfort.

This was completely different from previous experiences for me. Normally, participants live in comfortable air-con rooms on a twin or triple sharing basis, with separate areas for dining and laboratories. Here, the entire community was accommodated in four dormitories, which also doubled as labs and one of the dormitories was used as the dining room as well.

All through the duration of the community, there was a constant churning of participants among the group. You sleep with some of them, meet different people at meal times, attend your lab groups with still another set of them, prefer some of them for company in the evenings……. a constant shuffle of people you’re with, but no such thing as an isolated space for anyone.

I had been very apprehensive about this lack of space, but got so swept in the flow, that I don’t remember what exactly it was that I had been apprehensive about.

Ok, the food could have been better, the fans could have worked, and small comforts could have been missed by some, but the phenomenal community feeling was….. indescribable. People had just knitted together so close, that we had turned into one big family.

It was also an amazing experience to have such a large representation of people from the NGO sector in the community, and a valuable insight into perspectives we had never really been very close to.

I may write more about this eventually.

Just returning from another programme for Patni Computers. It went well. Far better than we expected actually, considering the size and difficulty in managing the group we had experienced the last time.

It was a two day thing. We had gone in expecting a recreation programme, but when we spoke with their representative, we discovered that there were specific expectations from the programme and it would be need to give it a training slant to the proceedings.

It was a difficult call for me to make, as it being a fun programme, participant expectations would not be toward learning. Particularly considering that some of the senior members seemed determined to take the whole thing as a joke. Honestly, I have no clue how we managed it, but somewhere down the line, we figured that fun and learning are not mutually exclusive, and then we took off into true experiential mode. I had a blast, and from the feedback we received, so did the participants.

And it was productive. For a quick two day thing with limited time, we managed to go through quite a bit in terms of behavioural learnings.

And I learnt a new lesson. An unruly but enthusiastic group may be difficult to handle, but once channelized, the potential for learning, even amidst chaos is huge as compared with a obedient but cold group in terms of energy.

Heh. This is an easy one for me to write, and if you really think about it, it is all stuff you know anyway. How many points for betting that you may not have thought of things like that?

One of the best ways of knowing if the promotion material’s claims and the experience match is hindsight. *ducks under the table*

Ok. I’m serious now. What follows are the real ways to tell.

1. Count the number of destinations offered, deduct 2 and divide by the number of days of your tour. If the number you get is greater than one, your tour is going to be too hectic to really see anything. The lower the number, the better. I like 0.7ish
2. Sleeping in a new hill station every night is not seeing the Himalaya. If you don’t have the time to do something special in each place, the pace is too fast.
3. Does your guide love the place he is showing you? If he doesn’t, you’re missing out on insights collected over years of experience - which is something you are paying for when you ask for a guide.
4. Ask to meet the guide before you pay. If your guide doesn’t go all enthusiastic about the place in ways not mentioned on the brouchre, you might as well save the money and travel with a road map and brouchre.
5. Does your guide speak the language of the place - even a little is good - but do you have someone handy to communicate with the locals?
6. Read what is being offered in the tour carefully. How much of it is statistics and luxury descriptions and how much is local information? You can be sure that the same will be reflected in your tour most of the time. So, if you want luxury, or if you want interesting stuff, or something else, reading up befopre paying up can be a good idea.
7. Ask questions. Before you pay, make an effort to read up about the place and ask questions in the meeting. Knowledge shows - even if it means admitting ignorance, but having a good idea on where to find out.
8. Do the people have a sense of fun? Self-explanatory.
9. Find out about other people on the tour and ideally, attend a group meeting to make your payments to get a good idea of whether you will gel with the group or not.
10. To find out if an operator is reliable - simply show an interest in an unlikely variety of tours anthropology and pilgrimage, for example. If they want to sell you anything you point at, get out fast. They don’t really care what your interests are, as long as you buy a tour.

Or come to Wide Aware

I think this is a rant, but I’m not sure yet what direction it will take as I write.

We were casually chatting with a friend/free lance instructor with us, and he was telling us of his experience with another group of tour operators he was hired to work with. He is a good outbound instructor, and experienced, but he still doesn’t handle groups on his own when he works with us. Reason being, we aren’t sure of his instincts in an emergency.

And the incident he told us about reinforced it. Let us call him “Raju” for now.

Raju had no bookings for a particular day, and was hired by a new “adventure sports company” in Mumbai. Well, when you’re a free lancer, you take what comes along. Heck, when you’re a business owner, you still mostly take what comes along.

Raju lands up on the location for the programme, and discovers that he is the only experienced instructor there. Well…. he has confidence in his abilities, so…. he’s ok with that. Then, he discovers that it is a group of 40 people and throws a fit. How is a person to handle rappelling for 40 people solo in a 4 hour morning session? The owner hurried to assure him that he had some experience and would help.

Well… when you’re thrown in the water, you swim. Raju begins to set up the rappelling and discovers insufficient equipment. He is encouraged to “adjust”. Great. He adjusts, and changes the site of the rappel as well, so that the length is shorter. Then comes the parade. One participant after another. Owner apparently is clueless about putting on the harnesses he himself owns. Raju teaches him. Very late into the day, they still have about 10 people left. Lunch time is long past.

Participants are bored from sitting while one person at a time does the rappelling. They are hot, hungry, and very irritated, because their promised 100ft rappel is now 40ft. At the end of the day, there are complaints about how Raju is slow. And the bottom line is that these guys are extremely lucky that no one died, but of course, no one there realizes that.

As far as I am concerned, Raju is NEVER going to be a chief instructor at Wide Aware. If my chief instructor can’t have the guts to cancel an activity when there is a shortage of resources - both human and equipment wise, I’m not interested. If I wanted yes men, I would hire yes men. I don’t. I want an instructor to speak up and make a stand when security is compromized.

Of course, such a situation wouldn’t come up with Wide Aware in the first place. We maintain a minimum of a 10 participants to one instructor ratio on our programmes, and it works well. I’m not planning on changing that. I’m hiring a vehicle for transport anyway, so where is the point in being stingy with equipment? If its not needed, it can sit around and come back untouched. Raka would throw a fit if he were expected to handle rappelling or climbing without a rope of adequate length sitting around anchored and unused for use in an emergency. And honestly, I wouldn’t expect him to adjust on that either.

What would I or Raka have done in the place of Raju? To begin with, we would have booked instructors and carried the equipment needed for that group size. If something went wrong, and we ended up being without equipment, we would have cancelled the activity and done something else that could be managed safely in the resources we had. Non-negotiable. I don’t care if I don’t get paid or have to issue a refund when the option is putting clients in danger.

When we do our mad cap adventures, we are experienced and know what we are getting into. Clients are paying us to know that for them, and we KNOW that if they had the experience, they wouldn’t be paying us. I think this is cheating and endangering the client.

Why does anyone want to make such a great profit, or offer services at such a competitive rate, that there is no basic infrastructure offered?

The ministry of tourism is making efforts to regualate adventure tourism, but unfortunately, there is nothing yet about rock climbing and rappelling below 6000m. Is there a rule that says climbing accidents don’t happen below 6000m?

But still, I recommend that that moronic operator read this link. One climbing accident is going to make all our clients leery, and honestly, there are less climbing accidents than road accidents, but that hasn’t factored in potential stupidity. It takes one.

Call me paranoid, but I’m actually seriously reconsidering hiring this Raju at all, if he finds it ok to operate under those circumstances. Will he speak up about any problem he sees, or simply shrug it away thinking it is better than “that” company anyway? I don’t even see that company as a comparison, and I have made it clear to him, but I’m going to be keeping a very close eye on the guy for the next forever, until I find him being more assertive.

I see this as his fault entirely, as the only guy around who knew the game, and allowed that huge risk to happen.