D-Day Heavy Challenge AAR, part 2
Leadership
During the whole event we only had 4 team leaders (TLs). I had the shortest, most intense (though not the hardest) tenure, during beach fun. As we approached the beach from the Conservatory of Flowers, the amiable Cadre Clark announced that, once at the beach, he would switch into beast mode. So when he appointed me TL for that evolution, he straightforwardly told me that he would try to overwhelm me with fast-changing commands, break down my capacity to make good decisions, and make the team (temporarily) hate me.
For me that was a perfect challenge because, as a child of the 1970s and 80s, I was raised amid short-sighted “everyone’s a winner” attitudes about competition, risk, and praise that were the child-rearing equivalent of the macrobiotic diet: they sounded cool and progressive, but they were untested and misguided and they produced children with deficiencies. In my case, I play life safe when others are watching. I avoid situations where I might fail big in public and look incompetent. In my maturity I’d like to change that—I enjoy life so much when I remember not to GAF about how I look to others—so I was the perfect target beneficiary for a crucible where I had to command a group and then probably melt down in front of them.
I won’t give away the details of the fun and beach games that followed. I wish I could study video and gauge how I did. I do know this: I used a lot of energy just shouting my commands and calling cadences over the noise of the ocean. I had an assistant team leader (ATL) who was first-rate, and if I could do it over again, I would detail her as much as possible to yell for me, like a bullhorn. It would have kept me sharper longer.
However, as things played out, she won us our biggest victory of my term as TL. At one point we were given just five minutes to hide all ten rucks from the cadre by digging one big pit in the sand and burying them. When we failed, leaving just one fluorescent safety strap poking out, the cadre ordered me to have the team dig up the rucks, move them, and bury them elsewhere, this time in just four minutes. The ATL and one other cunning SOB suggested something that I will not reveal—if you really want to know, sign up and experience it for yourself!—and it saved a ton of precious time. All I did was order a pair of additional misdirects that took advantage of how harried and panicked we looked. Amazingly, we sold it! We really and truly spoofed the cadre and he commended us for it. And in that situation, I got the core strategy from the ATL, who might not have had the bandwidth and breath to suggest it if I had used her instead as a human amplifier.