CASE Currents: Finding your way as a leader involves some wrong turns

CURRENTS, Council for Advancement and Support of Education

Column: Office Space, February 2008: A-Maze-ing Grace: Finding your way as a leader involves some wrong turns.

We were on a giant checkerboard maze and had only 30 minutes to work our way through it.

This was a team-building exercise at the College of Southern Maryland but at times it seemed more like torture.

Frustration permeated the room as one team member after another was buzzed off the giant checkerboard for making a wrong step. Whether we were ejected from the maze for following a colleague's erroneous direction or for ignoring guidance and mistakenly dashing through the maze on our own, the team was failing miserably. Back to square one for everyone.