Lead Like Your Life Depends on It: At Night in Africa, It Does

Our guide in Botswana, Victor, relayed an experience that epitomizes strong leadership.

While taking a group of tourists in an open Land Rover, through the savannah to look for lions on the hunt he gets lost. This is a big deal. Lost. At night. In the wild.

No roads. No streetlights. No phones. No way to be found. And the wild in Africa means lions and other cats, who hunt at night, and hyenas who hunt at night. A few other creatures feed at night and may not intend to harm you, but you don’t want to get in their way either. The rhino, hippo and water buffalo fall into that category.

Truly lost at night in the open savannah is dangerous and frightening.

What did the experienced guide Victor do?

He calmly told everyone he was lost and asked if anyone knew the way back towards camp.

Pretty shocking, isn’t it? Think about your experiences in companies, organizations or teams. When did you see a leader admit ignorance and ask for timely help? When were you leading and felt completely, utterly lost?

As an aside, I spent hours searching on-line for good content about leadership (see link to Leading Blog here and above). I found  little, and almost none mentioned trust. We are experiencing an extreme violation of public and private trust right now. I was impressed with this story because it perfectly demonstrates elemental leadership.

Here’s what the experience taught me about Victor and other good leaders:

• The leader’s sense of responsibility for the team is held above ego. Victor asked for help because he knew his first, and most important responsibility was to keep the group safe. The corporate parallel could be having the team succeed, or furthering others’ careers.
• The leader is chosen, in part, because of expertise. Tourists selected him and decided to trust him because of his experience and reputation.
• The leader seeks input. Victor’s no fool. He quickly recognized that someone in the group might know the way and asked for participation.
• The leader is decisive.
• The leader establishes trust and maintains it. Victor built trust with the group through his expertise. He maintained it by asking for help at the right time.

Victor had the chance to prove his worthiness to lead again. Two nights later I found myself 6 feet away from a male elephant, who was not pleased to see me. My first elephant standoff.