Leadership the Outward Bound Way: Becoming a Better Leader in the Workplace, in the Wilderness, and in Your Community [Paperback]

Jimmy Carter (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2007

Dynamic and effective leadership skills-from the organization that has spent decades helping people discover their own potential to lead. Outward Bound has been teaching leadership internationally for more than sixty years. In the United States alone, some 700,000 people have learned life-changing, transferable leadership skills and strategies through Outward Bound experiences.

You don't need to summit a mountain to learn these invaluable skills. Now anyone can benefit from Outward Bound USA's collective wisdom and experience, as articulated by its top leadership experts. Leadership the Outward Bound Way introduces readers to the fundamentals of good leadership: communicating effectively, building trust, building teams, overcoming fear, taking risks, and making decisions. The book explores how these leadership basics can be applied in different areas of life-in outdoor travel and recreation, in the office or the boardroom, and in community work or volunteerism.

The text is punctuated by accounts of real-life events during Outward Bound programs, call-outs of key points and helpful tips and case-study exercises. This leadership approach is based on a teaching method developed at the Harvard Business School that challenges and informs readers about how to respond to real-life leadership situations.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

In addition to the foreword by former U.S. President JIMMY CARTER, contributors to Leadership the Outward Bound Way include the following:

JOHN RAYNOLDS, former Navy frogman and CEO/president of Outward Bound USA, addresses the leadership skills involved in making any trip into the outdoors successful. BOB GORDON, president of Outward Bound Professional, and CAROLINE BLAIR-SMITH, course director and writer/editor of Outward Bound publications, reveal how you can lead others in ways that encourage good teambuilding, high performance, and effective change management in a professional environment. JOAN WELSH, former president of the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School and founder of several non-profit organizations, explores how you can effectively impact your community through volunteerism. Case Studies are provide by JIM GARRETT, Director of the Outward Bound USA's National Service Initiative. MARK GERZON, codirector of the Global Leadership Program, puts Outward Bound's leadership development techniques and philosophy into a global context.

Product Details

• Paperback: 430 pages
• Publisher: Mountaineers Books (November 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594850348
• ISBN-13: 978-1594850349
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #482,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good content, slow pace, June 6, 2008

By 

Denver Dan (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Leadership the Outward Bound Way: Becoming a Better Leader in the Workplace, in the Wilderness, and in Your Community (Paperback)

As an alum of the Hurricane Island Outward Bound school, I was very interested to discover this book. The book uses case studies which I have always found to be a great learning tool. The content is very detailed (good), but as a result, the book can be a bit of a slow read at times (bad). The content is most relevant to outdoor leadership, but most of the lessons can certainly be applied in everyday situations.
I liked that this book does not contain any impractical graphs, lists, charts, etc typically found in leadership tomes. The content is well-presented and overall is a good read. Former students of Outward Bound should find this book especially interesting.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great combination of leadership and Outward Bound, May 9, 2008

By 

Michael W. (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Leadership the Outward Bound Way: Becoming a Better Leader in the Workplace, in the Wilderness, and in Your Community (Paperback)

My interest in leadership has been growing in the last couple of years and when I saw the opportunity to learn more about leadership and Outward Bound at the same time, I jumped at the chance. To be able to summarize this book in a review doesn't seem to do it justice as the amount of depth in this book continues to surprise me. I've been amazed at how much I've been underlining in my copy and pondering over before I move on. I like how the book is broken down into four sections which makes it easy to find things after you've read them and want to reference it again. I found it to be a slower read than I would have liked, only because after I read something, I wanted to figure out how to apply what I learned to my current workplace. This information and knowledge in this book will continue to benefit me for many years down the road.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Leadership the Outward Bound Way, June 17, 2008

By 

A. Knecht (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Leadership the Outward Bound Way: Becoming a Better Leader in the Workplace, in the Wilderness, and in Your Community (Paperback)

The book approaches leadership from the point of view of a leader organizing a group of individuals for an expedition and leading them through this expedition, with all its human and natural challenges. It accurately captures the fundamental principles of human interaction applicable to everyday life from the wilderness to the board room. Subsequent chapters take these teachings and apply them to the professional and community life. Much of the actual contents can be found in a number of other "leadership" and/or "communications" books, however the author does an excellent job of tying the application of leadership to group dynamics, whether it be in an outdoor activity or company project or a boardroom discussion The topics are well defined and characterized. This book is based in large part around effective styles of communication. The pace of presentation could be faster; at times it is easy to skip over content, or put the book down.

This book has a tremendous amount of depth with a welcome organizational style. Its style and organization is conducive to underlining and pondering over. From a practical viewpoint, this book is broken down into four sections which makes it easy to find things after you've read them and want to reference it again as you learn to apply the principles. In short, this is an excellent read as well as a reference book whether you are an outdoor leader or you are applying these principles to everyday life.

Karl Brackmann
Seattle Mountaineers