Leading At The Edge #5

   The real life stories featured in chapter #10 Tenacious Creativity, were simply amazing. I was especially impressed with how Callahan managed to survive on the raft for more than a month! Left with more water to spare too! ( This story reminded me a lot about the book I read before, The Life of Pi. It`s one of my favourite reads, so whoever is viewing this blog, I highly recommend you to take a look at this book:)). The endurance of Callahan, combined with immense self control played a big as part of the success in survival, as the his creativity I did think. I don`t think I would have the will to restrain my self from eating up or drinking the food and water that was stored.
  Although there was a lot of focus on teamwork being able to come up with radical ideas, because there are more heads together than just one. However, I think that being alone can sometimes prove to be more effective. I have seen that there is a tendency for people to rely on others and not try to for themselves when in a group. When alone though when a problem is needed to be solved, you only have yourself to rely on and you are forced to come up with some sort of miracle. I actually do have a lot of these experiences actually, though definitely not as heroic as the stories in the book. I think it is related a lot to the other quality of not giving up, that was referred to in the chapter, but when you are in a difficult situation if you think long and hard enough you somehow find a way. By not panicking and thinking systematically you really can find  brighter prospect to things.
  I think part of the leader`s job is to bring out that creativity in people. We can`t just let them and be, and hope for a miracle idea to strike them. I think the leader`s attitude that encourages and values participation, creativity, voices of individuals on daily basis is what helps prepare for dire situations where we need to draw on each`s ideas. The leader`s role is vital at the very time of the predicament too; they must be open to other`s opinion and have the guts to follow another`s idea.