The Guide Of The Wanderers (II)

Transmit to people the testimony of what you are, optimizing your actions according to your own dominant mode of orientation.

As not to ruin our plan and not taking any moment to think, Vlad, the team leader, took a brave decision: "I'll go to them and lead them on the good path. In 25 minutes I'll be back. Wait for me right here and rest on a while because we have a lot more to climb." Then, hastily, he went following the three strays.

Well, what happened afterwards seems to be taken out of the adventure movies. We did not have any choice, so we waited. However, we waited a lot, an hour or so, and Vlad did not show up. Seeing that he does not show up, we decided to return on the path on which we came. And what do you know? We got lost, as well, on one of the paths leading down the mountain. Luckily for us, a small group of tourists, lead by an authorized guide, was going down the mountain and, thus, they helped us get to the pension.

Nevertheless, what happened to Vlad and our other three friends? As they were not at the pension when we got there and only later, in the evening, we saw them again. Well, Vlad has caught the other three, but Maria, one of the two girls, sprained her foot, so that their little group came down slower and in a longer time than estimated by Vlad. When he returned to the place where he had left us, he could not find us anymore, since we took the initiative to come down all by ourselves.

Can you impose your limits on a quest for self-indulgence, without giving priority to a direction of affirmation of the values that do not define you?

We could not get to the destination we wanted because Vlad, our guide, in whom we put all our trust, behaved like a novice, and has allowed leakages. He lacked the organizational capacity. He could not take a stand in front of us, meaning the entire group because he has not had a well-developed plan with alternatives and rapid-response measures in case of unforeseen things that would occur, a plan which had to be brought to our attention.

First of all, Vlad should have warned us right from the beginning of any problems that may arise, and to ensure him that no danger threatens us. Then, he obviously had to assess our capabilities and personal skills. An authorized guide, thus with real experience, would have first evaluated our physical capacities, our states of health and knowledge regarding mountain climbing and previous experience. As when you are climbing a mountain, every step can turn into a decisive step, and one thing not taken into consideration can jeopardize the entire trip. So whoever cannot face the mountain should not be on the mountain.

Vlad’s values – such as solidarity, commitment and responsibility, did not make good with the strong beliefs that defined him by the impossibility of looking ahead to the pressures of undesirable events, convictions such as: "I do not have sufficient experience and I am under the impression that I react with feelings that others do not possess."

Do you value the lived and assumed experience as subject of critic reflection?

A first argument for the downfall of the influence sphere because of the alliance with a purpose that wants to be predictable (but marked by a degree of indirect contesting) and the accumulation of fundamental errors that are either not taken into consideration, or they’re interpreted and processed at a conscious level, is that this kind of accumulation pushes the man away from what he was before, transforming him in somebody else.

These thought errors regard the constituency of momentarily reality where you discover yourself totally different, you’re lost and you can no longer comply with your orientation requirements. I read somewhere on the Internet that the American psychologist attributed these thought errors to some "dead angles" to those stumbles of the mind when a man’s qualities become his worst defects.

The shift from superficial implication to active participation in the decision making process by determining the transfer function of error and removing its cause is part of the extension phase of personal horizons. These are executed through the "shifting" alone of the leader’s authority towards a smaller radius trajectory. We are strictly speaking about a new orientation, in an ambiguous situation imposed by the filters of intuition that accentuates the lived and assumed experience as subject of critic reflection, from the perspective of one’s own values and motivations.

Just as the industrial worker of an assembly line doesn’t have control over the finite product, for which he creates only a fragmented execution – neither does the initiator of a new approach for various "errors" present a credibility guarantee in proposing solutions and solving them if he can move on from accumulating abilities to accumulating new thinking and behavioral customs, followed by practicing and applying them in ambiguous situations.

Critical reflection is the process by which you explain your mistakes in the form of remorse that pursues you in the context of a low degree of ensuring the integrity of making difficult decisions.

A man who emphasizes his lived and assumed experience, as a subject of critical reflection, takes as a landmark a pre-planning of those events that may have the greatest impact and which are most likely to occur.

A wandering "light" can only stray from the path and make everybody get lost. In vain, you are a scout capable of discovering unbeaten tracks, who does not get defeated by dangers or hardships, if you are not capable of imposing yourself in front of people showing that you are the most important piece, taking the right decisions, assuming consequences and making yourself respected.

How could people keep their trust in you if, instead of safely leading them to the destination, you made them get lost at least one time?

A guide has the role of leading the team to the destination in conditions of maximum safety. This desideratum can be reached only when there is a competent, capable leader, experienced in the field, as well as in working with people, with a special ability to analyze people, with a plan of action very well conceived, with a special ability to foresee the unforeseen and to act quickly and efficiently.

On the other hand, the role of the team is not to be underestimated. A very good leader with a weak, unprofessional, divided team is just like a very good team with no leader. In both situations, the result is none other than a total fiasco.

Leadership is the integrity that pursues you even when you’re "offline" in times of doubt, having as a resulting variable the experience of always being "online" in the change you can bring.

The Guide Of The Wanderers is the man who denies his role of coordinator of an action following an emergency situation. Transmit to people the testimony of what you are, optimizing your actions according to your own dominant mode of orientation. In other words, the way in which you function is determined by how well you show off your potential, on the way you coordinate every decision, and the way you guide your actions.