Hari Sivan, an Indian participant in the MBA programme explains his experience in the recent outdoor activity, an exercise that gave revealing insights into concepts of team building, human psychology and leadership theories.

"It was fascinating. The whole experience ran over a couple of weeks, spanning different preparation classes such as negotiation and presentation skills, personality testing and brainstorming sessions. The exercise highlighted the diversity in our personalities and  brought out the competitive traits in us. We learned why some types of  personalities clash while others act in cohesion and learned how best to cope with these situations - useful for our future managerial roles. 

We were given a case study where we had to manage a team building exercise after the merger of two companies so that the top management would comes out as a cohesive and efficient entity. The class was split into 4 groups and each had to present their idea of how best to achieve staff integration through a team-building activity. From this event stemmed the idea of organising a 2 day trek to a peak in the Alps in the Mercantour Park, about an hour's drive from Nice.

21st September

We started from Nice on 21st September early in the morning and arrived in the Boréon Valley at around 10 am. The scenery was breathtaking. We met the 2 experienced guides who we had arranged for the trek and the role of the CEO's from the case study were played by 2 EDHEC professors.

Our first objective was to reach a mountain refuge, but in a group of 30 people, it soon became clear that not everyone is equal and that there would be a series of decisions to take to allow efficient teamwork and cooperation. We quickly decided to split the group into 2 groups according to physical capabilities.

Once the two groups reached the refuge, we had a series of team building games. These games were designed to demonstrate leadership, build trust and develop friendship and proved to be a good way for us to discover each other.

22nd September

In the two days that we were in the mountains there were various scenarios (that were perhaps contrived by our accompanying professors) to test our capacity for decision making and to see our motivation in achieving our goals. Scenarios often involved the splitting up of the group for some reason such as fatigue or difference of opinion and I found it fascinating to try to understand why different people choose to do different things in different ways. What was it that made one person want to go higher or further and go beyond his own limits whereas another was satisfied with less? Did that person have to prove something to himself or was he afraid of what others would think if he abandoned the group sooner? We all started putting ourselves into question, asking what our true motivations were and what made us behave in a certain way and I believe this sort of reflection is something we should do more often. The theme of personal development comes up throughout the MBA and I find it particularly interesting.

There was a lot of healthy debate before a decision was taken and the decision makers changed several times. There was nobody who was a self appointed leader.

In the de-briefing session after the trek, our professors transposed the scenarios to real life situations and used the treck to highlight the team dynamics, conflict control and different motivational methods. It was a far better learning process than a theory session inside a classroom and it seems this active learning approach is frequent throughout the MBA. The whole activity was very well planned (from the preparation to the de-briefing). I have some great memories and I'm sure there will be many more to come. "