Hemlock Overlook

Yesterday instead of going to the office I met met my Vistage group out at Hemlock Overlook for some teambuilding exercises. Leading up to the day, knowing our Chair, I was worried he would have us up on the 30 ft high ropes course. Fortunately and unfortunately that didn't happen. I say fortunately because as soon as I heard that we weren't doing it I was relieved. But unfortunately because I had sorta gotten myself pschyed up to try it. Only 6 of our 16 members showed up so the turnout was little disappointing and you need 14 people to do the high ropes course.

Regardless we were challenged physcially at times and mentally constantly. I like the team building games, problem solving is always fun.

This was the first time we did this, maybe next time we will do the ropes. Vistage is a pretty cool thing, it's group of senior executives and we meet once a month usually at one of our places of business. The monthly meeting consists of a speaker (topics ranging from leadership, personal development, employee development, world issues, health, etc.) and then the second half of the day we work issues. This is really quite interesting. Each meeting you come in and are asked to rate these three topics from 1-5 - Business, Personal and Health. Before we work the issues we work around the table and each person gives an update on what has been going on with them since the last meeting meeting hitting on each of the three topics. It becomes clear from the updates and ratings who may have an issue to work that particualr session.

Once the issues have been put on the table, the member digs into the issue and the group asks questions to flush out what the issue is and what the member needs from the group. After all questions are asked, each member of the group gives advice on the issue. You may or may not agree with the advice, but it's very interesting to see how different people think. Also when there are that many people working an issue it really brings out things you haven't thought of and sometimes the real issue is flushed out and it's something very different than what the member put on the table. I've worked an issue twice and both times it really helped me get some perpective and figure out how to to tackle it so I was able to resolve the issue much better than I would have on my own.

Anyway yesterday was fun...