Where Is Your Leadership Labratory?

In September 2020, we had a problem.

We were preparing for Leader-Chip, Alloy Solutions’ annual golf and leadership event at Quarry Oaks Golf Club. There was just one small complication:

We weren’t allowed inside the clubhouse. It was 2020. You remember.

No meeting room. No gathering inside. Even our awards ceremony would eventually take place outdoors on the driving range, with everyone appropriately spaced six feet apart. This presented an interesting challenge for an event designed around both leadership development and golf.  We weren’t excited about the prospect of just doing the “Chip” part of Leader-Chip.

So we got curious. If we couldn’t bring golfers into a conference room for leadership development, could we bring the leadership development onto the golf course?

Our answer had to be “yes.” And our answer was to make 18 videos. Yes. Eighteen.

We created three-minute videos on DISC, conflict management and resilience—six on each topic. Players watched one at every hole, answered a multiple-choice question and recorded their answers on their scorecards. At the end of the round, every correct answer earned the team a stroke off its final score. And something interesting happened. They loved it.

The leadership content became part of the golf rather than something separate from it. Even players who weren't particularly confident in their golf games had another way to contribute to their teams.  Two industrious attendees even watched the videos and solved the quiz questions on their two-hour drive in. Their teammates were thrilled to have 18 strokes already shaved off their score thanks to their strategic thinking.

At the time, I thought we had found a creative solution to an unusual problem. Six years later, I think we may have discovered something much bigger.

Leader-Chip is platform. Golf is the laboratory.

Maybe the conference room was never the most interesting part of Leader-Chip.  True, we always have very honest attendees who admit they are there just for the golf at a beautiful course.  They are also often the most exuberant attendees who tell us before leaving how much they got out of the entire day. The golf got them there – the learning they won’t soon forget. This has been one of our biggest “ahas” about Leader-Chip: learning together is powerful. Getting to put that learning into play together is where the real growth happens.

Think about what happens during an ordinary round of golf. You hit a terrible shot after feeling completely confident standing over the ball. The plan you had on the tee box doesn't remotely resemble the situation you're facing three shots later.

Someone in your group is struggling. Someone else is playing out of their mind.

You wait. You get frustrated. You make a mistake. You recover from one. You sink a 30-foot putt.

You have to decide whether to take the safe shot or attempt something with considerably more risk and potentially more reward.

And through all of it, other people are watching—not just your golf game, but you. Golf gives us an unusually good opportunity to observe what happens when things don't go according to plan.

Come to think of it, so does leadership.

This year, as we've been preparing for Leader-Chip again, we've been thinking a lot about three things: Curiosity. Confidence. Connection.

What happens to our curiosity when the answer isn't obvious? What happens to our confidence after something goes badly? And what happens to our connection with other people when we're frustrated, disappointed or under pressure? Those questions work remarkably well on a golf course. They work pretty well everywhere else, too.

Then We Realized Something Else

For years, I've thought about Leader-Chip as an opportunity Alloy created to develop leaders. I'm beginning to realize that's only half the story.

We created Leader-Chip to develop leaders. I'm beginning to realize Leader-Chip has been developing us.

Over the years, this event has challenged us in ways we could never have scripted. A pandemic eliminated our classroom. Weather has repeatedly challenged our plans.

We've wrestled with how to create an experience that is meaningful for experienced golfers and welcoming to people who are still figuring out which club they're supposed to hit.

We've experimented, adjusted, occasionally gotten things wrong and tried again. We've had to ask better questions. We've had to believe in an idea before we knew exactly what it could become.

And we've learned that much of what makes an experience memorable has less to do with programming than with people. Curiosity. Confidence. Connection.

Perhaps those aren't simply three leadership concepts we're bringing to Leader-Chip this year. Maybe Leader-Chip helped teach them to us.

Your Laboratory May Not Look Like Ours

Here's what I'm beginning to wonder:

Sometimes your leadership laboratory isn't a place. It's the thing you keep choosing to do that's just difficult enough to keep requiring a better version of you.

For us, one of those things has been Leader-Chip. For you, it may have nothing to do with golf. Maybe it's building a business.

Leading a team.

Parenting.

Coaching.

Serving on a board.

Caring for someone you love.

Building something from scratch.

Staying committed to a relationship.

Taking responsibility for a project that stubbornly refuses to go according to plan.

Our laboratories aren't necessarily the hardest things in our lives. And difficulty alone doesn't make something developmental.

Maybe the better clue is that it's meaningful enough that we keep choosing it — and demanding enough that we can't keep showing up exactly as we always have.

That's where the laboratory gets interesting. Because instead of simply asking, How do I get through this?, we can start asking: What is this teaching me about me?

Study the Experiment

This week, identify one of your own leadership laboratories. Don't try to fix anything yet. Just observe. When something doesn't go according to plan, what happens to your curiosity? Do you ask questions, or do you become more certain? What happens to your confidence? Can you treat a setback as information, or does it become an indictment of your ability? What happens to your connection with other people?

And perhaps the most revealing question of all: When I'm under pressure, what is it like to be on the other side of me? That's a question worth studying.

On October 6, we'll return to Quarry Oaks for another Leader-Chip. We'll spend part of the morning exploring Curiosity, Confidence and Connection. And then we'll go play golf. Together.  In a four-person team scramble format.  Only this time, we're heading onto the course understanding something we didn't fully appreciate when we started this event years ago:

Golf is the laboratory.

And apparently, Leader-Chip has been ours.

So take a look at the things you keep choosing — the things that stretch you, frustrate you, delight you and occasionally make you wonder why you signed up for them in the first place.  One of them may be developing you more than you realize.

Where is your leadership laboratory?