There are moments in leadership that do not unfold in boardrooms or strategy decks.
They unfold on a dusty road at six in the morning, under a sky still deciding whether to turn orange or stay blue.
They unfold when you are clipped into a bicycle you barely trained on, or when your tuk tuk support crew looks at you with more faith than you have in yourself.
This year, our ADA leadership team found ourselves in Siem Reap for a dualathon, one hundred kilometres of cycling and running carved through ancient temple routes, unpredictable terrain, and our own inner landscapes.
And here is the thing. It was never about the race.
It was about what the race would reveal.
And it did.
Leadership, it turns out, is an endurance sport.
The Race Before the Race
Preparation lasted two months, not in a picture perfect way, but in the real world way.
Some teams trained rigorously.
Others barely managed a single meetup, relying mostly on WhatsApp chats and a prayer.
My team was somewhere in the middle, equal parts optimism and organised chaos.
Because leadership does not start on the battlefield.
It starts in the build up, the conversations, the anxieties, the debates, the small negotiations of strengths and weaknesses.
All of it shapes the journey before the journey.
Standing at Angkor Wat before sunrise, surrounded by the quiet hospitality of the Cambodian people, each of us was already carrying a story.
The planners, the improvised teams, the confident ones, the underdogs, the ones with something to prove, and the ones who simply wanted to finish.
The Dualathon as a Mirror
Every team found its rhythm in its own way.
Some surged ahead effortlessly.
Some took a wrong turn, realised it, and returned with humility.
Some paced themselves slowly, preserving energy for the final stretch.
Every team completed the journey in just over five hours.
But the deeper story was how leadership patterns showed up when comfort left the room.
The Warrior spoke the hard truths.
The Thinker analysed.
The Dreamer imagined.
The Lover brought humanity into pressure.
These archetypes from the workshop did not sit on posters.
They lived inside us, animated, raw, unfiltered.
Leadership is not one voice.
It is a symphony that shifts with the terrain.
Endurance Builds Character
On a race like this, fatigue strips away the layers we usually hide behind.
Titles, personas, the polished edges of corporate life.
What is left is character.
The teammate who slows down because someone else needs the pace lowered.
The one who owns a mistake.
The one who stops to help someone not even on their team.
The one who smiles through trembling legs.
The one who says nothing but keeps going.
Leadership is often romanticised as clarity and charisma.
But quite often, it is this.
Falling, recalibrating, choosing again, and moving anyway.
The Afterglow Where Body, Mind and Teamwork Reset
The morning after the race, our bodies were exhausted but our minds were open in a way they had not been earlier.
We moved into a gentle Yin Flow session, slowing the breath, softening the body, and inviting stillness into places that had been tight with effort and adrenaline.
Then we were taught to chant Om.
Not as a ritual, not as performance, but as a way of owning our voice and reconnecting with our inner vibration.
There was something grounding in that simplicity.
A shared sound, a shared breath, a shared moment of being present with ourselves and each other.
It reminded us that leaders need recovery as much as resilience, alignment before acceleration.
And just when we thought the day had softened us enough, we were thrown into something completely different.
A Sub Arctic Survival Simulation.
Suddenly, we moved from meditative breathwork to imagining ourselves stranded in freezing wilderness, ranking survival gear, negotiating priorities, and testing how quickly we could align as a team under pressure.
The race had shown us who we were physically.
The yoga and chanting showed us who we were internally.
But the simulation showed us how we think, and even more importantly, how we think together.
Some teams debated intensely.
Some deferred to logic.
Some leaned on intuition.
Some divided decision making based on expertise.
Every team rediscovered a truth.
In survival, just like in leadership, you cannot depend on one archetype.
You need the entire collective, the Lover, the Warrior, the Thinker and the Dreamer.
Together, endurance, stillness and crisis created a complete arc.
It revealed our full leadership selves, mind, body, instinct and team.
Why This Matters for the Year Ahead
In a volatile year for ADA, breaking from legacy structures, building our own platform, losing clients, gaining new ones, this offsite was not just a retreat.
It was a metaphor.
We trained.
We stumbled.
We adapted.
We kept going.
We finished stronger than expected.
If 2025 was about surviving the terrain, then 2026 is about setting the pace.
Not through sprints.
Not through bursts of adrenaline.
But through sustained, intelligent, resilient endurance.
The kind built through sweat, humility, recovery, reflection and shared decision making.
In the End
The finish line did not teach us how to lead.
The journey did.
The tuk tuks, the heat, the detours, the arguments, the sunrise, the yoga, the chanting, the survival simulation, all of it became a classroom.
Leadership is an endurance sport.
Not because it is hard.
But because it demands heart.
And this team, quirky, diverse, imperfect, determined, has plenty of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment