Roadmonkey leadership lessons

While still at The New York Times, I launched Roadmonkey, an adventure-volunteering social enterprise (R.I.P.) that created bespoke, physically challenging small-group expeditions abroad that also included a sustainable volunteer project. Cycling through Vietnam’s Central Highlands, for instance, and then building a playground for children from a disadvantaged ethnic minority. Horsebacking and glacier hiking in Patagonia, and then refurbishing an impoverished school in Buenos Aires. Summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and…well, you get the drift.

After a career in global journalism, for which marketing was what people on the other side of the business firewall did, learning how to tell your own story and become a leader of high-achieving professionals in foreign environments was for me a journey in itself. Often a humbling one.

But I learned a lot, and the lessons from Roadmonkey carry me onward today. Here’s some of them.

Listen to what your clients say…and don’t say.

Regularly solicit feedback and then blatantly show how you’re incorporating it.

Be as competent as humanly possible….

…so you can unequivocally own your mistakes.

Humor and self-deprecation, in the right doses, go a long way.

Leaders aren’t loud and don’t talk too much.

It’s not about you; your actions should underscore that belief.

Revealing yourself to your teammates allows you to ask the same from them.

Be the bigger person, always.