Alien Abductions, The Erethizon, and Business Leadership Lessons from Hiking Across Massachusetts.

Aliens abducted Thom Reed on September 1st, 1969, near the small town of Sheffield in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. You’ll be pleased to know they returned him, unharmed, the same night. I know this because the Appalachian Trial runs close to the ‘covered bridge’ location of the incident, and the associated UFO Monument Park piqued my interest. A plaque erected in 2019, from Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, commemorates the incident as being “deemed historically significant and true.” So, I guess it must be.

As I started my journey north across Massachusetts, I hiked past corn fields and pastures full of cows waiting to be taken. It was as if Hollywood had requested this exact landscape for the aliens to show themselves. I did have my own close encounter a few days later, so read on if you want to find out if the aliens abducted me, and to learn about the great business leadership lessons I took from Western Massachusetts.

Lt. Dingleberry

You never know when someone will come back around.

I was hiking Northbound thru Massachusetts and several times a day would meet thru-hikers who were on a southbound journey. SOBOs (South Bounders) generally start their adventure at Mt. Kathadin in early July once the trail opens, and they finish at Springer Mountain, GA sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas depending on their pace. I had stopped to chat with one such hiker when another SOBO came down the trail. After a few pleasantries he said to me "hey, are you that guy hiking for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation?". How did he know? What kind of strange magic was this? Turns out it was a hiker with the trail name Lt. Dingleberry. If you've been following along with me then you might remember that Lt. Dingleberry was one of the heroes who came to a fellow hikers rescue as written about in my article 'When the BearS**t hits the fan'. He had already summited Kathadin, but had missed about a 150 mile section due to a personal commitment and was back to finish this small section and thereby complete the entire Appalachian Trail.?

This is an awesome leadership lesson that everyone needs to remember. At some point in the future that person in front of you today might come right back into your world in a totally unexpected manner. It could be a colleague who becomes a customer, or a junior client who is the CEO 10 years later. You never know how things are going to turn out so it’s important to be respectful of everyone. Small things you do today could well be the things they remember about you years into the future. It really does pay to be kind, respectful, and professional in all your business interactions. That small detail may well be how someone will remember you years into the future.?

Alien Abductions

Believe and others will too.

It must be quite the thing to be abducted by aliens. I watched a recent episode of Unsolved Mysteries (S1.E5) on Netflix about this area I was hiking through called ‘Berkshires UFOs’ with the fantastic program description as follows “Residents of Berkshire County, Mass., recall their baffling, terrifying experiences with a UFO on the night of Sept. 1st 1969.”??Thom Reed, now in his late fifties, is 100% convinced that he was abducted that night by the aliens.?The thing about Thom is that not only does he believe this happened to him, but his belief is so deep that he has convinced plenty of other people that this really did happen to him.?

Now you might be wondering where I am going with this, and what kind of business leadership lesson can I draw from it? Well, here you go, and I actually think it’s a really strong lesson.?When you take on a leadership role you must absolutely believe in the thing that you are being a leader for. Belief in something is really hard to fake. Sure, some people are good at that deception, but for most of us, we are not. Generally, people are way better at knowing if you believe in what you are saying, and doing, than knowing if what you believe in is actually true or not. Put another way, as a leader, not only must you have the belief in your mission or task, but you have to be able to express it in a manner that can be consumed by the audience you need to follow you. If your belief can be communicated in a strong enough way, then that becomes something that is enough for other people to believe too.

That night it was a clear sky and I couldn’t but help look at the bright stars, and the milky way, and wonder ‘what if?’?You’ll be pleased to know, I think, that no actual aliens showed up that night, but I did have a terrifying encounter with something totally alien to me the very next day.

Getting to the Point

Assumptions make an erethizon dorsatum out of u and me.

Just a few yards in front of me the alien was waddling down the trail. It stopped in it’s track, and turned to look back at me. It definitely didn’t look like it was from this planet. It was covered in dangerous looking spikes, and had small, beady, intelligent eyes. OK, so it wasn’t an actual alien it was just a porcupine; scientific name Erethizon Dorsatum. If 'Erethizon' doesn't sound like the name of a malevolent alien species, then I don't know what does.

The North American porcupine is basically a large rodent covered in quills. The one that was in front of me was the size of a small dog. Wikipedia tells me they can grow to 25lbs. He didn’t seem to mind me too much, but was totally aware that I was there. For a minute we kept on down the trail like this with the porcupine looking back at me and then just continuing to move along the trail. I was pretty sure he wasn’t hiking the whole trail so was intrigued to see what he would do. Finally, he simply stepped off the trail, and disappeared up a tree. When I say disappeared, he climbed the tree like nothing I had expected at all. One moment he was on the ground, and the next he was 50ft up sitting almost invisibly in the crook of a branch. If I hadn’t seen him climb, I would never have known he was there. It turns out that North American porcupines are excellent climbers, and spend much of their life’s up in trees. One other fascinatingly alien thing about porcupines is that they have built in antibiotics in their skin. This helps them to heal in case they fall out of a tree and cut themselves with their own quills which apparently must happen a lot. If you are thinking to yourself, 'that would be me as a porcupine,' evolution has you covered.

The leadership lesson I wanted to draw here is all about assuming the skills someone might have, or rather, not even considering the skills that someone might possess. It had never occurred to me that a porcupine was an excellent climber. I hadn’t really given it any thought, but if I had, I would have assumed that not to be the case given all those quills on it’s back. What if we make the same assumptions about people or perhaps worse yet, don’t even put the effort into assuming anything? There really is only one way to know and that is to spend the time finding out what skills, experience, and talents someone on your team has. Taking the time to ask, and to listen, is a critical leadership skill and perhaps one that we could all do better at. There may come a time when you need someone on your team who can climb that tree for you and it would be great to know who that is ahead of time.

No Regrats

Moving on from mistakes.

After a bruising 17-mile day I hobbled off the AT, and onto the half mile connector path to the Goose Pond Shelter. It's one of the very few shelters on the AT that has a door on it, and an actual caretaker. About halfway down this short stretch I came to a tent site, and my body decided that was as far as I was going. The next morning, I was up early as I had a harder 18-mile day ahead of me and I needed to be on the trail by 6am at the latest. As I was getting ready to head out a hiker already leaving the shelter waved at me, and shouted “Blueberry pancakes!” “Hmmm,” I thought as I finalized my preparations to leave.

That day on the trail almost everyone I met coming southbound asked me how good the blueberry pancakes were at Goose Pond Shelter. Doh! Why hadn't I taken an extra couple of minutes and gone to visit the shelter? The day wore on until finally I had just one more tough peak to climb and 4 miles left to go to the next shelter. It took me an hour to reach the summit, but the views were well worth it. I clambered down the other side of the mountain in about 30mins, only to arrive at the same place where I'd started up the mountain over an hour and a half ago. Doh! I'd got myself turned around at the top, and climbed all the way back down again. Now you might be thinking ‘rookie mistake,’ but it just goes to show you that even someone with all my trail experience can still make a costly mistake especially when tired.?

There was nothing I could do to take back these two mistakes. Pancake time was over, and I couldn't magic myself back to the top of the mountain. As leaders, we have to be able to own the mistakes that we should own. Mistakes happen. They happen to other people, and you know what? Sometimes they happen to us too. You need to be able to develop that skill that says, “I'm not going to waste time on what was” rather I'm going to learn from that and focus on the ‘what’s next’. I must admit standing at the bottom of that mountain, wishing I'd had pancakes for breakfast, was not my finest moment. I knew better than to dwell on it and instead turned around, started putting one foot in front of the other, and climbed back up that hill dreaming of blueberry pancakes every step of the way.

Coyotes

Howl at the moon.

One thing about a full day of hiking is that you go to sleep as soon as it gets dark. That is known as hiker-midnight. On this trip through Massachusetts, that was about 8pm. It had been a tough hiking day, so after a few minutes enjoying the star-lit sky, I crawled into my tent and went straight to sleep. The noise that woke me up a few hours later was that of a howling coyote. He was close, really close. It’s one thing when you hear coyotes off in the far distance while you are tucked up in a warm bed, safely hidden behind solid brick walls, however I want you to picture yourself deep in the woods with nothing between you and a baying pack of coyotes but a thin wall of space age tent material.

This singular coyote was soon joined by the rest of his pack and it was clear they were having a party. The group howling doesn’t necessarily mean that some poor deer was taking it’s last few terrified steps, but it’s a fair guess that is exactly what was happening. Coyotes generally hunt smaller prey alone, but for larger animals like white tail deer, they will call in the family. They also use this as an opportunity to teach their pups the art of putting dinner on the table as well. Sometimes coyotes will even form alliances with badgers to hunt specific types of prey in a highly beneficial alliance for both parties, but that night I'm pretty sure no badgers got an invite to the dance.

So what can coyotes teach us about business leadership? Turns out to be quite a lot. For example, if you want to win the big prize, you have to do it as a team. If you want to expand your territory, you have to be able to adapt. If you want to grow, you have to give the junior members of your team opportunities to learn, and grow with you. If you want to go after unique things, you might just have to build alliances that could be considered 'out of the box.' If you are having a great day, howl at the moon. Thanks coyotes, these are all great lessons.

Cookie Lady & the Trail Stand

Trust: Given or Earned?

I was maybe a mile from a road crossing when I passed a hiker walking her two golden retrievers. “I'm the Cookie Lady,” she said. “My place is just off the trail in about 2 miles. Fresh cookies in the cookie box. Help yourself.” I thanked her, and wished I'd done a little more research on hiking across Massachusetts before I'd headed out.?The cookie lady was indeed trail-famous and a short while later, I was enjoying a couple of most excellent chocolate chip cookies you could ever want. ‘Donations gratefully accepted’ said the sign. The table full of earrings, necklaces, and other trinkets, had an honor payment system too. Very cool.

The day before I'd come across another example of this honor system at the ‘Trail Stand’.?Cokes were $1 from the fridge, either cash into the cash pouch, or online payment via Venmo, if that was your thing.?I eagerly drank the coke, left a dollar for the next hiker's soda hit as a little trail magic, and got on my way. In both these cases, there was a lot of trust in hikers to do the right thing. The vast majority of hikers are going to do the right thing.

I got to wondering about the question: ‘is trust given, or is trust earned?’ After miles of contemplating, I decided my answer is that trust is reciprocal.??From a business leadership lesson perspective, I’ve seen this both ways in my career. I clearly remember a training class where the whole premise of it was that trust was something that had to be earned. I fundamentally disagreed with that at the time and still do. You can do everything right, but if the other party doesn’t trust in you, then it really doesn’t matter what you do, or think you have earned.

We do, however, automatically give trust to people who have formal qualifications, or specific roles and titles. For example, a medical Dr., a pilot, or a CISSP security professional. It’s a shorthand way of saying you can trust me, I've paid my dues. From that perspective, the capacity to gain trust can definitely be improved in the professional environment and formal qualifications go a long way to establishing that. It's also true though that trust can be lost far more easily than gained. “Trust me, I got this” is a fine sentiment, but you had just better be able to deliver.??????????????????

Earned trust is only useful if the other side of the relationship is willing to grant trust. When granting trust as a leader, you need to be consistent and clear on your criteria. If you choose to withhold trust as a leader then you need to be able to let the other party know what would constitute being able to be trusted. Trust is a defining quality of a leader. How you trust, who you trust, and what you do when you don't trust, all should offer up an opportunity for some introspection.

I trust that you have enjoyed hiking through Massachusetts with me. As I finished up this section of the Appalachian Trial, I couldn’t get the lyrics to a fantastic 80's song out of my head. Billy Bragg's rather appropriately named 'New England' contains one of the best lyrics ever written:

I saw two shooting stars last night, I wished on them, but they were only satellites, It's wrong to wish on space hardware, I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care.

I'm extremely grateful to those of you who do care about my mission to cure Cystic Fibrosis and am thankful for the donations you have made (DONATE).

Scary Erethizons and Coyotes aside, I can thoroughly recommend hiking the Appalachian Trail in Massachusetts and want to assure everyone that, as Mulder and Scully would say, "I want to believe."

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If you feel inspired enough to make a donation to the CFF, you can do so at the following link, and know that your donation will make a significant difference:?DONATE

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If you would like more information on why I hike, please visit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF) at?www.cff.org.

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