Day Three: Binah

We hoped to experience the sunshine in our second morning in Edinburgh, but it did not happen in a way that we wished, but our brightness got definitely shiner after successfully completing the 4 staff rides on the selected leaders at the locations. Following dinner was fantastic with delightful foods and lots of laughs. 

The first staff ride took a place right in front of Scott Monument. Sir Walter Scott came to the class a day earlier through the literature pub tour the other day. Along with the preview on Scott, Mehgan facilitated the class to think about the passion and responsibility as a good leader in Scott’s financial situation with a great amount of debt. Although it was not a good decision to devout his much energy to the creation of an estate, he later took a responsibility to pay the debt until his death. By the way, Daniel’s playing Scott shortly for us was amazing when he made his comment on Scott. (I wish I could take a picture of him.)

Then, we moved to the next stop, St. Giles Cathedral. Luckily, we were permitted to do the group conversation inside St. Giles Cathedral, standing next to the statue of John Knox. Daniel led his staff ride well balanced between the religious perspective and leadership standpoint. From the priest and slave to the one who became leading the religious reforms, he seemed to be systemic in cultural dimensions. However, our comments on his cultural dimension on indirect or direct differed.

  

At last but not the least, Karen invited us to ride 9 ¾ express (platform number in Harry Potter) to get to the elephant house, where  JK Rowling used to write her first Harry Potter book. Unfortunately, the table in the elephant house was not available for us without a reservation at that time. We still made the staff ride as lunch and learn though. Karen made her staff ride not only well-presented but also very memorable with Harry’s glasses and cute souvenirs for the class. We appreciated JK Rowling’s success story as much as we learned from the historical leaders. Harry Potter would not have existed if she would not settle in Edinburgh, and if she would not have the support from her sister. She knew her book would be great. She did not give up to find the publisher after many rejections. She even agreed to change her name as an author, from Joanne to JK. These are already showing some extent to her leadership potential, and she is now proving it by her success. After all four staff rides are done, we were supposed to go to New Lanark to learn about Robert Owen’s utopian village and his movement. Due to a transportation constraint, we could not. Therefore, we filled this unexpected downtime with very fruitful culture-experience opportunity. How adaptable and flexible we are! Observations in shops and stores (through this chance) were described in the cultural debriefing session with everyone and Dr. Herd right before the very enjoyable dinner.

Overall, day 4 in Edinburgh went very well, thanks to ten leaders in global HRD 2018!