Travel can teach us so much about resilience, flexibility, and humility. As a frequent traveler, I strongly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity as a way to stretch yourself, not only as a person but also as a leader. And for the record, travel doesn’t always have to take you an ocean away. Travel can happen in a neighboring city or town. It’s about getting out of your comfort zone and managing the uncertainty and vulnerability that comes with that.
You might think that travel and leadership both require a clear itinerary, and sure, that can help. But the thing they most share in common is the way you go in with a plan or destination in mind but you may end up somewhere completely different. Travel, like leadership, humbles us. And it interrupts the illusion that our perspective is the only one.
When you travel, it is not uncommon to become the person who doesn’t know the rules. You don’t know which line to stand in, how to read the menu, or what a particular gesture means. For a little while, you are dependent on the patience and generosity of people who owe you nothing. And there is something really humbling about that. It puts you on the other side of an experience that most of us don’t sit with very often.
A Skill You Can’t Un-Feel or Un-Learn
That’s the lesson I keep coming back to – the experience of being the one who doesn’t belong. It’s easy to lead from the center, from the place where systems were built for people like you and unspoken rules are second nature. Travel moves you out of that center. It hands you, even briefly, the vantage point of being the newcomer, the outsider, the person trying to navigate a space that wasn’t designed with you in mind. Once you have felt that, you can’t quite un-feel it.
And here is where it comes home. Every time someone new joins your team, they are traveling too. There is a new language to learn, full of acronyms and shorthand no one stops to explain. There are unwritten norms about how meetings really work and who actually makes decisions. The discomfort we choose when we book a trip is the discomfort a new colleague is handed when they start in their new role. Leaders who have practiced being the outsider tend to remember that, and they build bridges rather than expecting people to bulldoze their own way in.
Different Isn’t Wrong, Just Unfamiliar.
Travel also retrains how we react to difference. When you are somewhere unfamiliar, you learn quickly that “different” is not the same as “wrong.” It is just unfamiliar. The way another place keeps its time, greets a stranger, or shares a meal isn’t a problem to be corrected; it’s a logic to be understood. That habit of suspending judgment and getting curious is the very same muscle that lets us see what each person on a team actually brings. I believe that every person carries cultural strengths that can help a group meet its goals, and travel is one of the best teachers I know for learning to look for them.
Admitting When You’re Lost
The best moments on any trip tend to arrive when you stop pretending you know exactly what you’re doing and where you’re going, and start asking questions. Admitting when you’re lost and letting someone help you is powerful. Leadership works the same way. The point isn’t to perform or project that you have it all figured out; it’s to stay open enough to be changed by what you find.
If you have the chance to go somewhere that stretches you, take it, whether that’s another continent or the next town over. Let it make you a little uncomfortable. Discomfort, it turns out, isn’t the obstacle to growth – it’s more like the curriculum. And the leaders who keep choosing it are the ones who come back better able to create the kind of spaces where everyone, not just the people at the center, feels seen and respected.