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Summer is upon us, and it's time to relax, enjoy the weather and have some fun. So for this newsletter, I'm going to try something a little different. And to do so, I need to tell you a bit about the beginning of my summer.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife, my three children and I went on vacation with two friends and their baby. We rented a cottage on the side of lake and planned to spend a week there, enjoying the sun, the friendship and the absence of mosquitoes. (Yes, in our part of the world, mosquitoes tend to be a nuisance in the summer.)

Things didn't start out great. We were in two cars and our first order of business was to determine which bridge to take to get off the island of Montreal. We had two choices: either the Champlain bridge or the Mercier bridge. After crossing a bridge, we needed to take Highway 10.

We usually take Champlain (which leads directly to Highway 10) but on Friday afternoons, it is regularly backed up and you can easily spend an hour in traffic. So, being in the lead car, I opted for Mercier where heavy traffic hadn't begun yet.

Somewhere on the bridge, the other car passed us so I was now following instead of leading. Since we rarely use Mercier bridge, I wasn't certain of the direction to take in order to reach our destination. So I used my cell phone to ask the lead car if they knew where they were going. "Not really" was the answer, "but we have a map."

"All right, " I replied. "On your map, can you see if we can reach Highway 10 by going straight?"

"Well, yes, we can but we'll have to take a slight detour before we can reach it. And we have to go through a small village and take the correct exit otherwise, we'll have to take the long road back to Champlain bridge before we can head in the right direction." .

As I was listening to the explanations over the phone, I thought it was much too complicated. Make a left, take a right, go through a village, take the next exit... something was wrong. So I pressed with more questions: "Are you sure about that? Look on the map, there should be a highway that leads us straight to Highway 10. It should be Highway 30. If we keep going straight, will we reach Highway 30?"

The reply was confusing: "There is no Highway 30 like you say. To reach it, we have to go through some villages." I disagreed so I argued, even though I didn't know where I was going and I had no map. Yes, this was truly the blind leading the blind.

At some point, my friend with the map told me: "Dude, do you want us to stop so you can take the map and look at it?"

Well, that might have been a sensible thing to do. But it also would have meant that we would stop, which may wake the baby who would need to be fed, and maybe changed, and so on. So, typical of a man who wants to reach his final destination in the least amount of time possible, I said: "No, that's fine, I trust you." And we hung up.

A few minutes later, my phone rings. It's the lead car and my friend says: "OK, we're coming up to the exit for Highway 15. So we'll go there, and take another exit later on to find our way to Highway 10."

As I hung up, I saw the car in front change lanes to take the exit. And as it did so, there, right in front of me was a panel that said "Highway 15, exit right. Highway 30, go straight!"

I grabbed my phone, hit the redial button but by the time the connection went through, they were already on the exit ramp and they could no longer come back. Darn! When they answered I said: "Hey, you guys took the wrong exit. You should have gone straight. I'm going straight and we'll hook up a little later."

We hung up but a few minutes later, the phone rang again: they had missed the other exit and now had to take the long way around before reaching Highway 10. We decided to keep going, albeit more slowly to give the second car a chance to catch up. They never did, so we stopped at a diner that was close to the cottage and waited for almost an hour until they finally showed up.

Later on, when trying to figure out what happened we realized that the map they had in the other car was almost 15 years old! In those days, Highway 30 did not exist; you had to take a detour to get to Highway 10.

So, we had a bit of a shaky start to begin our vacation but all in all, we had a very good time and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Don't you just love happy endings?

As I look back on that trip, these are some of the parallels I can draw with leadership.

• The leader knows the destination: a leader knows where she is headed. She also knows what is the starting point of the voyage. That is what enables her to create a map to reach her destination.

• You need a map: Even if you know where you are headed, you need a map to get you there. Whether you create the map (your plan) yourself or whether someone else creates it for you, you need something to guide you toward your goal.

• Update your map: We had a map but it was so old that it actually became a problem. The same thing is true when you create a map to reach your goal: it needs to be updated. Whether you are taking a leadership position in your life, in your company, or in your employer's company, you need to revise and adapt your plan to reflect your current reality.

• Pay attention to the signs: Sometimes we become so fixated on our map, that we forget to look out the window and see the signs that surround us. When that happens, we run the risk of heading for hardship, even though things were very well planned at the onset. In the case of my trip, even though our map was old and wrong, simply looking at the road signs would have been sufficient to put us in the right direction.

• Face to face communication beats technology: As I mentioned in the original story, I probably could have stopped long enough to take a look at the map to make sure we were headed in the right direction. However, I relied on explanations over the phone, while driving. Technology is supposed to help us communicate better but it can actually impede communication (think email miscommunication). A strong leader will favour face-to-face communication instead of email or voice mail. Yes, face-to-face communication takes more time and effort but the results are usually worth it.

• You can't lead from the rear: If you know your destination and you know how to reach it, you can't lead by pushing people ahead of you. You need to be in front and have people follow. One of the mistakes I made on our trip was to stay behind and try to tell the other car where to go. Instead, I should have taken the lead and said "Follow me!" An effective leader has the confidence to tell other people "Follow me, I'll get you there."

• Don't leave your team behind: One of the most important parts of leadership is that you do not abandon your team wilfully. As a leader, you make the best efforts to keep your team intact, even if it means investing more time with the ones that have difficulty following. You may choose to remove them from your team; they may choose to cease to follow you and leave; but you don't abandon them on the way to your destination.

© Laurent Duperval