My dog handler says I lied to her. I told her that summer is our “slow” season on the homestead. She’s right. There is no slow season when you live with sled dogs; it’s just that seasons are different. In the summer we are diving into fish carcass dumpsters for salmon heads to cook for the dogs, free-running the dogs in the pen, and, of course, there are our summer tours and the mushing museum. And then it starts to happen… the frosty dew on the dandelion puffs, the   fireweed petals disappear in an orderly fashion from the top down, the green needles of the Siberian Larch turn to orangey gold, and the huskies looking longingly northward towards the outbound trail. It is fall—the season of always getting ready.

The Yupik Eskimo of southwestern Alaska have a word for “always getting ready.” This word, Upterrlainarluta, is the title of a bountiful book about subsistence living. Every season is getting ready for the next season. During the fall, we are scurrying around gathering our supplies for winter. There are lots of trips to the town butcher to get meat scraps that we cut up and freeze for the dogs and long drives to Anchorage to haul down dog food by the half-ton. All of the holes that the dogs have dug must be filled before the ground freezes lest we fall into a snow-covered pit with the feed buckets in the dark, frozen months ahead. Dog houses have to be cleaned out in preparation for straw. And best of all, it’s time to start fall training—chewed lines are repaired, harnesses are refitted, and trail work is top priority. We train in the fall with a 4-wheeler which allows far more control than a sled. It’s a great way to sort out all the kinks and get the dogs back into the swing of things. The advantage of practicing in a more predictable environment goes beyond running on the trail. It’s time to try out dogs in different team positions, experiment with new gear, and spend time enhancing relationships, trust, and communication. This groundwork will prepare us to work together more effectively as a team when conditions are more challenging. And as we are getting ready, we are all watching, wondering, and waiting for that first white blanket of snow that marks our transition into winter.

“Always getting ready” is essential to survival for traditional subsistence lifestyles. It is also essential to visionary leadership. Foresight is a critical skill for leaders whether it is a dog musher out on the trail or a policy maker in a depressed economy. As leaders we need to anticipate what is coming around the next curve in the trail, what we need to do if the winter is longer than expected and resources are limited, how to support our team under stress, and stay on trail for our goals and objectives. The Yupik understand what it takes to sustain their people in adverse conditions. As leaders, we must do the same—Upterrlainarluta.

During the summer months I have the privilege of teaching a graduate course on leadership. The students are from many different cultures and communities throughout Alaska, the continental U.S., and Canada. The course provides the tools to nurture leadership development in all domains of our lives—self, family, career, and community.
Our current topic is mentoring. [...]

Sometimes the hardest person to lead can be yourself. A recent personal leadership failure of epic proportion really drove this lesson home to me. Fortunately, I am immersed in an environment that forces me to see my mistakes. I am teaching a graduate leadership course that emphasizes an integrated approach to leadership. As described in [...]

I continue to find ways that three diverse compartments of my life—neuroscience, leadership development, and dog mushing—are highly inter-related. In the past two weeks, a forest fire, being fed by dried grasses and  unpredictable winds, was burning out-of-control within a mile of our homestead. I have been thousands of miles away in Scotland. My dog [...]

I believe in shared leadership. I use the two lead dogs, side-by-side, in dog mushing to point out the advantages of having leaders working together. I encourage students in my graduate leadership course to explore different styles of leadership and emphasize approaches that promote collaborative leadership. Of course, like all things worthy, it is easier [...]

In my leadership lectures, I always talk about rotating the dogs into different positions in the team to develop new skills and discover hidden talent. The other day, I realized that I had overlooked how important it is for the top dog—me—to be trading places.
A friend, Joanna, who had been a dog handler with us, [...]

The first time someone goes out with a dog team, one of the first things they usually say afterwards is they can’t believe how quiet it was. In fact, one of the great challenges for a novice musher (and I was a prime example) is learning to SHUT UP! There’s a natural tendency, particularly as [...]

I usually run my dog team during daylight hours, although, in the heart of winter in Alaska that’s not saying much—the light is so dim and slanted that it can be hard to see the trail. I rely on the dogs to keep us on track and ultimately get us home. During long distance races [...]

Today I headed out with nine dogs to do a longer run up into the hills. I had just turned onto the river drainage when I saw that the neckline had come off one of my wheel (next to the sled) dogs. We had only gone a few miles so the team was all jazzed [...]

It’s so easy to not pay attention to where you’re going especially when you’re familiar with the trail. After being up north for 9 days, I came back to the homestead and wanted to give the dogs a short run to stretch—I always think about this for the dogs but neglect to do it for [...]