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Entrepreneur Wayne J. Griffin thought he would have little to learn by attending a leadership training program in the summer of 2002 with a bunch of corporate presidents and COOs. "They're great, but at the end of the day, they don't have their own butts on the line the way I do," says the owner of an electrical contracting firm in Holliston, Massachusetts.

But during an exercise at Leadership at the Peak, a course offered by the Center for Creative Leadership, in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, Griffin and some cohorts were blindfolded and led by others on a half-mile hike through the woods. Once they reached a clearing, the exercise in dependency and trust continued as the group play-acted the removal of a piece of "radio-active waste" using a ball, a bucket and bungee cords. "I had to give trust to get trust, and even then, the outcome was unknown," recalls Griffin.