Outdoor Leadership: Technique, Common Sense & Self-Confidence by John Graham
Leadership is liberating people to do what’s needed in the best possible way
Leadership moves others toward goals with a focus and competency they would not achieve on their own
Know why you lead—always check your intention. It’s that vision of yourself, that acceptance of your role, that squares your shoulders, settles your emotions, and prepares your mind and heart to lead.
Appreciate that leading can be lonely. There will be times when doing the right thing will not be popular, when you’ll say no, when you will disappoint or anger others. You’ll need both inner strength and outer grace to do this.
Value your heart as much as your head. Develop your ability to sense in depth not only what others are saying but the feelings and emotions behind it.
Know that, as a leader, you’re always in the right place at the right time
Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Steven Covey The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
On breaks, the leaders should not be clustered together. They need to be out, mixing with the team members. Sometimes it’s not appropriate to be “one of the gang” but it’s always a good idea to be maintaining relationships and keeping a hand on the pulse of the group.
Use the Pucker Factor to determine if the leadership style must become authoritarian. PF=G/C where G is the gravity of the situation and C is the competence of the group. As the Pucker Factor rises, the consensus process ceases to work well, especially if the group members show a wide range of competence and experience or if the time to reach consensus is no longer available.
The fact is, women often do better
than men in the outdoors. They’ve got more endurance. They’re more logical, and
they’re more likely to make decisions based on reality.
[Paul Petzolt, founder of the National Outdoor Leadership School.]
If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman. Margaret Thatcher.
To train people to make good decisions in the outdoors, you’ve got to take them into the outdoors, into real situations, and let them face challenges by themselves. They learn soon enough that if they make foolish decisions or if they base their decisions on “hope” or “faith” that things will work out—they fail. And if they make their decisions based on reality, they succeed. Paul Petzolt, founder of the National Outdoor Leadership School.
Anticipate decisions before you have to make them. Try this decision-making strategy:
o Start by stopping—take a breath; center yourself
o Make a preliminary scan of options
o Look for unconventional options; develop 360-degree vision
o Get the best information you can about each option
o Use this information to define the risks and benefits of each option
o Assign a relative weight to each risk and benefit
o Pick the option whose benefits most outweigh its risks
o Implement the decision
o Adujst your decision to reflect new information
Never let any system make the decision
for you. Never go on automatic pilot.
Always ask whether what you intend to do is within the realm of common
sense. Listen to your intuition.
Be willing to put yourself in others’ shoes, and to be sensitive to their needs. Caring provides and early warning system for things that might affect the success of your group.
Be vulnerable. Being honest and frank
about yourself makes you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
One of the most important issues in life is trust. You don’t build trust by
hiding your feelings, your thoughts, your hopes, your fears. You build trust by
sharing, by being honest and frank.
Be tactful. There are right and wrong times to say certain things, and some things should not be said at all. Confidentiality is part of a trusting relationship.
Listen. Nothing demonstrates caring better than active, empathetic listening. Especially in a conflict situation, it can help defuse anger and fear enough so that both sides can risk the honest dialog needed to achieve lasting solutions.
Put your caring intention into action and follow through. Caring brings people together.
Let go of judgments. Caring includes being tolerant of the weakness of others. Others really are doing the best they can do.
Care for beginners by being prepared for their mistakes. Make sure your instructions and corrections to beginners leave them more, not less, confident. Correct with caring.
Acknowledge others for their strengths and contributions—especially those whose strengths and contributions may be few.
Care for yourself. When you make a mistake, don’t beat yourself up over it—you’re human.
Lou Wittaker: Never criticize people
in front of the group.
Never surprise people with bad news.
No matter what happens, never write people off.
Paul Petzolt: I have three rules for leaders in the outdoors.
o You have to know where the people you’re leading are coming from.
o You have to know what you want to do with them.
o And you have to love them.
You have to be unselfish. You can’t have leaders who will make plans based on just their personal preferences rather than what’s needed and wanted for the group. Selfish people will never get others to trust them. They don’t keep their word because they’re too focused on doing what they want to do.
Be conscious of the little things; do sweat the small stuff. Sometimes it’s the little things that can set the mood that will affect the entire trip.
Take responsibility for your thoughts and feelings. If you’re carrying around negative thoughts and feelings then it will change the “vocabulary”—including your body language—that’s available for you to use.
Leadership is a contract. People expect you to lead and give you the authority to do so.
o
Maintain the safety and well-being of your group;
Anticipate obstacles. Manage time. Stay on course. Be prepared for emergencies.
o
Help the group achieve its goal;
Know how your people are doing. Know where all your people are.
o
Help create a quality experience for the people in
the group;
Build and maintain positive personal relationships within the group. Encourage
opportunities for individuals to challenge themselves. Share your knowledge of
nature. Since it’s rare that you really are in a time crunch, smell the flowers
and appreciate the aesthetic delights all around you.
o
Meet the legal responsibilities for leadership;
Illegal? Outrageously stupid? Beyond the risks understood when you began? Don’t
go there.
Take responsibility for following
too.
Give your leaders the respect they need for doing their job, especially
those with less experience.
Support the leader in any way you can—contribute to good morale, pitch in, serve
as a model for the supportive “followership” you appreciate when you’re in
charge.
Make sure communications are complete
and accurate.
Target the information to the people who need to know it.
Choose the right means for sending your message.
Get the message there on time.
Confirm that the message got thru as you intended it.
Take responsibility for the effect of your communications on each person. Be a good listener. Solicit feedback.
Communicating means including your whole group in the decision-making process, as far as you possibly can. When people feel that their views were at least considered—even if in the end they weren’t accepted—it can make a big difference in their attitudes. Take the time to explain your decisions; not everyone knows or sees what you do.
Many youth think of risk in physical terms, facing physical danger. And these are real risks, but for strong young males they’re often easily met. The hard risks—the ones that really scare us—test our spirit. These include:
o Admitting and learning from mistakes; apologizing
o Trying something new and persisting, despite the fear of failing
o Forming relationships
o Dealing with conflict calmly and compassionately
o Standing up for an unpopular idea
The risks you perceive and the courage you’ll need to cope are individual. They depend on outward reality and inward experience. If, as a leader, you’re in a position to help someone move through fear, you’re helping them through a crucial step in their lives.
A leader needs to be cocky and confident—and borderline paranoid—all at the same time.
The people who I see performing best
in a crisis are people who are honest and forthright. They don’t hide their
personalities or their weaknesses. They’re genuine. What this tells me is that
these people have ego strength. The people who feel that they have to protect
their egos are the ones most likely to come apart in a crisis.
[Sharon Wood, the first North American woman to summit on Everest.]
Choose team members with care. The “magic” that can make the team more than the sum of its parts needs decent raw material.
Reach early agreement on your team’s goals. Establish and keep to the ground rules—people need to know from the beginning what they can and cannot do.
Honor differences. Find the best possible way that people’s different attributes can complement each other.
Fit the right people to the right tasks and delegate authority.
Create a team bond through building trust. Trust starts with caring for those you’re with—it starts with you but it’s not about you.
Create and communicate a vision of success—a clear, concrete picture of the intended results that’s shared by the entire team. Each individual should have a clear picture of the power and positive impact of their role.
A leader is someone who walks toward
trouble.
If you sense that there are difficult people in the group, go out of your way
early to open dialog and take actions that build trust.
No matter what the provocation, you are in charge of how you respond.
Be aware of preformed judgments you may have of people who see the issue differently, and/or act in ways you don’t like.
Understand that the real issues driving the conflict are rarely the obvious ones. Take a trip to the ‘ice berg’.
The key to success in dealing with conflict is to build trust between you and your opponent. Among other things, building trust is shocking—because it breaks the rules of the tired old win/loose game of blame and counter blame. Reverse the negative momentum of a conflict threatening to move in a vicious circle.
Do simple favors. Never pass up the opportunity to be generous.
If conflict starts, take advantage of whatever trust you’ve built to calmly and carefully look for easy fixes.
If easy fixes aren’t possible, make sure both sides know what they’re fighting about.
o Outline differences as accurately as you can
o Acknowledge others’ responses and seek any needed clarification
o Don’t moralize; don’t judge
o Get more information
Then begin exploring common ground and build on it.
o Acknowledge the elements of positions you agree with.
o Look for common goals
o Find a way to bring up shared background and experience that may be helpful
o Ask what the others would do if they were really in your shoes
Create a vision of success. Develop a joint strategy for implementing the vision—and commit to it.
And if this strategy doesn’t work? Reaffirm that you, as leader, bear the ultimate responsibility—and have final say—for decisions made on this trip.
Find a way to lessen the perception that you’re trapped. Map out a series of moves that tells your mind and emotions that you’ve found a way out.
Start by stopping; Take a deep breath.
Be here now. Don’t waste time wishing or blaming. Look around and you will see a place that speaks to your soul. Now you’re there.
Don’t
question your own competence to deal with the situation.
You’re where you need to be; you have the necessary skills, knowledge, and
experience; Reinforce your faith that you can meet this challenge successfully.
Deal with long-term stress by creating
your own challenge-with-a-challenge.
For example, invent your own game or song, challenge your own spirit, look
around for people who are having a worse time than you are in dealing with this
stressful situation and do something to improve their experience.