Experiential Learning, Situational Leadership, and outdoor Trip Leader training
Photo Credit: Michaela Burkey
Skiing at dusk in the Chic-Chocs, QC
“Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb, 1984)
On the 3rd day of my most recent outdoor leadership training expedition, a hut-to-hut nordic ski tour in the Parc National de la Gaspésie, a participant skied up next to me to start a conversation. They wanted to know what leadership style I thought the co-leader team could be using to motivate the group. They had noticed the group was having trouble maintaining morale and they knew that day 4, their day to co-lead, was meant to be our most difficult of the trip.
Everyone expected our 3rd day to be full, but manageable. The deep snow, however, required breaking-trail 10 of the 14 kilometers. Further, the repetitive up and down exhausted the group until they finally got the hang of kick-turns and cutting switchbacks - essential skills for efficiently going up steep hills on skis. 8 hours after we set off, with dusk setting in and 4 kilometers left, my participant posed their question on leadership styles.
When we finally arrived at our hut for the night, everyone was beat. At least one person shed some tears and another flopped to the floor upon arriving. No one was ready to think about day 4. After we finally mustered the energy to take care of our personal needs, get the wood fire roaring and dinner on the table, it was time for the student who approached me earlier to set a wake up time and departure time for the next day.
As they were planning how best to communicate with the group, I advised that they refer back to the Situational Leadership Model. the model for leadership styles we teach in one of our pre-expedition class sessions.Published in 1969 by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, the model outlines four leadership styles (Participating, Selling, Telling and Delegating) and the situations each style is best suited to. One can determine which leadership style to use by assessing the level of buy-in required from the group to accomplish the task vs. the consequences of not accomplishing the task as needed. While this participant acknowledged in our conversation that they understood, I wasn’t sure this was sincere…until I saw them implement it in their evening briefing for day 4.
The route for our 4th day was an ambitious 20 km ski over flat terrain that we hoped would be well tracked by snowmobiles. In the best possible conditions it would still require the group to be emotionally invested in doing what was necessary to complete the task - getting up early, taking breaks tightly managed for time and pushing daylight into camp. The consequence of not making it the entire way to our next hut would be improvising a campsite. We had what we needed for an emergency night out, but it would be far from comfortable. Using the Situational Leadership Model, this is a high Relationship & High Task situation, suggesting the Selling leadership style.
One of the psychological challenges of day 3 was not knowing to expect it to take as long as it did. So, the co-leaders for day 4 wanted to be conservative with their time estimate in hopes to set realistic expectations, and get into camp in the daylight. Their conservative estimate gave us an 11 hour day. The instructor team, made up of myself and two experienced student trip leaders, knew that pitching an 11 hour day to the group at this moment was going to be a tough sell. After sharing this concern with the co-leaders, they took a second, more precise look at our route and were able to reduce the time estimate to 9 hrs. The co-leaders did a fantastic job facilitating a discussion with the group, sold their vision, and got everyone’s buy-in. Not only did the 9 hour estimate hold true, but the leadership style the co-leader pair employed kept the group motivated and in good spirits throughout the day.
This series of events was an excellent example of how the Situational Leadership Model is well matched with an outdoor leadership curriculum. The point of sharing this story, however, is to highlight the pedagogy that ensured our students knew how to apply the model, not just understand it conceptually.
In the early and middle 20th century, John Dewey and Kurt Lewin proposed two models for understanding learning as a process, rooted in experience. In1984 David Kolb popularized the four stage cycle of learning originated by Kurt Lewin, now commonly referred to as Kolb’s cycle of experiential learning. The four stages of this cycle are: Concrete Experiences, Reflection and Observations, Abstract Conceptualization & Generalizations, and Active Experimentation (Kolb, 1984).
Before our 5-day backcountry nordic ski expedition, the instructor team facilitated seven weekly class sessions for our cohort of leader trainees. The lesson plan for every session is built using the experiential learning cycle. During the session on Situational Leadership we facilitated an activity designed to get our participants to Reflect on a time they Experienced one of the four leadership styles and assess whether they thought it was effective. We then describe the concept to help them to Generalize their reflections of those experiences through the lens of the Situational Leadership Model. The hope is that they now have the language to plan their approach to leadership styles when on the expedition, much like the student mentioned above did.
While the expedition would be a worthy recreational outing in its own right, its sole purpose was to provide the opportunity for each student to Actively Experiment with the concepts they learned in the class sessions. By designing an expedition that matches the cohort’s abilities, we can give them the real responsibility of co-leading one day of the trip. At the end of each day of the expedition we guide the co-leader pair through a process to Reflect on their leadership Experience. We focus on helping them draw Generalizations from their experience and the concepts learned in the class sessions. Finally we ensure our leader trainees have further opportunities for Active Experimentation, when we hire them to lead a trip for our program.
One of my core beliefs is that Outdoor and Experiential Education is for everyone. I believe a step toward this is to ensure that our sights are set on the right mark in the first place. It is critical that the programs we are working to increase access to are likely to have the impacts we hope for. One can easily imagine for example, a programs that claims to teach a breadth of leadership skills on their river rafting expeditions, but facilitate an experience that would more accurately be labelled adventure recreation than outdoor education. We need programs that use outdoor experiences as an intentional component of an educational framework.
My hope in sharing this is to inspire students, educators, facilitators and administrators to seek out, design and implement programming that uses outdoor experiences as a tool for implementing experiential learning theory. If this resonates with you, please reach out! I am excited to learn how others are already doing this and provide support for folks who think they could be doing it better.
