reflection of snowdon part 2

Following on form the last post which talked about leadership styles, in this post I’m going to talk about motivation.

With motivation, you can look at different areas such as adrenaline and anxiety; I’ll try and keep it brief but informative.

When looking at motivation there are two areas, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. I'll give an example of each, in relation to the day when we ascended Snowdon; one intrinsic motivator was personal gain. And one external motivator was the weather which was excellent. So I personally wanted a view from the top.

The main motivational area for the group was to get to the top of the mountain, As an instructor I was trying to include everyone to avoid social loafing, (Bandura)I did this by giving everyone different legs to lead, one aspect where I could have made it better was communication with the group, for example get the group to chat amongst themselves and that way it wasn’t the whole “Heads down, hood up” not that it would have been the case as the weather was exceptional for that time of year.  This was one thing that I didn’t do. To  make the whole experience better I could have stopped every now and again to point out specific interesting points such as any mountain plans only found in that area or pointed out any interesting wildlife such as birds deer. Etc.  

In terms of combating anxiety as the instructor there were a few points where the group looked a bit uneasy, especially when the wind was gusting quite strongly, In handling this I incorporated a democratic approach to let the group decide what was best and come up with ideas to handle the situation.  In doing this I made sure everyone was happy to continue and that everyone was feeling ok. As an instructor I should have more emphasis on enthusiasm as a happy group is more inclined to have less anxiety.

In regards to handling adrenaline there are many different approaches, as adrenaline tends to push people further out of their comfort zone and into the realms of exploration and peak performance (Simon priest)

 

With adrenaline comes risk because it pushes you beyond your limit thus pushing you past you competency.  Thus confirming the Adventure Paradigm Shift by Simon Priest. The trick to managing adrenaline and risk and competence is to analyse the group fist,  go too far and you end up in the devastation and disaster and thus inducing a possible fatality situation, but in the other hand you could not induce enough risk, so your group would not be learning anything, so the best area to operate dependant of the group would be the peak adventure, this is the optimal zone of functioning, where the participants and the instructor wold get the most out of the experience. In reflection of my leadership styles of motivation, character is key and if you have a positive character and appearance this influences the group decisions thus involving the group a lot more thus giving them a more enjoyable time on the mountain.

reflection on snowdon. part 1

Looking at my leadership styles which I put into place when I was leading groups up in Snowdon, I am going to critically analyse my style and look at what I'm going to do better for next time.

In this section I'm going to look at my leadership style and what style I used and why and which would work better for next time. I used an autocratic style of leadership, which has its advantages and disadvantages on the hill side, I took full responsibly and control of the whole group at point rather than letting the group make the decisions, looking back I should have used a democratic style of leadership thus sharing the responsibly of the leader as the group was good enough to have pulled it off. In my leadership I used a few different styles of coaching and leadership depending on the situations, at times where I needed all the control such as when we were ascending heather terrace on Tryfan I used a command style of leadership where I could have used a reciprocal style of leadership or the problem solving style. B. Woods (1998) states that depending on the situation depends on the style of leadership used. In using the command style of leading you would avoid "social loafing" (Bandura)

There are a few aspects of my leadership I could have done a lot better in, one of them confidence. As if you’re a leader you need to instil confidence in your group, so if you take a wrong turn or take a bad bearing, don't admit it, and just say you meant to do it.

Looking at my style of leading and different theory’s that emulate it, one of which is banduras social learning theory,  to avoid social loafing I used aspect four of banduras theory which is motivation.

One point where my leadership style was stretched and tested when leading on heather terrace I led from the front  where in hindsight I should have lead from the rear and put a confident person in the front, thus negating social loafing and people dropping behind.  You could also include arousal, in this situation if someone is placed under a stressful situation, they could experience the catastrophe theory, (Fazey and Harvey) or they could experience the inverted U theory (Yerkes and Dodson ) or if they have had lots of external stimuli they could experience the Drive theory (hull). This is all dependant on the group and weather the group is full of adrenaline and are highly motivated.

With my instructing of the Heather terrace assent there are many different things I could have done better, such as using a more authoritarian approach rather than a lazie fair approach when it came to communication, this would fill the group with lots more confidence and make them have a drive to do better. Over all there are many different ways you can look at my approach to leading, there are many way to make it better and to improve it as you can only learn if you make mistakes and rectify them.