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.