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.