Motivation and Mentoring in the Washington Wilderness

During my time at UW, I worked as a trip leader for the UWild outdoor program, leading multi-day backpacking trips in the PNW backcountry. During these trips, I would oversee 6-8 undergraduate and graduate students, making sure that everyone could complete the trips safely and gain value from their time in the outdoors. From pre-trip planning and logistics to crisis management in the field, to post-trip reflection, I oversaw the entire process. Each trip taught me something new about decision making, group development, motivation, and appropriate interaction.

Personal Importance

Guiding these backpacking trips was an incredible experience, as I could improve on my leadership and management skills while simultaneously sharing the lessons I have learned from the outdoors with a new community. On a personal note, being a guide was never something I wanted to do, as my father has been one for years and I never wanted to follow in his footsteps. But after two years of leading these trips, I have come to the realization that I enjoy the combination of personal development and social impact that they provide.

Tasks Accomplished

Planned and prepared two multi-day backpacking trips, as well as two single-day trips. This included food and gear logistics, route and activity planning, group bonding facilitation, and post-trip reflection processes.
Dealt with a variety of obstacles during the trips; from minor first aid to social dynamic issues to mental and physical exhaustion.
Designed and taught various courses designed to help students get the most out of their outdoor experience; photography, film, poetry, plant identification, survival techniques, and outdoor cooking to name a few.
Provided post-trip evaluations and reports to the UWild department, giving in-depth feedback and self-reflection on how each trip went.

Leadership Competencies Gained

Decision Making I learned a ton about decision making during my time as a trip leader for UWild. I have had plenty of experience in the outdoors alone and with friends, but when responsible for a group of people, I had to consciously alter my decision-making process. My personal love of adventure and risk was often in direct conflict with my sense of responsibility, both of which are core values of mine, but knowing that I was accountable for these people helped me balance these two extremes. Risks no longer applied to just myself, and each group member’s physical, mental, and emotional state had to be taken into consideration before making a decision. Even when 90% of the group was more than willing to go that extra mile, I had to determine whether the remaining 10% could, or more often would, be able to do it as well. Each decision came with its own level of risk, importance, and a highly variable time slot within which it had to be made. Many of the decisions I made on these trips were of minimal impact, but there were some that would have meant failure to achieve our goal (be it physical, intellectual, or emotional) in order to “cover our bases” and make sure we avoided serious consequences.

Group Development Overseeing a group of students who were often the same age as, or older than, myself was an interesting challenge. On one hand, I wanted to make sure that they respected my authority when it came down to the occasional important decisions I had to make for the group, but on the other, I wanted to be sure they felt they had enough autonomy that the trips were still an adventure. This issue of appropriate interaction was one of the most difficult parts of the trips, but I feel that I was able to capitalize on my core value of Professionalism and strike a balance between amicability and efficiency. Being in a setting without phones or external communication for 5-7 days allowed me to experiment with some very interesting group dynamics, and we did our best to take advantage of the intimate setting and encourage our clients to express their feelings. This often led to intensely emotional experiences in which professionalism gave way to compassion, and I realized that the two are not mutually exclusive. I believe it is a testament to my group development ability that so many of my students still stay in touch with each other and with me.

Motivation Along with Group Development, Motivation was something that I learned some very valuable lessons about during my time as a trip leader. Each student I led was slightly different in their ability to deal with an extended backpacking trip, but every single one of them (myself included) needed motivation at some point. Whether it was words of affirmation and bolstering to help someone hike the last half mile, allowing someone to take an hour by themselves when they were socially exhausted, or a conversation about group expectations when several people weren’t pulling their weight, motivation was always needed in some capacity. It was also important to quickly identify what motivated my students, as I knew I would have to draw on that knowledge at some point during the trip. This experience with motivation helped me better define my core value of Authenticity, as I was able to adjust my thinking to meet my client’s communicative and motivational needs, and therefore interact with them in a more genuine and understanding manner.

Follow Through Being able to plan, prepare, and then execute these trips has given me valuable insight into how I follow through on my plans, and how to adapt when those plans go awry. No trip ever goes exactly as planned, but being a part of the entire process instead of executing someone else’s plan has allowed me to increase my logistical and organizational skills, as well as shown me the value of allowing employees or team members to at least have insight into the entire process, if not contribute to it. For example, when we spent five long days in a cold storm on the Washington Coast, I was able to change the curriculum that my fellow leader and I had come up with to be more inward focused and intellectual, as opposed to the original physical and weather-dependent syllabus we had created.

Goal Setting Leading trips that asked for sustained physical and mental exertion from our clients made me realize how important it is to break big tasks into manageable chunks. Our clients knew from the beginning what our overarching goal was, but by the time we had gone five miles on the first day, and they knew that there were four more days and twenty-five more miles, motivation would often be sapped. So celebrating smaller successes such as lunch breaks, camp setups, and day hikes became essential to keeping the group’s morale up. Creating challenges out of mundane tasks, such as seeing which group could do the dishes faster, made menial chores more entertaining and gave the group little victories, which in turn sustained them in the long run. Creating goals like these made me realize that no matter the venture, it is important to celebrate your team’s small accomplishments and break daunting feats up into reasonable tasks.

Future Orientation

Leading these trips has made me realize how much satisfaction I derive from exposing others to the outdoors, and making an impact on their lives by doing so. So many of my deepest values have been born from my experiences in nature, and to be able to share some of those experiences with others has been incredible. These trips have also made me realize how much I enjoy leading and being responsible for groups of people, and how much gratification I get from turning a dysfunctional group of strangers into a close-knit, efficient team. While I do not see myself being a full-time guide in the future, I hope to use these leadership and team-building skills in a more entrepreneurial setting, while never ceasing to share my love for the outdoors with as many peers as I can.