Group dynamics and leadership
Most of my life I’ve paddled with family or a few friends. That’s my background from childhood. I don’t recall ever spending much time or thought back in the “old days” assessing whether a person we were paddling with was a “leader” or a “follower”, “skilled” or “unskilled”… we just watched out for each other and paddled. Responsibly. Like a bunch of peers.
Now I find myself getting involved in club paddles with groups of more or less strangers, often with wildly different physical abilities, quite often with well developed skill sets from wildly different areas of our sport, and perhaps most notably from different walks of life and the expectations associated with walking those walks for many long years. I’m loathe to think of any as “better” than any other, we’re still all peers, all have our own special skills. But we’re peers of differing backgrounds. It leads to a more complicated and sometimes frustrating group dynamic. Also one that is potentially more rewarding to be a part of. I therefore am reading this thread with great interest.
It is a whole different game from the “old days”, and perhaps calls for a more systematic approach to group organization. So for the sake of safety and to make a trip enjoyable for all involved (including the leader) some sort of leadership/followership, among peers of course, gets involved. What I find somewhat remarkable is how much thought is spent on the responsibility of leadership, its styles and nuances, and how little is spent on the responsibility of followership. I notice at the top of this very page an add promoting a leadership training course - because we’re all just itching to be leaders. Being a responsible non-leading member of a group isn’t something anyone seems to aspire to. Selling courses for followers would be a tough sell indeed. Yet can one succeed without the other? Can safety be assured without some measure of group cooperation?
That’s the #1 potential safety problem I see in our local club. I doubt that we’re alone in this among clubs. This smells to me like a social rather than a paddling problem. We solicit as many “leaders” for as many trips as we can. Its what we do, what the club is for. We expect those leaders to be responsible for the safety of the group and to do what they can to make a trip pleasurable for all involved. We want as many leaders as possible. Lotsa chiefs, qualified for what they do, to be sure; but darned few Indians.
So let’s run that hypothetical scenario… I’ve seen it happen on trips I’ve been on and done my best, with some limited success, to prevent this scenario on trips I’ve led. But I don’t know how to prevent it entirely, especially among peers, and suspect its a social/cultural problem more than a leadership problem - but one that can affect safety.
Imagine that you’re hitting the easiest possible stream, beautiful and as safe as a stream can be. You picked it because its safe and beautiful, you want to do your part for the club. You’re qualified to help in most any conceivable situation that might arise there. You arrange the shuttle. You let everyone know where the take-out is, that there will be breaks periodically to bring the group back together as we get spread out, remind everyone about using their PFDs, etc. You get your waiver forms signed, though you know they’re pretty much meaningless in court should it come to that.
Your chiefly peers nod in knowing agreement and go for their boats.
The sea kayakers and racers shoot out ahead of the group before most have their boats in the water. That’s what they do and enjoy. That’s why they came. (But if you stay with them you’re essentially abandoning your group from the git-go.) Fine. They do it well and can look after each other. They’ve trained and practiced, some of the best paddlers in the club. You might see them again next month at the club meeting. They don’t feel a need to group up. Its not their leadership trip. They don’t need to dally around waiting for someone who might need their help. How, they might reasonably wonder, could anyone screw up here?
The whitewater crowd lags far behind practicing eddy turns at every possible hint of an eddy, rolling, taking turns surfing holes the size of soccer balls to see who can do it best. Fine also. No real safety issue - everyone’s well within their skill level. Its almost a joke to think of whitewater skill levels and look at that lone rock stuck there in the sand. Some of the most competent paddlers in the group are back there and they know how to do a rescue. Peers doing their thing.
The sweep has to stay behind them, of course. Usually there’s someone who just wants to relax and drift through a day on the water back there keeping the sweep company. That’s OK too, but of course it puts your sweep so far back that they might as well not be on the water if any emergency arises.
The nature watchers will disappear up a tributary stream to watch birds or otters or whatever is noteworthy. They’ll disappear without a trace from whoever is supposed to be the designated leader if you don’t watch them like hawks. They’re OK too, they know what they’re about. Some of the chiefest of the chiefs are among them. Not doing anything dangerous…
So the leader is probably best occupied keeping an eye on anyone who might be having a bit of trouble, blisters, the complete novice, whatever…
But it puts the designated trip leader in the position of herding cats. I suspect the leader of the trip that the sea cave incident reported above might have felt a bit like that… Paddlers, God bless us every one, can be every bit as independent as cats. The trip leader has the responsibility, legally and ethically, but due to a complete lack of “followership” he is not really in a leadership role. He’s a group leader without a group and nobody but him gives a rip. He can bark orders or not, do whatever… but the fact of the matter is he can’t deny anyone the right to put their boat in the stream, paddle wherever they like, whenever they like, with whoever they like - but their safety is somehow still his legal and ethical responsibility.
And this is a litigious age we live in. I think that’s an important reality to bear in mind.
I agree wholeheartedly with willowleaf that perhaps the times when accidents are most likely to occur are on casual outings, in undeniably easy situations, with folks who know better and probably have done better a hundred times. But they could be serious or potentially fatal nevertheless.
Great Lakes and whitewater trips aside, that I think, is what a club trip leader around here mostly needs to watch out for and be prepared to deal with; the fluke accident or medical condition that flares up unexpectedly…in some member of this group that isn’t really, in fact, a group but a bunch of peers with different backgrounds paddling together.
(We, in fact, had a fatal heart attack to a group member a few years ago on a trip. Probably would have lost him even if it happened in the lobby of a hospital, but a slightly lesser heart attack would have required group cooperation and action. Could we have done it? We’ll never know.)
It would be darned nice if the skills available within the group were actually available to the leader in a timely manner. The hard fact is though that if something serious were to happen, that there was an urgent need for the skills of any member of the group, the chances are slim that the leader would a) know an emergency was happening and b)slimmer still that he could muster any of the skills that members of the group had and bring them to bear on the problem.
The cats will not be herded.
No shortage of leadership or skills. There might even be an excess of both. The problem is one of followership.
I find that both worrisome and disheartening. Not I nor anyone can lead if so many refuse to follow. I think we can do more to promote safe paddling by seriously considering what we can best do to support our peers and “leaders for a day” than by trying to always be better leaders ourselves. If we as paddlers spent as much time considering the habits necessary to improve our “followership skills” as we do our leadership skills this group paddling thing would be considerably safer, I believe.
Sometimes makes me long for the “good old days” when if you put your boat on the water the responsibility was yours and yours alone. No required judgments of other paddlers, no mini-bureaucracy, no leaders, no followers… just a bunch of individuals taking responsibility for themselves.
That’s why I like Pnet paddles.
BTW, thebob.com is probably the most skilled leader I’ve ever seen.