Strength in Vulnerability

So here’s a funny story, perhaps with a deeper meaning than I originally recognized …

I spent a few decades of my life leading wilderness expeditions for teenagers and young adults, integrating elements like backpacking, mountaineering, rock climbing, whitewater paddling, and conservation work. On one of my very early overnight programs back in the late 1990’s, my co-leader and I got turned around in a dense forest, leading a group of teens off-trail in the snow. We knew roughly where we were, but were essentially lost in terms of knowing which direction to go to get to our intended campsite for the night. The kids began to clue in to the fact that we were basically wandering around in circles and anxiety began to creep in for them. In an absolutely un-scripted and improvisational moment of “leadership,” I announced to the group: “You may have noticed that we are a little bit lost at the moment. It’s true. We aren’t sure exactly where we are. But I want you to know that I’ve been lost here in this exact same spot many times before, and it always works out in the end.”

Of course, we actually did go on to find our way to camp before dark, and the rest of the 22-day long mountaineering course went just fine. But what happened to the group in that moment, when I leveled with them (even if I didn’t realize exactly what I was doing)? This third article in our outdoor risk management series will explore the human dimension of vulnerability, sharing our mistakes to build trust and heighten learning. This trait is a core element of effective outdoor leadership, although it’s not always reinforced by mainstream western society, the corporate world or even elected officials. It’s my experience, and my contention, that being vulnerable and sharing our mistakes is an act of leadership and can help create an environment of learning and continuous improvement. But we’ll start by exploring things that make this easy to say and hard to do.

Barrier #1: Imposter Syndrome

“Imposter Syndrome” is a term psychologists use to describe the phenomenon where people doubt themselves and their qualifications for a leadership role based on internal feelings rather than external success. In other words, we may feel inadequate for no valid reason. People who are in leadership roles in outdoor settings may also suffer from imposter syndrome; as a result, admitting to one’s errors and mistakes can be harder as a result. Someone with imposter syndrome may be focused on covering up their mistakes and errors, if not from others, then from themselves. Digging into one’s failures, even if a valuable learning experience, can be more easily avoided by those who want to sidestep the underlying imposter syndrome they may be feeling.

Barrier #2: The Blame and Shame Game

When people make mistakes or get involved in incidents (or even a benign near-miss), armchair analysts on social media often spring into action to shame and blame those involved in the incident. Common attacks fall into a few familiar categories:

• They clearly had a death wish to begin with, so they deserve what they got (often with some reference to the Darwin Awards)
• They missed some specific, technical detail, perhaps obvious in hindsight, with the implication that the commenter would never make the same mistake
• They should be charged for any expenses associated with the rescue

Barrier #3: Potential for actual consequences of speaking up

In some cases, admitting to a mistake or an error -- especially one that resulted in some kind of injury or expense -- can potentially create accountability for someone as a result, in our litigious and blame-hungry society. For example, a group of backcountry skiers reported an avalanche that they started in Colorado, when skiing on a low-hazard avalanche slope, and were criminally prosecuted for doing so. In other cases, we have seen lifeguards prosecuted for making errors at work, even ones that did not result in any kind of harm to anyone.

The main problem we face is this combination of factors that make it easier for people who make mistakes in outdoor leadership roles (or elsewhere) to keep it to themselves, to not share their learning, to protect themselves rather than speaking up in ways that could create learning for everyone. This inaction is reinforced by our own internal psychological motivations and fears, by how we are treated by our peers and society around us, and even by our own legal system and how the media reports on incidents after they occur. We choose blame, and blame makes error a choice that people appear to make - a moral failing on their part. When we get into a cycle of blame when people report their incidents, near-misses and mistakes - we become less safe as a result, as it leads people to cover up these kinds of mistakes, to not share their lessons learned. It leaves us exposed to others repeating those mistakes, perhaps in those same ways or in the same places.

Breaking the Blame Cycle

Coming back to the story from the beginning of this article, what if I had acted like we knew where we were when we didn’t? What would that have done to my credibility as a leader of the group? Better to own the mistakes and challenges, and all work together from an accurate reality, on a shared foundation of trust and accountability. It reminds me of a cartoon I saw once: A family is wandering in the woods. The father eventually speaks up: “Okay, I admit it, we’re lost - but the important thing is to remain focused on whose fault it is!”

Despite personal and societal barriers, the best thing we can do is to find outdoor partners, and build an outdoor community, that normalizes the opportunity to learn from incidents and near-misses, and errors that we are actually making all the time as imperfect human beings. When we trust our partners, we see them as solutions rather than as causes of safety concerns. We can share concerns, share learning from mistakes. As a result, we can learn from each other and create a virtuous cycle of improvement. Professor Sidney Dekker likes to say that “we can blame, OR learn - so you have to take your pick.” I recommend choosing learning, and breaking the cycle of blame and shame. When we hear about other people’s incidents, rather than starting with “it couldn’t happen to me,” better to start with “how COULD this happen to me, and how can I learn from this so I don’t repeat the same mistakes?”

Steve Smith is a risk management consultant at Experiential Consulting, providing risk management and safety strategies for outdoor and experiential education programs. He is the primary author of Beneficial Risks: The Evolution of Risk Management for Outdoor and Experiential Education Programs (2021). Based on his many years of trip leading and personal adventures in wild and remote places, he understands that good judgment comes from experience. Still, that experience often arises from bad judgment.