Skills required for an outdoor leader

Question 1

What skills are required to be an outdoor leader?

Answer 1

Both hard (technical) and soft (communication). Typically soft skills are harder to learn to.

Question 2

What is the hardest soft skill to learn?

Answer 2

Experience based judgement.

Question 3

List some hard skills.

Answer 3

• First aid
• navigation
• understanding the weather
• environmental management skills
• knot tying
• activity specific skills

Question 4

List some soft skills.

Answer 4

• influence - influence a group, build rapport
• awareness - know personal/group strengths and weakness.
• communication - verbal + non-verbal
• critical thought - analyse cognitive process
• tolerance - personal, natural world can be a challenge

Question 5

Provide an in depth definition of a hard skill

Answer 5

those that are easily trained and easily assessed such as technical activity, safety and environmental skills. They are knowledge based skills that can be physically completed.

Question 6

Provide an in depth definition of a soft skil

Answer 6

More related to working with participants in outdoor adventure setting, soft skills are often intangible, difficult to measure and harder to access or train.

Question 7

What are the two main evaulation strategies?

Answer 7

A logbook and debriefing.

Question 8

What advantages does having a log book produce?

Answer 8

• high lights learning
• promotes reflection
• goals
• have the ability to track training
• can write learnings in (briefs, how to, weather)

Question 9

What are the advantages of debriefing

Answer 9

• promotes group cohesiveness
• learning (personal/group)
• reflection - ability to see better
• team work
• enables individuals to connect activities and lessons they learned in the experience/program to the outside world.