Trust Development

From personal experience, i can say that trust is a big deal in outdoor recreation.  The leader of a trip plays a critical role in the learning and growing process of outdoor education.  I may trust a leader's knowledge on a subject, but i may not have trust for them personally.  I've been on a few different outdoor educational trips and there have been leaders that i have trusted as a person and as an educator, and there have been leaders who i trusted as educated on the matter, but that i wasn't comfortable with.  The difference between the outcome of the trips was immaculate.  I couldn't agree more with the idea in the article from Mitten, "healthy leader-participant relationships are necessary to accomplish course goals". Again, I've had rough relationships with leaders and the trip outcome was not a positive one; whereas trips with leaders that i was close with were positive experiences that i would want to repeat.  I like that the article poses the questions to outdoor leaders of what can they do to establish and strengthen relationships with participants.  I liked where it said, "If a lack of trust in one's supervisor hinders performance, then it is reasonable to suggest that a lack of trust in one's outdoor leader could hinder the accomplishment of course goals." I do believe that a lack of trust in an outdoor leader hinders goals.  If i don't know that a leader believes in me and my ability, then i probably won't work as hard and I'll be extra cautious about what i say and do on the trip instead of working to my full potential and having that ability realized and recognized.  I think it's great that trust is being realized as such an important part of outdoor leadership.  All outdoor leaders should be taking a course on building trust and relationships so that they can learn to work with others and learn to work with all personality types too.