Years ago, two of my instructors put a group of kids into a rising river.
I was the program director at the time, and I heard about the incident afterward, once everyone was back and dry. The kids were shocked, the chaperone was angry, and the instructors were embarrassed.
We all knew it was a near miss that we had to debrief and learn from immediately. The school demanded it. They wanted to know how we would handle the parents once the kids told them.
One of the two instructors knew it was a bad decision at the time. I was confused why he wouldn’t speak up and change the plan.
He was a good boater, so he volunteered to set safety. He didn’t know the kids would all be swept down river, but he felt something was off. He set an unusually far safety, just far enough where he could see and signal to the instructor upstream, yet far enough down where he knew he’d have time to intervene.
In his little blue duckie, he went after all 10 kids and the teacher, one by one. He picked them all up; it was truly incredible. The other instructor kept sending them in pairs, not realizing what was happening downstream. The safety boater downstream was unable to signal to stop sending kids, because he was too busy picking them up.
I felt like we were extremely lucky. Everybody came out completely unscathed. A little shaken, but physically they were completely unharmed.
Before we went home, I closed the door to my office with the four of us: the two co-instructors, the course director, and myself. I listened to their stories and kept asking “why”? Why did each decision make sense at the time?
Then I began to understand. My stomach dropped, and my inner mood shifted from anger and blame to embarrassment. What they say about hindsight is right. It is, indeed, 20/20.
There were several gaps in our program design and planning. I had missed these gaps, and I didn’t realize how much I was relying on the individual competence of each instructor. Competence in reading a river, reading a group, paddling and rescue, and in making decisions together.
While it makes good sense to not swim in a rising river, we didn’t have a policy that said so. They were focused on learning and getting through the first day’s swim assessments, so they could get on with the educational goals of the program. There wasn’t a “no-go” policy that said “don’t swim in a rising river, or above XYZ cfs” they could fall back on that trumped everything else.
Additionally, I had expected the older and more capable paddler to speak up. He didn’t, because, as he said “we’re co-instructors, and I didn’t feel I had the authority to disagree.”
I created the ambiguity in their team, and I didn’t give them a way out.
Outdoor educators tend to like instructor judgment and flat hierarchies. They’re both pretty much synonymous with the individual and partner sports we enjoy that get us into this line of work in the first place.
Everyone is responsible for safety, including the participants and the parents, and I’ll keep saying so. But, when it comes to safety-critical decisions, one person should be accountable for it. Two people who have to navigate their own social perceptions and dynamics to make a safety-critical decision slows down the process and creates gaps that are hard to fill.
Notice, I’m not talking about input here. Single-person accountability doesn’t mean decisions are made without input. Everyone should seek input, give it, and have a veto power. But, one person should ultimately be accountable at every level of the system. This means among the instructor team, among the admin team, and among the senior leadership team.
Policies that aid instructor judgment (like no-go’s), and structure and clarity among roles is one way an organization shows its care for its people. Reducing ambiguity is an often overlooked way of saying “I see you, and I won’t put you in an awkward situation where you are more likely to mess up.”
Somewhere in your program, two people share a decision that one of them should own.
Whose ambiguity is that?
Stu
P.S. Role clarity and accountability structures are two common findings from program risk reviews. Check out my recent blog post where I outline a few other common findings.