North Sound Leadership Conference Breakout Sessions
We are excited to offer two in-person days of professional development - one in Seattle and one in Tacoma - dedicated to thanking, inspiring, and empowering The Mountaineers current and aspiring volunteer leaders. Both conferences will offer equivalent content, with a similar line-up of presenters, expanding our reach and giving volunteers the flexibility to select the program that is most convenient for them.
Join us at one of our Leadership Conferences!
Presenters
- Click here to view a list of the North Sound Leadership Conference presenters
- Click here to view a list of the South Sound Leadership Conference presenters
Session tracks
A series of interactive sessions will explore the many facets of leadership through our three session tracks:
- Empowered Leadership: Elevate your leadership skills through exploration of real-world scenarios and understand how practical experiences shape effective leadership strategies and skills.
- Risk Management: Delve into strategies and best practices for identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks through expert insights.
- Culture of Belonging: Dedicated to fostering dialogue and inspiring concrete steps towards building diverse, inclusive, and equitable spaces.
Presentations
9:15-9:45AM
The Outdoor Leader - Resilience, Integrity, and Adventure
Jeannette Stawski | Goodman A/b
Keynote
Author of “The Outdoor Leader," experienced leader Jeannette Stawski focuses on the essential attributes of outdoor leadership: resilience and grit, integrity, tolerance for adversity, and highly developed listening and communication skills. Her talk will share how a transformational leader makes good decisions, creates and champions a vision, and leads meaningful change - and how volunteer leaders can improve their skills to apply both care and commitment to impact the greater good of the Mountaineers community and beyond.
10:00-11:00AM
The Outdoor Leader - Resilience and Grit
Jeannette Stawski | Goodman A
EMpowered Leadership Track
In this engaging presentation, author and experienced leader Jeannette Stawski will share with you how you can become a transformational leader. You’ll be challenged to consider how you can choose to lead - wherever you choose to lead. She’ll share with you the essential attributes of care and choice to help you recognize and reframe how new ways of learning can evolve into new ways of leading. Most importantly, you’ll walk away empowered and inspired to lead yourself so you can better lead others.
Practical Risk Management for faulty minds
tom unger | Goodman B
Risk Management Track
We want to do fun things in the outdoors while avoiding harm. Our activities have inherent risk, so we need to manage the risk. In this presentation, you’ll learn some practical ways of thinking that help you make risk management decisions. These are ideas that you can use when faced with decisions while on a trip - practical. Unfortunately, our decisions can be flawed by bias. We have faulty minds. You’ll learn a little about bias and how to minimize the problem of our faulty minds. Finally, you’ll get some guidance on how to manage risk across a multi-decade career of venturing in the outdoors.
Use Your Outside Voice: Lessons From Nature On Speaking Up
Angie Marie | Cascade a/B
Culture of Belonging Track
Speaking up for yourself and others can be difficult, whether or not you’re the designated leader. Thankfully, nature is full of lessons on how to communicate effectively and confidently.
What risk management skills can we learn from flash floods and alpine whiteouts? When people operate out of fear, how do we realistically address it? How can we ensure participants of all abilities and backgrounds are comfortable and respected on a trip?
In this session, hear true adventure stories that introduce applicable frameworks that you can use when planning, leading and experiencing outdoor trips. Then, practice applying the framework in small groups so that you’re ready to use them in the field.
You’ll collect tools to help navigate heuristic traps, assess real vs. perceived risk, and use effective body and verbal language to make others feel welcome in the outdoors. Take away guidelines for communicating equitably and planning safely in the outdoors and beyond, so that you can use your outside voice and be a strong leader.
11:15AM-12:15PM
Breaking the Halo: Lessons in Leadership from Outdoor Education
Katja Hurt | Goodman A
Empowered Leadership Track
Breaking the Halo explores the deadly thinking errors that can occur outdoors and beyond, and offers a simple, universal approach to confronting complacency, assumptions, and communication breakdowns between subordinates and leaders. Breaking the Halo is inspired by previous works on heuristic traps by Edward Thorndike and Ian McCammon and speaks to a more global audience. Participants will learn to recognize halos, participate in small group discussion, and share empowerment tools for breaking future halos they encounter.
Making Risk Management Tangible for Trip Leaders Using Cross Industry Adaptations
Rumi Kodama | Goodman B
Risk Management Track
The ability to manage risk is a hallmark of excellent leaders. What does this actually look like beyond “Follow your Policies & Procedures” and “Stay within your Scope of Practice”? Whether it is to enhance your own risk management practices or learn a new way to train risk management, you will walk away with both.
With recognition of cross industry research as an invaluable resource, this session presents a Trip Leader Centered Risk Management Framework created from research from the fields of Aviation, Paramedicine, and Military. The goal is to move beyond risk theories and towards tangible actions that make the management of risk in the field concrete. When actions become understood of where it fits within the bigger picture, actions become intentional and managing risk becomes conscious.
Sound Risk Management starts with Self-Awareness and Empowerment as skills. We will start getting you acquainted with your own level of Risk Self-Awareness and habits and how to stay vigilant by learning how to incorporate flexibility focused “Learnacy Skills”. Finally, we will touch on Stress Injury Mitigation and the importance of viewing this as a core component of a well-rounded risk management strategy.
Along for The Ride: The Importance of Increasing Access to THe Outdoors
Ian Mackay | Cascade A/B
Culture of Belonging Track
Join Ian Mackay to discuss the joys and challenges that folks with mobility impairments
experience in the outdoors. This session will explore the importance of thoughtful infrastructure,
inclusivity, community and the importance of stepping outside your comfort zone.
Attendees will leave the session with increased awareness that can be applied to
crafting more inclusive trips and activities for varied mobility levels.
1:30-2:30PM
Passing the Torch: Building Mentor Relationships for Leaders and Learners
LIz Riggs MEder | Goodman A
EMpowered Leadership Track
Mentorship is often seen as a solution to a specific challenge, but the real work lies in building and maintaining productive mentor-mentee relationships. Finding someone to coach you, or to coach, is only the first step. This workshop is both for those seeking to build new skills with guidance from an expert and experienced leaders aiming to cultivate the next generation. We will explore foundational principles of how people learn and develop and then dive into practical strategies for taking ownership of mentor relationships, establishing routines for reflection, and ensuring both parties grow—whether you're expanding your own expertise or passing it on.
Risk Management In The Outdoors from a Mountain Rescue Perspective
Dr. Dennis ELLer | Goodman B
Risk Management Track
Risk management in the outdoors looking at the impacts from a Mountain Rescue Technician’s perspective. Analyzing steps and actions that should be taken before, during, and after a trip. Discussing impactors that affect decision making, reporting, and assessing risks as a trip leader or a participant. Those attending will walk away with ideas on how to create their own checklists for risk assessments, discussion of various rescue scenarios and what could have prevented them- with a focus on our PNW region from the viewpoint of a Mountain rescue and guide specialist in our region.
The 4 P's: Supporting Mountaineers Who Menstruate, Pee and Poop in the Backcountry
Anastasia Allison | Cascade A/B
Culture of Belonging Track
Effectively and confidently handling your own hygiene in the backcountry directly translates into the ability to have a safer and more connected experience to the natural world. In addition, knowing how to effectively and tactfully approach this discussion with other hike/trip participants and having the ability to point them in the direction of appropriate resources is an undervalued and often overlooked skill. As mountaineers, we spend extensive amounts of time training with our tools and skills: ice axes, crampons, ropes, carabiners, and knots. In this extensive preparation process, we often overlook the seemingly ‘simple’ tasks of properly handling hygiene in the backcountry. And yet, as we step away from the trailhead – most hikers and climbers will agree that hygiene is an essential and critical part of any backcountry adventure – but it is also a part of the climb that is often never discussed.
As we embark upon our backcountry explorations — there are many things that connect us – our mutual desire to explore, our love of the wilderness… and also, the fact that we all have similar basic hygiene needs. Even with this shared bodily connection, many people still feel uneasy about how to approach this topic – and often, that silence leaves hikers or climbers feeling uncomfortable on trips and/or deciding not to pursue an outdoor adventure due to a lack of resources or education about how to handle hygiene in the backcountry.
This class will provide an in-depth overview of current ‘best practices’ for backcountry hygiene (peeing, pooping, periods and personal hygiene) – and will also leave participants feeling empowered to include hygiene discussions in their own trip planning efforts with other humans.