Breakout Sessions
For the first time ever, 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 Seattle Leadership Conference presenters
- Click here to view a list of the Tacoma Leadership Conference presenters
Session tracks
A series of interactive sessions will explore the many facets of leadership through our three session tracks:
- Experiential 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.
- Equity & Inclusion: Dedicated to fostering dialogue and inspiring concrete steps towards building diverse, inclusive, and equitable spaces.
Presentations
9:30-10:45AM
Servant Leadership In the Mountains
Priya Sinha | Cascade A/b
Experiential Leadership Track
How developing yourself as a Servant Leader helps you and the teams you will lead. Thoughts on basics and how to apply them
Breaking the Halo: Lessons in Leadership from Outdoor Education
Katja Hurt | Goodman A
Risk Management 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.
Use Your Outside Voice: Lessons From Nature On Speaking Up
Angie Marie | Goodman B
Equity & Inclusion 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.
11:00AM-12:15PM
Building teams
tom unger | Cascade A/b
Experiential Leadership Track
One happy outcome of a trip, particularly a long one, is the feeling that participants formed a team and worked well together. By contrast, most of us know disappointment when there is conflict instead. Let's learn what we can do as leaders to foster team development and build successful teams.
How Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Principles Can Improve Risk Management Systems
Moleek Busby | Goodman A
Risk Management Track
This workshop will gather wisdom from industry leaders who have intentionally leveraged diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) work to improve various risk management systems within their organizations.
Training for Mountaineering: A Personalized Approach
Lyra Pierotti | Goodman B
Equity & Inclusion Track
Navigate through mountains of generic information and gender-biased research to create--and continually adapt--a training plan just for you.
Join Lyra Pierotti, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and AMGA Rock & Alpine Guide, for a discussion about training for mountaineering, focusing in particular on athletes who menstruate. As a young mountain guide, Lyra noticed how differently her male counterparts could train--and knew she needed to do things differently, but had no resources or examples. When she developed a mysterious and career-threatening overuse injury at age 30, she dove into her own movement and fitness education to find a new way of doing the things she loved.
In 2016 she started coaching climbers through her company MOVEmentum Training (www.movementumtraining.com), while pursuing further coaching and guiding certifications. Watching countless athletes in the mountains fueled her curiosity around performance and longevity, and posed endless questions around the ways people trained, and what worked and didn't. As she worked to heal and optimize her own body, she would bring those lessons to her clients. First was the work to establish an unshakeable base fitness. Next was connecting the strength of the breathing muscle (diaphragm) to the core musculature, and using this to improve movement economy and overall efficiency. And most recently, Lyra has been following the surge in research into female physiology and performance, watching her clients thrive as they adapt their training plans to their cycling hormone levels--not to mention achieving some of her own elusive performance goals.
The optimal training plan will be different for every athlete. The key is in your powers of observation and adaptation--and the tools you use to get in touch with your body. In skill-based sports like climbing, skiing, and mountaineering, it's all about showing up, time after time, to build your skill. Ensure your training plan keeps you healthy and psyched, and you'll find yourself on track to your fitness goals.
12:25-1:05PM - Lunch [optional]
Creating Mindful Outdoor Experiences
LIZ MCNETT CROWL AND LORI HEATH |Cascade A/b
Special drop-in presentation. Please feel free to bring your lunch to eat during the presentation.
Mindfulness is about being present in the moment and bringing awareness to any given activity. Rather than focusing on how many miles you have to go or a pace you need to hit, a mindful outdoor activity is about paying attention to your body and being more aware of nature and your surrounding environment. Focusing on your breath, how your body feels and moves, the cool breeze or warm sun against your face, and the way your arms and legs work together to balance your movement are all aspects of mindfulness. Shifting your focus from achievement to experience or from doing to simply being can aid your performance and improve your health. In this session, Liz McNett Crowl and Lori Heath will discuss the benefits of mindfulness in the outdoors, present a few ways that leaders may incorporate and practice mindfulness during outdoor activities, and guide you through some simple mindfulness exercises to help you develop more mindfulness during your outdoor adventures and in your daily life.
1:15-2:30PM
We Can Do Better than the Poo Sandwich: Move Beyond Constructive Criticism to Deliver Feedback that Actually Leads to Improvement
LIz Riggs MEder | Cascade A/b
Experiential Leadership Track
Feedback from others is vital to learning and improving a skill. While many would agree with this statement, many would also agree they would rather clean a toilet than give or receive feedback. Feedback, when done well, is so valuable for growth. But the reality can vary from helpful to at times even downright hurtful. In this talk, you’ll move beyond unhelpful platitudes, or worse, criticism sandwiched between compliments. You’ll learn and practice using a process to consistently provide productive feedback in any area that you give it - whether that is for an outdoor skill or to an office colleague.
Tactical Decision Games in Outdoor Leadership
Chris O'Steen | Goodman A
Risk Management Track
Tactical Decision Games (TDGs) were developed by the German general staff in the 19th century as a method to improve the speed and accuracy of Commander’s decisions through pattern recognition and repetition. The technique was adopted by the American military and widely utilized by the U.S. Marine Corps to develop leaders from the 1990s to about 2010. This workshop applies the principles of the military decision game to the context of outdoor leadership, asking it’s participants to make rapid, difficult decisions and then provide clear and concise orders. Through multiple iterations of the decision game process participants will gain a better understanding of their decision-making process. Successful completion of this workshop will prepare participants to make better and faster decisions during real world situations.
Going from an Outdoor Enthusiast to an Outdoor Advocate
Betsy Robblee and Conor Marshall | Goodman B
Equity & Inclusion Track
Mountaineers’ love of place and testimony to the transformative power of the outdoors translate to compelling advocacy. The Mountaineers conservation staff will share top tips and best practices for advocating for public lands and the outdoor experience, and offer leaders a sneak preview of the new Mountaineers Advocacy 101 e-learning course. Join this session to get the tools that can help you go from an outdoor enthusiast to an outdoor advocate.