Year 9 Camp

“A Leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way”

When completing a tough group task, there are many capabilities needed within the group to make the task easier. For example, on the fourth day, our group had the hardest task ahead of us, Hiking out of the 4-Ways Camp Site with all of our belongings and tents. It was an activity no-one was excited for, including me. I had taken upon my self to become the leader of the group, the person at the front, making sure I had a good pace and also making sure no one was left behind. I used effective communication to make sure that the last person in the group was still in range. I had to use call outs such as shouting aussie, aussie, aussie, and the back of the group had to call back oi, oi, oi. That was an example of effective communication when making sure that the whole group would stay together so no person would fall behind. The hike felt like a breeze when talking to the group. Also, from time to time, I had paused and waited for the group to catch up, allowing everyone to take water breaks.

This leads into the second capability that I was using during the hike. Empathy. In the camp group, everyone was different in terms of their athletic capacity. If I had just raced ahead, that wouldn’t be any fun for the people at the back. I had shown understanding that not everyone had the same capacity as me, so I took breaks after a hard stretch of hiking. And in the break, I asked if I should go slower, faster or stay the same pace, asked the people in the back if they were ok to keep going. Although there were arguably a lot more capabilities that I developed during OLP, such as Teamwork, I can confidently say that effective communicated was the most improved one form me.