NOLS 4/7/1 Leadership: The Four Leadership Roles

Designated leader Sally studies the map while
active followers Anne and Cristina smile actively.  

In its 4/7/1 leadership framework, NOLS identifies four leadership roles.  They make so much sense, they are almost self evident.  Here they are: designated leadership, active followership, peer leadership and self leadership. 

Designated Leadership
The designated leader is the person identified either by the organization or by the group as the one in charge.  On our course, Audra and Sally were the designated leaders.  It was Sally and Audra's responsibility to provide direction, support and content.  For safety, the buck stopped with them.  They may (and did) delegate responsibility, as well as to collaborate.  They never abdicated their role or relinquished responsibility.  The designated leader is accountable.

Active Followership
Huge!  I never thought of it this way.  Active followership is empowering of subordinates in that active followership means that group members are hands on, intentional and supportive of the leaders.  Leaders need followers or they're just taking a walk (John Maxwell).  Any of us who has led knows what it feels like to have someone we know we can count on, versus someone who is a constant drain on our energy, continually questioning, and overall being negative.  Active followers ask for clarification, and direction, and put feet on group goals.

Peer Leadership
We lead our peers when we help each other move forward.  There's no hierarchy here.  We look out for each other.  We hold each other accountable.  We support each other without enabling laziness.  One hand washes the other.
In our tent, we had Rich, Blake and me.  We shared cooking duties.  Each of us had differing strengths.  Rich is an awesome, willing cook!  But he also shared the cooking. Blake set the tone quite literally with his ukulele. I added my two cents where I could.  Sharing tent space and cooking creates instant opportunity to clarify fairness, roles and relationships.

Self-leadership
This is personal management with a leadership twist.  To borrow from the NOLS blog, "Each team member is responsible for demonstrating self leadership: personal initiative, character and attention to one's well-being in order to be a productive member of the group and of the larger society."  In my case, I had come straight off a five day mountaineering course, during which we were nearly killed, with no rest, and right into the nine day NOLS trip leader's course.  I am a good twenty-five years older than most of the other participants, and halfway into the course I hit a wall.  I needed a rest day.  Thankfully, Audra took the young whipper-snappers on a ridgeline tour as Sally stayed at our base camp while a few of us rested up.  Our designated leadership provided a situationally appropriate opportunity for self-leadership.

Next?   We'll start looking at the Seven NOLS Leadership Skills.


Note: This is the second in an occasional series on leadership, drawing from the NOLS Leadership Education Notebook. The National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) is a non-profit outdoor education school based in the United States dedicated to teaching environmental ethics, technical outdoors skills, wilderness medicine, risk management and judgment, and leadership on extended wilderness expeditions and in traditional classrooms.  NOLS has its own blog post on this topic and you can read it here.