156 - Adventure Education means Facilitating Vulnerability with Phil Brown

If you think of adventure education, do you imagine rock climbing, swinging from trees, and kayaking down flowing streams?

For Phil Brown, Lead Trainer at High 5 Adventure Learning Centre, it looks more like overcoming vulnerability and supporting one’s peers.

Adventure education is facilitation in action - literally. The act of exploring and adventuring stretches far beyond the physical experience and challenges us emotionally and socially.

Phil joins me in this episode to share the facilitation lessons he’s learned from a career in adventure education.

Find out about:

• Why adventure education is about far more than physical challenges
• How to encourage risk-taking when you've worked hard to establish trust and psychological safety
• Why collective and individual growth happens when we share novel experiences
• How we each need different support structures around us to take risks - and how we can facilitate them
• What it means to be vulnerable in a shared space and the things it can teach us

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Questions and Answers

Part one

[01:03] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator?

[02:05] What advanced facilitation skills did you learn that changed your mind?

[05:20] Why Phil struggles with a 'traditional' educator mindset.

[10:06] Can you explain what adventure education is?

[15:05] What happens if the physical challenge is entirely within a person's comfort zone?

[21:15] When does the trust start to build - on the ground or in the air?

[23:38] Can playful contexts teach us serious skills?

[26:35] How do you find the right 'amount' of risk? How do you determine that balance?

Links

Vertical Playpen - High 5’s podcast hosted by Phil

High 5’s website

Connect to Phil:

On LinkedIn
 

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

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👉 What happens when being “professional” gets in the way of being human? My new podcast Unprofessionalism explores the rules we’re taught to follow at work, and what happens when we break them. Listen here: https://unprofessionalism.buzzsprout.com/  👈