The Mountain Center (TMC) is a nationally recognized and accredited 501(C)3 educational and therapeutic organization founded in 1979. They are dedicated to promoting personal discovery and social change among youth, families, and groups through the use of creative learning experiences in wilderness, community, and cultural environments. They provide unique opportunities for people to transform their lives through remarkable experiences and adventures. They serve a wide range of populations, including people in recovery or working on other mental health issues, survivors of violence, populations that are justice involved, low income, refugees, LGBTQ+ folks, and Native Americans.
For the past five years, the Experiential Consulting Team has worked alongside TMC in support of their ongoing growth and commitment to effective and evolving risk management practices.
This work has included:
A comprehensive overhaul of risk management documents and staff manuals;
A full day training for leadership team members as a pre-conference session at WRMC;
An on-site therapeutic adventure program review, along with a report documenting commendations and recommendations;
A follow-up site visit to crystallize learning and identify next steps from the report;
Ongoing collaboration and connectivity.
This blog post will highlight some of the ways in which TMC is actively evolving their approach to risk management in order to better serve their students, staff, and community.
Aligning risk management strategy with organizational values
At TMC, programs are designed with an asset-based approach, meaning that they are focused on understanding the unique strengths and abilities their participants bring, and designing therapeutic adventure experiences to build on (or amplify) those strengths. In their own words, “The Mountain Center is successful because we focus on building strengths rather than identifying weaknesses.” This happens to align with contemporary thinking in risk management practices (Safety II) which also aims to understand what’s going well, and develop positive capacities within organizations to amplify the things that are contributing to success. No one wants an incident or accident to occur, obviously - but if all we do is set our risk management goals around the avoidance of injuries, then we have no clear direction. In the words of Dr. Erik Hollnagel, “if all you want to do is go away from something, it doesn’t matter what direction you run.” Avoiding incidents is a traditional approach, while pursuing the things that make us successful is a contemporary approach.
The following model depicts the essential difference between a traditional (Safety I) view of occupational safety, and a contemporary (Safety II) view. Safety I focuses on what has gone wrong, and attempts to train people to do less of it. Safety II attempts to understand why things normally go right, and how we can support people and create workplace environments more conducive to things going right.
In order to pursue this approach to risk management, TMC staff are revisiting their written risk management goals and philosophy, to expand it beyond the avoidance of injuries to also include the pursuit of positive capacities that create the conditions under which safety can thrive. They are also having discussions about Safety II with staff at all levels, from board and risk oversight committee to administrators, supervisors, and frontline staff.
The connection between physical and emotional safety
According to the TMC website, “Adventure includes challenge—moments when participants are on the brink of both success and failure and where they both succeed and fail. Adventure is about taking risks—not necessarily physical risks, but emotional and apparent physical risks, where participants see the natural consequences before them. Perhaps just connecting action to consequence is vital; knowing it is one thing, experiencing it is another. For participants to experience adventure, a program must provide physical and emotional safety—a space where participants can speak their minds and stretch themselves to new limits. While all of this is challenging, it also has a purposeful element of fun and play through which participants become willingly engaged.”
Climbing at TMC
During our site visit, and throughout our work with TMC, we have been impressed by the staff’s clarity of thought and focus on combining intentional challenges with layers of support, emphasizing both physical and emotional safety. Whether it’s taking interpersonal risks in a group setting, physical risks climbing or paddling, or intra-personal risks in reflecting and learning experientially, TMC creates a well-structured, supportive environment for participants (and staff!) to grow and learn.
At Experiential Consulting, we don’t see physical and emotional safety as separate, discrete elements - we see them not only as equally important, but as interdependent. When a group is not physically safe, it’s hard to feel emotionally safe; and when a group is emotionally safe -- able to speak up about safety concerns without fear of consequences, able to be vulnerable and be honest, allowed to bring their full, authentic selves to the group experience -- this promotes a physically safe group environment, one in which people look out for each other, proactively address safety concerns, and are able to learn from incidents and near-misses. Physical safety and emotional safety are interdependent.
Trauma-informed, culturally-inclusive programming
As much as any program we’ve worked with, TMC makes extraordinary efforts to attune their program and risk management strategies to be inclusive of the populations and staff with whom they work. During our site visit, we met with staff who had had memories of being students in TMC programs themselves, and who were now serving as leaders and role models for today’s students from those same local communities. We met TMC staff from local tribes who were providing therapeutic adventure programs for school groups from the same tribal communities, modifying programs to integrate Indigenous practices and cultural norms. We saw a willingness to skillfully modify mainstream practices such as Leave No Trace to make them more relevant to Indigenous participants.
Mural at TMC by Nani Chacon, representing the healing ability of the natural world
Safety II strategies also support Principles of Trauma-Informed Care as originally defined by SAMHSA and as expanded in 2022.
The following chart contrasts Safety I and Safety II approaches using the principles of trauma-informed care:
Trauma-Informed Principle | Safety I (Traditional) | Safety II (New View) |
Safety | Tells people what to do to be safe, but people may feel less safe to make mistakes or report incidents | Asks people what they need to be safe, creates inclusion, acceptance, and fosters learning from incidents |
Trustworthiness | Makes expectations clear, aims for consistency | Invites adaptation where needed to maintain outcomes and well-being |
Support and Connection | Sees people as a cause of safety concerns | Sees people as solutions to safety concerns |
Collaboration and Mutuality | Promotes a top-down, hierarchical approach centered around rules | Flattens hierarchy, values expertise at all levels, invites frontline input |
Empowerment, Voice and Choice | Discourages individual choice and sees variability from procedure as a problem | Promotes personal voice and choice, invites adaptation to match situation |
Social Justice | Less sensitive to privilege and power, maintains a top-down approach | Attuned to hearing from all perspectives and inviting dissenting voices |
Resilience, & Growth | Seeks to avoid harm | Seeks to amplify strengths |
Equity, inclusion, and social justice ultimately are risk management issues, as they promote emotional and physical well-being and resilience for individuals and communities.
Reflecting On Our Five Year Journey Together
Chama River Rafting
Experiential Consulting is grateful for the opportunity to support TMC and their meaningful, mission-aligned work. By evolving risk management practices to align with their values and mission, TMC is not only taking a contemporary, research-based approach to risk management, but they are also doing so in ways that tap into their own innate strengths and capacities as an organization - an asset-based approach.
By increasing clarity about their risk management philosophy, expanding their approach to integrate both Safety I and Safety II practices and involving front-line staff in continuous risk management improvement efforts, TMC is taking intentional steps that amplify existing strengths, such as their trauma-informed, culturally-relevant programs uplift physical and emotional safety through therapeutic adventure. They approach their work in an intentional way that taps into long standing traditions and integrates contemporary views as well.
TMC's Executive Director, Juan Antonio "Tony" Dixon, had this to add: "Our experience working with Experiential Consulting over the last five years has been an amazing journey of validation, in terms of what is working well and growth, in terms of holistically shifting our organizational perspective managing and engaging with risk. Their approach to assessing programs and operations through the lens of Safety II as well as other modalities, is deeply inline with the trauma-informed care practices and the values of The Mountain Center. Experiential Consulting's approach to consulting is one that is intrinsic and inclusive that invites all voices and perspectives as a part of the larger goals for creating purposeful risk management strategies.
Knowing that we need to balance both Safety I and Safety II, it's all too often that programs, teams and organizations lean heavily on Safety I as their primary approach. As TMC learned from Experiential Consulting, Safety II guides us to look at our positive capacities, working with people as the solution to solving problems, and asks the question, what is working well? We love this approach! Safety II creates a fuller circle on how we hold, manage and assess risk as a team. We are truly grateful for Experiential Consulting's support and guidance and look forward to our continued partnership."
References
Hollnagel, Erik. Safety I and Safety II. Routledge, 2014.
Dekker, Sidney. Safety Differently. Routledge, 2014.
Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, US Govt. (2014). SAMHSA's Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach. https://store.samhsa.gov/product/SAMHSA-s-Concept-of-Trauma-and-Guidance-for-a-Trauma-Informed-Approac h/SMA14-4884
Dawn Schell. (2022). Trauma-Informed Facilitation. Adapted from Fallot & Harris, 2009: SAMHSA, 2014. https://bccampus.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Trauma-Informed-Facilitation-Slides.pdf
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