When leading any group it’s important to remember to think about the affect feedback can have on individuals and their motivation. Harackiewicz (1979) stated that positive feedback can enhance intrinsic motivation.
Basset's Cover - The start location
Recently I was helping to lead a group
of Scouts on a two day expedition around Cornwall. During the two days a couple
of the group members were particularly struggling. For those members it was
important to keep them motivated and moving, which was done through giving
them feedback as to how they were doing. It was also important to keep the
other members who weren’t struggling motivated as they were getting annoyed at
the people who were struggling.
All the members of the group will have
experienced different types of feedback during the walk including intrinsic,
extrinsic, positive, negative, terminal and concurrent (BrianMac, 2012). Intrinsic
feedback will have come from what the individuals body was telling them to do
through balance, joints and muscles (BrianMac, 2012). The Scout members may have
had intrinsic feedback telling them that their legs ached. Extrinsic feedback
comes from sources outside of the body (BrainMac, 2012) such as us leaders
telling them that how they were doing. Positive and negative feedback is fairly
self explanatory with the feedback either being to inform the individual how
well they were doing or how they could improve (BrianMac, 2012) such as telling
the ones who were struggling that they were doing a good job, or that the ones
who weren’t struggling needed to be more considerate to other team members.
Terminal feedback is given before and after the individual performs (BrianMac,
2012) so during the two days it was giving feedback at the end of the day and
then in the morning, before starting to walk again. Then concurrent feedback is
given whilst the individual is performing (BrianMac, 2012), so during the
weekend it would have been during the day whilst walking.
During the weekend all the previous
mentioned types of feedback were used, all of the time combining the different
types of feedback. For instance on the second day about half the way through,
one of the guys was really struggling even with one of the other leaders
carrying his bag and having gained two walking poles to help him. At this point the rest of
the group needed more feedback than the guy struggling, because they were
getting annoyed and being impatience, by showing their aggravation and not
waiting. The feedback given was mixing concurrent, extrinsic and negative; as
the feedback provided was during the activity, not from within their body and
negative, to say what they needed to improve, to increase their team work and
the group’s overall motivation.
To keep the group motivated throughout
the two days, a mixture of the different types of feedback, needed to be given
to keep the group together and moving, whilst also motivating each other. This factor
is important when leading any group as from experience, group members are more
motivated by their peers than their leaders.
Maenporth Beach - The end location (Helpful Holidays, 2012)
References
BrianMac (2012) Information Feedback. [online] Available: http://www.brianmac.co.uk/infofb.htm
[date accessed: 9 May 2012]
Harackiewicz, J M. (1979) ‘The Effect
of Reward Contingency and Performance Feedback on Intrinsic Motivation’, Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 37 (8), 1352-1363.
Helpful Holidays (2012) Maenporth 2012. [online] Available: http://www.helpfulholidays.com/property.asp?ref=S39&year=2012#MAENPORTH BEACH_1_DSC04716(with text) [date accessed: 9 May 2012]
