Ropes courses do not teach teamwork, leadership, or confidence.

Facilitators do.

This is one of the things I tell staff when I kick off challenge course training. What I love most about this work is watching participants’ transformation — the confidence building and the developing of both the “soft” and “hard” skills they need to grow into capable facilitators. These facilitators will go on to transform the campers and staff they will work with throughout the summer and beyond.

The growth is amazing to witness, and the lessons truly spread far beyond the cables. It doesn’t always land right away, but as we progress through the training, these ideas begin to take hold. Participants start to see how they can apply what they are learning far beyond the platforms of the challenge course.

The truth is that a ropes course is just a collection of wood, bolts, and cables. It is a static environment. Without a facilitator to set the stage, manage the safety of the group, and guide a reflection, a ropes course is just a playground.

A challenge course training teaches you how to guide people through uncertainty, risk, conflict, and frustration by challenging them to step out of their comfort zones with team-building activities and opportunities to stretch emotionally. While many camps don’t have a challenge course, they are still doing meaningful youth development every day, and challenge course facilitation practices can be applied to great benefit across programs, roles, and everyday moments at every camp.

To that end, I want to share five training activities that translate directly into tangible skills that you can use to be a better facilitator. By focusing on these practices, you can help support the emphasis the American Camp Association (ACA) has placed on intentional character building. Character isn’t something you teach in a lecture. It’s something young people build by doing hard things together — practicing grit, empathy, and responsibility in real moments.

Facilitation is what turns those moments into growth.

1. Setting Expectations: The Social Contract

The Lesson

One of the most important facilitation skills we teach is how to set expectations. Notice I didn’t say “rules.” Rules are often top-down, while expectations are a social contract. For a group to grow, they must have buy-in. If you, the camp counselor, are the only one invested in behavior, you become a police officer. If the group is invested, together you become a community.

The Activity: The Five-Finger Contract

Hold up your hand and ask the group what each finger could represent as shared expectations. These are mutually agreed-upon behaviors and attitudes that will help the group share the best possible experience. For example:

• The thumb. Be positive and encouraging.
• The pointer. Take responsibility (don’t point fingers or blame).
• The middle. Respect (our “tallest” value).
• The ring. Commit to the group and yourself.
• The pinky. Practice physical and emotional safety.

When you create a contract, you have to sign it. So if you agree to these expectations, give your neighbor a high five to sign your contract.

The reason this works is that the group names the behaviors before they need them. That makes it easier to support the group in the moment, rather than trying to fix behavior after something goes wrong. This quick visual cue keeps the correction small, neutral, and connected to an agreement the group created. It offers a simple alternative to a public, adult-driven correction.

The Character Connection

This social contract shifts the focus from compliance to integrity. Compliance is doing the right thing because an adult is watching. Integrity is honoring an agreement because you value your community.

Processing Questions:

How could you adapt this to fit the age or setting of your own program?

What benefits could you see in using a social contract approach over just setting the rules?

In what moments could a quick visual reminder help reinforce expectations without stopping the whole group?

2. Facilitating Grit: Stepping Outside the Comfort Zone

The Lesson

Grit is defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals and is an important part of character development (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007). You can’t force grit upon someone; it has to be a personal and intentional choice. You have an opportunity at camp to help young people practice sticking with something that feels uncomfortable, frustrating, or uncertain while still feeling supported.

Your goal is to facilitate experiences that invite campers to move from their comfort zone into their stretch zone. This is where learning and growth are most likely to happen. At the same time, be intentional about avoiding the panic zone. This is where campers feel overwhelmed or unsafe, the brain shuts down, and real growth stops.

To give campers ownership of this journey into the stretch zone, you can utilize the concept of challenge by choice. This allows each camper to define what that stretch looks like and feels like for them. Your role isn’t to decide how far someone should push themselves. Your role is to create a supportive environment where they feel safe enough to choose to make a choice to push themselves.

The Activity: Stepping Into the Stretch

Have each person draw a circle around themselves with their toe. This is their comfort zone. Ask, “What activities feel easy and comfortable?” Then, introduce the stretch zone, and ask, “What activities would you consider to be out of your comfort zone?” As they share, everyone takes a literal step out of their circle for each thing they hear that feels like a stretch. It’s important to highlight that we each have a different comfort zone based on our variety of experiences. This gives campers language to name what they are feeling without having to defend or compare themselves.

The Character Connection

You can facilitate grit by letting campers make the decision to challenge themselves. When a camper is struggling, try asking, “Can you take one more step?” When that step is their choice, the growth lasts.

Processing Questions:

• Name an experience where you didn’t think you could go any further, but then you did.
• What type of support helps you step out of your comfort zone?
• What is a lesson you learned as a result of stepping outside of your comfort zone?

3. Empowerment: “Each One Teach One”

The Lesson

Character building is tied to confidence and competence. In traditional settings, as a staff member, you hold the power. But you want to shift that power to the campers through critical pedagogy, bringing the leader and the learner onto equal footing.

The Activity: Peer Instruction

Instead of teaching 15 people a knot at once, teach two until they are experts. Then, tell them, “You are now the experts. Your job is to teach the rest of the group.” Then step back and observe.

The goal is not perfect instruction. The goal is to give campers responsibility for one another’s learning.

When campers teach, they have to slow down and really think about what they know. They start to see that their voice matters to the group. Teaching becomes a way to lead others, not just a way to show what they know.

The Character Connection

When a camper becomes the teacher, their confidence skyrockets. It turns a skills session into a character-building moment where campers take pride in others’ success and realize they have valuable knowledge to share.

Processing Questions:

• What is harder, learning a skill or trying to explain it to someone else?
• What is a skill at camp that you would feel comfortable putting a camper in charge of teaching others?
• Who is a role model that empowered you as a learner?

4. The “Talk Less” Rule: Active Listening

The Lesson

Processing an experience is the hardest part of facilitation. The biggest mistake you can make is to talk too much and tell campers what they should have learned. True character is built when a child reaches their own conclusion. You can facilitate this growth through asking good questions that help guide them to name what they learned, what worked, and what they would try differently next time.

The Activity: The Question Game

One person shares an experience that they would consider challenging. The listener may only respond with questions. Each question should be an active response to what the other person shared. The goal is for the listener to stay fully present and track what is being said. After the role-play, ask the group what they learned from the experience.

The Character Connection

Research from the Quaglia Institute suggests that less than half of young people feel the adults in their lives truly value their voices (Quaglia Institute for School Voice and Aspirations, 2016). When you are fully present, you validate the speaker. By listening intentionally, you show campers that their voices matter.

Processing Questions:

• What are some challenges you experience in being fully attentive when having a conversation with someone?
• What are some cues to tell when someone is really listening to you?
• What is the difference between hearing words and actually listening to a message?

5. Facilitator Eyes: The Safety 360

The Lesson

Safety is more than just a checklist; it’s a habit of paying attention. You aren’t going to point out every rock along a path, but as a facilitator, you are responsible for noticing what’s happening around you. This positions you to foresee potential hazards that could cause someone harm.

That same habit of paying attention can also help you notice what’s happening socially and emotionally in a group. Who is pulling away, who looks frustrated, and who might need support?

The Activity: The Safety 360

Stand in one place and slowly turn 360 degrees to observe everything in your surroundings:

• Physical hazards. Uneven terrain, loose gravel, exposed roots
• Human factors. Energy levels, body language, group dynamics
• Environmental conditions. Heat, wind, sun, approaching weather

Ask fellow staff what they observed, where they naturally looked first, and what they might have overlooked.

The Character Connection

When campers see that adults are paying attention and looking out for the whole group, it builds trust. That trust is what makes it easier for campers to take healthy emotional risks, such as trying something new, speaking up, or sticking with something that feels hard.

Processing Questions:

• How can we protect the emotional safety of campers?
• How does knowing the environment is safe allow you to try harder things?
• What else can we do to keep ourselves and our campers safe?

Bringing It Back to Camp

Whether your camp has a full challenge course or just a field, a few trees, and a Frisbee, the same facilitation habits apply. Group contracts, the stretch zone, peer teaching, intentional listening, and a safety 360 help turn ordinary camp moments into meaningful ones.

What would change if you brought that same intention to everyday moments like cleaning cabins, lining up for lunch, or ending a game? That’s the power of facilitation.

Photos courtesy of South Carolina Camps & Retreat Ministries, Greenville, SC; YMCA Camp Tumbleson Lake, Boulder, CO.

References

Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087–1101. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1087

Quaglia Institute for School Voice and Aspirations. (2016). School Voice Report 2016. quagliainstitute.org/dmsView/School_Voice_Report_2016

Danny Sudman is a professional facilitator and trainer with more than 20 years of experience in challenge course operations, staff training, and experiential education. He is the founder and executive director of Green Camps and works with camps and youth-serving organizations to strengthen facilitation practice, leadership development, and sustainability education.