Resilience in paragliding

Over the past few weeks, I have been focusing on cognitive biases, which are quite difficult topics, and I thought it might be time to talk about something more fun.

I've written before about the student-teacher dynamic in airplane pilot training: There are no talents in aviation.

I also learned to fly a paraglider and that dynamic was completely different. The key difference is that in paragliding you are flying alone from the start, you don't have the comfort of having an experienced instructor sitting at your side and being able to correct any mistakes that may affect the safety of your flight. After about 5-6 days of ground training, when you have learnt basic control of the paraglider and made a few small jumps, maybe up to 10-20 metres above the ground, you go on your first high flight, with the only connection to your instructor being via radio.

This difference completely changes the way you have to deal with the task as an instructor. In both training situations, you are dealing with a novice with an inadequate skill level. But in an aircraft, the level of delegation is low and increases as you progress. In paragliding, you have to learn how to fully delegate an important task to a novice without risking failure, because the cost of failure can be very high.

My first high flight was in a beautiful Swiss village of Braunwald and to my horror the take-off place was about 600 m above the ground. I felt that it was too big of a progression from this safe little meadow, but I was assured that this was the right spot to start. The weather was fantastic, and I survived, made over 100 more flights, and learnt a lot from Thise about smart delegation in an environment where you cannot fully control an incompetent person. What you can control is the location and weather conditions, and this makes the impossible task much easier to complete. Surprisingly the best place is high above the ground because it gives you more time to complete all the tasks, and weather conditions are a skill that the best paragliding teachers have mastered to an incredible level. As he used to say - you can take off in almost any conditions, but the whole exercise is about landing safely, and that is not so easy if the weather is not good. It was very disconcerting and reassuring at the same time to see how many times he cancelled flights because of the weather, how he assessed in detail every aspect of the conditions, which in the mountains change from hour to hour.

I think we often have similar dilemmas in the business world. Delegating tasks to an incompetent person is not considered appropriate, goes against the principles of situational leadership, and creates a high risk of failure. Paragliding training is a great example how you can deal with this by creating the right environment for learning and still being able to delegate the difficult job. The kind of relation you can build with people by being a smart delegator is unique. Thise was the person who trusted me, gave me the chance to jump high over the ground when I still barely knew how to control the vehicle. The feeling of being trusted by someone stays for long, he is my brother, one of a kind and I will be always grateful for the opportunity to do something I hardly mastered by being placed in the environment I could handle (high above the ground in a fantastic weather).

The resilience is paragliding depends mainly on your ability to prepare for a flight. Finding the slope with a proper wind, good landing options, appropriate weather, checked equipment, after you take-off there are too many variables out of your control to risk flying unprepared.

Practical questions

• What would mean, in your business context, high above the ground and good weather?
• Did you delegate a difficult task to an inexperienced person? Was this high above the ground and in a good weather?

Short video from a wonderful paragliding trip with Magiclift in Panchgani, India, long after my first flight: Panchgani