Who affects who?

It's always interesting watching the interpersonal relationships within and without a group of people from any walk of life; a jury for example is a good representation of what I'm trying to establish and describe, imagine how many people are influencing each other in that situation not to mention the myriad of different possibilities in which the information presented to each individual member is interpreted; how it is presented to them, by who etc, etc... then there's how they interpret the whole experience individually and as a collective.

Today this phenomena struck me as focused even further within an outdoor education experience; there are so many different levels going on, to make it a little easier to comprehend lets try and split the overall group of people involved, into some component parts:

1 - the group
2 - the facilitators/instructors
3 - the staff accompanying the group (teachers/youth leaders)
4 - facilitators managers

Model of hierarchy in shared experiences;

One way of looking at the way in which this complex set of participants to 'an experience' interact is the model shown above however this model does not show which direction the flow of influence travels; consider the expectations of each level of the pyramid it becomes quickly apparent that this experience becomes a complex interaction simply by the four expectations highlighted in this way, not to mention the further breakdown into individual expectation!

Another way to interpret this interaction may be to view it as a continuum with each component of the shared experience listed from left to right, this would suggest a flow of influence however in which direction? Does the Facilitators Manager ultimately influence the overall experience; it may be argued that the facilitator/instructor has the difficult task of meeting the expectations of all the other three component parts...

Given that experiences are in their nature, reciprocal phenomena then all the component parts must in some way meet the expectations of all the others; this leads to the question who's expectations are the most important? Again it may seem we have come full circle and the pyramid hierarchy model of expectations may be argued, by the purest of outdoor educators/facilitators, is the prioritisation of choice. The pragmatic among us however may have experienced a compromise in this situation, it is an unfortunate circumstance but more often than not it is the 'accompanying staff's' expectations that take precedence; more often than not the expectation of the facilitators manager is simply that the expectations of the teacher/youth leader are met! I claim that this may be the view of the pragmatist as in the current economic climate the people who pay the bills are the people we, out of necessity have to keep happy.