The Humans Behind the Behaviour
I know, I know. Some people can be really annoying!
As tour guides, we meet people at all different moments in their lives. They’re celebrating or grieving, travelling after a divorce, a diagnosis, a death, burnout or a massive life change. For some, it’s their first time abroad and they’re nervous. Others are constantly announcing this is their 100th country. At that initial welcome meeting, almost everyone has some kind of discomfort, whether it’s about meeting new people, wondering if they’ve made the right choice, worrying about what the group will be like or just stepping into the unknown (and 90% haven’t read the itinerary!)
They’ve all arrived with a lifetime behind them before we meet and greet them, just as we have. That’s really the point of this post. We don’t know what people have been through before they arrive on our tour, and we don’t need to.
What we should remember, though, is that every person arrives with a history, a nervous system and their own ways of creating safety. Understanding that, can completely change the way we lead people. If you know me, you know I love humans, and ‘trauma-informed’ keeps coming to mind. Not because tour guides should become therapists, absolutely not, but because we work with humans. Often tired humans who are far away from home, sleeping in unfamiliar beds, hanging out 24/7 with new people and sometimes doing things that scare the absolute shit out of them.
I love to stay curious about life, people and even just the day ahead. When we’re ‘trauma-informed’, we might shift from asking, “What’s wrong with you?” to wondering, “What happened to you?” I love this in my day to day life, but as a guide, it’s not a question I will say out loud! Let’s be honest though, humans love to secretly diagnose people. Sometimes labelling someone can help us make sense of their behaviour. For me, these days, it’s more about making an internal shift from judgement to curiosity.
Instead of thinking, Why are they being so difficult? Take a breath and wonder what might be going on underneath the behaviour. The guest who asks a million questions about tomorrow’s itinerary might be annoying, but maybe information helps them feel safe and gives them a sense of predictability. The person who desperately wants the front seat every day might get motion sick, maybe they’ve had a previous experience we know nothing about, or maybe they just really like the front seat and aren’t very good at sharing. Stay curious but don’t give way to bad behaviour!
This doesn’t mean turning every behaviour into a psychological diagnosis. It means leaving room for the possibility that there’s more going on than we can see. And, let’s be honest, there is always way more going on underneath the surface than what we can see. The parts of people we meet are just the tip of the iceberg of a life lived. Some people are just fussy, talkative, forgetful, demanding or used to getting their own way but the point is that we don’t really know, so curiosity is often a better starting point than judgement.
That doesn’t mean difficult behaviour suddenly stops being difficult either. If one guest wants the front seat every single day, the other guests are eventually going to get pissed off. If someone monopolises your time, interrupts constantly, asks the same questions over and over again or needs reassurance every fifteen minutes, it affects the guide and the group. Trauma-informed practices aren’t about bending over backwards until everyone else is resentful, and it definitely isn’t about removing all boundaries.
We can understand someone and still hold a boundary. We can acknowledge that the front seat helps them while also explaining that the seats need to be shared. We can answer questions while gently directing someone back to the information we’ve already provided. We can support one person without allowing the whole experience to start revolving around them. For me, this is where good guiding sits: being able to hold compassion and responsibility at the same time.
The way we communicate those boundaries are important. There’s a big difference between pulling someone aside and saying, “I know sitting up front feels better for you. I do need to share those seats around, though, so let’s work out some other options,” and calling them out in front of the group with, “Why do you always need to sit there?” One creates a conversation. The other puts a giant spotlight on the person and can leave them feeling exposed, embarrassed or defensive.
I think this is something I’ve done fairly naturally for a long time without necessarily having the language for it. People often open up to me, but I don’t feel the need to drag their story out of them. I’d rather meet them with curiosity, notice what’s happening and give them space. Often, when people don’t feel interrogated or judged, they tell you what’s going on anyway. It might happen while we’re walking somewhere, during a quiet drive, over a coffee or when the rest of the group has wandered off. They share because they want to, not because they’ve been put under a spotlight and asked to justify themselves.
Curiosity without interrogation is really important to me. We can notice behaviour without making the behaviour the person. Someone isn’t the annoying guest who asks a million questions. They’re a person asking a million questions. Someone isn’t the difficult one who needs the front seat. They’re a person trying to meet a need in the best way they currently know how. That distinction doesn’t excuse everything, but it changes the energy we bring into the interaction. I mean, in our future stories they’ll probably be remembered for the behaviour, but while we’re actually working with them, they have a name!
Trauma-informed guiding also means offering choice where choice is possible. There are times when guides need to be direct. If there’s a safety issue, an evacuation, a snake on the path or a bus leaving in two minutes, this is not the moment for beautifully worded invitations designed to make everyone feel safe and happy. Clear leadership is key. But most of the time, we can shift from command to invitation without losing authority.
The more I learn about trauma-informed practice, the more I realise that a lot of it isn’t complicated. It’s creating as much safety, trust, choice and predictability as we reasonably can. It’s telling people what’s happening instead of leaving them guessing, offering options when options actually exist, explaining why something is non-negotiable, asking rather than assuming and avoiding unnecessarily taking someone’s control away. None of that requires us to know what someone has been through. It’s simply a more human way to lead.
I am the Queen of options. If people can walk somewhere and meet the bus, I’ll offer it. If there are multiple things on the menu within my budget, I’ll offer them all. If there’s an option for a night off, some solo time or a little breathing space, I’ll let them know. Instead of telling someone they have to join an activity, I think it’s important to explain what the options are. Saying that, some tours are very much 24/7, always-together kind of experiences, so finding moments where people can have a bit more space becomes even more important. That might be at mealtimes, during free time or anywhere else I can fit it in.
At my welcome meeting, I’ll usually let people know that there’ll be things they can opt in and out of, but there are also some non-negotiables. When the bus is leaving, for example, everyone is expected to be on it. Choice doesn’t mean chaos. Giving people options and holding the structure of the tour can exist at the same time.
Predictability is another huge part of this. As guides, we already do it all the time. We tell people how long the walk will take, where the steep section is, when the next toilet stop is, how cold the water might be, what time we’re leaving and what happens if they decide not to participate. We often think of this as good organisation, and it is, but it’s also nervous-system-friendly leadership. Knowing what’s coming can help people feel safer and more capable of making decisions for themselves.
It also helps to remember that when people aren’t comfortable, it doesn’t always look like nervousness. It can look like anger, controlling behaviour, people pleasing, shutting down, needing endless reassurance, talking constantly, withdrawing completely or becoming extremely rigid about plans. Again, we don’t need to diagnose any of it. We simply need to recognise that behaviour often communicates something, even when we don’t know exactly what that something is.
None of this means people are stuck in their stories forever. I’m a huge advocate for rewriting our own stories, taking responsibility for our lives and recognising that what happened to us doesn’t have to become who we are. Trauma-informed practice doesn’t mean wrapping people in cotton wool or expecting nothing from them. To me, it means meeting people where they are first, then inviting them forward from there.
We don’t need to know every chapter of someone’s life to treat them with dignity. We don’t need to excuse every behaviour, fix every problem or become someone’s therapist. We can simply become a little slower to judge, a little more curious about what might be happening underneath the surface and a little more thoughtful about how we communicate.
That’s probably the heart of it for me. Good guides don’t just move people from one place to another. We create environments, hold groups, set boundaries, offer reassurance, manage uncertainty and help people do things they might never have imagined themselves doing. We have no idea what every person has lived through before they step onto our bus, but we can still meet the human in front of us with curiosity, dignity and enough awareness not to make things harder than they need to be, for them or for us.
And in all honesty, the best way to truly see other people is to truly see ourselves. To notice our own triggers, flaws, strengths and weaknesses. To understand how we behave when we’re tired, stressed, hungry, overstimulated or completely over it. To know that when we give 100%, that 100% will look different every day for a hundred different reasons.
The 100% I gave yesterday might have felt like I was absolutely nailing life. Then I have a bad sleep, don’t get a decent breakfast, the coffee has run out and suddenly my 100% looks very different. The same is true for our guests. Their capacity changes from day to day, just like ours does.
Maybe trauma-informed guiding begins there. Not with trying to understand every person’s past, but with understanding that we’re all arriving in each moment with something. If we know ourselves well enough to recognise what’s happening within us, we’re far less likely to dump it onto somebody else. And if we can offer the same curiosity to the people travelling with us, we create tours that are not only better organised, but a whole lot more human.
