We put a lot of things to the test during two months sailing the Pacific. Amongst other things we tested the theory of forming, storming (literally), norming and performing team stages www.businessballs.com/tuckman/
Teams in the work environment tend to have the luxury of going home and giving themselves a break. This is a little difficult when we were all literally at sea together relying on each individual 24/7 in all weathers.
As www.joseph.conrad in Lucky Jim “There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting and enslaving as life at sea.”
Soulmate’s team was made up of 4 men and one woman (me) and we have very differing levels of sailing skills but of course as we know a high performing team requires diversity.
So what makes a ‘good’ team?
A good team/crew has a high success rate. It sets out clear objectives that everyone agrees to-in our case Tonga!
A good team leader adapts their style from participative to autocratic depending on the circumstances, although hopefully not like the quote in ‘Captain Courageous’ by Rudyard Kipling
www.rudyard.kipling “… an angry captain is an unhappy crew”
A good team learns from experience, both successes and failures (we didn’t want too many of those), by reviewing its processes and thus constantly improving its own performance.
When faced with huge challenges (in this case a big storm of 10 metre swells and 60 knot winds for 20 plus hours ) different leadership styles came to the fore. Each member understood exactly what their task entailed and felt confident enough to master the obstacles by trusting each others capability
However the best part of being in the crew is we all know a good team works hard and plays hard, i.e. its members not only achieve their challenging objectives but enjoy themselves as they do so.
We certainly celebrated when we reached our goal-Tonga
Obviously you had a great time under a superb skipper!