Good afternoon,
Weekly...or Monthly?
Some of you, likely those who who will choose the monthly option offered below, don't always find time each week to read this letter. To be sure you all have the opportunity to choose, I'll continue for a few more weeks to announce that I now offer two options for receiving
The Unity Community -
weekly or monthly.
On the first Saturday of a month, everyone will get the same letter. The other 3 or 4 Saturdays of the month only the weekly subscribers will get a letter. If you switch to monthly and are occasionally curious about what you're missing, I post a link each week on LinkedIn, or you can go
here
to review any archived letter after it is published.
I
f you prefer the monthly option p
lease reply from the email address where you receive this letter. I
f you're a person of few words, a
simple "
monthly
" in
the subject line or message will suffice. If I don't hear from you, or of course if you specify weekly, you'll stay on the weekly list.
Please be sure you send your request from the email address where you receive The Unity Community, so I can be sure I'm identifying you correctly.
Airplanes and Sailboats - Two of my Loves!
For virtually all of my working life, I've been a pilot, part of the time professionally. There have been periods of intense flying activity, and hiatuses from flying. As any of you who are pilots know, a pilot is something you "become" more than something you "learn to do". Once it's in your blood it's there forever, regardless of how much or how little you fly - once a pilot, always a pilot.
During most of that time I've also been fascinated with sailing, and have enjoyed sailing whenever I had the opportunity. For a few years I owned a small sailboat, and I've often enjoyed renting or borrowing a sailboat, or mooching my way onto somebody else's, now including my son's. More about that in a few paragraphs.
Having spent a considerable amount of time with pilots and some time with sailors, I've noted that in many cases they are the same people. The experience of learning to cooperate with the natural elements
- or in some cases learning to work around the lack of cooperation! - is common to these two pursuits. And, similarly to what I described in the case of flying, once you've experienced and enjoyed the thrill of it you can never go back.
Of course this isn't everybody - quite obviously those of us who get bit by this bug are a relatively small percentage of the population. This assessment though is nearly universal among aficionados. It's also interesting that many pilots sail when they can't conveniently fly and many sailors fly when they can't conveniently sail.
This week, I'm going to discuss another analogy involving sailing - the similarity of a sailboat and its crew to a company and its team. One of my recent LinkedIn connections introduced me to Gillian and Christian Walter, a couple who promote a coaching technique they have dubbed
Inside Out Coaching to help people find a good balance in life. Gillian writes a blog, to which Christian recently contributed an article entitled
"Leadership Lessons from Sailing". He describes the leadership and teamwork on a sailboat as a microcosm of leadership and teamwork in larger and more diverse pursuits, in his case his company.
My son is a partner in the ownership of a 32' sloop (a particular type of sailboat). I've enjoyed several outings with him and my grandchildren on this boat. This is a much smaller boat than the one Christian describes. However the principles (both nautical and leadership related) are identical. My son, an accomplished sailor, is quite capable of managing his boat single-handedly. Nonetheless, when other family members or friends are aboard, it adds to the experience for everyone to join in. There's the helm which needs constant attention, the various lines that keep the sails properly trimmed, navigation, depth charts, and the other myriad details needing attention to keep a sailboat working efficiently. And of course leadership is necessary to coordinate all these activities.
The experience Christian describes, on a much larger and more sophisticated boat, is very similar to what I described in the case of my son's small boat.
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A Showcase of Leadership and Teamwork
A sailboat sophisticated enough to require a few hands to operate it efficiently provides a wonderful microcosm of a leadership structure parallel to that of a company or other organization. Large ships and airliners are other great examples. The small teams operating these vessels provide such good examples in part because they have a
very specific objective. The other factor that makes them interesting and illustrative is that they are uniquely isolated from society in performing their tasks. The effects of good or poor leadership and teamwork are pure and easier to study than for teams who mingle with the world around them and often have multiple, sometimes conflicting, objectives.
Christian does a masterful job of comparing the sailing experience with that of the leadership and teamwork (or in some cases, lack of it!) among the sales people in the good-sized international company where he is sales director.
In fact he draws these analogies so skillfully that anything more I add might detract from the points he makes. Enjoy
his article.
Let's Talk!
Do you find the analogies discussed here interesting? Want to talk about your experience with flying, sailing, leading or teaming? I'm all ears!
Whatever's on your mind, including your suggestions for topics or other improvements to The Unity Community, is fair game.
Reply to this message or go here if you'd like to talk.
Thanks!
