“Sand team building on a boat works, it’s not by chance: the boat is a space where everyone brings their experience, their strengths and weaknesses, and must commit to a common goal. Like in the office, ”explain Ilaria Colleoni and Martina Cavallo, team building experts for the company Peplumwhich rests on the boat rental platform Sailogy for its activities. “The difference, compared to the work environment, is that the boat is an inclusive space, free from prejudices, with very strict rules but with many margins of freedom”.
The office is like a boat, the metaphor works
For this reason, the sailing metaphor is perfect for understanding more of the internal dynamics of any office, focusing on the critical issues between the “types” of colleagues and any unimaginable positive alchemies. For instance? “On the boat you immediately understand the value of collaboration, a value that in the office is instead often filtered by hierarchies and likes or dislikes: the leader who, at the helm, gives orders without really listening to whoever is behind the sails, will steer a stationary boat»Continues Ilaria.
Again: the boat imposes obvious constraints and no one would ever think of wasting time questioning them. The wind, the waves, the storm and the calm are facts that as such must be faced, serenely seeking alternative ways to overcome them.. We hardly ever live like this in the office: we complain, indeed, and we despair about what is not going in the right way. Losing the opportunity to find new resources to achieve the set goal, if not a more ambitious one.
Here then, with the advice of the experts, the identikit of the 5 colleagues in which everyone, sooner or later, may have come across, with the strengths and weaknesses on which it is worth working.
The anxious
The sea, like work, is unpredictable. In facing work like the sea, the anxious person has strengths: usually it is the precise one, who controls everythingonce again, and find the error. But it risks panicking. The boat can teach you the value of method for gaining tranquility: the navigation procedures are simple once understood. For an anxious person, it means that it is enough to develop a clear mental procedure, repeating the fundamental steps in the head, to reach the goal.
Advice for the leader dealing with the anxious? To make it work well, it is necessary clarify in advance the times in which certain operations will take place and reassure him more often about the fluidity of his work.
The disorganized
He is the colleague who always arrives late, almost always forgets something and always tries to get help, sometimes exaggerating in requests. Often what he lacks, and which will become evident in the boat, is a sense of responsibility towards others that leads him to contribute profitably and without wasting time to the common good. But he also has strengths: it is the colleague who usually adds a hint of creativity even in the most routine work. Since he doesn’t have a method, he does everything differently every time. But this can be good: the best way to really learn something is to do it in another way.
In a business setting, this creativity may not be understood and appreciated, as it comes from a person who seems to want to avoid routine chores. The boat is a playful, but serious space, in which the schemes fail, and resources of this type can also be discovered.
Team building on a sailing boat – photo Sailogy
The super demanding leader
Each team has a leader and, every self-respecting leader wants their collaborators to work in the best possible way, sometimes not taking into account the rhythms and operating methods of each one. It is certainly necessary to lead a group towards the achievement of objectives, but, sometimes, there is the risk of exerting exaggerated pressure on others and demanding too much, in a short time. Rigor and respect for the rules are its strengths, even on a boat, for a good performance. He has vision skills, usually, and he is therefore the first to understand the value of a functional change. But without the enhancement of all the team members, the goal will not be achieved.
His guiding words must therefore be listening, empathy and respect for differences.
The competitive, in the office and on the boat
It is present in all teams: it is the one that from the outside seems to be competing to win the World Cup, who always feels superior and experiences each result as an incredible victory. The sense of challenge is of course a strong point. But it must not become a race between members of the same crew who instead all have the same goal. On the boat or in the office, he will have to learn to question his way of facing the challenge: to go faster and win, it may be necessary to go slower and tack. And maybe rely on a colleague who finds a different tactic than the shortest route.
The perfectionist
He is the most punctual, precise and demanding, he doesn’t miss a beat. Yet, he too, must work on the theme of the role: in an office as on a boat, it is of fundamental importance to have a role, a proper task to be respected and on which to focus, without invading the spaces of others, to be able, together with the whole group, to accomplish the goal. The perfectionist will learn to focus on what is truly important to the common good, without focusing on unnecessary details.
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