What a lovely autumn we are having with such a fantastic range of colours starting to appear on the trees before they shed their leaves for the winter. It seems to have brought so many people out and I was pleased to see much activity on the River Severn too (the longest river in the United Kingdom at 354 km). It was quite early and already there were various boats on the river.
As I walked along there was a dragon boat moving well on the river to the beat of a drum. All of the people on board were dressed in similar red tops, so it was clearly a team. They seemed to be in training as no other boat of a similar type was about – they were all trying hard as the boat would speed, then slow whilst a briefing was made before starting off again at pace. The drum beater beating out a rhythm.
There were a few canoeists about and a number of rowing boats as well. The one in the picture caught my attention, as it was also a team in training rather than competition – this is a ‘coxed eight’. So, eight rowers plus a ‘cox’.
Unlike the canoeists or the dragon boat racers, everyone in an ‘eight’ faces in the opposite direction from which they are going. Well, with the exception of one person in this boat, who is called the cox. The cox does not row, their role is to steer and get the best route, to call out the rowing speed and deploy the best tactics to win over rivals.
This always strikes me as being a brilliant opportunity to get it all wrong, OR, to work as a fantastic team and get it right. Typically, the cox is the one person who is least able to row. The main attribute of a rower is strength and stamina. The cox also tend to be smaller, to avoid handicapping the team with excess weight. Now this is not a lesson on the layout of a crew in a boat, although anyone who has seen a rowing ‘eight’ will know that they tend to be pretty strong people (female or male). This is more about realizing that everyone has to be excellent at what they do:
- The strength and stamina of the rowers
- The skill to keep your stoke in time, else oars could collide with devastating effect
- The technical aspect of each rowing stroke
- The correct tempo being signaled by the cox
- The direction of the boat to miss competitors, to miss troublesome parts of the river, to miss the river bank
This list could go on with so much more but I think you have the idea.
Now how does all this work? I think it is quite profound:
- It is the ability to be excellent at what you do, at an individual level
- It is the commitment to the team, to be your best for the team
- Crucially, it is the trust to do what you are excellent at, whilst trusting others to do what they are excellent at.
If any part of this is wrong, the whole does not work – if you are one of the oars and are not fit or accurate, the whole of the boat will feel unbalanced, if you are the cox and choose the wrong tempo or the wrong route to steer you all fail to get the result.
Now for any team you are part of, or run:
- Are you all excellent at what you do?
- Do you keep fit for the tasks in hand?
- And most critically, have you developed the trust in your team to ensure that you all get on and do what you are there to do?
- If not, what training are you doing to correct things?
- What honest debriefing are you having to build that trust for yourself and for the team?
Now these are powerful questions and if the answers are all affirmative, perhaps your team performance will be as powerful as a top performing ‘coxed eight’. Even if, as one of the oars, you cannot see where you are going because you trust the person steering implicitly.
Now that is a top performing team….!
I’ll leave you to steer your team to the winning line.
My best wishes,
Peter
