team leadership, teamwork, team-building

No team bonds more closely than the crew of a racing yacht. And no team depends so vitally on its teamwork. Rounding Cape Horn in 50 knots of wind, the crew members must be able to trust and rely unpon each other. It's literally a matter of life and death. For Tracy Edwards and her Maiden team in the Whitbread Round the World race, there was an added and compelling dimension. They are all women - the first ever to enter this competition.

They were also the first to enter, period, with one other boat. Entering early and paying the fee gave the crew weekly updates on any rule-changes and stop-over information. Their planning was always completely up-to-date, which kept their training and their mental vision one step ahead of the competition. They also developed an early relationship, even a rapport, with the race committee. As every sportsman or woman knows, a committee can make your life extremely difficult - or ease your voyage significantly, which, says Edwards, happened with Maiden.

The early start and its beneficial consequences bear out her belief that, when all is said and done, good teamwork and effective team-building come down to organisation. Preparation and foresight are vital to team performance: though to many, Edwards must have seemed like a whistler in the dark. When she contact a top British yacht designer, and asked for immediate plans, she was not only far ahead of most other crews, but far ahead of her own finances. In fact, the necessary money was never raised.

The forethought, however, had left plenty of time to buy a secondhand and dilapidated boat, bring it back from South Africa and get it refitted. Moreover, the contact with the designer, including hundreds of pages of weather analysis, brought innovative ideas to Maiden. Finishing the refit in advance of rivals, Edwards had a yacht ready for crew training and preparation before many other crews had even started boat-building. The disadvantage of having a boat that wasn't purpose-built thus turned into an asset.

The value was especially obvious in the first stage of any team operation: selection. Edwards was inundated with applications from all over the world - over 300 women eager to help her prove that an all-woman crew, not just women helping to crew a mostly male boat, could race successfully round the world. Once the hundreds had been reduced to a manageable short-list, Edwards could use Maiden to help in final selection, seeing how candidates reacted under pressure, and starting the process of team-learning.

The eventual crew had already begun to learn about each other, about the boat, about mistakes and how to rectify them. Warm-up races could also be entered - although, amazingly, some crews in the Whitbread were racing together for the very first time. Teamwork thrives on real-life, real-time experience. Knowing this, Edwards entered her raw crew members in as many races as possible, starting in December 1988 with the transatlantic Route of Discovery race from Cadiz in Spain to Santo Domingo.

Meticulous as ever, Edwards took a thorughly prepared crew to Cadiz. Two days before the race, though, she started to worry. Every boat but her own seemed to be a hive of frantic activity. She felt that something must have been forgotten, that she had overlooked some very basic preparation. But then another skipper rushed over and asked to photocopy some of her charts: as a stream of others did likewise, Edwards relaxed: planning and foresight were again standing her team in good stead.

Maiden came first in its class on handicap and second overall, beating ten other Whitbread yachts in the process. The excellent result, however, counted for much less than the lessons learnt while competing. Edwards had planned to enter another race, starting in Bermuda. Instead, the crew sailed back to England to correct all Maiden's revealed faults. They had met many situations which would recur in the Whitbread. They took time out to analyse these situations and evaluate their performance.

As Edwards says, they had the luxury of being able to make mistakes and learn from them before the supreme test. Team-learning is psychological as well as practical. The transatlantic race had strengthened, not only the individual confidence of each team member, but the collective confidence which each had in the others. You can't just throw together a team of individuals, however talented, and expect mutual trust to ignite. A team must perform and learn together over time to develop real trust and confidence in each other.

Perfection of detail is essential to achieving general team confidence. Take safety, obviously a life-or-death factor in a round-the-world yacht race. First, Edwards recruited a doctor and taught her to sail (she actually saved the life on a man who went overboard from another, doctor-less yacht). Second, careful research identified the best safety equipment. Third, the crew practised using the equipment until they were comfortable and confident with it, and all understood how it worked.

Fourth, one of the crew members was appointed Safety Officer: she wrote an abandon-ship schedule, which again was rehearsed. For her pains, the Safety Officer was thrown overboard in the Channel again and again, to be rescued by the crew: they only stoped dumping her in the sea when fully satisfied with the routine. The net result was that Maiden had one of the best safety records in the Whitbread - and, of course, that the team's confidence was boosted by their trust in the safety equipment and procedures.

If you don't allow enough time for training and team-building (which are inseparable), you won't be sure of putting the right people in the right positions. Until that's done, moreover, you can't start training for and tackling the team task itself. It's also important to bring outsiders into the team operations - a lesson which Western managers have taught, after long and costly delays, from the Japanese. Like any business, Maiden had key suppliers. There was time for them to work with the crew and each other.

The sailmaker had time to work with the sail-loft; the rigger had time to work with the spar-maker; and so on. One of the crew members had a mathematics degree, and wanted to handle the boat's electronics; she became an apprentice with the company which installed all Maiden's electrics and navigation equipment. Edwards was beginning to assemble the equivalent of the basic unit of modern management: a team of specialists, covering every need, who can also work together as a highly efficient unit.

Another indispensable truth is that team-training, while it must always be relevant, mustn't be confined to the specific activities of the task. In addition to basic sailing, Edwards instituted a physical training programme, put together by a sports instructor. Here again, thought, planning and innovation paid off. Many of the male crews directed their training towards brute strength: Maiden's was geared towards stamina.

An all-female crew couldn't compete with males on muscle. They had to find new approaches - and lateral thinking in many instances actually resulted in superior performance. For example, the Maiden members weren't strong enough to raise a spinnaker in over 55 knots of wind. Instead, they used a blast-reacher, which worked so well that sail modifications were made. The boat became stabler and easier to steer, which in turn lessened the stress on the crew: Maiden could be pushed to her limits with greater safety than with a spinnaker.

The prerequisite for the cohesion and development of any team is communication. This was an element into which Edwards poured great energy. Weekly crew meetings were held while money was being raised and the boat refitted. The plan was to stop the meetings once the project was firmly established. In fact, they never ceased. The girls badly wanted to be continually updated on the project and its progress, as well as on each other and what was happening generally.

Communication alone, however, is not enough. Honesty is indispensable. If there were problems or differences among crew members, Edwards wanted them aired face-to-face and as soon as possible: there's no other way to alleviate grievances while continuing to work smoothly as a team. This is always vital, but especially in the cramped confines of a boat, in which people will spend many months in cramped conditions. Grievances left to fester endanger safety, raise stress levels still further, and kead to neglect of duties.

It's axiomatic that the team leader can't be exempt from the honesty. Edwards encouraged comments on her iwn performance as the necessary condition for her own honest critiques of the team. In general, she was determined to get input from all the crew. Like any good team-builder, she had set out to select the most brilliant and gifted people she could find. It makes no sense to recruit at this level and then to ignore the ideas and minds of such excellent colleagues.

Because the crew felt able to come forward and offer constructive suggestions in a positive atmosphere, many problems were sold with very little hassle or time-wasting. The vital ability to admit to ignorance without being made to feel a fool can only arise if trust and empathy exist between the team members. Creating that atmosphere is a prime responsibility of the leader. In the atmosphere built on board Maiden, all discussions, thinking and action became focussed on a positive outcome: Edwards herself never entertained the possibility of failure, and her mind-set became that of the crew.

The vision and the mission were especially inspiring, of course, and she was surrounded by people equally determined to suceed. Edwards calls herself lucky in these respects, but the truth runs far deeper. However inspiring the though of winning the Whitbread was to this all-female team, the moments of doubt and stress must have been innumerable. That's when the team looks to its leader, whose bearing and conduct at such moments can tilt the balance between success and failure. And more than the moment is at stake.

If the members sense that the leader is still convinced and confident about the team's direction and prospects, the passing moment of doubt will be converted into a lasting boost to morale. Knowing this, Edwards used many techniques to maintain motivation, which wasn't easy during periods of setback, when their race position was lagging, when day followed day of bad weather conditions, when crew members were sick or suffering the effects of being so long away from home. Edwards used to heep bits of good news up her sleeve, precisely for such moments.

Before the race, rebuilding morale meant taking the girls out for a crew meal, say, or showing them videos of the race. In the obviously tougher circumstances at sea, Edwards tried to keep the end-result uppermost in everybody's mind. Reading out mileage results was crucial: the crew had to develop enough mental hardness to take the bad news as well as the good. If a team does not receive the whole picture, the credibility of any information collapses, and that of the leader comes into question.

It's dangerously wrong, to quote one example from our experience in management seminars, for a managing director to put an optimistic gloss on the prospects for bonus payments when he knows full well that none will be made. The natural inclination is to give only good news. Nobody wants to demotivate a management team, or any other group, by telling it the bad news. But that's one test of team leadership - and a good team proves its goodness in adversity as well as success.

The difficult moments, though, shouldn't be created by internal inefficiencies. That's where good organisation - the key, as Edwards notes, to top quality teamwork - plays its crucial part. On Maiden, the crew were well looked after in port: accomodation was good, hire cars were arranged, clothes were ready in their rooms, and toiletries and the right currencies were provided, along with an information pack about the country (including the nearest bars, restaurants and clothes shops) and detailed information about the length of time in port and the work to be done before departure.

All the necessary spares were waiting wherever Maiden docked, thanks to a shore team so enviable that efforts were made to poach them. As it was, the Edwards team helped out many other crews. The excellent on-shore organisation left the crew time for richly deserved rest and recreation. Edwards believed that a happy crew is a fast crew - that the more they enjoyed themselves, the more rapidly the boat would run when they moved off. One yachting journalist seemed to have got this message: he wrote of Maiden, 'not just smart tarts, but smart, fast tarts.'

Despite their speed, the women didn't realise their ultimate vision of winning the record. They came second. For the crew, that was a great disappointment, but for yachtsmen (and women) all over the world it was a magnificent achievement, an outstanding team performance. The basic principles to which Edwards adhered were amply proven inpractice, starting with the weight placed on the initial organisation and preparation. That enabled the team to spend ample time on learning, training and re-evaluating.

On that foundation, Edwards could build honest and open communication, positive team focus on the final outcome, high levels of motivation, and organisation at seas and on shore during the race that matched the high quality of the initial approach. The crew exemplified the importance of being confident in your collective efficiency as a highly trained team, but also in your own efficiency as a highly trained specialist. Team leadership is a speciality itself, and Edwards mastered the art in high degree.

Without question, she was helped by her track record in bringing the project into any kind of reality. Every stage presented difficult challenges: distilling a skilled and motivated crew from the 300-plus applicants, raising the sponsorship despite a series of rebuffs, finding the boat, and making so effective a job of the planning and organisation. All that work on providing the foundations for Maiden earned Edwards respect. But once the team was formed, she had to set the standards, and earn respect all over again, by her own behaviour.

In any team, that means taking hard decisions. Very early on, Edwards sacked the second most important member of the crew, her first mate. If the leader believes that anybody on the team has become a disruptive influence, action must be taken. In this case, Edwards also sensed a direct challenge to her authority as leader. That made the decision inevitable, but no less difficult. Taking such decisions reinforces the leader's credibility: shirking them is even more destructive than the difficult personality who caused the problem in the first place.

Edwards didn't actually replace her first mate: she restructured the crew to cover the loss. The whole episode demonstrated great strength of mind. Throughout, that mental concentration - whatever the distractions and difficulties - stayed focused on the winning line and the vision of crossing it first. The focus of the leader and that of the team go hand-in-hand. That's fundamental in the relatively calm conditions of business life: but life at sea in an arduous competition tests the basics to the limits.

In the claustrophic, pressure-cooker conditions of a racing yacht, the leader is as vulnerable as anybody else. Edwards could have become demotivated, demoralised and unfair in her treatment of the crew: that would have guaranteed failure. She stuck firmly to the half-dozen principles of team leadership:

1. Set the right tone, developing mutual trust and bonding

2. Allot specific roles - and make sure that those filling the roles get genuine satisfaction from their tasks

3. Communicate frequently and honestly

4. Involve the whole team in deciding every aspect of the project

5. Keep the team fully informed at all times - whether the news is good or bad

6. Create a blame-free culture: mistakes are made to be learnt from

These half-dozen points are simple enough. They are basics. The cry of 'back to basics', though, doesn't fit the needs of team leadership. The right message is moving forward from the basics. Far too often in teams the commonplace task of being good at basics is not commonplace - which is a good way to fail, but no way to succeed.