Do Your Crew Share Your Vision for Success?

As a leader one of the most important skills you can master is the art of making your crew want to do what you want them to do. Not only do you not have time to personally crack the whip continuously or micromanage every single crew member, it is absolutely exhausting and self defeating to do so.

They won’t thank you for it and you’ll never get as much out of people by doing this as you will if you learn how to tap into their own private sources of inner motivation.

What this really means is being able to communicate your vision for the yacht convincingly enough to make your crew buy into it… in other words, finding a way to make your crew personally adopt the yacht’s vision as their own, so they want to achieve those outcomes as much as you want them to. But how do you do this?

The secret is the yacht’s vision has to become important to them on a personal level: i.e. you need to find a way to match each crew member’s individual objectives to the team or yacht objectives. The most effective way to do this is to help them understand what the success of the yacht will give them personally as an individual. When people can see how their own personal or professional goals align with the yacht’s objectives, they will automatically become more self motivated andyou won’t need to push them as hard as someone who hasn’t made that connection.

Many people, particularly younger crew, may not have given much consideration to their own personal goals and might therefore need a little more help from you to get clear on these. Ask them to consider what they want to achieve this season: Perhaps they want to learn certain skills or understand something they didn’t previously. Perhaps they want to reach a level of experience or expertise in a new area or reach a financial goal that could take them on to something else in the future. Or maybe they want to acquire the necessary sea time and associated training that could take them to the next level in their career.

Whatever their personal objectives are, demonstrate how achieving the yacht’s objectives will give them what they want too. Ask the team to discuss the yacht’s goals for the season and then ask them to consider: What will achieving these goals give each of you personally? How exactly will every one of these objectives contribute to each team member getting what they want from their life or job this season and in the future?

When people are focussed on working towards specific personal goals, they work with a sense of purpose – which means they are more willing to go the extra mile and take responsibility for their work being done to a higher standard. Aligning the yacht’s vision with crew members’ personal goals also gives individuals a sense of ownership, autonomy and motivation that can never come from old school ‘command’ based leadership. An additional benefit is that having an inner source of self motivation will considerably reinforce your crew’s level of dedication to achieving their goals, which really helps carry them through the most difficult times in the season when they maybe feel like giving up.

How do you communicate your yacht’s goals and visions to your crew? Share your comments in the field below.

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Alison Rentoul is ex yacht crew with 15 years of yachting experience, and a professionally trained personal development coach working with crew worldwide, helping them realise their highest potential at every level. See www.thecrewcoach.com for more information.