COACH YOU BLOG

Are you a team player? Really?
20/8/2012

Until recently I would have described myself as a team player. Now I’m beginning to wonder! I have recently had a few outings at the rowing club in an eight – that’s sweep oar rowing – like the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. It’s very different rowing to the sculling (two oars) I have been doing until now and involves seven other rowers, a cox and only one oar each (or should I say “blade”).

At the outset, just physically getting the boat on the water was a major challenge – everyone seemed very polite and calm about it … just me huffing and puffing then … it was SO heavy. We were swinging this thing from waist to over our heads, manoeuvering down to the landing stage and then carefully lowering it into the water some eight inches below our feet standing on the landing stage. All this preparation before any of the hard work starts… I can’t help feeling this is such a good analogy for the success of any team.

Everything is managed by the cox who issues instructions to the crew as a whole and individually – everyone complies. This is obviously important as it avoids injury and means the crew rows well and we all have a good outing. It felt good to be part of something bigger, exciting to be part of a team. On the river at last, we have to number off “Bow, two, three etc” (so the cox can shout at you by number which doesn’t feel quite so personal … I’m making that up …)! The warm up is steady and well-managed – the boat is held steady by the bow four whilst the stern four warm up which is then reversed. The warm-up has been my most enjoyable experience of rowing in an eight so far … all downhill from here on in for me …

The balance is a nightmare.

The team follow the lead of the guy in the front of the boat (“Stroke”) and trying to synchronise the timing of the stroke perfectly to his. (We’ve all had bosses like that …) There were a couple of experienced rowers but most of us are pretty new and had very limited experience of sweep oar rowing. The huge blades must go into the water at the same moment which, believe me is hard enough.  AND they have to be the same height all the time out of the water or the boat flops from side to side like an inebriated penguin. Hand heights, the pressure placed on each foot and even tension in either cheek of one’s bottom are vital to the balance and the whole crew is constantly adjusting by millimetres to attain the balance and a smooth row. The cox has us row with our eyes closed, listening for a single sound of the blades at the catch. He has us take our feet out of the shoes which are fixed to the boat – it leaves us “floating” and sensitive to the boat rather than boss of it. Any loss of concentration can tip the boat once more out of balance. It is exhausting and requires total engagement of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic senses. There is no room here for day-dreaming, no role for rebels and “individuals” – it only works, only feels right, when the crew row as one body.

Ah, but when it feels right …

 

The boat powers through the water, the only sound the plop as the blades slice into the water at the catch and the clunk of the oars feathering as one, the cox silent at last with no need for correction. A coming together of nine people as one…

 

This is not about a team being the sum of their parts – bringing their individual skills towards a common goal. This is about working in total synchronicity: the only goal to perfect each stroke with precision, elegance and power using their whole being to perfect that one moment. The crew’s focus is acute, their total concentration on the stroke. So much so that the cox acts both as brain and will-power as well as steering the boat. It is the cox that instructs any change of power pushed through the boat, any change of rating (strokes per minute), how far left to go, when to turn or stop. It is the cox that encourages the crew when they’re flagging. The only voice is that of the cox; chatting or comment is not encouraged.

There is an abandonment of individual will to contribute to the perfection of the moment. The lack of verbal discourse is an anathema to me as many of you who know me personally will laughingly appreciate. The strain of rigidly following everyone else, attention to detail and complete silence is almost too much to bear. However, eventually it stills my monkey brain and being subsumed to the will of the whole leaves me with an incredible sense of peace and calm – almost spaced out by thinking “nothing” for ninety minutes.

The only time I feel this in my working life is in coaching. At our best a Co-Active Coach is watchful of the client, “self” entirely subsumed in the client’s energy, all their sense heightened to reflect the client. We intuitively sense a client out of balance with the world and team around them and gently ease them back. We act as cox – telling them how far they’ve come, how much further there is still to go and give them to positive self-belief, pointing out their brilliance, that has them keep trying to perform their best in each moment.

How often do we make shifts and adjustments in our behaviour to maintain balance in our lives? Judging our partner's/boss’s/friend’s mood to provide the relevant balance? What would it be like to just concentrate on doing our best in every moment – just for the joy of it, without a thought of where it fits into the whole scheme of things or what it will bring us? 

 

There is, of course, the brilliant book “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle if you want to explore more or get a coach …

 

Or you could just take up rowing …