Team Breakthrough Workshops

The sole purpose of the Team Breakthrough Workshop is to improve performance at work.  It begins with a one-day sailing skill-building and racing workshop on the water, with an evening dinner and debrief.  The second day is an opportunity to apply our peak performance on the water to our work culture.  It is a program appropriate for those organizations committed to sustainable growth.

Captain Howard’s teambuilding design is so much more than “a nice softball game that didn’t make any difference back at work.”  It is a robust, out-of-the-box activity about the quest for optimum performance.  Possibly no other activity reveals so much about  the dynamics of teamwork and the culture and spirit essential to succeed. 

Assessment:  We will begin by “walking in your shoes” during an initial needs assessment in order to understand your workplace and core cultural messages and behaviors that you are striving to embed back at work.

Design:  We will select from a large toolbox of activities those that will most fit for your requirements:  providing fun and exciting challenges that will illuminate current team strengths, dynamics and limitations and link to your training goals.

Delivery:  Teams will begin with a lecturette on safety and the day’s agenda, and immediately transition to their yacht for on-the-water practice and skill building.  During the morning teams will ramp up on basic sailing skills, understand and learn various roles, and learn to sail fast.  Following lunch we will have a series of races and on-the-water challenges requiring the application of the morning’s skills.

Evening Debrief:  The dinner and debrief back at the clubhouse are both a celebration of our day, a time to understand ourselves at a deeper level, and engage a conversation to generate new possibilities back at work.

Sustainable Shifts: Captain Howard has a core belief that sustainable growth is the goal of any developmental workshop. New behaviors and dynamics generated during the sailing day are fragile and may be lost without support and reinforcement.  We strongly recommend the following day’s workshop to explore in-depth possibilities, embed core cultural messages and new behaviors, and set a course of action consistent with these gains.   

This day is facilitated by Captain Howard, who is unique in his dual trainer/consultant and sailing expertise.  It links peak performance sailing metaphors to the real world of work and moves the team to action. 

Results vary with the nature of each group’s experience, the context in which they work, and the designed conversation and targeted results.  You may, for example, select from results demonstrated by previous teams:

• Breakthroughs in honest and open communication, moving toward a seamless organization 
• Increased willingness to engage an essential change initiative
• Resolution of persistent team barriers or personality conflicts, such as working collaboratively vs. competitively,
• Breakthroughs in performance and productivity, previously thought “impossible”
• New context for  understanding “risk”, and willingness for taking appropriate risks
• Reduction in blaming and increases in personal accountability
• Renewed energy and commitment to aligned action and goals 
• A dramatic increase in mutual support, and role adaptability.
• Breakthroughs in personal, team and organizational perceived limits.
• Higher level of performance in the face of pressure, complexity and ambiguity.

 A Thoughtful Invitation

Building teams, reducing conflict, improving productivity or shifting a culture is complex work deserving an exploratory conversation. 
If you would like to understand the possibilities for out-of-the-box results in your work team and how we might attain them please contact Captain Howard Edson.