Team Building | Full Sail Leadership Academy

Self-Mastery on the Seas: Daily Debrief in the Life of a Steward Leader

4 min read

There’s always more to learn in all aspects of life.

Even masters of their craft will tell you they know nothing. Such is the nature of life.

Taking in our surroundings to adapt our behavior and mindset is a lifelong approach – not a one-off strategy.

As I was recently reminded during our latest Full Sail Workshop, I have plenty more to learn about steward leadership. Every day and every interaction is an opportunity.

Every Moment is an Opportunity for Leadership Coaching

What can a navy seal sailing an 82’ classic schooner teach you about leadership?

Simply put, more than you might think.

I recently had the pleasure to sit in on a training program led by former Navy SEAL Mark Divine. Divine talked about developing self-mastery of our skills and mindset to serve others to the fullest ability.

He stressed that only after we get past our own limiting beliefs and lack of skill can we fully engage ourselves to serve others and be a true steward of a team.

The authors of the book Steward Leadership – A Maturational Approach reinforce this message as well. However, it wasn’t until we did a team debrief after a recent Teams on Course ™ workshop in the Florida Keys that my learning came full circle.

Old Dogs Learn New Tricks in Team Building

We enjoyed the stout and beautiful winds for the sailing portions of our Teams on Course ™ workshop. Our chartered vessel went by the name When and If.

But this isn’t just any sailing vessel you’ll see on a Sunday afternoon on Lake Michigan. This is the boat General George S. Patton commissioned famed naval architect John Alden to build for him.

Patton so eloquently named the vessel When and If proclaiming “Bea [Patton’s wife] and I are going to sail this vessel around the world when and if the war ever ends.”

The boat is a two-mast schooner. Imagine – all original masts from the moment of its first launch.

If you aren’t familiar with sailing, even sailors experienced in modern sloops required some “on the job” training to manage the beauty’s rigging system.

The learning experience also served as a pertinent reminder for the corporate workplace: When organizations onboard fresh staff members, teaching a team’s shared language is critical for achieving success in respect of the mission.

The Ethos of Steward Leadership

In the classroom portion of our workshop, we discussed the importance of maintaining a personal and corporate ethos.

The essence of this ethos doubles as a code of excellence, as Commander Devine describes in his book Unbeatable Mind:

“Excellent results in life are the result of hard work built on a personal code of excellence. I call this your personal ethos. Defining this ethos requires deep introspection and skillful methods leading to a continuous pursuit of self-knowledge and growth. Life without a personal ethos can leave you directionless, not able to answer the question, Why? when faced with life’s many challenges”

Just as individuals can develop a personal ethos, organizations can develop them as well – and they should. For Divine, this includes the Naval Special Warfare ethos embodied nicely in this passage:

“We demand discipline. We expect innovation. The lives of my teammates and the success of our mission depend on me – my technical skill, tactical proficiency, and attention to detail. My training is never complete.”

Verbosity is nice, but why bother?

What purpose does an ethos statement serve in a corporate organization?

For starters, it uses a simultaneously shared yet unique language across the entire organization. Also, it dictates a specific yet flexible roll as the chief steward of the organization – in other words, shared qualities with room for individuality.

Again, words are nice, but they’re nothing without action. How does ethos translate into action?

In one way, the ethos provides a dogma for holding team members accountable and caring for them on a personal level – all in relation to their job performance.

The ethos statement should always reference how team members utilize their strengths for the greater good of others, the customers, and the overall organization.

Taking Our Experience Back to Full Sail for Leadership Coaching and Team Building

Post-workshop, our team did a deep dive to evaluate our performance-based largely on our ethos statement. The incredible experience we gained will embolden the value of our future Full Sail workshops with a fresh approach about:

How we as steward leaders can optimize our organization to benefit our customers.
How to identify our most important strengths that will help our clients discover their strengths to the fullest
How to maximize our client’s value from their first investment with us, in both time and money
How to prioritize a culture of psychological and emotional safety in an organization to create an environment where learning can thrive

As you become a steward leader, remember that you need to need to breathe, pause, think, and act so your team becomes stronger and serves your customers better.

Just like we needed some “on the job training” on the classic boat, your organization can benefit from a culture of learning and quest for knowledge.

Join us on our next adventure for a similar yet totally unique experience. Our next Full Sail Summit Workshop embarks from Salem, Massachusetts. We’d also be happy to serve you on Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, or the Seattle area waters during the months of May- October. Contact us for more details.

May 13, 2021/by Tim Dittloff

How to Position Your Team to Weather the Storm

Team Building

< 1 minute

The Positive Polarity Featuring Tim Dittloff

In a recent episode of The Positive Polarity, I had the pleasure of meeting with the host Dave Molenda who is also a #1 Amazon Best Selling Author and Speaker. It’s here that I shared key strategies on how you can utilize shared language, positive conflict, and connection to weather any business storm ahead.

March 1, 2021/by Tim Dittloff

How Steward Leaders Identify and Prevent Burnout in the Workplace

Employee Engagement, Team Building

4 min read

Whether on a sailboat, in the workplace, or throughout life, I’ve learned there’s one critical mental health skill everyone must learn to encourage smooth sailing.

We must understand what factors around us are in our control and which are out of our control.

You have no time to debate whether something is in your control while navigating a sailboat through stormy waters. The whole crew’s safety rides on each sailor showing up focused and motivated.

That’s why as a sailboat captain, I must recognize which broader caretaking tasks are under my control.

If a sailor shows up visibly burned out for their time at watch, I must ensure their wellbeing comes first so the entire crew’s wellbeing won’t suffer.

What do you think would happen if I didn’t send that person down below for some rest?

Even one sailor’s lack of motivation, attention, energy, and cognitive function could lead to unthinkable disaster on the water.

Sadly, most corporate leaders never fully acknowledge that the mental and emotional wellbeing of their team falls under their realm of control.

Just like the sailor, one team member’s symptoms of burnout will create a ripple effect across the entire team. Not only will their own work suffer, but it will lead to further slowdowns and spread negativity throughout the entire workplace.

That’s why every true steward leader understands they’re at the helm of preventing burnout in the workplace.

Preventing Burnout in the Workplace is Key to Employee Engagement

You may have heard that employee burnout has reached record levels during the pandemic. Burned-out workers are not engaged in daily tasks, so this truly demonstrates the impact of preventing burnout in the workplace on productivity.

Plus, burnout spreads. Remote work environments prevent one team member from showing up to work visibly burned out and spreading the negativity to others. However, working from home also creates other stressors that workers might find particularly challenging. It all depends on the individual.

The same logic applies to every workplace, age group, and company: Prevent burnout in the first place and organization-wide productivity will skyrocket.

Preventing Burnout in the Workplace is a Steward Leader’s Responsibility

As a leader, it’s your job to prevent burnout in the workplace.

Specifically, preventing burnout in one team member so it doesn’t spread to the entire workplace – much like water that gets inside a sailboat.

I know what you’re thinking. “You’re saying it’s my job to watch every single person’s mental wellness, really now?” Yes. Leaders understand their role as the caretaker of everyone across their team.

It doesn’t mean becoming overly parental in everyone’s personal lives or emotions. It does, however, go back to understanding your own control over their mental and emotional wellbeing at work.

“But I don’t scream and punish people.” You don’t have to. Everyone struggles to meet the organization’s expectations and their own internalized work expectations that you’re responsible for enforcing.

You might be the kindest leader in the industry already, but you also must acknowledge your role as each team member’s psychological caretaker in the workplace.

Change Your Mindset Towards Monitoring Stress and Caretaking in the Workplace

Now you’re probably wondering how a steward leader could manage the mental and emotional wellness of each person across a team.

First, think about the negative emotions within your control as a leader, specifically stress and overworking.

Just like the captain of a vessel must promote downtime and diversion to keep the crew fresh and alert, a corporate leader must monitor the stress levels across their team – both individually and holistically.

Doing so ensures you can prevent burnout in the workplace by plugging the leak at its source, keeping your team productive and enthusiastic.

Start by learning the key signs of burnout so you can identify and gently rectify them as they arise:

Cynical attitude
Overly critical of themselves or others
Irritability
Impatience
Lower energy than normal
Trouble concentrating and focusing
Disillusionment
Unable to sit still or constantly chatting
No satisfaction in their achievements

Sometimes this involves placing a team member in a new role with tasks suited for them. Others, it means talking to them about realistic expectations for themselves and the importance of self-care.

Stewards Use StrengthsFirst Leadership to Prevent Added Burnout in the Workplace

Ideally, you want to avoid creating the conditions that drive someone to burnout in the first place. A steward leader also understands that, like burnout, all types of negative emotion and energy spread.

If a captain pointed out the weaknesses of each crewmate constantly, the whole crew would sail in a state of perpetual fear and despair.

That’s why another critical part of stewardship, and preventing burnout, is adapting a StrengthsFirst mindset regarding yourself and your team.

With strengths leadership, we take time to learn each team member’s unique strengths. Make it your job to encourage each person’s strengths and help them to partner up with people that can offset areas that they are less strong in – anywhere you can.

This type of caretaking in the workplace – placing each team member in the right environment to thrive – is another psychological wellness component totally within our control as leaders.

It’s much easier to set your team up for productivity and avoid any burnout when each person’s working in “their element.”

Take the First Step Learning the StrengthsFirst Leadership Mindset and Transforming into a Steward

Becoming a steward leader with an eye to preventing burnout in the workplace doesn’t come overnight from reading a book or list of tips.

It takes dedication and time to change your mindset and communication style, especially the part that involves switching to the critical StrengthsFirst leadership.

A hands-on sailing workshop on the open water offers the perfect exposure to enhance your current leadership mindset and adapt the steward leader’s approach. That’s what we do at Full Sail Leadership, along with our comprehensive team-building program, to create a generation of steward leaders of all ages.

Join me and the Full Sail Leadership team for a workshop providing experience on the water and knowledge in the classroom. Sign up for a Full Sail Leadership workshop now! Or join us this Spring in the beautiful Florida Keys aboard the historic General Patton’s WhenandIf sailboat.

February 19, 2021/by Tim Dittloff

How (and Why) to Use Faith Over Fear as a Successful Steward Leader

Team Building

4 min read

Fear can drive you to do disastrous things you’ll later regret. When we’re confronted with a challenge, our brain’s fight or flight response kicks in – our fear instinct.

We react irrationally without thinking through the full range of possibilities and consequences. On the open water, fear-based thinking is dangerous because it leads to fear-driven action. Fear that’s not addressed when the seas are calm inevitably leads to trouble when disaster strikes.

That’s why every experienced captain understands the importance of leading from faith over fear on his sailboat. Just like sailing captains, your steward leadership charts the course for either fear- or faith-based decisions at your organization. Today’s uncertain and treacherous waters leave no room for fear. One poor decision made from a point of fear can lead your company down a dark path from which there’s no return.

Unsurprisingly, today’s remote workers report heightened fear and other negative emotions: 54% feel worried, 46% report anxiety, and 62% say they’re stressed.

As leaders, we must prioritize faith in ourselves first so we can lead from faith in good times and bad.

Why Faith Over Fear is the Key to Steward Leadership

As a leader, your job isn’t to bark orders, point out faults, and punish workers when they fall out of line or don’t meet expectations. The best leaders know that they must fill a role as caretakers of the soul for everyone across their team.

Your team already faces enough fear around every turn:

Economic uncertainty
Missing deadlines
Feuds with coworkers
Losing income and livelihood
Not living up to management expectations
Letting coworkers down
Poor company performance and the consequences

They don’t need more fear-based leadership radiating from your presence every time you walk by.

Instead, it’s your job as a leader to exude faith to and for your team. Faith that:

They are capable and prepared to handle the route ahead.
You’ll support their decisions made in good faith.
The organization is invested in their outcome and best interest.
Their coworkers are there to offer critical support.

This faith over fear mindset allows you to become a steward leader who protects his team and creates a safe place for them to thrive. Steward leaders are caretakers: They ease fears, supply tools, and offer support so the entire team can function at optimal capacity.

What Does Fear-Based Leadership Look Like?

It only takes one cataclysmic event for teams running on fear-based leadership to fall apart when it matters most.

Exploiting Weaknesses

Things like performance evaluations and meeting callouts do nothing but instill fear across every member of your organization.

When performance is judged by shortcomings, employees grow reluctant to speak up when there’s a problem they might get blamed for. Issues go unaddressed until they evolve into unavoidable roadblocks.

People point fingers to assign blame instead of finding the root cause of problems and working together to fix them.

Reactionary Thinking and Action

Fear-based leadership leaves you in a constant state of reactivity.

Since you’re chronically focused on your team’s weaknesses and shortcomings, you end up stuck ten minutes in the past backtracking, fixing yesterday’s problems, and dishing out punishments.

Again, this reactionary thinking causes us to ignore a problem’s root causes. Instead of fixing our boat’s structural problems, we patch the holes and hope they don’t leak again – but they always will.

Defensive Team Hostility

A fearful team operates from a defensive, and often hostile, disposition.

Your employees and colleagues show up to work every day worried about potential mistakes they’ve made that will be uncovered today and how leadership will react.

Everyone responds to criticism and complaints – even genuine ones – from a defensive state, seeking to avoid the full range of blame and its consequences. This leaves your team wholly distrustful of each other.

What Does Faith-Based Leadership Look Like?

When a leader prioritizes faith over fear, their team trusts them – and each other. Your team will know you have their back and you’re invested in their best interest.

Focusing on Strengths

Faith-based leaders operate under the assumption that people are generally well-meaning and want to do their best.

Instead of punishing weaknesses, you uplift people based on their unique strengths. You celebrate their individuality instead of forcing them to fit into boxes.

Rather than operating in fear, employees become excited to share their accomplishments and take on the next challenge as a team.

This could translate into removing traditional performance evaluations, reassigning responsibilities for employees, and just adapting a supportive mindset overall.

Proactive Responses

It’s always easier to prevent problems from happening instead of cleaning up after them.

As every sailor knows, regular boat maintenance and cleaning are key to keep your vessel in top shape. Otherwise, something could go drastically wrong at the worst possible time.

When you run on faith over fear, you lead proactively. You look for conditions that might create rocky water ahead and chart a new course.

Proactively preventing problems means no one is ever assigned blame, punished, or fearful.

Honest and Open Communication

Fearful employees don’t speak up when something might go wrong. They’ve learned to keep their heads down and avoid making waves.

Steward leaders foster an environment where their teams trust each other.

With widespread trust, people feel comfortable voicing concerns, problems, and mistakes because they know they won’t be punished. They also know that the issue will be addressed appropriately without anyone losing their job or being put in the corner.

People need faith in both leadership and those around them before trust can build.

Steward Leadership is Always the Answer to Trials and Tribulation

By definition, steward leadership makes you the caretaker of your team. Instead of promoting fears and exploiting weaknesses, it’s your job to lift up each individual worker’s strengths and create a trusting environment.

Effective steward leadership doesn’t happen overnight. People won’t suddenly trust you just because you’ve said something nice. It takes real actions, consistency, and time. Once your team realizes that you’re prioritizing faith over fear, they can learn to trust you. Next, they’ll start building trust and openness with each other.

That’s the goal and it’s the key to long-term success via steward leadership: the only caring way to lead and the only successful style for managing today’s uncertainty.

Are you ready to chart the course towards faith over fear steward leadership? Space is still available for our exclusive spring leadership workshop in the Florida Keys aboard General Patton’s historic yacht. Claim your spot now!

January 13, 2021/by Tim Dittloff

The Secrets to Building Resilience in the Workplace

Team Building

5 min read

Resilience (noun):

/rəˈzilyəns/

The capacity to quickly recover from difficulties; toughness. (Oxford Languages)

In psychology, resilience refers to our ability to cope with mentally or emotionally challenging situations and swiftly return to our pre-crisis mental equilibrium.

Resiliency is an acquired skill – it’s not something anyone is born with. I would even argue that those who seem born into mental toughness are simply bottling their fears and emotions.

Instead, resiliency is something we build within ourselves as a response to crisis and hardship.

We’ve all had a task we put off for weeks because even thinking about it made us anxious. Once we finally commit to the task, we realize it wasn’t as stressful as we imagined. Next time, we jump into the same task head-on.

As a sailing instructor, I get to witness this process of resilience-building in newbie sailors on the open water.

High winds, choppy waters, and extreme heeling of the boat are frightening experiences for new sailors. Just imagine the fear and panic you would feel yourself.

For me, however, I find such conditions exhilarating, comforting even. That’s because as an experienced instructor, I have the trust, knowledge, and ability needed to manage the situation mentally and emotionally – I have resilience.

Building such resilience in the workplace is key to traversing the inevitable rocky waters every company faces. It’s how you learn from crisis and grow.

The 7 Cs of Resilience in the Workplace

Over the years, I’ve learned that the high seas are the best place for building resilience. Sailing creates a situation where we face the perfect ratio of factors in and out of our control.

Specifically, sailing instills seven critical components of resilience:

Control
Competence
Coping
Confidence
Connection
Character
Contribution

A large part of resilience comes from understanding what we can and can’t control. For things we can’t control, we must trust the boat’s design, our crew, and God.

For things under our control, we must remain calm to make competent decisions and keep everyone safe. We must stay confident in our ability to cope with strength and dignity.

We need to uphold our own positive character and contribute to the team to the best of our individual abilities. Part of character also requires understanding each crew member’s unique character, contribution, and confidence.

Building Resilience in the Workplace by Weathering the Storm

Resilience isn’t something you can learn from a book or inspirational speeches. Resilience only comes from personal or collective experiences.

It’s so easy to judge people for making the “wrong” decisions in frightening situations. “How could they have done X? I would have done Y if I were in their shoes!”

The truth is that we never know for certain how we would react to a situation until we face it ourselves.

Every year, dozens of sailors decide to put themselves in crisis by signing up for the HOOK Race. Non-sailors would consider the HOOK Race a nightmare: It takes you over the relentless waters of Lake Michigan and Green Bay, through Death’s Door, and around Wisconsin’s treacherous Washington Island and Door Peninsula.

As the name implies, Death’s Door is no joke, even for the most experienced sailors. The hazardous conditions in this part of Green Bay have put hundreds of vessels out of commission – especially sailboats.

Death’s Door unique combination of wind direction, water currents, and rocks makes it the ultimate nightmare or exciting challenge depending on how you look at it.

This year’s HOOK Race was one of the most relentless ones yet. We faced wind speeds of nearly 65mph, torrential rains, thunder, and lightning. Winds tore the masts off seven boats and ripped the ails to shreds on several other boats.

Our boat made it to the end, so our resilience grew.

Every sailor who’s finished HOOK Race knows that once they’ve finished it, they have the resilience to take on anything – especially as a team. They walk away from the experience confident and armed with the coping tools they need.

Resilience and Mental Toughness Keep Us Focused

No one wants to hear this, but your team must face crises and emergencies if you want to build the mental toughness, character, and confidence needed to persevere.

It’s not what you go through but how you handle it and respond.

People who have experienced crises in life and subsequently spent time in therapy will often say they feel prepared to handle anything life throws at them. Although they wouldn’t repeat the crisis if they had the chance, they’ll say the crisis made them who they are today.

Every organization needs to learn mental toughness and resilience across the workplace. On one hand, this is harder than responding to individual crises because you must build resilience in multiple people simultaneously.

On the other hand, everyone knows it’s much easier to cope with a crisis when you have a supportive circle around you.

The Qualities Every Team Needs to Build Resilience in the Workplace

Today’s workplaces don’t prioritize resilience-building. Instead, workplaces run on fear.

Read between the lines a bit and you’ll see fear lurking around every corner at most companies. Fear of economic turbulence. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of being reprimanded, demoted, or fired. Fear of losing benefits. Fear of fellow workers. Fear of leadership.

We already know fear is a horrible motivator in other aspects of life – it drives us to make irrational decisions, react without thinking things through, lash out in anger, and isolate.

Why then do we still allow fear to run our corporate life?

To build resilience in the workplace, teams need an environment free of fear where the following conditions are met:

Teams should uplift everyone’s strengths instead of focusing on their weaknesses.
Individuals should feel responsible for the organization’s well-being and share praise during growth.
People must be held accountable for their actions – both good and bad.
Employees must feel respected enough to speak up when something’s not right or could be improved.
Workers must trust that they won’t be punished for certain mistakes – don’t create a culture of tattletales.

These qualities are the secret to a resilient workplace that keeps them focused on the vision. Resilient workplaces have the coping tools and mental toughness to respond to crises swiftly and shrewdly. With this type of support, a crisis goes from devastating to a small blip in operations.

Tackle Uncertainty Head-On with Effective Leadership

Resilience in the workplace and mental toughness comes from the top down. It’s your responsibility as a leader to build a culture of respect, trust, and honesty.

Approach leadership from more of a caretaker role – just like a captain at sea.

It’s the captain’s job to make sure his crew is fed, safe, connected, respected, and inspired. Today’s corporate leaders must prioritize the emotional and mental wellbeing of their team if they want to succeed.

Once a team’s well-being improves, job performance increases and everything falls into place. Then you’ll have a resilient team ready for the next challenge.

Build a Resilient Team on the Open Sea

Don’t wait for an emergency to analyze the resilience of your team. Start building mental toughness and support for the next challenge today on the high seas. Our sailing workshops provide the perfect challenge for teams to communicate and support each other.

Browse the Full Sail Leadership workshop schedule now!

December 11, 2020/by Tim Dittloff