Team Building

Build the foundation for productive teams focused on common goals.

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

Why Respect in the Workplace is the Secret to Positive Conflict

Team Building

4 min read

Respect: Everyone demands it but only the smartest leaders do what it takes to earn it.

Respect in the workplace starts at the top. If leadership doesn’t foster a culture of respect and dignity, why should team members feel compelled to reciprocate?

If you’re suffering from a complacent team and shriveling productivity, maybe it’s time to revisit respect across your team.

Millennials, for example, make up the largest generation in today’s workforce. When asked how leadership could improve their workplace, over 90% of working millennials said they just want their accomplishments recognized!

That just goes to show today’s leaders aren’t doing the bare minimum to earn their team’s respect.

It’s important to foster a culture of respect in the workplace where everyone feels valued and accountable. You can’t create a conflict-free team – nor should you try – but you can encourage healthy team conflict based on trust and respect.

Widespread Lack of Respect in the Workplace Undermines Your Work as a Leader

Imagine a ship where the captain doesn’t respect the crew and the crew doesn’t respect their fellow sailors. Sailors would ignore commands, neglect to share vital information, and lead the vessel to danger.

A lack of respect ripples across your team, dragging down productivity and engagement while creating negative conflict.

People don’t respect someone who hands down orders and disappears until it comes time to enforce them.

When a lack of respect plagues your workplace, trust disintegrates. Workers don’t trust each other nor their leaders. Major symptoms arise like:

Team members withhold vital information out of fear they’ll be punished.
Negative conflict leads to chronic fighting and unproductive disagreements.
People stop speaking up because no one listens to them.
Productivity and engagement nosedive. Poor respect, trust, and engagement create a negative feedback loop. The organization gets stuck reacting to problems and can’t focus on healthy growth.

You Can’t Demand Respect in the Workplace – You Must Earn It

Amazing leaders don’t think of themselves as parents managing children or tsars controlling subjects. The best leaders consider themselves the stewards of their team.

A steward is a caretaker. A steward leader doesn’t try to control their workers – he or she invests in their wellbeing. A steward leader knows respect should be mutual and earned. They lead by example, hold themselves accountable, and encourage honest discussions.

Respect starts at the top. As a leader, you’ll have to earn the respect you wish to receive – and it all starts with trust. If workers are used to being neglected, ignored, and punished, it will take some time.

Chronic trauma from negative conflict is sticky and people develop unhealthy coping methods to avoid future negative conflict. You’ll have to work tirelessly building trust to break down those coping strategies and foster widespread trust.

Why a Conflict-Free Team Shouldn’t Be Your Goal

Conflict-free workplaces don’t exist. Even if an organization appears conflict-free, that only means people’s voices are going unheard and neglected. A conflict-free environment means people have stopped speaking up.

Positive team conflict is vital. People voice their grievances and concerns with respect and the team addresses them together. People aren’t shouted down or punished for speaking their minds.

Positive Team Conflict Improves Psychological Safety

Fear is a tricky emotion. When people feel unsafe in their surroundings, their brain triggers fight-or-flight mode. Rational thinking shuts down, giving way to emotion-driven decisions.

Over time, fear erodes a person’s sense of safety. People can’t exist in fight-or-flight mode forever. Instead, their brain adapts with learned helplessness.

They say and do things to avoid trauma and conflict. They repress their true emotions.

To reverse these problems, your team must feel psychologically safe. Only when people feel psychologically safe will they feel comfortable enough to voice ideas and address grievances.

Positive Team Conflict Encourages Growth

When there’s no conflict, it means problems are bubbling below the surface just waiting for a spark to explode. Think of a shoal that goes unseen by a sailing crew who is inattentive to the nautical charts and GPS. Both lead to disaster.

No one cares about meeting organizational goals – and why should they if the organization’s leadership doesn’t value their contribution?

When team members feel valued, appreciated, and respected, your organization can focus on addressing problems and growth.

Positive conflict digs you out of the reactive cycle. People feel invested in the wellbeing of the organization because leadership is invested in their individual wellbeing.

Trust Breeds Positive Team Conflict

It all starts with trust. Think of the last time someone wronged or betrayed you. Whoever it was no doubt had to earn back your trust. Maybe they didn’t change their behavior and never earned your trust back.

Leadership must show why the team should trust them. As we all know, just saying you’re sorry is never enough unless you make changes to show it. That’s why trust and respect must start at the top.

Respect and Positive Team Conflict Lead to Better Accountability

It’s a positive cycle: Positive conflict breeds respect and accountability which encourages positive conflict.

When people have the entire organization’s best interests in mind, they voice concerns, problems, and ideas freely. People are held accountable – both for their good behavior and bad.

When team members and leadership are held accountable for mistakes AND recognized for achievements (with respect), that encourages trust.

Practice Respect and Effective Team Building on the Open Water

Trust and respect don’t happen overnight. Sailors must spend time learning with their fellow crew making mistakes, building communication, and growing.

The same is true of team building. Fostering a culture of open communication, respect, accountability, and positive conflict takes time. Leadership must first earn trust and respect.

Full Sail Leadership lets you chart the course towards growth and psychological safety on the open seas. Our workshops slash turnover rates, absenteeism, and poor productivity in a hands-on exciting environment.

Find out why a day on the water with Full Sail Leadership is exactly what your team needs to start its path towards growth!

October 12, 2020/by Tim Dittloff

Don’t Let Fear Sabotage Your Team – Learn to Manage It and Adapt

Employee Engagement, Team Building

5 min read

Fear is everywhere.

In many ways, we wouldn’t survive without a healthy dose of fear.

Fear prevents us from walking into traffic or balancing on the edge of a cliff.

Originating in the amygdala, fear is a fundamental component of shrewd decision making.

But like any emotion, the key is balance and management.

If we lose control of how to manage our fears, they overtake us.

We stop taking risks. We internalize. We become stagnant.

On the other hand, without fear, we operate indiscriminately as if consequences don’t exist.

The same thing happens across teams – and it can sabotage an entire company’s success.

How Fear is Paralyzing Your Workplace

On a sailboat, fear can be everywhere we look: the unrelenting water, the wind, the unknown.

Even the reliance of other sailors can invoke fear – what if we can’t trust them to make the right choice in rough water?

The same is true of any business. Workers face different fears every day: unhappy clients, scolding from bosses, letting down other workers, potential layoffs.

Like on a sailboat, these fears can paralyze a workplace if they’re not confronted and managed.

Fear prevents us from making rational decisions. Over enough time, sustained fear can impact memory, emotions, and other psychological processes.

Think of the fight-or-flight response.

It’s useful if you accidentally step into the street, see a car barreling towards you, and quickly jump out of the road. But living in a sustained fight-or-flight state would cause intense generalized anxiety – everything becomes a threat.

Even in cases where our fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, we wouldn’t want it to cloud our judgment and overtake our actions completely. Jumping out of the way to avoid a car won’t help if you jump into another lane filled with traffic.

What Does Fear Look Like in Organizational Behavior?

Over time, sustained fear mismanagement leads to burnout.

Fear is also contagious. On a ship, we’ll isolate a sick sailor to prevent infecting the entire crew. An outbreak on a ship at sea is a disaster.

Within an organization, fear spreads like fire. It infects individual workers, departments, roles, processes, relationships, and revenue.

Here’s what a fear outbreak might look like across a business:

Personal fears: Letting down coworkers, missing deadlines, unprepared for meetings, alienation from goals and outcomes, etc.
Business fears: Departments in frequent disagreement, unclear goals, low confidence, lack of honest communication, low morale, etc.
Existential fears: Unstable markets and economic outlook, automation and AI, changing culture, layoffs, etc.

5 Strategies and Techniques to Manage Fear and Avoid Sabotage

You can’t avoid fear completely. It’s a healthy reaction to instability and danger.

Instead, focus on confronting and managing fear. Turn fear into a useful tool for communication, dedication, and growth.

1. Prioritize Psychological Safety

We’ve all been in situations where we feel psychologically unsafe.

Verbal abuse, gaslighting, emotional manipulation, lies – these all take their toll. Over time, we build unhealthy coping tools and adapt learned helplessness. We stop speaking up and setting boundaries.

On the sea, a lack of psychological safety is dangerous. Imagine if the first mate was afraid of stepping on toes so he didn’t alert the captain to an oncoming iceberg! That’s how the Titanic sunk!

The same is true of a workplace. If someone is afraid of being reprimanded or attacked, they’ll never speak up.

A psychologically safe environment is where:

People feel obligated to speak up when something’s wrong.
People are held accountable for their actions.
Disagreements aren’t inherently aggressive – certain words and actions are.
Asking for help isn’t viewed as annoying or poor character.
Decisions and risks are made for the good of the organization.

It’s not about creating a safe space where everyone says and does what they please without consequences. If people feel psychologically safe enough to say rude things or give detrimental advice, that’s not safe for others either.

That’s why accountability is critical.

2. Develop a Strength-Based Organizational Attitude

Everyone hates performance reviews, don’t they?

Why? Performance reviews or employee evaluations are frightening situations. They drum up all kinds of fearful thoughts like

Have I accomplished enough this year?
Are layoffs coming?
Is my raise on the line?
What did I do wrong this time?

I know this might be surprising, but no one likes to be reminded of their weaknesses. We all have weaknesses we could stand to improve. Unless they routinely make other people’s lives harder, then why are weaknesses even worth addressing?

Instead, eliminate fear by focusing on strengths.

Talk to team members about areas they truly excel – and what they dread.

Whether on a sailboat or at workplace, teams perform best when everyone plays up their personal strengths.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we should ignore major shortcomings to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. In most cases, however, we can avoid a situation where someone’s weaknesses are on full display by promoting the use of their strengths from the beginning.

3. Promote Positive Conflict and Accountability

Conflict is painted in a negative light far too often.

We’ve all seen relationships between two partners who never fight. It’s almost eerie – surely no one can avoid conflict forever.

Most times, a lack of conflict means people aren’t speaking up about problems.

Those problems just bubble below the surface until they pressurize and explode.

No matter the situation, people avoid conflict from fears of:

Being attacked or shouted down
Hurting another person’s feelings
Looking stupid or emotional
Failure to enforce boundaries

Many times, a worker is eager to express their grievances – at first. Later, when no one is held accountable, boundaries are ignored, and nothing changes, they stop speaking up. What’s the point?

Conflict turns positive when two things happen:

People trust they won’t be attacked or get anyone in trouble for speaking up.
Others are held accountable, respectfully, for their words and actions.

4. Build Trust to Learn About Their Fears

We can’t assume people will suddenly be comfortable speaking up after years of bad experiences.

If we want to know our team’s fears, we must ask them.

It takes time to earn trust. People need to know they’ll be respected before they’ll speak up. They need to know leaders will provide honest and transparent answers.

Team building exercises are excellent tools for jumpstarting a new culture centered around trust.

On a sailboat out on the open water, leaders and teams must work together toward a common goal in a way they never have before.

Teams can take that new attitude back with them to the workplace and apply the principles of trust.

Trust is paramount.

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5. Offer Transparency and Stability in Times of Uncertainty

We’re all facing rocky waters right now with no end in sight.

Workers are anxious about layoffs, economic downturns, automation, and acquisitions.

Leadership owes them transparency and stability.

If you don’t know something, say so. Don’t sugar coat things.

At the same time, routines and rituals can help create a pillar of stability in troubled waters. Routine is your lighthouse.

Science shows rituals – no matter how small – calm our nerves. They offer a semblance of control when everything feels out of our control.

Ask any sailor. They’ll tell you their favorite ritual before embarking, like wearing a certain cap or putting on a life vest in a certain way.

Don’t Let Fear Run Your Life – Don’t Let It Dictate Organizational Behavior Either

I’ve seen countless businesses at the brink of succumbing to widespread fear. By fostering steward leadership, business leaders can turn an entire organization’s attitude around.

It won’t happen overnight. Effective team building takes time, effort, and dedication – especially from those in leadership positions.

Tackle business fears on the open water. Learn how Full Sail Leadership development and team building workshops can increase productivity and communication.

September 14, 2020/by Tim Dittloff

9 Essentials of Steward Leadership Development for Engaged Teams

Employee Engagement, Team Building

5 min read

Today, the term “steward” refers to someone called to look after the passengers aboard a ship – a caretaker.

I’ve found that steward leadership results in engaged teams who are invested in the organization’s mission, vision, and values.

Unfortunately, this is a challenging concept to grasp. Leaders tend to assume a controlling role over their employees – as if workers are a form of capital to be shaped as the company desires.

“I pay these people a good wage, what else could they want from me?”

You can’t just throw money at disengaged teams and expect them to suddenly become productive. Studies show that 60% of workers will consider leaving a position if they feel their work isn’t captivating enough.

Steward leaders, on the other hand, invest in both the financial and emotional well-being of their employees.

Stewards care about the lives and hearts of their crew outside the office walls.

When workers feel valued and respected instead of alienated and reduced to a financial figure, an amazing synergy happens: those team members become the stewards of the organization’s mission, values, and vision.

What is Stewardship in Leadership Development?

In 2013, Julia Kukard, Kurt April, and Kai Peters published an important book called Steward Leadership: A Maturational Perspective under UCT Press.

According to the authors, steward leadership is “a form of leadership that focuses on others, the community and society at large rather than the self.” They explain that a lot of senior leaders tend to adopt a steward leadership outlook naturally as their careers mature.

Mature and experienced business leaders know you can’t force productivity out of people. They know a team needs to feel respect, compassion, and inclusion before they’ll engage wholeheartedly.

How Does Steward Leadership Differ from Servant Leadership?

Under servant leadership, the leader exists to serve the team members. With traditional leadership, it’s the other way around: the team serves the leader.

Steward leadership is different: a steward leader cares for the team members, the organization, and society as a whole. Their actions are done in the interest of growth for the organization’s mission, vision, and values.

Living through example, steward leaders attract talent who hold the same values.

9 Essential Components of Stewardship in Business

Community building, responsibility, and trust within an organization all hinge on these nine components:

Personal Vision
Personal Mastery
Shared Vision
Mentoring
Vulnerability and Maturity
Valuing Diversity
Experimentation and Risk-Taking
Raising Awareness
Delivering Results

Steward leadership, as an attitude, starts with a person who embodies these characteristics.

When you’re out on the water, and things get rocky, what happens? You band together with fellow crew members around a shared vision: getting to shore safely. That shared vision leads to self-governance, which keeps the individual and organization on course.

A steward leader should inspire trust in team members. No one can put themselves into a vulnerable position without complete trust. People must have faith before they speak up, brainstorm, and offer constructive criticism openly.

Widespread trust empowers team members to adapt their operations and promote the organization’s growth.

Steward leadership can’t manifest without maturity.

It takes maturity and vulnerability to build healthy inter-dependent relationships, rather than toxic codependent ones.

A mature and emotionally intelligent leader realizes they are only as successful as the team they’ve assembled. No single person has the answers 100% of the time.

Emotional intelligence and maturity allow a leader to step back and invest in the people around them, when necessary.

In our blog, you can find countless case studies of companies across the country that have accomplished amazing things through stewardship leadership development. Repeatedly, a caretaker mindset delivers incredible results.

I’ve seen companies on the brink of collapse pull through – and thrive – after transforming their attitude in favor of steward leadership.

Steward leadership begins in the heart. Have you ever seen someone forced into therapy by a spouse or family member? Nothing changes if they don’t have a genuine desire and commitment to change themselves.

To become a steward leader, a person must commit to empathy and encouragement across the team.

Using Steward Leadership Development to Weather the COVID-19 Crisis

John F. Kennedy once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

A steward leader asks what they can do for their company – especially in times of crisis.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen companies do extraordinary things to assist their workers:

Embracing pets and children in the workplace
Sending pints of gourmet ice cream and essentials
$250 Amazon gift cards
Asking team members to introduce their kids or pets during Zoom meetings

You can bet the companies who adapted steward leadership principles like these will come out of this crisis in much better positions than others.

Here are a few examples of ways companies have risen to the challenge of stewardship during today’s trying times.

Incorporating Families

Goodway Group hosted a half-hour “Family Fun Friday” so workers could introduce their kids. Jillian Gap, Goodway Group’s People Experience Director, said it included “music, magic, and laughs.”

Everyone could use a lighthearted break, especially taxed working parents.

Other companies like F&B NY, The Media Kitchen, and PubMatic also tried to lighten the mood by encouraging teams to bring kids, pets, or a glass of wine to lunches or meetings.

Wellness Programs

Salesforce took major strides towards worker wellness by launching a series of programs and initiatives. The Thriving Mind benefits program provides mental and emotional health resources for employees and their families.

Meanwhile, the B-Well Together twice-daily broadcast connects industry luminaries with their employees to discuss wellbeing.

Salesforce also made Plum Village’s Zen Meditation App available to all its workers through the Salesforce App Catalog.

Material Support

People can’t concentrate on work when their basic needs aren’t met. During COVID-19, Salesforce and many other enterprises launched employee assistance programs to help lift workers out of survival mode.

It’s never been more obvious that every team member faces a different reality and struggle. Steward leaders know not every worker needs the same help. That’s why you see companies like Salesforce jump into prioritizing conversations and connections.

Stewardship Impacts All of Society – Not Just the Company

Treating workers right doesn’t only benefit the company – it improves society profoundly.

Bob Chapman, the CEO and Chairman of Barry-Wehmiller, views his team members as “someone’s son or daughter, mom or dad, brother or sister.”

He points out that his attitude and treatment create a ripple effect: how we treat our team members impacts how they treat their family at home and everyone in their lives.

Think of it this way: how many times have you seen someone lash out and said to yourself, “wow, I wonder what they went through today?”

Taking a few moments to treat workers with dignity, respect, and care can lead to healthier families, quality marriages, and a more wholesome society.

A steward leadership mindset creates team members who share a genuine investment in the company’s vision, values, and mission. When team members care about all business aspects, engagement improves, and productivity soars.

Learn how to become the steward of your team with Full Sail Leadership’s COVID-compliant workshops.

August 12, 2020/by Tim Dittloff

7 Strategies for Overcoming Fear in the Workplace

Team Building

Photo by niklas_hamann on Unsplash

5 min read

What is fear? What am I afraid of?

Most people have no trouble naming their obvious fears like public speaking, spiders, or standing too close to the edge of tall buildings.

But what about all the fears we don’t notice? Those are the fears that wreak havoc across our lives.

Fear of success, failure, commitment, change, the unknown.

Overcoming fear in the workplace is critical for creating a growth-centric environment where trust, communication, and strength thrive.

Perhaps that’s why we focus so much on the obvious fears like snakes and spiders. They’re easy to avoid and don’t require serious self-reflection.

I believe the most successful people have a special skill for finding, embracing, and challenging their fears. That’s one thing that sets them apart from everyone else.

7 Strategies for Overcoming Fear in the Workplace and Building Sustainable Success

In all my years on the water, I’ve noticed a sailor’s success hinges on his or her relationship and reaction to fear.

If a skipper is afraid of the waves, wind, and speed, everything will go wrong that possibly can. On the open seas, that’s not the situation you want to be in.

However, if that same skipper looks fear in the eyes and embraces the uncertainty for what it is, he can seamlessly adapt in challenging situations and overcome obstacles. That’s where true success lies.

The same principles for overcoming fear in sailing apply to the workplace beautifully.

1. Think of Yourself as a Steward

As John Maxwell once said, “Anyone can steer a ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course.”

My question to you is, are you charting the course or just steering the ship? Overcoming fear in the workplace starts with those in leadership roles.

I recommend all executives start thinking of themselves as stewards rather than business leaders. A steward functions as a caretaker. They make sure everyone on the ship is heard, motivated, fed, and encouraged.

We’ve all seen over the past few months that our environment can change in an instant. We can’t commit to the unstable world around us, but we can commit to each other. Removing fear starts with proper leadership.

2. Build Trust Across the Team

You absolutely cannot overcome fear in the workplace without trust.

No one wants to wind up on a boat where they can’t trust their fellow sailors. I’ve seen sailors break parts of a ship and shift the blame to someone else. It’s not pretty.

When a team suffers from trust issues, people live in constant fear. People can’t allow themselves to feel vulnerable, so they never speak up – even when they absolutely should!

Distrust on a team is like a windshield crack: Once it appears, it continues to spread. It makes people fearful and deteriorates morale. No relationship can succeed without trust, and teams are no different.

People need to feel respected and understood before they can trust anyone.

3. Lead with Strengths, Not Weaknesses

Everyone fears performance reviews – and why shouldn’t they? Who wants to sit down with the boss just to be reminded of their biggest weaknesses and failures?

In any relationship, highlighting someone’s shortcomings breeds distrust and chronic fear.

I recommend overcoming fear in the workplace through strength-based leadership. When each worker focuses on improving their own strengths during normal conditions, they’ll tap into those strengths when the waters get rocky.

Build trust by praising everyone’s strengths. Constantly reminding people of ways they fall short promotes nothing but fear.

4. Use Positive Conflict as Opportunities for Growth

Most people fear conflict. It makes sense: We’re conditioned to believe that conflict is always negative and riddled with aggression.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. In fact, positive conflict is vital for learning, adapting, and growing.

In my experience, the most successful sailing crews openly debate diverse ways of racing a regatta without fearing an adverse reaction. The key element here is trust.

When teams don’t trust each other, conflict is always negative. Resentment builds, workers disengage, the mission all but vanishes, and turnover rates skyrocket.

5. Make Sure Everyone is Committed to the Goal

A lack of commitment to the organization’s shared goal is a structural issue. If we don’t address the structural issue, it impacts every aspect of operations.

Take sailing, would you want to board a ship where the entire crew isn’t committed to the goal of sailing safely and reaching your destination by any means necessary? If even one crew member lacks commitment, that puts everyone aboard the ship in danger!

Every worker needs to know others have their back in times of uncertainty and chaos. Otherwise, they operate in constant fear of failure.

In many cases, this type of fear must first be addressed in leadership by reevaluating the mission, culture, and onboarding process.

6. Encourage Everyone to Hold Others Accountable – Respectfully

Ever wonder why people who stick with AA or other group counseling program are successful in their goal to avoid alcohol or substance issues while others can’t manage more than a few days? It’s not the program itself; it’s the peer accountability.

Peer pressure can be positive or negative. When we surround ourselves with people who challenge us to do better and hold us accountable for our actions, we strive to meet their expectations.

Respect and support are key here. We must hold each other accountable, but with understanding.

Holding each other accountable encourages everyone to harness the fear of letting people down and channel it into something incredible.

7. Create a Positive Feedback Loop

It’s never been easier to focus on an organization’s failures: missed sales goals, shrinking markets, decreased demand. Every quarter and end of the fiscal year, workers hear about all the ways they failed over the past few months.

Seeing business growth in black and white creates a negative feedback loop that provides the perfect environment for fear to thrive. Behind every individual failure on paper, you’ll find a dozen people who tried their best.

Overcoming fear in the workplace requires a positive feedback loop instead.

When people can see and enjoy the results of their labor, they feel encouraged to continue the work. Positive reinforcement pushes people to outdo themselves time and time again for the greater good.

The only thing more frightening than letting yourself down is letting down an entire company. Rewarding and praising teams for a job well done and recognizing their work is critical for creating a fearless culture.

Build a Team That Runs Full Sail

An engaged and dependable team starts with leadership. As the captain of your ship, it’s your responsibility to chart the course, lead by example, and change course when the winds shift and throw you off course.

Full Sail Leadership helps you create a company culture of trust, respect, and commitment through team building. A growth-centric culture requires structural change – not one-off teambuilding retreats.

Read more about how sailing out on the open water is just what your team needs for overcoming fear, building trust, and promoting strong leadership.

August 7, 2020/by Tim Dittloff

To Steward is to Care, To Lead is to Steward

Employee Engagement, Team Building

4 min read

I tell people that I firmly believe that organizations need to approach the human resource function through the philosophy of co-stewardship.

When I discuss this, I get a sense of puzzled agreement. The concept seems to make sense to people, but when you press them on what they think the concept means, often they admit that they are not quite sure.

Sometimes the listener conjures up the idea of a church concept of giving money when they think of stewardship. When they do that, they falsely think that employees should be more sacrificial. This type of definition is only one-sided and fails to take in the management component of stewardship. It also completely misses the identity of the steward.

In understanding the identity of the stewarding company, owners and company team members can thrive together. This can lead to greater profits and productivity for the organization through improved employee engagement.

Blessed to be a Blessing

Life is fragile and temporary. Look down the road when a hearse goes by. There is never a U-Haul trailer following it because the person is taking their possessions with them. In the end, we don’t really own a thing. That’s especially true when it comes to the people that are in our lives. It is even more true if we are team leaders or company presidents. The people that work on our teams are entrusted to us by their family members.

As Bob Chapman of Barry-Wehmiller so accurately states it in Everybody Matters, “I realized (watching a wedding) that the people in our company are someone else’s mother or father, son or daughter”. He went on to say that how he treats the people that work in the company impacts how they treat their family members. This new way of thinking for Chapman led him to form the theory of Truly human leadership.

Bob’s new idea of human leadership took off and has become a hallmark of the Barry-Wehmiller culture for the past few decades. The organization is considered a top place to work not because of the perks that it provides employees but because of the caring and supportive environment.

“When we started caring about each team member, they started caring about each other,” Bob says. Chapman continues by saying, “We genuinely care about the people, and we show it through our actions.” I realized that every single one of Barry-Wehmiller’s team members is like that young lady in the wedding. Every single one of them is someone’s precious child, with hopes and dreams for a future through which they can realize their full potential. The power in that revelation was the realization that the people within our span of care are not objects. Some leaders view their people merely as the function they serve—she’s an engineer, he’s a mail clerk, he’s a machinist—and not as the precious human beings they are. When we realize that people are not objects, they are not tools for our success, we have begun to take our leadership to an entirely new level of understanding.” Spot on advice from America’s Number 1 Steward Leader.

Keeping up with the Gallups

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When a storm comes up on the open water, or in our organizations, there are two directions our human nature can take us:

fear and helplessness
or resilience and engagement.

If leaders have communicated vision, and lead with confidence, human beings are amazingly resilient. There is a documented “rally effect.” I have been in many foul weather races where the winds and waves were storming against the boat. It was the grit, confidence, and vision of the skipper that held the team together to safely and successfully complete the race.

Gallup recently published an article that described the four universal needs that followers have of leaders in times of crisis. These needs include:

Trust
Compassion
Stability
Hope

The storm of the coronavirus outbreak has blown uncertainty into our lives. Millions of people are required to work from home and millions of kids are learning their curriculums from home. The blending of work and home-life is even more complicated. All this has created unprecedented stress on employees’ wellbeing.

A key predictor of employees’ well-being is whether each employee believes that the organization is looking out for their best interest.

Gallup research shows that employees ask themselves on a regular basis:

Does my leadership have a clear plan of action?
Do I feel well-prepared to do my job?
Does my supervisor keep me informed about what is going on?
Does my organization care about my wellbeing?

These questions can be boiled down into questions of co-stewardship. The employees ask themselves questions about how they are being stewarded (cared for), and they ask themselves if they are prepared for the job and will they do a good job for the company.

I believe that if leaders adopt Chapman’s wisdom, they will find that their team members begin to adopt an attitude that they are stewards of the company’s resources. Team members will become more engaged, waste less time, and accomplish the mission of the business.

Combining this with an understanding of Gallup’s research will lead us to unstoppable, winning organizations. It’s like the crew on a race boat. The skipper doesn’t own the crew, but he is a caretaker of the crew. The team doesn’t own the boat. They are a caretaker of the boat. Together they win!

April 15, 2020/by Tim Dittloff