“Welcome aboard!” As a new crew (staff) member, that greeting conveys a special sense of being wanted, accepted, and belonging. All too often however, that initial enthusiasm can be quickly extinguished as the new crew tries to fit in and existing crew grapple with the inevitable change in team dynamics.
Shaping a high performance yacht culture - How can you ensure that as new crew are hired, the team does not get off track?
The captain and / or management company is at the heart of the group of individuals, that are working in the best interest of the superyacht owner’s they serve. How can you ensure that as new crew are hired, the team does not get off track? How can you, as employers, employees and agents, help everybody work collaboratively to ensure that the owners’ needs are met, and their superyacht is an enjoyable, productive work environment ?
Assessment Tool MBTI®
Having a new crew join a yacht—or joining a new yacht yourself—can be stressful and tense. But today there are tools specifically designed to help you and/or a new crew adapt, and better understand yourself and others. As employers and corporations are finding out (some the hard way), just putting qualified individuals together, does not a dynamic team make. It is how they as a group of individual personalities interact, how they share and develop their mental models that enables a team to develop dynamically, and to operate successfully.
Much more than just a product, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) assessment is a powerfully versatile solution to these interpersonal issues, and has helped millions of people around the world better understand themselves, and how they interact with others. During the past 20 years, the MBTI assessment has been extensively and effectively used in leadership and management development and helped organizations of all sizes address their needs, from team development, leadership, coaching, and conflict management, to career development and retention. All critical points for the superyacht owner that requires and demands the very best from their crew.
MBTI® People Benefits
While there are many tools that can help assess your people, we use MBTI® assessment as our instrument of choice for crew development. Obviously the MBTI®, has many strengths, but when used within a team based environment, as aboard the superyacht, there are some significant strengths that come to the forefront:
- MBTI® allows crew to examine different ways to meet an objective or to do a job.
- MBTI® helps identify assets and potential blind spots for teams or units within the superyacht environment, such as interior and exterior.
- Knowledge of individual personality preferences helps crew gain better self-awareness as they learn about themselves in relation to others, their work, and to the yacht culture.
- The tool provides a neutral language to reduce conflict and deal constructively with issues.
Because personality type® is dynamic and about preferences rather than traits, and does not label abilities or skills, it’s self-acceptance, ‘being okay with who you are’ (not pigeonholing), is far more readily accepted. Crew can go on to use their new knowledge to achieve goals and overcome shortcomings, vastly improving self-awareness while discovering unique abilities. New improvements in conflict resolution contributes greatly to the improvement of the team process as a whole.
Maximize Value in Crew Development Plan – CDP
MBTI® assessment provides a valuable process in understanding how personality preferences, and patterns of preferred reactions, and interactions effect interpersonal relationships. And while this a strong beginning, the work doesn’t end there. It is up to each individual and subsequently the crew as a whole to decide what to do with this information, how to maximize the value, and how to deliver exceptional team performance (a critical component of your CDP).
Understanding yourself and fellow crew provides the opportunity to get “unstuck” and out of the “turnover eddy”, to manage the daily situations that arrive aboard. The route to productivity begins with looking first at yourself (self-awareness), then at others and how you interact with them (situation awareness), and realizing that different does not equal bad.
MBTI® Analyzing and Building your Team
No matter where you work aboard a superyacht, no matter what you do, you are part of a team. The crew itself represents a team effort to reach a goal. Each department or title represents a team too. So do the smaller groups of crew working together within those departments. In each case the team’s success is directly linked to the efforts of the individual crew member and how well those crew get along with, and work with each other.
By learning how you approach tasks, evaluate information and make decisions, crew can communicate and collaborate with each other at new levels, levels that lead to more satisfying, efficient, and safer working relationships.
Use of MBTI® allows for a nonjudgemental language and analysis of the crew and its members. Analysis that can lead to a greater awareness of that crew’s functioning.
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