Sailing through Leadership Theory

“Ready About?” asks the helms-woman.“Ready,” reply the other five students aboard the sailboat. The helmswoman pushes the tiller to the left, the boat begins to turn, and the sails begin to flap. Cranking begins, pulling the sail tight so that it once again fills with wind. After a brief moment of silence and astonishment, all six students simultaneously applaud and congratulate one another on successfully tacking, or turning the boat 180 degrees, for the first time. The captain of the ship also applauds the group's first smooth tack and asks them to switch positions, allowing each student the opportunity to operate all parts of the boat.

These students are participating in The University of Tampa's Leadership and Sailing program. Two hours earlier, none of the students had been on a sailboat, much less sailed a boat as a team. The program, modeled after one at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, set sail at The University of Tampa in spring 2004. It introduces students to leadership and sailing simultaneously by situating their learning about leadership in the context of sailing. By combining outdoor adventure and leadership training, the program is designed to help students to learn the basic components of a sailboat and to operate the boat as a team. Through this experience, the students begin to explore, identify, and understand the four stages of Bruce Tuckman's model of group formation. They examine the roles that collaboration, common purpose, and commitment play in successfully sailing a boat as a team. They explore their feelings about conflict and discuss the positive aspects of engaging in controversy with civility. And they are challenged to apply what they learn about leadership to their lives on land.

The voyage begins with a two-hour session on campus. The group is often composed of strangers and of students who have never participated in any of the institution's other leadership activities. Because sailing as a team is a necessary component of the program, it is important that the students learn one another's names and become acquainted. After an hour of icebreakers and exercises to begin to build the group, I provide an overview of what will happen when we arrive at the sailboat (learning about the parts of a boat, practicing operation of the boat, and then team-sailing the boat). We review a diagram of a sailboat and talk about the sailing terms the captain will use. Finally, I engage the participants in a discussion about the skills they will need to team-sail the boat. These steps are helpful in lessening their apprehension about each other and about sailing. They frame the experience as a fun day in the sun and as a learning experience. This first process also serves to model the forming stage of Tuckman's model as highlighted by Susan Komives, Nance Lucas, and Tim McMahon in Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want to Make a Difference. Tuckman's is one of several leadership theories that will be used to tie the students' experience on the water to leadership in their daily lives.

We meet the captain at the boat, where he introduces himself and asks about students' prior sailing experiences. After an overview of the science of sailing, he discusses the role each student will take in sailing the boat. One student will be the helmsper-son (the individual who steers the boat), one will have the mainsail, one will take right jib sheet (a smaller sail), another will take left jib sheet, another traffic control, and one is allowed to relax and enjoy the view. The students spend about an hour and a half practicing—catching the wind, trimming the sails to increase speed, and tacking. Once the captain is comfortable that the students understand how to sail the boat, he points to a location and instructs them to sail the boat toward that point without his help. Typically, the students look at one another for a few moments, unsure of what to do next. Their minds seem to wander back to our earlier discussion about the moment they will be in charge, and at this point, someone typically suggests a course of action. Communication begins tentatively, but each success reinforces their new abilities. The individuals in the boat begin to function as a team.

As an observer on the excursion, I witness when the students collectively move away from the forming stage of group development, toward creation of group norms. In moments of hesitation, they seem to experience a shift in group process. They talk to one another about specific procedures for moving the boat toward the desired destination (which the students and I later discuss as being their common purpose for the day). The sailing experience is a singular opportunity for collaboration to occur. It is always interesting to observe how collaborative the group becomes. Do they rotate responsibilities? If they do, does anyone resist? Do they offer individual feedback to improve the group's performance? What form does communication take? These and other aspects of the program are different each time. Because I want participants to make meaningful connections between sailing, leadership theory, and their lives in general, I take copious mental notes to share later about their interactions with one another and about each student's affective response. When participants are unable to offer examples related to leadership from their experience, I am able to draw on these observations to help them bring leadership theory to life.

As we sail back to port, I steer the conversation toward reflection on the day. I toss out general questions aimed at helping them reflect on their expe-rience:“What did you think? How did it feel to sail a boat?”

Then I ask the most anticipated question:“What do you think sailing has to do with leadership?”

“Communication,” says one young woman.

“Teamwork,” suggests another.

More probing prompts one young woman to say, “Well, one of my favorite quotes is ‘You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails.'We have no control over the wind out here. We would be sailing in one direction and then the direction the wind was blowing would change, so we'd have to adjust the sails to get the wind to fill them up again.”

“Yes, so tell me more about how you think that connects to leadership,” I say.

“Well…. ” She pauses.“As leaders we can't always control what happens, so we just have to change the way we are doing something to make it work.”

The students typically generate good connections between leadership and their experience on the water. I ask how all of this might intersect with their experiences on campus.“We have to be able to communicate well with each other so we can accomplish our goal,” says one young man.

That triggers something for another student who says, “Well, yeah. But you have to know what your goal is to be able to move the boat to it. People in my organization totally have a huge problem with that.” This comment opens up a rich conversation that results in the creation of a largely applicable metaphor and more questions: Why is her boat (that is, her organization) not able to move? Are the individuals in her organization even in the same boat (that is, do they share the same goal)? Can people be in different boats and still get to the same destination?

Shortly before we pull into port, I pull out a packet that includes several leadership theories and ask the group to review Tuckman's model of group formation. We look at each of the four stages—forming, storming, norming, and performing—and I ask, “Can you identify any of these stages in today's group experience?”

“When we first met this morning we did some forming stuff. We did that question game, and you explained what we were going to do the rest of the day,” offers one new sailor.

“I feel like we were really performing after we had done a good first [tack],” says one young woman.

“So I guess norming would be right after the captain told us where to sail to and we had figured out who was going to do what and then started moving toward the point and deciding when to tack and stuff like that,” says another.

A few moments of silence pass as the participants study Tuckman's theory.“Can you think of any examples of storming?” I ask. A few more moments of silence.

“What about in your student organizations?” I ask. Everyone looks up, nodding, half smiling, and saying, “Yes.”

I ask a couple of participants to share examples.

After discussing the nonlinear nature of Tuckman's stage model, we move to the social change model created by the Higher Education Research Institute. We explore most deeply the components that closely align with the sailing experience: collaboration, common purpose, controversy with civility, and commitment. I ask, “Did you experience collaboration today?”

“Yeah … we collaborated. We had to, since we needed everyone to perform their function to make the boat move, or turn, or whatever,” one student notes.

“What about in your groups on campus? Does collaboration happen there? What does it look like?” I ask.

One student grimaces and replies, “We're all in different boats. The only time we collaborate is if we accidentally bump into each other.”

Everyone laughs.

“Okay … why do you bump into each other?” I ask.

“I think it is the same reason as what we talked about earlier. We have trouble communicating,” she says. One astute participant sparks a thoughtful line of discussion by asking about the connection between communication, common purpose, and controversy with civility.

One trend I have noticed with Leadership and Sailing groups is that discussions about conflict focus on its negative attributes. So, we end our exploration of leadership theory by discussing what benefits might accrue from group conflict. I share thoughts offered by Ko-mives, Lucas, and McMahon in Exploring Leadership.

One student follows a conversation on the healthy aspects of conflict as it relates to issues of civility by sug-gesting, “If we can get people to be civil about it, we might figure out that we are all actually saying the same thing, just in different ways. I feel like that is always happening in my organization, but no one sees it.”

Finally, I ask, “How might these theories help us in our work as student leaders?”

The student whose organization members all seem to be in different boats comments, “Well, I think if I can identify what stage [of Tuckman's group process] my group is in, I might be able to figure out how to be more helpful.”

“Yeah, and I am going to try really hard to get my group to do the positive conflict stuff instead of fighting unproductively,” says one young man.

“I want to be able to help my group find common purpose,” says another student, “but I don't feel like I know enough about how to do that.” As the boat docks, I suggest that she schedule an appointment with me and extend an invitation for her to attend the institution's leadership seminars.

Leadership and sailing is in its second year at The University of Tampa. The large number of students interested in participating and the diversity of students the program attracts has encouraged us to expand the number and types of trips offered each semester. On our last excursion, students brainstormed possibilities for Leadership and Sailing, Part Two, that might include leaving the safety of Tampa Bay for an overnight trip. This experience would offer an opportunity for students to learn more about sailing, the group process, and the connections between the theories introduced and their lives on campus. If students spend more time with one another on the boat, they might begin to see the short four hours they currently spend as part of the group formation process. Certainly, sleeping as a group in a small boat cabin could produce some storming behaviors that might serve as the basis for rich conversation. In the current program, the sailing group rarely gets past the niceties associated with meeting new people. The more opportunity students have to live the leadership theories through their sailing experience, the deeper the conversation can go, and the easier it will be to help them put the theories into practice on campus.

Although we have not yet conducted a formal assessment of learning outcomes associated with the Leadership and Sailing program, anecdotal evidence suggests that through this experience, students become more interested in learning about leadership. Conversations with several students indicate that the experiential nature of the program allows them to see the relevance of leadership theory to their roles in student organizations. Several other students have become regular attendees at other leadership seminars and retreats. For participants in student organizations, one outcome seems to be discussion among group members about where the group is in Tuckman's model and what they can do to move their organization toward shared goals. Perhaps most important, the students begin to understand that group life is cyclical and that groups typically progress through stages.

As we walk to our cars after the sail, one student says, “That was a blast. To tell you the truth, I signed up to go sailing and thought the leadership stuff would be boring. I had fun sailing like I thought I would, and the leadership part applies to me more than I thought it did.”