What Viking boat rowing taught me about leadership in the workplace

The Toronto sports and social club offers many different sports activities over the year. I thought of trying something totally new and I chose “Viking Boat Rowing”. In February 2014, I signed up to join the summer season for six weeks in June. I didn’t know at the time that it would have a great influence on my professional life as well. This is a reflection on what Viking Boat Rowing taught me about leadership in the workplace.

ABOUT THE BOAT

Viking boat rowing involves a team of 14, with 7 rows of two people sitting side-by-side, with one oar each. We begin by getting into the boats: there are two rowers known as “Strokes” — they lead the team and sit at the front of the boat. The right side of the boat is called the “port”; the left side is called “starboard”. There’s a captain who calls the rowing strokes and steers the boat. The 800 pound boats that we used are from Finland and they have red canvas seats that are mounted on casters so the seat moves forward and backwards as you row. The oars are made of cedar, like the boats, and the head of the oars are made of particleboard. The butt of the oars are carved into a rounded, tube-like handle. The middle of the oar — the body — is flat so that rowers will know which direction their oar is tilted towards while rowing. They are heavy! The oars are about 10 pounds each, and six feetlong. Compressed fibreglass hooks that are mounted to the body of the oar connect with hooks on the boat when you’re rowing. When the team is in sync and moving fast across the water, the boat still wobbles slightly, as if to remind you that it could tip at any time. As a rower, you can feel this wobbling throughout your body as your muscles work to resist the drag of the water against your oar.

THE FIRST MOVEMENT

The two Strokes get in the boat first, then everyone else steps in, with the tallest to the shortest at the front to back. One person gets in, then helps the other beside them with a hand if needed. We raise the oars with the flat side of the head facing outwards, so that when the oars lower, the keyholes are easily accessible. Then the oars hook into the gaps of the wooden slats on the dock and we push the boat out to the water.

The next step is for everyone on the team to raise their oars in the air like Vikings to notify the captain that the team is ready to go. This is an exciting stage of the experience. Then, the captain calls for the team to “Come up to the catch” and we all point our handles forward, which makes the head of the oar sink into the water. At the same time, we slide forward, bending our knees, which allows us to slide back and push the oars towards our upper chest. This is the first movement.

SIT UP STRAIGHT!

The second movement involves pushing straight down on the handle of the oar from just below your collar bone down towards your belly button, then out towards your knees. Then, you push the oar up — raise the handle up — and raise the handle up to the catch to start over again. You might imagine that pulling the oar towards your chest is the most physically taxing activity, but in-fact it is the next step of pushing out and up, which requires incredible core body strength. It involves the greatest force and is the longest part of the rowing movement. While doing this, you also need to keep your back straight and the coaches whistle to remind us of this. As you pull the oar towards your chest, you also lean back as if you would almost lay down flat on the lap of the person behind you. When you push out and up, you also curl your torso upright again. We did 10 strokes on the first time, so it was like doing 20 slow push-ups with resistance. The water, and the heavy oars resist your strokes, and this makes for a great workout in your core, back, quads, upper arms, forearms, and hands. Because of the different stages of the strokes, it is important not to use any one part of your body more than the others, because you will get tired.

STAY IN SYNC!

If you look at the oars of rowers around you — doesn’t matter which one — you’ll naturally get out of sync, and your oar will get pulled deep under the water, which makes it feel like carrying a ton of bricks. When this happens, your team will have no choice but to stop and wait for you to re-set. It happened to me many times.

To avoid going out of sync, we learned that each and every person needs to watch the backs of their your teammates by following their movements and their stroke count. Each person also needs to trust that the person in-front of them is doing their job by rowing, otherwise the whole team will literally get dragged down under the water. Initially, our coach let us figure this one out on our own. When you move in-sync with the strokes of your teammates, you will all paddle well, and you can also increase your speed incrementally. But if you try to anticipate or worry about what people are, or are not doing on your team, then you will slow down your entire team.

REFLECTION: TEAMS THAT ROW TOGETHER…

As I was learning how to row, I was also learning how to project manage the tasks of a multidisciplinary, multisite research team at OCAD University, in-partnership with the University of Toronto. We had recently finished a presentation of “The CBC Newsworld Holodeck Project” in Toronto for a conference called “Computer-Human Interaction” (CHI), and we were planning for additional presentations in the summer and fall 2014. As any team does, we encountered obstacles. Many obstacles we faced were overcome by working together as we did on those boats. A few of the lessons I learned on the boats included:

1. Have fun while you’re learning

When we first encountered a few water drags, or oar bumps, we often laughed. There was nothing else that we could do but laugh and carry on. No one got hurt, the boats never tipped or sank (though it was possible), and if someone was always causing the water drags — until our coach revealed the secret — someone was there to try and think of ways to prevent another drag or bump.

The same thing happened on our research team. Because we had to practice the presentations and test the projections and equipment before our big presentations, things went wrong. As a team, we were always there for each other. We shared many laughs, we celebrated wins, and it was always fun to get together.

2. Staying in-sync by having each other’s backs

Initially, we didn’t know that looking at the back of the person in-front of us on the Viking Boats would prevent loss of good posture, which lead to dropping or bumping our oars. Everyone is needed in order to move the boat, and the Strokes at the front of the boat—especially the very front—are both leading the entire team and relying on them to trust their leadership at the same time. They can’t look at someone’s back to measure their own strokes. So, it is important to trust each other, and also do our part to contribute to the team in rowing, and in research.

The rowing lesson I learned was to avoid micro-management and making assumptions about important tasks by accepting contributions by individuals who are all trying their best to support the big picture goals of the team. This seems straightforward, but when there are deadlines and things to do, it is tempting as a leader to over-help. The reality is that everyone on our team was aware of the deadlines and what they needed to do to accomplish the goals that we planned for at weekly meetings. If someone was having trouble, or needed to spend more time on a task, we adjusted our timelines to work together as a team. By having our own roles, tasks, and knowing about our interdisciplinary skills, there was always someone to work on something, and always someone who we could collaborate with.

3. Proactive problem-solving

Sometimes our oars would dip down a bit too far, and knowing that we had to have each other’s backs, we had to keep rowing. These tiny blips did not stall the entire boat; it was sometimes easy to recover and get back to the catch.

Likewise, each member of the research team took on proactive problem-solving within their tasks, and we were transparent with each other when we needed to take extra steps to accomplish our work. Sometimes these included “teachable” moments where two or more teammates learned how one or a group of teammates recovered from a blip. For example, how to adjust the computer code to match the resolution on a projector.

4. Learning to grow as a solid team member by practicing good self-care

On the Viking boat, it was important as an individual rower to stay fit and focused on the task of rowing. It was okay to stop rowing, by raising your oar out of the water until the next series. Sometimes we were invited to be a “Stroke” but it was okay to decline this offer. Practicing good self-care on the boat and in the lab was essential for sustaining the objectives of the team.

Self-care on a research team is important. Our team met once a week and accommodated those who could not meet in-person, by allowing them to join on Skype, or to take time off when needed. We used a shared project management sheet to organize our workflow, and ensure tasks were balanced. Certain people on the team had specific skills that only they could share with the team. As we were accepted to new conferences, it was not always possible for our entire team to attend the presentations, so we created guides and tutorials for each other at meetings for everyone to have the opportunity to learn how to keep our work going as a team.

5. Keep going!

As we neared the 8th and 9th strokes, out of 10 the first time, we quickly tired. It was important to keep trying and keep going because we eventually found out how to avoid drags or bumps and could go farther for longer strokes.

In the lab, we once tested the installation 7 times before our presentation at a conference. In reflection now, we were one of the first teams to complete a very complex set-up of our installation at CHI 2014. We learned how to prepare for other presentations by documenting our work and creating diagrams to explain to how to interact with it.

In my opinion, this is perhaps the most important take-away from both experiences of Viking boat rowing, and project management of a research team. In rowing, you have to keep going in order to get back to the dock and disembark from the boat. With almost any other sport, you can stop. It’s the same with a team at work. Rowing reminded me what my grandmother instilled into my cousins and I: “Work hard, then work harder”. In the lab, sure, we could take breaks, and we could regroup. Regrouping was an act of continuing to strive for our goals. Each step forward was a step towards our goals.

We kept going, and we presented the CBC Newsworld Holodeck at national, and international conferences, including three conferences that were hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). We published conference proceedings and collaborated on two other projects. We became a team that had each other’s backs and had fun in the process!