Generating Power and Alignment in Teams: An Olympic-Level Approach to Maximizing Performance

People are one of the greatest assets to any organization. Bring together the right people with the right knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA), and you have the potential to do great things. Leveraging those KSAs and aligning your teams toward a common purpose will allow you to convert that potential into realized performance gains. Indeed, management teams that work together toward a common vision are 1.9 times more likely to have above-median financial performance.

Under the guidance of Olympic-level rowers and coaches, students will experience and learn how to apply the most important differentiator in the human species: methods for motivating individual power within a team for maximum collective effect. Students will row in racing shells twice in a day from Philadelphia’s storied Boathouse Row. They will undergo training, race preparation and a race itself. During classroom instruction, students will debrief team performance at various physical and psychological stages to gain an understanding of their path to generating and aligning collective power and focus. Coaches and students will discuss how these same dynamics play out within corporate environments.

Course Outline

Module 1: Setting the Stage

• Creating a Shared Purpose
• Understanding Your Role
• Erg Training

Module 2: Understand Your Team

• Aligning Collective Power
• Sources of Power and Creating Focus
• First Team Row/Race Preparation

Unit 3: High-performing Teams

• Race!
• Empowerment — Leadership and Individuals
• Creating the Environment for High-performing Teams