Five in a Row is an amateur rowing crew based in Scotland who are taking part in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge 2021 – a rowing race covering 3000 miles unsupported across the Atlantic. The team are undertaking the challenge to raise awareness of Rett Syndrome, a cause close to the team’s heart, and to fundraise for the charity Reverse Rett.
As part of their preparation the team requested support from Pop Up to help them consider their team dynamics and how they could build a cohesive, high performing team, ready to compete and succeed under extraordinary circumstances.
After the scope had been agreed, we had a call with each team member to explore individual motivations and objectives. We then held two virtual workshops with the team, which were used to explore current team dynamics, roles and behavioural preferences, including how they would likely respond in a crisis. With an intense experience ahead of them, and much of their training done remotely, the team needed to explore how to communicate effectively and ensure they could manage conflict, failure and crisis situations effectively. The team worked through thorny issues such as what success looked like for individuals and as a team, how they made decisions and whether they needed one of them to act as captain during the race. We also covered latest thinking and theory of building a high performing team. Belbin© individual profiling and team reports were used to build understanding of each team member’s strengths and development areas, and to create a team action plan.
“This experience with Q5 has been really enjoyable and will give us a competitive edge over other teams in the race. Q5 has also provided us with a sense of what our team and individual goals should be and, more importantly, how we can work to achieve these goals”
