© Comaea Consulting Pte. Ltd., 2019. All rights reserved.

Developing Leadership Among SeafarersKrishan Sharma

2020| SingaporeA Leadership Team Building Program for seagoing staff

Comaea Consulting Pte. Ltd., 2019. All rights reserved.

© Comaea Consulting Pte. Ltd., 2019. All rights reserved.

Seagoing context

THANK THE SEAFARERS – EVERYTHING YOU NEED AND HAVE IS BECAUSE SOMEONE CHOSE TO SAIL!

Traditionally, maritime education and training have focused on technical skills and competency of the seagoing staff. They are expected to lead andmanage a significant team and an expensive asset. But their competency certification process ignores the need for leadership and team building skills.Training Programs run ashore by the in-house maritime training schools focus and approach once again this issue from technical aspects such as in thecourse like BTM and ERM. Some attempts by in-house seafarers seminar run by companies largely aim to have camaraderie and good time whileinforming most important fleet incidences and learning. Such seminar don’t aim to impart hard leadership skills. As a result, the leadership, andmanagement education and training of the seafarers has been ignored in traditional maritime HR process at all levels and left to chance in manyorganizations.

After interacting with managers in our client organization and within maritime community, we discover that the most critical need that mustbe bridged is to impart leadership and team building training to seafarers working on ships. The group that needs such training the most is among theengineering and navigating officers at the management levels.

This is the population that is among the most hardworking, possesses significant technical education and experience, and directly manages a large assetand team on-board. Their education and experience level is such that they can imbibe stronger leadership practices and skills with relatively limitedinputs. That is, they don’t need an MBA level of training to become leaders. A targeted leadership and teambuilding program that allows them relativelyquickly to learn key concepts of leadership and teambuilding and implement what they learn as they go along in their day-to-day life of seafaring, wouldbenefit them tremendously.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

- Leonardo da Vinci

© Comaea Consulting Pte. Ltd., 2019. All rights reserved.

NeedComaea consulting has developed a 16 hours training program delivered in a workshop that covers the key aspects of leadership and team building forseagoing staff of merchant vessels. Starting in 2014 we have trained over 1000 seafarers through 20 such workshops in Russia, Ukraine, Cyprus, and India.All these programs have been an inhouse program developed and delivered with the specific needs of the clients in mind.

The main stated objective for these program has been to develop its shipboard management teams’ leadership and management capability. Ourcustomers main aim has been to train its entire sailing staff to be competent leaders and team players well versed in leadership skills and competence,demonstrated by their ability to challenge when needed, influence others, demonstrate confidence, and develop ability to manage complexities. Further,they aim to fully disseminate and align their company vision, mission, and values among its seagoing staff as their core part of functioning and shipboardculture. Through these workshops it is expected that the seagoing staff goes beyond just knowing importance of these expectations but to be able towalk-the-talk and come out as a role model to juniors on board. Such training is not only expected to lead them to perform better in their respective rolesbut also to grow in their career, help others to grow with the company, and assume increasingly important roles in the organization.

With this in mind we typically approach any leadership and teambuilding workshop with following steps.

Step 1 – Training Need Analysis : Analyse training needs, take shore-based managers and stakeholders feedback on their perceived needs.Step 2 – Participant View Compilation : Meeting some of the seafarers visiting the office for a briefing on their perception of gaps that needs to be filled.Step 3 – Formal Proposal : Refine the program presented in Scope Section of this proposal.

The sea finds out everything you did wrong.- Old Norwegian Adage

Provision of leadership development services

© Comaea Consulting Pte. Ltd., 2019. All rights reserved.

PartnershipMost of our clients are willing to engage Comaea Consulting for its key leadership development needs because we are able to provide committedexpert talent development resources for clients in maritime business.

Why Comaea Consulting:

Comaea is a Swedish HR consulting company. We started our operations in Stockholm as an HR competency management company in 2005. Ourconsulting division in Singapore was formed in 2014.

Comaea Consulting is well placed to be a valuable partner for the following reasons:• Ability to understand your business needs and strategic direction• Solid customer base in marine segments of Shipping and Equipment manufacturing• Relevant portfolio of services• Familiarity with your needs and culture due to our consultants’ background• Credible track record of our dedicated consultants• Market leading ability to understand people and improve their impact on results• Local, regional, and global experience• International mindset

Scope

Program ObjectivesLeadership development

Providing fundamental leadership and team building concepts via content-led delivery.

Stimulating greater collaboration, team working and leadership attitude through practical exercises.

Creating a greater sense of ownership and leadership initiative.

To develop seagoing senior staff in their

leadership and team building skills by:

The leadership training landscape

Topic and content

Topic Key content• Introduction

• Overview and program philosophy• Who is a leader?

• Leadership Traits and Ethics

• Personality Traits and Leadership• Traits and Personality Profile of Effective Leaders• Leadership Attitudes• Ethical Leadership

• Developing Effective Teams and Teamwork

• Characteristics of high-performing teams• Team leadership capacity• Team development processes

• Motivation • Motivational Approaches

• Power, Influence, and Leader-Member Exchange

• Source of power• Delegation• Leader-Member Exchange

• Integrative & Contemporary Leadership Approaches

• Contingency theories• Transformational leadership• Servant leadership

• Leadership and Social Capital• Communication• Feedback• Coaching

• Strategic Leadership and Change Management

• Top management perspective• Leadership vision• Implementing and evaluating strategy

• Culture, Diversity, and the Learning Organization

• Leadership climate and culture• Leading across differences• Developing the learning organization

• Putting It All Together • Summation of the Learning / Take home

© Comaea Consulting Pte. Ltd., 2019. All rights reserved.

Feedback

1. IntroductionMeet the stakeholders

Designing the program

Develop the schedule

Individual preparation2. Plan and block timeFix the dates and time

Block your calendar3. Adjust based on needsLearning outcomes

Overall program management

© Comaea Consulting Pte. Ltd., 2019. All rights reserved.

Process of development

1. First meetingBroad overview of the expectations

2. One-on-one meetings

Individual and departmental level expectations

What do the seafarers need

6. Feedback Finetune the next program

7. What more can be done

What can be additionally done to face the leadership challenge

8. Final delivery format

Apart from step 4 what can be done to handle comprehensively the leadership

challenge.

Evaluation and feedback of each workshop by participants

4. First delivery

First program delivered

3. Outline presentationProgram structure and outline to be

presented

5.

© Comaea Consulting Pte. Ltd., 2019. All rights reserved.

Our consultative approach

To client1

To the participants2

Long run3

Knowledge | Support | Partnership

A. Help in understanding theircompetence and fit (ormisfit) with the leadershipchallenge

B. Help in calibrating their styleand expectations on theirown with organization’s realneeds

C. Offer them supportguidance during theirtraining delivery

A. Build a repository ofknowledge base for theclient’s leadership agenda

B. Be a sparring partner fortheir talent developmentneeds

C. Act as the knowledge partnerfor the strategic HRrequirements

For each project For each delivery Over the relationship

A. Support in understanding what is needed

B. Define the roadmap for the future and scope what can be achieved

C. Comprehensive program development and delivery