“The doorway to high performance teams is through the individual.”

Early voyageurs’ canoe
Photo: Wikimedia

“One, two, three, shift!” I bellowed. Six paddlers shifted in their seats and their paddles hit the water in unison. The big northern canoe lurched forward in the open waters of Georgian Bay. I sighed as I thought “We have ‘lily dippers’. It is not going to be a good day.”

I was part of the Queen’s University High Performance Team Seminar that recreated the route of the early voyageurs through the Canadian North. Our purpose was to teach and model the essence of high performance to executives and educators.

Our vehicle to do this was the fabled north canoe used by the early voyageurs. In the four canoes on this trip we had twenty four people with diverse backgrounds including five senior government officials from Pakistan. They were not used to hard labour.

Going through the motions

A lily dipper is one who looks from the outside like they are paddling like everyone else; however, from inside of the team, they are known for just going through the motions of real work. The north canoes are designed to seat up to ten people — one in the stern, two each in the middle four rows and one lead person. It’s important that each paddler carry their own weight by digging into the water long and hard; otherwise, someone else on the team has to carry it for them.

After nineteen paddling strokes, we employed the ‘Centennial Shift’, a technique where every person in unison shifts to the opposite side of the canoe without losing a stroke. Although we perfected the shift early in the day, I couldn’t get a system going where everyone pulled water equally. Two of our six canoeists were lily dipping.

As a team, we were struggling to maintain our position of dead last and we were fading quickly in the hot sun.

Handing over the problem

Bill Peruniak, well into his sixties, was the expedition leader. He always sat in the second seat of the canoe. Regardless of where he was placed, that canoe invariably ended up at least a half mile ahead of the rest of us.

He would infuriate us when his team would stop to replenish themselves while waiting for us and then leave the minute we caught up to them. The strong got stronger and the weak got weaker. It was not pretty!

The stern people were the leaders in the canoes. It was our daily responsibility to balance the canoes with a good mix of paddlers and lily dippers. Today was my turn to take two of the weakest. I made a mental note to ensure that I would express my displeasure over chauffeuring these people through the Canadian Wilderness.

I was not alone. That night we all complained to Bill. He listened to us and then offered to take the lily dippers with him. We were overjoyed! We could sit back and work with the stronger members of the community on the last day. It would be a perfect ending to a frustrating trip!

The problem solved

The next day, Bill settled into his regular second seat with the five worst lily dippers. We smiled because we knew that none of them had every acted as stern in a north canoe before. We had never given them the chance, because collectively we believed they were incompetent with the basics of canoeing.

At first, the big northern canoe of the lily dippers struggled to keep up to us. By mid-day break, they were comfortably pulling up the rear. Shortly after lunch, they inched out ahead of all of us and by mid afternoon they had taken Bill’s customary position of being half a mile out in front. They gave us the same courtesy of only waiting long enough for us to catch up before they left again.

The trip ended with our five lily dippers feeling elated over their easy sprint to the finish line. They had become a high performance team while the rest of us had floundered. Later as I rode home with Bill, I asked how this could happen.

“The doorway to high performance teams is through the individual,” he replied.

He explained: “Everyone thinks that the stern position is the team leader because they control the direction and set the pace. The reality of the big canoes is that the stern keys off the quality and quantity of the lead stoke.”

“Because of my age,” he continued, “I’ve found that the second seat is where I can help the team the most. I coach the lead on stroke technique. As their stroke improves, the speed and efficiency of the pace improves too. People directly behind the lead automatically imitate the improved technique to keep up with the pace. I fall in line with the lead and the people directly behind me imitate my technique to keep up.”

“You have only one person to lead,” he concluded. “I found my way to help the team. If you weren’t getting the results you wanted from your team, what did you do differently?”

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