My sailing expertise surprises those who know I was raised on a wheat farm in Nebraska. I was introduced to sailing by a friend on Iowa’s Lake Okoboji. From there he and I jumped to bare boat cruising in the Bahamas, where we quickly learned we needed training. That led us to the Offshore Sailing School on Captiva Island which gave us the skills and humility needed to safely bare boat charter with our wives and friends.
Years later, my company rewarded the sales and marketing team with a trip to the Carribean. One of the team building activities involved racing 12 metre yachts that had previously sailed in international competition. I was excited to get on the water and surprise those who didn’t know about my sailing expertise and show-off some.
We had to descend a long ramp to board our assigned boat. I lagged behind with a noticeable limp from childhood polio, slightly more pronounced on the narrow, angled, and lengthy gangway. Immediately upon boarding, the young captain assigned jobs to everyone except me. It immediately brought back childhood memories of being overlooked and not chosen for a team. I probably responded as if I didn’t care and just put on a big smile to cheer the team to victory.
I did care. It was obvious to me that the captain was biased. He saw my age and my limp and he had a preconceived notion that I was not able to do any of the crew tasks. Perhaps he thought he was being kind and didn’t want to put me in the position of having to decline or to publicly Perhaps he was concerned about my safety or the risk involved should I lose my balance while trimming a sheet. Or, perhaps he was just driven to win the race. I’ll never know – just like the captain would never know that he passed over one of the most experienced crew members on his boat.
At the same time, I could have spoken up, introduced myself, and offered help based on my experience. By not saying anything, I probably reinforced the captain’s bias. Through my passivity, I nurtured the bias by reacting with my own prejudgement of and bias against the captain. I perceived the captain as too insecure or too ego-bound to even ask the question, “Has anyone here sailed before?”
Both the captain and I judged each other and jumped to conclusions based on preconceived notions and without gathering information. We should have spoken up to bridge the gap between our perceptions and reality. Communication is imperative to debunk assumptions and to better navigate leadership, team building, and inclusion. 1
1 Noise, Kahneman, Sibony, Sunstein, Little Brown and Company, May 2021, p 169