This weekend Rob Hagens and I took part in the 8th Annual Colorado Dragon Boat Festival held on Sloans Lake in Denver. For those of you not familiar with the sport, let’s delve into a quick lesson on Dragon Boating 101.

There are several styles of dragon boat racing, one of which is Taiwanese dragon boating, the style we raced last weekend. A Taiwanese style dragon boat is a very long, narrow, flat bottomed, human powered boat weighting over 1,200 lbs when empty. A typical crew consists of 18 paddlers, a drummer or caller, a sternsman or coxswain, and a flag catcher. STERNSMAN READY, PADDLERS READY, SET, GO! On these commands the 18 paddlers begin paddling in sync with the drummer’s drum as the sternsman guides the boat in the direction of the finish line, where the flag catcher must hang off the dragon’s head (the front of the boat) to pull a flag, signifying the completion of the race.

As you may have guessed, the success of dragon boat racing lies solely in the paddlers’ ability to keep their strokes in perfect sync, assisted by the drummer’s beat. Failure to do so will easily result in this extremely heavy, flat bottomed dragon boat spinning off course and potentially tipping over. As such, teamwork holds the key to a successful dragon boat race.

Teamwork can simply be defined as individuals working together to accomplish the same goal or objectives. When applied to business, the concept of teamwork lies in an organization’s ability to align its employees’ goals and objectives towards a specific business purpose. In the case of dragon boating, the goal is simple: be the first to cross the finish line. A single individual does not possess the ability to win the race solely on their own as it is impossible for one person to play the part of a drummer, a paddler, a sternsman, and a flag catcher simultaneously. As such, it takes the collective effort of many individuals to not only move the boat forward but to also guide it in the correct direction in order to achieve the final goal of crossing the finish line first. Just as in dragon boating, it takes the collective effort of many individuals to move a company forward in the correct direction to achieve organizational success. To simplify, Rob put it best as he reminded the team last Sunday of the old saying, “There’s no I in teamwork!”