More than team building – people building
We always market dragon boating as team building, a word that is perhaps overused. It’s more than building a team, though. It is a building (or the building up) of people.
The dragon boat holds 20 paddlers, a drummer and a steersperson. That’s a lot of people in one boat creating a winning team. (All teams are winners). The goal is to move the boat as one synchronizing machine. To accomplish that, a dragon boat coach must build the people up to believe they can be successful. Sometimes it happens one person at a time and sometimes all the people build together. There has to be a certain amount of one-on-one attention, and a strategy to make everyone feel like they are given personal instruction. When people bring their own enthusiasm and belief system to something worth doing, they do it well.
Dragon boating is about more than just those 20 paddlers and drummer working as one powerful machine to the finish line. Everyone has a personal response to it. When they all have a common goal of exerting their best effort, their personal goal becomes a team goal. Thus, a more unified team develops.
We have known many people whose lives have been changed by dragon boating, because they bring their hearts to it and they get back what they put into it.
Dragon boating can build you up, and make you better. More on this topic later.
