I’m always amazed at the number of people who going for a morning sea swim all through the year. I’ve tried a couple of time but only once with success as I was concerned about getting frostbite as the sea was so cold! 

I asked a few people why they do it, some said it was fun (not sure how) others said it was for health reason, it is good for the blood flow and the heart and keep you healthy. But the majority said it was the challenge. The challenge of getting up from a warm bed and going out into the cold and getting into a freezing sea. The challenge of going in, in all weathers and the camaraderie they get with other sea swimmers. 

From a work perspective what can we learn from this?  

Well let’s look at how challenging work is for our teams? When I talk to teams of people about work most say they enjoy their work but there not a lot of challenge in it. If you ask the Supervisor or Manager they will often tell you they have too many challenges and the pressure of work never ends. So, we have a disconnect. 

What if we gave our teams more challenging work? Passing on challenges that we need help with. Teams I have worked with always thrive when given challenges. It adds interest to their job role, it gives them something to achieve, they support each other and it builds camaraderie between the team members involved. Some call it delegation, but the work we delegate must be interesting as well as challenging otherwise they will soon figure out that we are dumping work that we don’t want to do. 

If you pass on challenging work to your team, you build their skills, you create a better team environment and you give them the chance to feel fulfilment in their jobs and a great sense of achievement. Doing so, reduces your workload, it upskills your teams and it makes you a more competent and effective leader. 

But we also need to factor in that sometimes it may not work out to our liking, but they can come up with better and faster solutions so give them the encouragement that they need and step back and let them get on with it. 

So why not take the plunge and give your teams a sense of achievement? 

Think about what jobs you could delegate and encourage and support and see what happens – you too might just go for that morning sea swim!