HellasCams - Commanding a Ship and the Importance of Friendliness

Commanding a Ship and the Importance of Friendliness

There is an important element you can control that influences your success as a Captain. Effective Captains use it frequently, and ineffective Captains rarely use it. It is called friendliness.

Sea Captain

You have probably heard it said that Captains' success is directly related to their relationships with the people working for them, the people working with them, and the people they work for. This is true. In analyzing these relationships found that each relationship can be separated into two general categories:

there are the business relationship and the

person-to-person relationship.

The second category deals with that important element called friendliness, the little things effective Captains do on a person-to-person basis that bad Captains rarely do.

Friendliness doesn't mean being your crew best friend, or forgiving bad performance, understanding personal problems, inviting them to your room, lending them money, or letting them do what they want to do.
Friendliness means doing the little things you might think of as politeness and respect, such as:

Saying please and thank you

Looking at people's faces when they are talking to you and showing a pleasant face

Greeting people with a good morning or a good afternoon before talking about their work

Being prompt in keeping appointments so people don't have to waste time waiting for you

Apologizing when you are late or have to interrupt a meeting

Not insulting them and wasting their time by accepting nonrelated phone calls during meetings

Holding conversations with people versus lecturing them and interrupting people when they are speaking

Controlling your emotional outburst because you don't have the right to speak loudly or otherwise abuse your crew

Not making sarcastic comments

Not eating or drinking while meeting with your Head Departments unless you offer them the same privilege

Some people are only friendly to their dog

These things are easy enough to do once you decide to do them.

The Captains identified as having "friendliness" just seem to be nice people. They smile a lot, they are easy to talk to, they are polite, thoughtful of others, and considerate as they perform their management interventions. It just seems so natural when they do it.

Unfortunately, there are some Captains who aren't friendly at work on the ship because they are not pleasant people in the first place; they are not even friendly to their families or neighbours. Some people are only friendly to their dog. But there are a lot of other Captains who are naturally nice to their families and friends and neighbours, but when they arrive on ship, they change; they become unnatural and unfriendly.

If you want to be more successful than you are, spend more time acting friendly on ship; it doesn't take more time to smile.

Maintaining a friendly relationship is another part of maintaining work performance. It also helps you avoid having people try to hurt you because they don't like you. It might save your life.

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