Andrea Bacon, who coauthored a book on the 1996-1997 race, says the reason that the Group 4 and the Toshiba Wave Warrior performed as well as they did had little to do with yachting and everything to do with the leadership that their skippers exhibited -- the teams they built, the cultures they helped create. And it turns out that Simon Walker and Group 4 skipper Mike Golding are different leaders.

The Group 4 crew was a team of highly focused specialists -- each crew member had one, and only one, clearly defined primary role. On the Toshiba Wave Warrior, crew members traded among several responsibilities. Golding was independent and very much his own boss. Walker was more collaborative and accessible.

"Mike and I barely talked during the race," Walker recalls. "But afterward, we went out for some beers and we learned something: He aspired to be more like me, and I aspired to be more like him.

"I wanted my team to specialize in particular areas and stick with particular functions, but that wasn't me. And Mike wanted to be more sensitive to his team and be more collaborative, but that wasn't him. Ultimately, it's not a matter of which style works better than the other. It all comes down to which style works best for you."

Walker is a competitive man, and you can sense behind his big smile the disappointment over finishing second. But, while his team failed to win, it's clear that they succeeded. "At the end of the race," he says, "when we knew that we wouldn't take first, one of the guys said, 'Finishing second isn't bad for the first lap. What are we going to do about the next one?' And it really hit me: We'd created something with longevity. We had built something that would last."

Bill Breen (bbreen@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior editor. Contact Simon Walker by email (simonwalker@challengebusiness-box.com), or follow the BT Global Challenge 2000 on the Web (www.btchallenge.com).

What's Fast

A few years ago, as a crew member of the yacht Group 4, Andrea Bacon raced against Simon Walker -- and her boat beat his. Now she is the research director of Inspiring Performance Ltd., a Southampton, England-based consulting company. Working in partnership with the UK's Henley Management College and with the support of such organizations as Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Microsoft, Inspiring Performance is studying team dynamics during this year's round-the-world race.

It's an event worth studying. In the BT Global Challenge, almost all things are equal. The boats are identical, the members of every crew are evenly matched by ability, and everyone is put through exactly the same training regimen. So what separates the speedsters from the laggards? According to Bacon, it all comes down to a skipper's ability to lead and a crew's capacity to team. Looking back at the last race, Bacon cites three lessons for leading teams to victory at sea.

Celebrate a success. "Taking the time to celebrate an achievement -- whether it was passing another boat, rounding Cape Horn, or finishing the first leg -- made a huge difference in people's morale. But we could have been better at that. For example, we spent Christmas day in the Southern Ocean, and we did a radio linkup with the other boats. All of them had done something special to celebrate -- one crew had written a Christmas play, another had drinks -- but we did nothing. The conditions were horrible down there, and we all needed a lift. But the fact that everyone around us was celebrating, and we weren't, made it that much harder to take."

Never, ever hesitate. "You can't put off a decision, especially when you're sailing in extreme conditions. When we were in the Southern Ocean, we logged the wind speed every 10 minutes. As soon as we started to see a pattern of wind increases, we'd think about making a sail change early. It's really dangerous to get into a big wind with too much sail up. Now, the last thing you want is a skipper who puts off a decision just to see what the wind does. Because the longer that decision is delayed, the more the fear builds up inside you that things will turn really nasty -- and you will still have to change that sail."

If you have to, fake it. As a leader, you have to keep the team's confidence up -- even when your own confidence is in the toilet. "When the boat has plowed into a gale, and the waves are thundering against the hull, the last thing you want to hear from the skipper is 'This isn't normal, but we'll be fine.' The skipper has to exude 100% confidence at all times -- even if his knuckles are turning white as he grips the chart table."

Contact Andrea Bacon by email (andreabacon@inspiringperformance.com).