Adventure expert Mark Denton reveals the three rules that help teams survive storms at sea and in business

Mark Denton is an adventure and exploration expert, leadership speaker and former BT Global Challenge skipper whose work is shaped by one of the toughest tests in professional sailing: leading a team of amateur crew members around the world against prevailing winds and currents.

Before developing his keynote, Navigate the Storm, Mark completed more than 80,000 nautical miles at sea and led people from different ages, backgrounds and nationalities through extreme conditions, competitive pressure and constant change. His experience gives him a practical view of teamwork, psychological safety and decision-making under pressure.

In this exclusive interview with the London Keynote Speakers Agency, Mark discusses how he entered sailing later than many would expect, what the Global Challenge taught him about leadership, why “safe, happy and fast” became central to team performance, and how lessons from the ocean can help businesses navigate disruption and change.

Q1. You came into sailing later than many elite competitors. How did that first Tall Ships Race change the direction of your life?

Mark Denton: “Not the usual way, or not the way that you might expect. It’s not like I’ve been sailing since I was four years old and all of those kinds of things. I actually really only got into it at 21.

“So, it just shows that you can be perhaps a bit later in your life and still get into something like this and achieve quite a lot.

“The way that I got into it, I’d actually just finished my business degree, and I sat at a kitchen table with my dad, and he was sitting there reading the newspaper, as he always did. And then there was a picture of an old tall ship, which are these old ships with big sails that you have to climb the mast to set the sails.

“It was an article on a race called the Tall Ships Race. The Tall Ships Race is for people between 16 and 24, at least the majority of the crew that does it between 16 and 24. I said to him, ‘Wow, that looks amazing.’

“And he said, ‘Well, look, you just finished your degree. If you apply for it and you go through all the selection criteria, and you make it, I’ll back you because there was a cost associated with it.’

“I did that, and I sent off the form, had my interview, and I managed to get through, and to get on that race.

“Fundamentally, Megan, it changed my life because over the next 10 years or so is when I did my 80,000 miles, and I just loved it. I absolutely loved it. I never really looked back. It’s funny how your life takes you sometimes.”

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Q2. In Navigate the Storm, you use the Global Challenge as a leadership case study. What made that race such a powerful test of people and performance?

Mark Denton: “Navigate the Storm is the title of my keynote speech, and it is really looking at a particular race, which was the culmination of my career.

“I was lucky enough after 10 years to have climbed the ladder enough to be skippering, but actually, I ended up skippering a team in an around-the-world yacht race. This was a very particular event. It was called the Global Challenge.

“The Global Challenge was unique in many ways, not least of all the fact that it was about ordinary people trying to achieve an extraordinary thing, in that anyone could take part in this round-the-world yacht race.

“My crew applied to do this thing from all over the world, all different ages, backgrounds and nationalities. So long as you’re between the ages of 18 and 60, you can sign up.

“So, what we end up with is a real slice of life taking this thing on, and basically, there are 12 teams like this, identical teams of mixed, diverse amateurs, and in one way or another, we as skippers have to lead them around the world.

“Interestingly enough, the route is very challenging. It actually goes the wrong way around the world, against the spin of the Earth.

“Navigate the Storm is really me sharing my experience about what it was like to lead a team like that and what I learned as a leader, and we learned as a team, as to how to navigate these constantly changing conditions in a very competitive environment.

“Not unlike the environment that businesses find themselves operating in today.

“Navigate the Storm is really about letting people get under the bonnet of this sporting endeavour, but many of the challenges that we face were very much the same as businesses are facing in this stormy world of today.

“That’s what Navigate the Storm’s all about.”

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Q3. Your framework centres on being safe, happy and fast. Why do those three conditions matter so much for high-performing teams?

Mark Denton: “Safe, happy and fast is the key learning that comes out of Navigate the Storm. But interestingly enough, it was actually the values that we chose on board our team that we felt were going to be really important for us.

“We validated them across the race. If any team pays attention to these three things, that will provide the environment for high performance to flourish.

“Let me talk about safe, happy and fast. Interestingly enough, safety isn’t just about physical safety. Obviously, we were operating in a pretty risky environment, but this isn’t just about allowing people to be physically safe.

“Crucially, it’s about creating an environment of psychological safety. Psychological safety is really about trust in teams.

“It’s that we’ve got an environment where people feel safe to be part of the team, safe to say what needs to be said, critique the strategy, suggest an idea, but also, if they’re struggling, safe to be able to put their hand up and say, ‘Look, I don’t know how to do this,’ or actually, ‘I’m just struggling with this’ in one way or another. ‘Can I get some help?’

“That’s super crucial for teams. In fact, it’s the absolute foundation for a high-performance team. Create an environment of psychological safety. That’s the first thing.

“The second thing is about happiness. You can have the greatest bunch of individuals, but if they’re not happy in what they’re doing or happy in working together, then we’re never going to get high performance out of them.

“So, whatever is standing in the way of them being happy, we need to pay attention to it. Whenever we weren’t happy, we thought about, well, what is it that’s stopping us and how can we address that?

“That’s the second thing. Got to get people happy again. Look at us post-pandemic, when people are in such a mixed mindset about where they want to work and how they want to work.

“We need to be paying attention to that and really thinking about how we can get people happy again and wanting to go after it rather than having to go after it.

“Last but not least is we need to be fast. Mega slow boats never win, never on the racecourse. Interestingly enough, never in business.

“If you’ve got a competitor that just has a more efficient way of doing things or makes it easier for their customer to interact with them and buy from them, then the customer is always going to take the path of least resistance.

“A lot has changed through the pandemics, and it’s really challenged our existing business models. We need to be thinking very quickly about how we adapt and change and be agile in relation to that.

“That’s what being fast is all about. It’s really about who can learn the quickest. Certainly, for us on the racecourse, us versus all the other teams, this was a learning challenge.

“Who can deal with the challenges that we face quickest because ultimately that’s who’s going to be ahead on the racecourse.

“That’s what safe, happy and fast are all about. We proved the importance of those things through this case study.”

This exclusive interview with Mark Denton was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.

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