Captain Kerry Titheradge has something few leaders ever get: game film of his own management style.
As a cast member of the longtime Bravo show “Below Deck,” cameras follow Titheradge and his mostly Gen Z crew through every mistake, conflict, and high-pressure moment aboard luxury yacht charters. Watching those interactions back, he told Business Insider, has made him a better leader, particularly when it comes to managing younger workers.
When the show is being filmed, “I don’t know what’s going on, other than my intuition and just being observant,” said Titheradge, a native of Australia who now lives in Florida. “If you’re the employee or the employer, you only see your side.”
The cameras, however, capture what he misses.
Titheradge doesn’t see other scenes where crew members air their grievances about him until the show airs. “It’s quite good for me because I’m like, ‘Man, I thought I read that situation really, really well.'”
Give them that ‘attaboy’
One of the first lessons Titheradge said he gleaned from watching himself on TV was that his facial expressions often undermined his words. He now takes a moment to compose himself before dishing out critical feedback.
“When I am pissed off, and I’m trying to be nice, my face is still pissed off,” he said. “So it doesn’t matter that I’m speaking softly.”
Titheradge has also changed how often he weighs in on employees’ performance. Instead of unloading a litany of criticisms in an annual review, he said he’s learned that it’s better to space out corrections.
“If I wait till the end of the year, how are they going to course correct?” Titheradge said.
He tries to be just as quick with praise. If a crew member does something well, he’ll say so right away rather than wait until the end of the charter.
“Just do it at the moment,” he said. “Give them that ‘attaboy,’ and you’ll see that’ll help spur on their confidence.”
Earning respect
Titheradge’s approach to managing managers, the bosuns and chief stews on a yacht, has evolved, too. He said he tries not to solve every problem for them so they can grow on their own. During Season 11, his chief stew wanted to dismiss a crew member after the two clashed. Titheradge resisted, saying the employee was good at her job and the chief stew needed to work through the conflict.
“This is your chance to lean in and become a better manager,” Titheradge recalled telling him.
Another takeaway for the 50-year-old is that today’s leaders need to adapt to the workforce they have, rather than expect employees to adapt to them.
When Titheradge entered the yachting industry in 2004, he said, the burden was on him to prove himself to his captain. He believes younger workers have a different relationship with authority, in part because they grew up with search engines, social media, and other resources at their fingertips and fewer reasons to simply take someone’s word for something.
“Now I want to earn the respect of my crew,” Titheradge said. “The title doesn’t make you a leader.”
The right headspace
Adapting doesn’t mean lowering the bar, Titheradge said. Sometimes it means recognizing that what seems obvious to one generation may not be to another, he said.
That lesson recently hit home while Titheradge was working with his 17-year-old son on his yacht management business, Yachting Concepts, where he is CEO. He grew frustrated when the teenager couldn’t figure out which of several keys started a boat, until he realized his son had grown up with keypad locks and keyless cars. What seemed obvious to him, he said, wasn’t to someone raised in a different era.
“How many keys have you used, mate?” Titheradge recalled asking. His son, he said, replied: “None, Dad.”
The experience also reinforced another lesson for Titheradge: Before faulting an employee for a mistake, make sure they were equipped to do the job. During the filming of the upcoming 13th season of “Below Deck,” a crew member mishandled a potentially dangerous anchoring procedure. Safety is paramount, he said, “and you’ll see my reaction.”
Later in the show, after learning the employee hadn’t been properly trained, Titheradge concluded the supervisor who assigned the task was responsible. He said he then made a point of telling the crew member the error wasn’t their fault because he didn’t want them to be afraid to try the task again.
Sometimes, Titheradge said, an employee can also struggle if they’re not in the right headspace. He pointed to a talented chef who had started making mistakes while dealing with personal challenges. Titheradge let him go, but rehired him a year later for another charter.
“Just because you aren’t succeeding at your job here doesn’t mean you’re not a success,” said Titheradge. “This is just the wrong environment for you.”
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