It was a choppy day with some big swell. The kind of day when the sea is murky, and there’s a lot of water moving around. It’s disorientating when I can’t see the shoreline or pick a line in front of him. I usually can see the rocky outcrop up ahead, and I make a beeline for it. Today it was too choppy, it was feeling sharky, and I wasn’t hanging around. Instead, I picked someone swimming next to me and used her as my marker. If I stayed on her inside, then my thinking was that we would hit the point and then swing left towards the beach.

It was taking a little longer than I thought, so I stopped and quickly got my bearings. I realized that my marker was starting to veer away from the point and take us further out instead of moving closer to the turn. I immediately course-corrected and dig in hard on my left and headed closer in. I noticed that my marker veered left as well. I realized we had both been using each other as markers, and the problem was that neither one of us was triangulating our location.

The same thing happens in relationships, families, and teams at work. Make sure you do a sanity check and triangulate with something other than your chosen marker. You both be in the same bubble and unintentionally guiding each other off-course.

Photo by Andreas Gücklhorn on Unsplash