Alexander Tsitsonis, Starbulk: “from followers to leaders”
At this year’s CrewConnect Global, we spoke to the leaders and stakeholders of this industry, and found out about their views on the changes in the maritime industry and their impact on crewing and seafarers.
Alexander Tsitsonis, Crew Director at Starbulk, shared how he manages change for the seafarers, organisational culture, and the future of maritime leadership.
Ships have changed both physically and digitally in the last 20 years. How do you manage this change for your seafarers?
“Indeed, there has been a lot of change in the industry in the last few years, and the one thing that we see is that these changes and developments are happening at an increasing pace. We do have a wide fleet and we provide extensive on board training for our crews, as well as developing crews from the beginning. We also invest in very high quality training at reputable training centres.”
Seafarers need to change and adapt to changes. How would you nurture this agile culture?
“We have employed a series of measures to assist them to realise the changes and adapt to the new situation. One of these measures is creating a collective leadership. This means that not only do we recognise the master as the leader of the ship, because of course he is the leader – he has ultimate authority. However, we empower all the seafarers on board our vessels to act as potential leaders in order to assist in the change. For each change, we’re trying to highlight the benefits of the change so they can easily absorb them. We know that change is part of the life process, so we try to make it appears so, as a natural life process.”
Today’s seafarers will be tomorrow’s leaders. How do you ensure that these seafarers stay in the maritime industry and how would you nurture them to become tomorrow’s leaders?
“[Currently, there is a discussion with a panel:] Autonomous ships will reduce the number of seafarers on the vessels. While I agree with that rationale, I think that we are very far from autonomous ships. There are legal aspects of that operation.
Regardless, we create a friendly working environment for seafarers while on board the vessel by increasing connectivity with their friends and family, by adopting a series of measure to assist their welfare. And we’re also looking at very serious programmes that convert them from followers to leaders, so we heavily invest in these leadership programmes.”
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