The Programs
Built ashore.
Proven with executives.
Adapted for the sea.
Every program below runs on methodology Meritage has refined over two decades with Fortune 500 leadership teams — leadership-style assessment, 360° feedback, and neuroscience-backed pattern work. What changes is the setting: the season cycle, the yard period, the passerelle.
Crew Compatibility, Mapped
Most crew hires are decided on paper credentials and a dockside interview — then everyone finds out in month two whether the chemistry holds. Our Enneagram-based assessment, built on the same instrument Meritage uses to compose executive teams, goes underneath the CV: you learn what actually drives each crew member — the core motivation they run on, what they need to do their best work, and what shuts them down under pressure.
Profile the individuals, and the team comes into focus. You see where the pressure points sit — deck vs. interior, galley vs. bridge — before the lines come off, and you make the next hire knowing what the team needs, not just what the résumé says.
- Individual assessment for every crew member — what drives them, how they work, how they handle pressure — with a personal typed report
- Whole-crew compatibility map — where friction is likely, and how to lead through it
- Hiring overlay — candidate profiles read against the existing team before an offer goes out
- Debrief session with the captain and department heads, in person or by video
Owner & Captain, Aligned
Susan advises CEOs on the relationships that decide whether a company works: the board, the co-founder, the successor. On a yacht, that relationship is the owner and the captain — and it almost never gets professional attention until it's already fraying.
This is a confidential, standing advisory engagement on both sides of the passerelle: expectations made explicit, communication patterns understood, transitions (new captain, new build, new family chapter) navigated deliberately rather than survived.
- Confidential counsel for the owner or family office, and separately for the captain
- Structured alignment sessions — mandate, decision rights, communication cadence
- Transition support — captain changes, new builds, ownership or program changes
- Family-at-sea dynamics — where the vessel is a multi-generational family program, we bring Meritage's family-enterprise expertise aboard
The Captain's Circle
Every senior executive ashore has a peer bench — a board, a forum, a room of equals who understand the weight. A captain has a crew that reports to them, an owner they report to, and nobody in between.
The Captain's Circle is a small, confidential, professionally facilitated peer group of captains — the format Meritage has run for executive forums for years, built around candor, confidentiality, and craft. Monthly sessions, working the real problems: crew conflict, owner dynamics, career weight, the isolation of command.
- Six to eight captains per circle, matched for seniority and program type, never from competing boats' crews
- Monthly facilitated sessions by video, with an annual in-person gathering
- Strict confidentiality protocol — what's said in the circle stays there
Dockside Intensives
Meritage's six-week team development program — the one Fortune 500 teams run with assessments, a team report, and a working offsite — adapted to the rhythm of a season. It's delivered where the crew already is: alongside in Newport, Palma, Antibes, or Fort Lauderdale, timed to the yard period or the run-up to the season. Nobody flies anywhere.
- Individual assessments for the full crew — strengths, blind spots, working styles
- Team report — the crew's dominant styles, gaps, and friction lines, in plain language
- Dockside working day (or two half-days around watch schedules) facilitated by a Meritage coach
- Season playbook — concrete agreements the crew actually keeps when charters stack up
- Fleet delivery — the same program run across a management company's fleet, coordinated centrally
How an Engagement Works
Bespoke, start to finish.
Leadership development isn't one-size-fits-all — and a yacht isn't an office. Every engagement is scoped in conversation, but the spine is consistent:
- Conversation. The vessel, the season, the people already aboard — and where the friction actually is.
- Assessment. In-depth leadership-style and emotional-intelligence assessment; 360° feedback where the team is ready for it.
- Insight. Individual and team reports in plain language — no jargon, no binders that die in a drawer.
- The work. Coaching, facilitated sessions, and dockside or onboard workshops — neuroscience-backed methods for interrupting the patterns that aren't serving the team.
- Follow-through. Agreements with owners, captains, and crew that survive contact with charter season.
Scope it around your season.
Tell us where the vessel is in its cycle — new build, new crew, pre-season, mid-refit — and we'll shape the engagement to fit.
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