The secret of leadership: let the other guy catch a fish once in a while. And stay out of his way while he's doing it.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: On Management - Column

FOURTEEN DOWN AND 14 TO GO. DAYS THAT IS.

For two weeks, three of us have been on a boat on the Intercoastal Waterway going from Florida to Cape Cod. (How I spent my summer vacation!) It's really interesting to see what becomes important to you as your daily living space shrinks from the size of a normal house down to a trawler with a couple of cabins and a main salon.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

There are the three of us on the boat, sometimes four, as my kids cycle on and off, so privacy is sometimes an issue. Most meals are prepared and eaten on board, but occasionally we have dinner ashore in marinas or nearby towns. Magnificent scenery is served up in an unusual way, sort of like the world's longest Disney-like ride with the attractions changing constantly. Miles of almost nothing except bushes and trees and mosquitoes, deerflies (bigger and tougher than horseflies), then suddenly a small community of beautiful homes along the shores or a huge, industrialized city like Charleston (just spectacular from the water).

Everything and everybody fish here! The people fish, of course, with thousands of different kinds of rods, reels and bait. The birds fish. Even the fish fish! I saw a bunch of fish jumping out of the water. They were about four or five inches long and schooling within a 20-foot circle. I asked someone why they were jumping, and was told they were jumping out of the water to get away from a predator. Of course, the escape was short-lived.

I also watched for a while as a man showed a young boy some things about fishing off a pier. He basically talked him through baiting the hook and then let the boy throw the line in the water and land a fish. The first bite got away, but the man kept encouraging his pupil and the boy fished! He landed the second bite, but the fish got away as the boy tried to get it off the hook. The next one the kid landed, he unhooked safely, put it in his creel and then excitedly told everyone in shouting distance about his catch. He also kept opening the creel just to check that his fish was still there...