WIN BEFORE YOU RACE
Chariots of Fire is a great movie about great runners. It mostly follows the athletic career of Olympic sprinter Eric Liddell. Liddell famously won the gold in the 400 meters at the 1924 summer games in Paris after refusing to run his best event, the 100-meter dash, for religious reasons.
Before the Olympics, Liddell ran at the University of Edinburgh against his nemesis: Cambridge sprinter Harold Abrahams. Abrahams would have been the fastest man in Europe if it weren’t for Liddell, and he knew it.
After losing one particularly heartbreaking heat to Liddell, Abrahams laments to his girlfriend, Sybil Gordon, that if he can’t win he won’t run. Gordon logically responds that if he doesn’t run he can’t win.
I’d like to take that statement a step further. I’d like to say that races aren’t where high-performance teams win at all. They’re just where they go to pick up the medals.
JUNE 2005
Boathouse Row
Pre-elite. That word really bothers me. You often hear the term in athletic circles, but in reality it’s meaningless. How can something be pre-elite? That’s like being pre-hungry or pretired or pre-dead.
Anyone with a pulse and a few firing neurons could be considered pre-elite at one thing or another. I wasn’t the best student in school, but maybe I was just a pre-elite Rhodes scholar. This is an honorific that grants zero significance to its subject. It’s a meaningless title. But the day I arrived at number 10 Kelly Drive all I wanted was to have the term apply to me.
ROWING ON MOUNT OLYMPUS
America has so many incredible natural wonders. The redwoods, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon. Their beauty is life changing. But for my money this country’s best feature isn’t in the deserts of Arizona or the mountains of California. It’s in Philly.
The Schuylkill River runs northwest to southeast for 135 miles and goes straight through eastern Philadelphia. Back in the day, it sent enough coal out and brought enough money in to make Philly the most populous and powerful city in America. Today, the coal doesn’t flow like it used to, but the river has managed to find a new primary export. Rowers. Damn good ones.
The Schuylkill has played host to more notable rowing competitions than almost any other waterway in the world. But that isn’t because the river is perfect. In fact, the Schuylkill does something that no competitive rowing surface should ever do. It bends.
That’s right: there’s a big, fat, annoying turn about 1,000 meters into the raceable portion of the Schuylkill. Rowing is all about timing, technique, consistency, and synchronization. Even a subtle curve can clip valuable seconds off a boat’s time, and the Schuylkill’s big left hook is less subtle than Gilbert Gottfried stepping on a Lego.
FISA, the international governing body that sets the rules for competitive rowing, has officially banned rivers with turns. But the Schuylkill has been hosting races since before FISA even existed. It’s so old as a racing venue and so respected that it doesn’t have to play by the rules. Basically, it’s the Clint Eastwood of rivers.
As a result, the factories and refineries that once dotted its wide banks have now been replaced by dozens and dozens of rowing clubs. These clubs range from happy homes for weekend warriors to full-time lodgings for the most successful rowers on the planet. The thing the Schuylkill draws in large numbers is past, present, and future Olympians.
These champions, and their clubs, are grouped into a tightly packed collection of Victorian architecture on the river’s east bank. Most people would walk right past this clump of vintage domiciles on their way to the art museum or the boardwalk without a second thought. But for rowers this is hallowed ground, sacred space. It is Kelly Drive, or, as it is more commonly known, Boathouse Row.
Number 12 Boathouse Row is Penn AC, a breeding ground for gold medalists dating all the way back to 1871. Number 11 is College Boat Club, the official boathouse for the University of Pennsylvania’s Ivy League rowing program. Number 14 is the Philadelphia Girls’ Rowing Club, the first all-female rowing club. Number 12 is Malta Boat Club, and connected directly to it is number 10. Vesper.
When rowers graduate from college programs, their future is far from guaranteed. Most rowers put the communications or advertising degree they earned while competing to use and join the white-collar workforce. Others start coaching the next generation of hopefuls. A small number get placed on some form of semiprofessional rowing team in the hopes of improving their game and moving up the chain. An even smaller number—only a few hundred athletes at most—are taken in by one of the few professional, nationally competitive programs in the country. These programs are called “the elites.”
Among the elite programs, the clubs on Boathouse Row are the most competitive and have the best track record when it comes to turning out world record holders and Olympic medalists. Vesper is in the top two or three clubs on Boathouse Row in any given year.
Getting into Vesper is like getting into Harvard or Yale. Staying at Vesper is like getting into Harvard or Yale while also running for president. Getting placed on one of Vesper’s top-tier national teams is like getting into Harvard or Yale while running for president as you win the lottery.
It’s not an easy thing to do. Most people who live, train, and compete on Boathouse Row come from Ivy League schools, perennial powers like the University of Washington, or top-of-the-line foreign programs like Oxford or Cambridge. They definitely do not come from a bottom-tier team whose biggest claim to fame is “we didn’t lose as much as people thought we would.”
So it was hard for me not to vomit as I reached out to knock on Vesper’s door for the very first time.
THE WORST OF THE BEST
Before I left for Vesper, Mark took me aside. “Look,” he said. “It’s incredible that Michiel accepted you, but you need to understand. I haven’t prepared you for this. What they do and how they do it is way beyond what you’re used to. You honestly aren’t ready for what’s coming.”
As far as pep talks go, this one kind of stank. But I managed to do what all 22-year-olds do best: ignore advice, lie to myself, and charge headlong into disaster.
On day one, at my very first Vesper training session, I was told we’d be indoors working on the ergs (short for ergometers, indoor rowing machines). Perfect! I had the best erg times at Sonoma State by far. This was my chance to show these Ivy League trust fund kids how we do things on the West Coast.
Have you ever been so wrong that looking back you wonder why your future self didn’t show up in a time machine to slap you in the face and scream, “What the hell is wrong with you?” I was about to have a moment like that.
Either on the erg or in a shell, the longest I’d ever had to row was seven minutes. Seven minutes was my maximum. Which is why my heart dropped down to my toes when I heard Coach announce that day’s routine. That day we were each expected to row four 20-minute pieces on the erg with four minutes of rest in between. That’s 80 minutes of effort, and I’m not talking about that just-do-your-best kind of effort. I’m talking about that crush-this-or-we’ll-see-you-back-in-California-Jason kind of effort.
I knew I was going to be suffering. If I wanted to stay at Vesper—if I wanted to keep moving toward my goal—I would have to go more than 10 times longer than my current limit. This was going to hurt. A lot. But, like most of the suffering we face in pursuit of our dreams, it was optional.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about quitting right there on the spot. “Why not?” a voice inside me asked. “What’s the point of destroying your body for the next 80 minutes when you’re already the worst person on the team? Maybe this is a sign. Maybe you just aren’t cut out for this. Maybe you should have gotten that surgery after all.” But as bad as this was going to hurt, I knew I could take it. I knew it would not surpass my threshold for suffering, and I was ready to make the sacrifice.
Pain is an amazing teacher. Even being near it can show you who you are and what you care about. In that moment, I knew that going forward would mean more pain than I had ever felt in my entire life. But I also knew that, despite the discomfort, I still wanted what was beyond it. Once again, agony was guiding me to the life I wanted most.
The kindest thing I can say about myself that first Vesper practice is that I survived it. My times were high but wouldn’t get me kicked out immediately, and low enough to raise Coach’s eyebrows as he passed my station.
SEAT RACING
If you start rowing competitively in the United States, you’ll typically begin your training in a two-, four-, or eight-person boat. This method teaches hopefuls how to row with a team first and then slowly identifies the standout athletes through a process called “seat racing.”
Seat racing works on the principle that it’s really hard to figure out how good an individual rower is inside a team boat. In a sport that’s all about teamwork and group precision, singling out one rower’s skill takes time. Here’s how it works.
Coach wants to know how good Racer A is as opposed to Racer B, so he puts together teams in two boats. Each boat contains one of the racers and seven of her elite teammates. Coach then has these two boats race and measures their times. Then he has Racer A and Racer B switch places and has the boats race again. By running this drill a few times and measuring each boat’s performance, Coach can make a realistic determination that one rower is more successful than the other when placed in identical conditions. While it’s not a perfect system, it usually works, and it’s used by just about every notable rowing program in the world. That was a problem for me.
Back at Sonoma State I was the biggest, strongest guy on the team. But while I was there, I struggled to win seat races against guys I would crush in an individual race or erg time trial. I was supposedly a leader on that team, but my losing streak got so bad that Mark eventually had to start putting me in the top boat based on his own instincts rather than my performance on the water. I performed well, but I was also becoming an Adam Sandler—someone who manages to earn his higher-ups a fortune even though he also made Jack and Jill.
The specter of my seat racing struggles came with me to Philly and Vesper’s style of boat selection. All things being equal, an American rower could go their entire career without ever rowing a shell by themselves. This makes it easier to be selected for seat races and work your way up to the top boats. I was an American athlete, but my coach was Michiel Bartman—who may be the most European man who has ever lived.
It’s hard enough to qualify for the Olympics once; Michiel did it three times. He rowed for the Netherlands in Atlanta (1996), Sydney (2000), and Athens (2004), where he won gold, silver, and silver, respectively. He’s built like Dolph Lundgren’s slightly smaller brother, and he’s fluent in the ancient Dutch language of “saying exactly what you think to anyone, anytime, anywhere, no matter how they might feel about it.” Michiel is not the guy to ask if you look fat in that new outfit—unless you want to hear exactly how fat you look and how perhaps it’s time for a haircut as well.
During his days as a competitive rower, Michiel was known as one of the most brilliant rowing tacticians in the world. He had the uncanny ability to perfectly time his practice rows in order to make sure he nailed it on race day. That strategic genius propelled him to three Olympic medals and several world championships.
This is a man who has succeeded at the highest levels of his craft. And he would be my coach for every stroke I pulled at Vesper. He would routinely annihilate my confidence in one breath and then give me a perfect strategy for improvement in the next. I have never been more terrified of, or more grateful to, any person in my entire life.
European rowers start their training in a single shell. Before they can even get into a seat race, they have to prove they know how to handle the mechanics and compete on their own. European clubs believe that the key to building strong teams is to first build strong individuals.
Today, I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, it’s become one of my core philosophies. Back then, however, I was miserable. Until I started posting better times in a single, I couldn’t even buff a team boat after practice. This meant I couldn’t even be selected for a seat race and THAT meant my chances of making the year-round team looked slim as I struggled along in my lonely solo shell. But, suddenly, there was hope.
The USRowing National Championships were taking place in Indianapolis that year. I had no business being invited, but even a scrub on Vesper is still on Vesper. To my utter disbelief, Michiel informed me I would have the chance to compete in the biggest race of the year. I would be entered as a single, but so what? As long as I didn’t finish in last place, everything would be fine.
AUGUST 2005
USRowing National Championships, Indianapolis
I finish in last place.
As the final shell screams across the finish line, the people around me are whooping and cheering while I pray very hard for the ground to open up and swallow me. Dead last. I have never been dead last at anything, ever in my life. But numbers don’t lie; it is now official.
I need to get some help.
A LESSON FROM DON WIPER
Everyone loves Don Wiper. Don was a mainstay at Vesper when I first arrived, and he remains a good friend to this day. But back then I wasn’t looking for a friend; I was looking for a teacher. And Don was known for one thing at Vesper: he never, ever, lost a seat race.
Don was getting on his bike when I caught up to him after practice. “Hey, Don!” I shouted as he strapped on a helmet that clearly wasn’t designed for someone his size.
He looked up and smiled as he saw me coming. Don is always smiling. “What’s up, Jay?” he asked. Only a handful of people on the planet get to call me Jay. Don is one of them.
Oh crap! Good question. What exactly was up? Even though Don and I got along great, I was suddenly terrified. How do you ask someone you respect—someone who’s clearly better than you are at something you’re both trying to excel at—how to improve? Take it from one very nervous 22-year-old; the direct approach is best. “I wanted to ask you how you always win your seat races,” I sputtered.
Struggling in a single, I wasn’t even in a position to be chosen for a seat race yet, but Don didn’t seem surprised by my question at all. If anything his smile got bigger. “It’s actually not as complicated as you might think,” he replied. “Think about it like this. Seat racing isn’t just about you, right? There are seven other guys in that boat with you. You know how we all say we pull hard for everyone no matter what?”
This was true. In rowing it’s a MAJOR unwritten rule that you do your absolute best for the guy or gal being seat raced no matter who they are. Because next time it could be you.
“Well, we both know that isn’t always how it goes,” Don continued. “There’s something inside of people that unlocks for things they care about and shuts down for things they don’t. If you hate a guy, you can be as honorable as they come, but there will always be 1 percent of you that isn’t doing its best. But if you care about him, I mean really care about him, you’ll go well past 100 percent to get him where he wants to go.”
I like to think I was nodding wisely as Don talked that day, but in reality I was probably drooling with my mouth open. This was it. This was the key to everything. Suddenly, the doors were open, and I was staring at the secret to achieving high-performance, emotion-first leadership.
You win races by winning people.
LEADERSHIP LESSON:
BUILD AUTHENTIC TRUST
One of Michiel’s favorite sayings is that “the winter is where you win your medals; the summer is just where you go to pick them up.” I always took that to mean that it’s important to train hard in the winter off-season so you’re ready to win the summer regattas. But Don’s philosophy on seat racing showed me that it’s not about strengthening yourself physically. It’s about strengthening your team emotionally.
Here’s the important thing to remember: a team becomes high performance well before the test that actually defines it. The mistake is to put the cart before the horse and try to classify you or your team as high performance by throwing it up against an impossible challenge. This common misconception can easily burn teams out and leave leaders chasing their tails.
High-performance teams aren’t high performance because they do something hard; they do something hard because they’re high performance. High-performance teams are different from other teams in one major way: they are completely dependent on one another. It’s all about emotion. The vital interdependence of high-performance teams is created by leveraging a single emotion: trust. So when we talk about performance, we first need to talk about trust.
Trust with regard to high-performance teams is not the act of doing what you say you’re going to do. It’s the act of trying to do what you say you’re going to do. It’s not about results or strategic brilliance. It’s about authenticity.
As the leader of a team, you leverage trust with your teammates through genuine, authentic effort. This effort was displayed beautifully by Don, who was always trying to make the athletes around him better.
Don would go to extra practices, double up on exercises, and always be the guy who kept the rest of us from making asses of ourselves at the bar. It’s important to note that those aren’t all decisions about “work.” But they are all high-performance decisions that authentic leaders use to build and leverage trust.
Vesper is a team of battle-hardened elite performers. They don’t display their emotions easily. The team didn’t trust Don because he was the best rower; he wasn’t. They trusted him because he convinced them that he genuinely had their best interests at heart. If you’re a leader, that is your job, too.
Here’s the good news: You don’t have to be the best in the world at what you do to earn trust, which was great news for me during my first abysmal summer at Vesper. You just have to be authentic and consistent.
Don was not the best rower on our team. He wasn’t the most skilled or the fastest. But the rest of the crew knew with 100 percent certainty that he was going to give them everything he had. His authenticity created trust, that trust created a bond, and that bond leveraged our entire team to the point that they had no choice but to pull past their limits. Don wasn’t the best at rowing. But he was the best at building trust, and that trust made him the best.
Here’s the bad news: I can’t tell you how to be authentic. There’s no checklist or rubric to follow. You can’t fake it, and if you try, you could ruin the very trust you’re trying to create. Don’t read this and think all you have to do is ask the guy at work about his baby and he’ll bend over backward to help you meet your deadline.
Stay with me here: the type of authenticity that builds elitelevel trust is similar to pornography. In his landmark ruling, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography, “There is no one definition of what it is. But you know it when you see it.” And so does your team.
A high-performance team needs to trust more than just its leader. The individual team members must also trust one another implicitly. The leader’s job is to prioritize and foster this trust—to turn the people he leads away from the individual ego of self-interest to the collective ego of team interest. This cannot be faked.
The best way to be authentic and build this type of trust on your team is to worry less about the alignment of your strategies and more about the alignment of your own emotions. Do you care about your people? Are you more concerned about who they are becoming, or do you care only about what they are capable of producing for your bottom line? Do you pull hard for them before asking them to pull hard for you?
If your answer to those questions is yes, then you don’t need a checklist to build authentic trust. Emotion-first leadership goes both ways. In order to leverage your people, you also need to make sure you’re letting them leverage you.
JUNE 2011
Back on Boathouse Row
After my discussion with Don, I made a difficult choice. I decided to leave Vesper and return to Sonoma State for an extra year. I had some unfinished business to attend to.
That year at Sonoma, armed with my first few lessons in emotion-first, high-performance leadership, I never lost a single seat race, and together we rowed the most successful crew season in the school’s history.
Michiel follows our success and invites me to return to Vesper for another shot at the year-round team. Once again, Don’s lessons pay off. I not only make the team; I make the top boat as well. Three years after being the worst rower on the best team, I finally earn my place as a member of a true rowing elite. Not just because I have become stronger but because I have become a guy who the other guys genuinely want in that boat along with them.
There is then only one challenge left to conquer: the Olympics.
GATHERING POINT:
THE COLLECTIVE EGO
Results come second: High-performance teams are defined not by the results they achieve. They are defined by how they interact with one another and the outside influences acting upon them. The amazing results are simply a byproduct of these high-performance relationships.
Complete interdependence: High-performance teams are unique in that there is complete interdependence among the teammates. They become a delicate and complex organism that breaks down if you take out the most seemingly insignificant player.
You have to care: Leaders aren’t the only ones whom the team needs to trust. They must also trust one another implicitly. Authentic trust comes from being more concerned about the collective ego of the team than about your individual ego. This cannot be faked.