MULTIPLY THE MULTIPLIERS
ANGUS
Everything about Latitude 35’s race was a surprise. No one expected Nick to get sick or Ethan to leave. No one expected Tom and me to stay, and I’m sure that no one expected us to finish. But another boat in our field had a much more predictable experience.
The Jean Marie completed its voyage across the Atlantic in 37 days, 9 hours, and 12 minutes—a decisive and expected victory. The winning team, Ocean Reunion, was the best in the race by far. But, as the saying goes, “Good artists borrow; great artists steal.” And I had a massive heist in mind.
As competitors, Angus Collins and I were fundamentally different. Even though I had trained under a classic European coach at Vesper, Angus was born with Yorkshire pudding in his veins. He rowed his way through the legendary Essex program with great success and parlayed that momentum straight to the oceans. Plural.
Before captaining Ocean Reunion to its 2015 Talisker victory, Angus already held a world record for crossing the Indian Ocean in a grueling 70 days. After the Talisker he could arguably be called one of the top-five most successful ocean rowers on the planet, if not the best outright.
Since he was the one who built my boat, I would have called Angus Collins after the race anyway. All those other factors may have crossed my mind as well, but someone else had gotten to him first.
Through our chats Angus revealed that the offers had started pouring in even before the Jean Marie touched the dock in Antigua. An entrant in the 2016 Talisker had already offered him $30,000 to captain their crew. For a sport that doesn’t usually pay anything, that’s a fortune.
As our phone conversation began, I congratulated him, but for some reason Angus seemed ruffled.
“There’s just one thing that’s bothering me,” he growled. “I heard you may be entering again as well. It must have been hell for the two of you to row that four-man boat all the way in. I can’t shake the feeling that together we could do something pretty special.“
I was shocked. I was the one frantically planning ways to sway him away from five figures, and I never thought he would be the one to bring it up first. “I am looking for a new crew,” I replied, trying to sound measured. “But listen, man, I could never be the guy who comes between you and that kind of money. You have to take it.”
The line was quiet for a while. And then that beautiful baritone said the one thing that could make me respect this world champion more than I already did. “I hear you, mate, but listen. I’m more interested in making history than I am in making money.”
I couldn’t believe it, but Angus was in.
ALEX
My strategy for the first race was to try to outsmart the ocean, but I quickly realized how foolish that was. You can’t win any games with it because it refuses to even play. It’s just an unstoppable force of nature. So I decided to recruit a few of my own.
Angus and I together could easily handle the logistics, navigation, and day-to-day operations of the race. We didn’t need another Ethan—for a multitude of reasons—we needed power.
Like I said before, ocean rowing boats need an engine. But this time, I wanted two.
The first was relatively easy to acquire. By signing Angus I had given up on my goal of winning the Talisker with a United States crew. But that’s the thing about big goals. They’re worth only what you’re willing to give up to get them. Which, for me, meant checking my pride and saying a hearty “Hail to the Queen!”
Alex Simpson had rowed with Angus to set that Indian Ocean record. He’s bigger and stronger than your average rower with a surprisingly posh, cut-glass accent that couldn’t be more different from Angus’s. Angus himself recommended Alex to me, and when I asked why, he gave me an honest answer: “The kid just shuts up and rows.”
Let me pause here and say how important someone like that is to your organization. Talent is obviously important. Commitment is even more so. But when you’re weighing the individual strengths of your team, don’t be suckered by flash. Find the people who just shut up and row. Their consistency is what will carry your team when all the loud ones, the type A’s, and the overthinkers burn out.
Alex jumped at the chance to row with Angus again. The two of them were born to adventure. If they’d been born a few centuries earlier, they probably would have raced Magellan around the world. With them on board, our team was looking crazy strong. But not strong enough. If we were going to do this right, I knew we’d need some good old-fashioned American muscle.
MATT
This was an important day at Vesper. In just a few seconds, Michiel was going to give the signal, and the seat race would begin. If I won this, I’d finally be going to the show. The big time. The top boat.
My boat won the first race—a great start. But as I switched out of that boat and started settling into the other one, the guy in front of me suddenly turned around. “We’re actually faster than the boat you just came from,” he told me. “The choppy water was keeping us from getting good connection on the front end. Slow down and focus on staying right with me. Don’t be late to the water, and we’ll surge ahead. Adjust your spacers to allow you to finish a little higher and get out of the water clean.”
I didn’t respond; I just went to work adjusting my spacers. Not because of what was said but because of who said it. When Matt Brown talks, people listen.
Matt is six foot five, 240 pounds of “Oh, shit, look at that guy!” He was a track star in high school who, similarly to me, pivoted into rowing at college. His first time on the rowing machine at UCLA, he pulled a 6:20 without any technique or training whatsoever. Once the word got out, the Ivies descended on him like he was Scarlett Johansson at Comic-Con.
When the dust settled, the UCLA on Matt’s jersey had been replaced with a big blue Y. By the time I finally got in touch with him, we were pushing June. With little time to train, Angus and I knew that whoever took the fourth spot aboard the American Spirit would already have to be at their fighting weight. Matt was the perfect candidate.
Matt came into his own at Yale, then made the team at Vesper, where he quickly shot up to the top boat. After Vesper he earned his master’s while rowing abroad for Oxford’s legendary crew.
While I was rowing the Atlantic, Matt was gearing up for Olympic trials. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t make it. Fortunately, I knew exactly how that felt. I knew how it felt to have talent and strength and to have absolutely nothing to do with them. I knew I could sell him on this challenge, but he wasn’t so sure.
Matt had just taken a great job at a tech company in San Francisco, and he had a wife and newborn daughter to support. If I wanted him on board, I would have to be a better leader than I was before. I would have to do more than just recruit. I would have to build a community. I would have to establish a generation.
I was always fascinated with the trophy case at Vesper. Not just because it was full of gold medals but because each of those medals represented one group of people at one time who pulled off one unbelievable accomplishment. For the four years I rowed there, we became the new generation of the historic Vesper program. We could feel it, and we took it seriously.
Sundays were our only day off, so Saturdays were sacred times for the team. We wouldn’t leave the bar if one of our guys was still inside. Do you have date? Doesn’t matter. You’ll be politely calling it an early night with her and meeting up with the team. Because this team matters.
The difference between building a team and establishing a generation is that teams work for a goal, but generations work for one another. This starts with the leader. It’s one thing for you to know when to push, when to rest, and when to quit, but it’s another to extend that throughout an organization.
As a leader, you are always trying to do something greater. But not everyone’s version of that is the same. In order to bring people into your generation, you need to be able to convince them that they’re something greater is or should be the same as yours. Doing this doesn’t require standing on your desk and delivering a grand, Braveheart-style speech. It happens day by day, one decision at a time. Matt is a perfect example.
After a few weeks of back-and-forth phone calls and deep discussion with his family, Matt was close to joining the team. He had just one final problem that needed solving. Over the phone he told me that his wife was on board, his new job was supportive, he’d have all the time off he needed. But there was just one problem: daycare.
I almost laughed. Despite his superhuman size and strength, Matt is actually extremely emotional. He cries more than any guy I know who can squat 400 pounds.
Matt’s biggest concern wasn’t the risk of the race. It was being able to afford childcare so his daughter and wife could be supported while he spent eight weeks with me chasing a dream. I cut him off before he could even finish the request. “Matt—we got it,” I said. “I’ll put it in the budget.”
He started to go on about how much it would cost, but I cut him off again. “Whatever you and your family need, the team will take care of it.” That was it. Matt was in.
Every person you are leading has this type of emotional lever. Pulling it may have a cost, but it’s always worth paying it. Because once it’s flipped, that person won’t just be working on your team; they’ll be joining you in your generation. Matt’s lever was his daughter. Because I was willing to support her, he was willing to support me. And her name, fittingly, is Olympia.
LEADERSHIP LESSON:
INVITE THEM IN
There is a difference between the best guys and the right guys. Every member of my new team was more than a strong athlete. They were all leveraged toward the goal of a world-record row on both a personal and a team level. After my experience with Nick, Ethan, and Tom, I knew that emotion mattered more than anything. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how far that idea could take us.
When Tom and I started eating breakfast together and re-engaging with each other emotionally, we went from twenty-third to eleventh place and finished a race most people thought would kill us. But what if instead of just Tom and me there was a four-person boat full of people who were similarly leveraged to and for one another? A team like that, I thought, could do anything. But why stop there?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my teammates are not the only people who leverage my emotions. My wife, for example does that better than anyone every day of my life. And, I realized, the men I would be rowing with had wives and daughters and significant others, and fathers and mothers and friends and neighbors as well.
Slowly I began to see the lens zoom out on the unending network of emotional connections that exists behind each and every human being. As I took in these constellations of impossibly strong bonds, I decided that our team would no longer be just the four of us. I realized that it never was to begin with.
All the teams we lead are made up of people who represent many other people. The power of leveraging an individual’s emotional connection is impressive. The power of leveraging that entire gamut of interdependency is quite frankly unstoppable.
Once you realize that the junior assistant on your team is actually the product of an infinitely complex web of emotional connections, you should jump at the chance to leverage that web for the purposes of your high-performance goal. This is how you do it.
Once a quarter, invite your teammates to bring the people they most care about to a meeting about their jobs. I know, it’s crazy; nobody does that. Whenever we talk about work-life balance, we’re mostly talking about keeping work out of the home, not bringing the home directly in to work. Uniting as much of your team’s emotional network under the banner of your team’s goal is unspeakably powerful.
If your junior salesman’s wife suddenly sees her husband’s office, listens to his boss explain the team’s goals, has the chance to meet other members of the team and ask as many questions as she wants, she will leave better prepared to leverage his emotions in your team’s favor.
Then the conversations they have at dinner about work won’t be so one-sided. Then she can understand better why he’s staying late and can provide more empathy or higher-quality feedback. Suddenly, the most powerful emotional lever in his life is leveraging him toward your team’s shared goal as well. That lever is a multiplier on that teammate’s performance that will unlock unbelievable results. I say so from experience.
I had two years to train for my first Atlantic crossing. The new team would have only nine months. Matt and I trained in the Bay Area while Angus and Alex worked together in England. The days passed in a flurry of protein intake, international phone calls, and list making, until finally, the new Latitude 35 would come together in person at last.
A few weeks before we would head out to the starting line in La Gomera, I flew Angus and Alex out to California to connect with the rest of the team. But, fascinated by this idea of emotional connections, I also brought out the people they were closest to as well.
The time we spent together was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. On one memorable night our group was occupying an entire restaurant in my sleepy little Northern California suburb. All around me I saw people laughing, talking, listening, and making new friends over good food. At that moment I truly realized what Michiel meant when he talked about earning your medals in the off season. Looking at the people in that restaurant, I could feel the strength of the emotions being leveraged. And I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that we were going to win.
But, as always, the ocean had other plans.
JANUARY 2017
The Atlantic Ocean
We’re screwed. I rub my charred forehead with salt-caked fingers, hoping to shake loose some inspiration, but all that falls is another flurry of dead and peeling skin.
I close my eyes and try to focus, but there’s barely enough room for someone my size to sit in the cabin, let alone come up with an idea to get us out of this mess. I let myself stay like that for a while as we rise and fall on the disturbingly gentle waves, each one a reminder that our dream is slowly dying.
Eventually, I have to face the facts: This isn’t just a mess, it’s a disaster, and we don’t need a good idea.
We need a miracle.
GATHERING POINT:
THE TEAM BEHIND YOUR TEAM
The right people: There’s a difference between having the best people on your team and having the right people on your team. Talent must be only part of the overall picture when you’re building a high-performance team.
See the network: Understanding who has the power to leverage your teammates’ emotions, and who they in turn have the power to emotionally leverage, is the key to understanding who your teammates truly are.
The actual team: In business, most people identify the team as the people who are getting paid to accomplish the task. But if a husband, wife, best friend, or neighbor leverages a teammate, then you must see them as being part of the solution as well. If more people are leveraging and being leveraged, both within and outside of your organization, then the amount of suffering and sacrifice your teammates will be willing to endure will increase exponentially. This is the key to creating a truly exceptional team.