The Ontario Broker - Volume 22, Issue 4 - 21

GROWTH
W
hen I was a newcomer to rowing, I joined
the defending Olympic championship
team. The group was reeling from a poor
showing at the 2010 World Championship
Men's Eight Crew event, which caused
this high-performing team to face new challenges. They were
in a moment of transformation and disagreement. They were
also challenging themselves to maintain their high standards of
execution. Joining the team at this time gave me an opportunity
to observe the culture before becoming
immersed in it. It also allowed me to me
learn many personal and team-growth
lessons.
Keep Working Hard While
Working it Out
When there is disagreement within a
team, it's important to maintain some
basic consistency of output-even
before the issues are resolved. In our
case, there were questions about our
head coach's suitability for the job,
fairness and transparency in athlete
selection for boats, and distribution
of resources to the various training
groups that made up the national team.
This meant having to stomach some
incongruence between what we wanted
as individuals versus what was actually
happening in the training environment.
Instead of getting our way in the
moment, we had to have faith that we
were working toward a future that had
a future.
Change and transformation in a team
environment is an opportunity for you
to demonstrate personal leadership
through action. I wrestled constantly
with my coach's approach to training
and racing, but I made a promise to
myself that I would commit 100% to his
program for at least one full year. Even
though I doubted our coach at times, I
knew that I had little chance to realize
my potential without committing fully
to a specific strategy and plan. That
meant my personal uncertainty was
secondary to the primary principle of
committed execution of a plan, even if it
wasn't my plan.
In a high-performance team, the
people with the problems should
become the people with the solutions.
If you're a leader experiencing push
back on a decision, consider this next
approach. During a world cup event in
Switzerland, our coach struggled to convince us that our stroke
rate needed to be higher to compete with the best crews. We
didn't buy it. Our coach allowed us to try our desired stroke rate
during the next race, and the result was abysmal. We learned
our lesson. In the post-race meeting, we all said, Mike, we think
we need to increase our stroke rate. The people with the problem
quickly became the people with the solution.
Knowing the Score
I was asked after a recent keynote, How do you know when you
have enough rapport with a teammate to ask them to go beyond
expectations to help you? My answer was that every relationship
you have-whether at work or on a sports team-has its
own bucket of relationship capital that you're gradually filling
through repeated cycles of give and take. Our coach used to
call this knowing the score.
It's our responsibility to know how much credibility we've
developed with our teammates and to not over-leverage the
relationship. When we lost our first heat at the Olympics, I
remember my teammates and I looking into each other's eyes
for an answer to the question, are you with me? By then, we had
gone through hundreds of hours of grueling training together
and had forged such trust and belief in one another that we
knew we could expect total commitment. We knew that we
would deliver for each other under the greatest pressure of
our lives.
Stick with It
Personal growth for me has always been about staying open
to finding out what something-some job, experience, life goal-
is really like, and then actively recommitting to the new reality
as it unfolds. Whatever your pursuit, it ends up being different
from what you imagine it's going to be. Consider making your
commitment to an appropriate time horizon stronger than your
commitment to the goal itself. Say, I'm going to stay with this
for X years, no matter how I'm feeling moment to moment. While
this may seem overly simplistic, it keeps your mind connected
to an appropriate timeline within which real growth and
transformation can occur.
" PERSONAL GROWTH FOR
ME HAS ALWAYS BEEN
ABOUT STAYING OPEN
TO FINDING OUT WHAT
SOMETHING IS REALLY
LIKE, AND THEN ACTIVELY
RECOMMITTING TO THE NEW
REALITY AS IT UNFOLDS. "
VOLUME 22 | ISSUE 4
21
The Ontario Broker - Volume 22, Issue 4

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Ontario Broker - Volume 22, Issue 4
