Make Winning Inevitable

Are you constantly looking for ways to utilize your collective resources for the most successful outcome? “We thinking” is about bringing everyone across the finish line with you and not just being a standout player on your own. If you are the strong link, do you just happily enjoy yourself at the front of the pack, or do you stop and realize that feeling good means you should be carrying more weight for someone who is struggling? In the early days of adventure racing, most teams tried to recruit the best mountain biker, the best paddler, the best navigator and so on and then organize them into a team. More often than not, these teams of individual superstars wouldn’t even see the halfway point of the race, much less the finish. Too many egos and too little sharing of strengths and weaknesses was most often the culprit. It wasn’t until my group realized that being a true team builder was the most important skill to have in the long haul that we started to win races. I’m convinced that the same holds true for teammates throughout the rest of our lives. In the real world, it’s easy to be an island, to pay lip service to teamwork and to get to the finish line of a project alone if you need to. We mostly rely on our own talents, wits and skills because they have gotten us this far, haven’t they? But to get to the next level, beyond what you can accomplish alone, you must be able to build and inspire a “We Thinking” team in which you share strengths and weaknesses, integrate various talents and skills, and see yourself as just one important piece of a high-performance puzzle. Inspiring and Demonstrating "We Thinking": Choose a goal that can't be accomplished alone and build a world class team to achieve it: The best of the best in any challenging endeavor didn't get to the finish line alone; they had mentors, great teammates, sponsors, a supportive family, and they consistently surrounded themselves with people that could push or tow them to the next level. In our business lives, we should always be reaching out to others in pursuit of our goals for ourselves, and, most importantly, our clients and customers. Just like a tree, we can only grow so tall before we need to widen our base and extend our roots...only then can we grow even taller. It's not a weakness to seek teammates when faced with a big challenge or a huge hairy audacious goal...it's a strength!! Strive to Take Everyone Across The Finish Line Together: In our real lives and from a young age, we’re wired to think of winning as being a mutually exclusive thing: if I am to win, everyone else must lose. But once we’ve decided who is on our team (is it just you against the world every day, or do you consider your family, your business unit, your clients or your entire company as part of your team? This is an important question, one that we have to think about and answer every single day), why can’t we then strive to take all of our teammates onto the top of that podium with us? Isn’t it more fun and memorable to have a Stanley Cup–style finish, with everyone pouring champagne on one another on stage, than to have an Olympic-style awards ceremony where you’re standing on that podium alone? Accept Responsibility For Success and Failure As a Team: The best teams word everything as we: “We lost our way.” “We struggled in that section.” “We lost the account.” The people who are responsible feel bad enough already. And more than likely, they know who they are. They will appreciate you having their back, and in the future, when the shoe is on the other foot, they will have yours. What happens on the team stays on the team. This grace and generosity of spirit is the glue that holds a team together over the long haul. Besides, many team issues are due to a lack of synergy and not a particular individual’s performance. For example, if an adventure racing team’s navigation is wrong, it is not because a single navigator screwed up. There are three other people who are supposed to be helping that navigator along the way. His job is to communicate which landmarks you should all be looking for, and the rest of the team should be vigilantly backing him up: “Steve, I see that ridgeline you told us to look for, and I think I see that little meadow coming up, too.” It’s that constant communication that keeps people thinking as a team. "Suffer Equally"-- Offer and Accept Tow Lines: This is a funny term that one of my teammates came up with to describe how a world class adventure racing team operates. World Class Teams are always finding a way to "suffer equally" during the race, whether that means taking some weight from a struggling teammate's pack when we feel strong, or grabbing a tow line from a teammate when we're at our lowest point. Teammates who are consistently sharing their strengths AND their weaknesses/challenges will always get to the finish line before a team of superstar soloists in the long run. Seek Synergy Everywhere: The best leaders have a knack for creating synergy in every interaction, because they are consistently operating with the intention of a teammate: They always try to find the win/win, they bring more value than they take, and they walk out of their front door every day and see a world full of teammates versus a world full of competitors. This energy draws people to us and brings out the teambuilders in them. It's amazing how much people will give when the person across the table from them has the intention to give back.