Leadership from Behind
I just completed Ashley Seeger’s 4th “I AM A BADASS” 5-hour event and, as usual, had a fantastic time. We typically start with some P.T. and some teamwork challenges and this event began in much the same way. In the past, the first teamwork challenge always involved hoisting a tractor tire onto our shoulders and then moving with purpose up into the hills. The smart teamwork move here is to rotate tired team members out from under the tire at intervals throughout the trek. Fresh team members jump in to relieve as needed, no single person gets exhausted and the load is efficiently moved.
A new twist for this event was to move buckets of water, along with some awkward jump ropes and slam balls, up into the hills to a checkpoint within the allowed 30-minutes. This was a team timehack but each person would operate independently, carrying their fair share of water or extra gear or both. No longer operating as small teams orbiting around tractor tires, how would this giant team accomplish the task?
I can tell you how I have approached this challenge in the past. I would have done my best to up near the front, killing it. RAWWWRRRR! Must. Destroy. Challenge. Of course, after reaching the checkpoint I would still come back and help my team members still out on the trail. There’s nothing wrong with that approach--after all, it still benefits the team but I learned something new this time out.
It was an unexpected lesson but also one that is embarrassingly obvious to me now. What I discovered is that there are opportunities to lead that only occur at the back of the pack.
First off, when your team has a timehack (assuming no other parameters), the ONLY time that matters is the time of the last person to arrive at the checkpoint. Any effort spent to propel a middle-of-the-pack team member to the front won’t accomplish anything. Similarly, the front-runner pushing hard to arrive even earlier rarely produces a benefit. However, time spent with the slowest among your team goes straight to the bottom line--improving your team’s finish time.
Just in case one of my pals at the back of the pack reads this, know that I am absolutely NOT knocking you. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and depending on the task at hand and the makeup of the team, any of us might find ourselves the slowest team member at that particular moment. Challenge me to a crab walk race sometime and I’ll prove my point.
The back of the line is where I met people with the least experience at these types of events. The picture, above, is of Laura. She was carrying two buckets--both with cracks in them. Laura silently put up with the awkward load and was doing the best she could but the water was still draining away as the team advanced up the hill. Eventually, we ended up dumping her water in my bucket. (By the way, I’m not bragging about carrying a double load of water--CAW CAW! As soon as I had opportunity, I distributed some of that extra weight among other team members up ahead).
At the back of the line I saw a lot of offers to carry packs and extra gear to lighten the load of team members who were struggling. I saw Ryan carrying two water buckets for long stretches during the first ascent. Someone even suggested that the bucket handles were wide enough for two people to share. Sure enough, that worked too. There was also plenty of encouragement being shared as the heat and the hills made many question their preparation and training.
All of this early teamwork paid off at the end of the night. It took four events to get to this point somehow everything clicked. We had a final timehack which involved the entire team getting themselves and their gear back to Marie Kerr Park by the deadline or suffer a horrible penalty. (The penalty last time was an agonizing elephant walk which I hope never to repeat.)
We set a timer and away we went. I noticed immediately that the team was running as a tight pack--no stragglers and no one sprinting ahead. We checked in frequently on the time remaining and were confident of the pace we set. We took shifts carrying the heavy gear, keeping it out of the hands of our more tired teammates. Our lines stretched a bit once we exited the trails but we arranged to re-group at the final traffic signal leading to the park, ensuring that we would cross the finish line as a team.
At the regroup point, I believe it was Brandon Grazer who suggested that the slowest team members from the most recent run should move to the front and set the pace. Brilliant! THEY would be the ones to lead us in.
Time was short so Rachel Beardsley abruptly stepped off the curb and marched into the street with arms waving to stop traffic. The team followed and poured into the crosswalk. All extra equipment was now in the hands of those most able to carry them all the way to the end--there would be no time left to switch carriers mid-run.
Our weary team members led us into the park at an impressive pace. You could see how much effort they were giving and it was the most inspiring thing I saw all night. Timekeeper Beardsley called out that we had less than two minutes remaining which resulted in a quick change of course. The flat dirt running path was instinctively abandoned to cut a direct line through the park towards our destination. We saw Ashley and the volunteers in the distance ahead. We knew it would be close and gave it one last push. We reached the finish line and were relieved to find that we had succeeded--and with 40 seconds to spare. Victory!
Looking back now, I wonder if our slower runners would have had enough energy for that final sprint if we had left them to struggle under excessive weight earlier in the night. Or if we had not earlier shown care and concern for them, would they still have even been willing to push themselves to the point of collapse to ensure the team’s success? Maybe instead they would have said “screw you guys” when we asked them to sprint for the finish.
Real teamwork is not something we could have conjured up in the final minutes of an event only when it suited us. Instead, it was something cultivated by our actions and timely words in the hours leading up to our last sprint to the finish.