Together we can

My teammates and I have learned about building world-class teams the hard way: by competing in and winning the world’s toughest ultra-endurance adventure races. From the leech-infested jungles of Borneo to the towering peaks of Tibet and Ecuador, from the frigid seas and glaciers of Patagonia to the searing desert of Namibia, we have run, paddled, mountain biked, climbed, rafted, spelunked, navigated and raced across the most remote places on earth for up to 10 nonstop days and nights as a team. There is no shelter, no warm food and no escape from the harshness of the uncharted terrain and no reprieve from the competitors relentlessly nipping at our blister-covered heels.

If even one racer from our four-member mixed-gender team quits, we are all disqualified. So, our journey to the distant finish line in these 600-1,000 mile eco-challenges becomes a matter of great leadership and the ability to inspire teammates to rise to the occasion — no matter how tough the challenge, no matter how steep the climb and in the face of a constantly changing game (sounds like your job as a leader, doesn’t it?). There is one very useful, real world takeaway for every participants: An honorary PhD in team-building. Or, as I like to call it, creating human synergy. 

So, how do we, as leaders, keep a team moving forward towards audacious goals with one heart and one mind? Here are a few essential elements of human synergy that I have learned over the years from the world’s greatest extreme teams:

Be ruled by the hope of success

Are you consistently doing what it takes to win instead of simply avoiding failure? It’s a completely different mindset leading to vastly different outcomes. Great leaders shatter the norms and do things that have never been done before in an effort to propel their team to the next level. We won many races by coming up with game-changing solutions. My teammate taught me the ‘be ruled by the hope of success’ lesson through some tough love in the middle of the 100-mile whitewater canoeing leg of a race. We were paddling our raft near the front of the race on day six, and every couple of minutes I kept looking behind to see where our closest competitors were.

My teammate reached out from behind and spun my head around to face forward, pointed down the river and said, “Winning is that way.” When the race organisers gave each team two inflatable canoes for the next leg, we tied them together, creating a faster boat powered by the whole team. Thanks to such inspired ideas, we won the race by two hours on that final leg. In the Borneo Eco-Challenge, we took the lead by turning a hiking leg of the race into a swimming leg, jumping into the whitewater rapids and swimming downriver for hours. We led the race from there to the finish line.  

Offer and accept help

Leave your ego (but not your confidence) at the start line — it’s the heaviest thing in your backpack. In life, leader or not, we are all going to be the strongest or weakest link in our team. We happily offer our strength to our teammates when they need it, but how many of us also offer our weaknesses to the team? In our team, each racer has ‘tow lines’ made of thin bungee cords hanging from their packs. If we are feeling strong, we offer tow lines to a struggling teammate.

If we are having a low moment, we grab them from someone stronger and get pulled along faster till we recover (as compared to forcing the team to slow down for us). The goal is to ‘suffer equally’, as my favourite captain, Kiwi John Howard, used to say. I believe that we don’t use all of our strength as leaders till we seek and accept help from our teammates. Accepting help is a gift to the helper —people are thrilled when they have a chance to help you. Let them do it; you create a bond every time you do. 

Inspire ‘we’ thinking

We are all conditioned to see winning as something mutually exclusive, as in, ‘For me to win, you must lose’. We are wired to compete at everything. And we do, to the detriment of our friendships, our rapport with colleagues, our workplaces and even our marriages. What if you saw the world as being full of potential teammates instead of competitors when you left home each morning? You would be happier and far more successful. Great leaders understand that in the quest to become the best, nobody wins alone. ‘We’ thinking leaders capitalise on their strengths and outsource their weaknesses, consistently building and inspiring a team that is able to connect to each another for mutual gain —whether for a moment, a project or a lifetime. And they happily share the space at the top of the podium with the people that got them there. 

Always act like a team

You’re not always going to feel warm and mushy about each other, but don’t let emotion effect locomotion. No matter how we feel, we are not allowed a day off from being a teammate or a leader. So, channel your inner great leader or teammate till the good feelings come back. During the world championships in Ecuador, my team had a major disagreement about navigation and we didn’t speak for hours. But as we approached the media crews on our exit, our team captain said something that changed the game for us: “If you want to become world champions, you need to act like world champions.”

We could have won an Academy Award for that performance — congratulating each other on a job well done, high-fives and hugs all around. It was all for the cameras, of course, but guess what happened? By the time we moved on, we were all genuinely happy together and behaving like a team. The argument never resurfaced — we were too busy with winning. Yes, I just suggested that you fake it until the feelings come back. It works. Acting like you’re in love is more important than feeling like you’re in love. 

Carry your teammates on your shoulders

As leaders, we often assume that we have to get out in front and show people the way. But, my favourite leaders are actually those who allow teammates to shine based on their strengths and not their titles, allowing for different leaders to emerge. In the 1997 Eco-Challenge, the Japanese team did something that defied all logic, reason and the boundaries of human endurance. They carried an injured female teammate on their backs for 18 hours, up and over an incredibly steep, rocky, muddy, densely covered 9,000-ft mountain in their quest to get to the finish line.

When they emerged from the sugarcane fields at the base of the mountain, battered but victorious, they did something incredibly graceful. They picked up their injured teammate and put her on their shoulders. They gave her the moment to shine and symbolically gave her credit for allowing them to succeed against the odds. Their performance says it all: We don’t achieve our greatest heights as leaders by stepping on our teammates’ backs to rise higher — we stand much taller as leaders when we put our teammates on our shoulders. And we don’t inspire our teammates by leading the pack and showing them how wonderful we are. We inspire them by putting them on our shoulders and showing them how amazing, smart and capable they are.