Sprints
It was a scorching Friday afternoon. The sun beat down on our backs and sweat drenched what little clothes we were still wearing. Ross, Hannah, and I had been at the gym for two hours already, but nobody was going home. Not this close to the finish line. A few more four hundred meter sprints were the only thing between us and tacos.
Ross and I walked the allotted hundred meters of rest in between sprints with our hands on our hips. We squinted into the afternoon sun and we spoke in short snippets while trying to regulate our breathe. We discussed how neither of us would be there without the others. We agreed that our daily competition with each other was motivating.
We turned at the fifty meter mark and headed back toward our starting line. We passed Hannah on the way with encouraging but silent high fives. She stuck out her tongue to express her exhaustion. Her legs couldn’t carry her quite as fast as ours, but she ran with just as much ferocity. She didn’t need to be a part of the conversation, she knew what we were talking about. The three of us pushed each other regularly.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were Competition Training days. Days when extra work was listed on our gym’s daily planner. In addition to the regular workout, those who wanted to compete and get better at Crossfit would have the option to add more training to their day.
A year ago I wouldn’t have taken on this challenge. But over the past 12 months, the internal competition (the level to which each of the athletes pushed each other during workouts) at the gym steadily increased. Members like Ross and Hannah found members like me to compete with. We gave our best efforts in workouts because we knew the others would be watching. We knew that the others would call us out if we slacked. Not to mention, beat our scores. We fiercely competed with each other and we had all improved.
Ross, Hannah, and I would all likely have improved if we hadn’t exercised together. However, there was a compounding effect from us being together and pushing each other to new heights that none of us could have attained individually.
Talent Begets Talent
When you work with professionals, you want to bring your best to work. Most people want to pull their weight. Most people don’t want to sit idly by as someone else carries them. Not all, but most.
When your organization attracts new talent, your current team (and you) will often rise or fall to the new person’s ability. At the same time, the new person will likely have the same reaction to your existing team. This is what happened at the gym: talent begot talent.
When everyone strives to do their best work, good things happen. If there are a few influencers with negative or lazy attitudes, the outcome is bleak.
The “Sum of Five” is a principle from Jim Rohn that was impressed upon me by my former boss. Even though I no longer work for him, this is one of the ideas that I’ve adopted from my old mentor. The principle goes something like this: You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. For many of us, the people we spend the most time with are the ones we work alongside – for better or worse.
The best way to raise the level of talent in your organization, whether it’s a gym or a small business or a Fortune 500 company, is to find people who will push each other.
When I use the term “push” I mean that individuals do a few things for each other. First, they challenge each other to want to do more, create better, and bring out the best version of the others. Next, they keep each other accountable (if I skip a workout, I’m guaranteed to get a text from Hannah and/or Ross asking where I was). And finally, they will encourage each other when things don’t go as planned.
If the five people you interact with most are challenging you, encouraging you, and keeping you accountable, you will accomplish things you never thought were possible. Now imagine if that were the case for everyone in your organization.
It’s not feasible for one person to influence everyone all the time, not on an individual level at least. That is not scalable. However, you can create an environment where everyone wants to compete and can compete with each other.
Hope, Hire, or Train
The owner of our gym may or may not have intentionally attracted higher-caliber athletes to the gym. However, he saw that it was happening and enabled growth by offering the competition training program. He wanted to help us reach our goals because he knew that happy athletes create a positive environment. He knew that if his gym was “home” to athletes who did well in competitions, that more people would know about our gym. There was no down-side to fostering a competitive environment for us to work within.
The first strategy, outlined above, is to train your team to always push for more. This requires the right people who are willing to push each other to new heights. One talented person surrounded by duds will likely become a dud or leave. There are always exceptions and some “rock stars” have huge egos that prohibit them from playing well with others. But for the most part, they are like Alpacas, they tend to need company if you want them to stick around.
You cannot force this kind of growth. But, you can create a environment where this is possible: allow/encourage the team to compete, continually teach them, incentivize them, and champion the people who are always honing their craft.
The next strategy, which couples with training, is hiring the right people.
Assuming you don’t have the competitive environment you desire, take action to change it. Find new talent. Surround yourself with people who will lift you up, push you harder, and keep you accountable. Ross and Hannah do that for me at the gym. And when you find them, go back to the first strategy above.
Conversely, if you have someone with a negative attitude who discourages growth, get rid of them as quickly as possible. These people will be a cancer to your organization. They will infect others faster than you realize, deeper than you imagine. Point out their shortcomings and give them opportunities to change, but do not tolerate people who actively discourage growth.
Finally, your last strategy is to hope that you attract more talent. You aren’t intentional about fostering growth. You aren’t aggressively pursuing new talent to raise the organizational bar. And your Sum of Five is a group of people who drags you down.
Pro Tip: Hope is not a strategy.
