Grit(83)

Pete’s idol, basketball coach John Wooden, was fond of saying, “Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.” What I wanted to know is how a culture of grit continues not just in the afterglow of success, but in the aftermath of failure. What I wanted to know is how Pete and the Seahawks found the courage to continue.



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As I look back on it now, my visit has an “in the moment” feel:

My appointment begins with a meeting in Pete’s office—yes, it’s the corner office, but no, it’s not huge or fancy, and the door is apparently always open, literally, allowing loud rock music to spill out into the hallway. “Angela,” Pete leans in to ask, “how can this day be helpful to you?”

I explain my motive. Today I’m an anthropologist, here to take notes on Seahawks culture. If I had a pith helmet, I’d be wearing it.

And that, of course, gets Pete all excited. He tells me that it’s not just one thing. It’s a million things. It’s a million details. It’s substance and it’s style.

After a day with the Seahawks, I have to agree. It’s countless small things, each doable—but each so easy to botch, forget, or ignore. And though the details are countless, there are some themes.

The most obvious is language. One of Pete’s coaches once said, “I speak fluent Carroll.” And to speak Carroll is to speak fluent Seahawk: Always compete. You’re either competing or you’re not. Compete in everything you do. You’re a Seahawk 24-7. Finish strong. Positive self-talk. Team first.

During my day with the team, I can’t tell you how many times someone—a player, a coach, a scout—enthusiastically offers up one of these morsels, but I can tell you I don’t once hear variations. One of Pete’s favorite sayings is “No synonyms.” Why not? “If you want to communicate effectively, you need to be clear with the words you use.”

Everybody I meet peppers their sentences with these Carrollisms. And while nobody has quite the neutron-powered, teenage energy of the sixty-three-year-old head coach, the rest of the Seahawks family, as they like to call themselves, are just as earnest in helping me decode what these dictums actually mean.

“Compete,” I’m told, is not what I think it is. It’s not about triumphing over others, a notion I’ve always been uneasy about. Compete means excellence. “Compete comes from the Latin,” explains Mike Gervais, the competitive-surfer-turned-sports-psychologist who is one of Pete’s partners in culture building. “Quite literally, it means strive together. It doesn’t have anything in its origins about another person losing.”

Mike tells me that two key factors promote excellence in individuals and in teams: “deep and rich support and relentless challenge to improve.” When he says that, a lightbulb goes on in my head. Supportive and demanding parenting is psychologically wise and encourages children to emulate their parents. It stands to reason that supportive and demanding leadership would do the same.

I begin to get it. For this professional football team, it’s not solely about defeating other teams, it’s about pushing beyond what you can do today so that tomorrow you’re just a little bit better. It’s about excellence. So, for the Seahawks, Always compete means Be all you can be, whatever that is for you. Reach for your best.

After one of the meetings, an assistant coach catches up to me in the hallway and says, “I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned finishing to you.”

Finishing?

“One thing we really believe in here is the idea of finishing strong.” Then he gives me examples: Seahawks finish a game strong, playing their hearts out to the last second on the clock. Seahawks finish the season strong. Seahawks finish every drill strong. And I ask, “But why just finish strong? Doesn’t it make sense to start strong, too?”

“Yes,” the coach says, “but starting strong is easy. And for the Seahawks, ‘finishing’ doesn’t literally mean ‘finishing.’?”

Of course not. Finishing strong means consistently focusing and doing your absolute best at every moment, from start to finish.

Soon enough, I realize it’s not only Pete doing the preaching. At one point, during a meeting attended by more than twenty assistant coaches, the entire room spontaneously breaks out into a chant, in perfect cadence: No whining. No complaining. No excuses. It’s like being in a choir of all baritones. Before this, they sang out: Always protect the team. Afterward: Be early.

Be early? I tell them that, after reading Pete’s book, I made “Be early” a resolution. So far, I had yet to be early for almost anything. This elicited some chuckles. Apparently, I’m not the only who struggles with that one. But just as important, this confession gets one of the guys talking about why it’s important to be early: “It’s about respect. It’s about the details. It’s about excellence.” Okay, okay, I’m getting it.

Around midday, I give a lecture on grit to the team. This is after giving similar presentations to the coaches and the scouts, and before talking to the entire front-office staff.

After most of the team has moved on to lunch, one of the Seahawks asks me what he should do about his little brother. His brother’s very smart, he says, but at some point, his grades started slipping. As an incentive, he bought a brand-new Xbox video-game console and placed it, still in its packaging, in his brother’s bedroom. The deal was that, when the report card comes home with A’s, he gets to unwrap the game. At first, this scheme seemed to be working, but then his brother hit a slump. “Should I just give him the Xbox?” he asks me.