Grit Read online

  Indeed, forty years ago, 170 of the cadets who started Beast Barracks quit before it was over. That’s 12 percent, double the proportion who dropped out of Beast by the time I came to West Point to study grit a decade ago. Last year, attrition was down to less than 2 percent.

  One explanation for this downward trend is hazing, or, rather, the lack thereof. The practice of inflicting physical and psychological stress on first-year cadets was long considered a necessary part of toughening up future officers. A second benefit, so the logic went, was to cull the weak, effectively eliminating weakness in the corps by pushing out those who couldn’t handle it. Over the decades, the list of approved hazing rituals was progressively curtailed, and in 1990, hazing was officially banned altogether.

  So, eliminating hazing might explain declining Beast attrition in the late twentieth century, but what explains the last decade’s precipitous drop? Is West Point admissions doing a better job of selecting for grit? From the year-to-year data on grit I’ve seen, absolutely not. The average grit scores of incoming cadets haven’t changed since West Point began collecting them.

  According to General Caslen, what’s happened at the academy is a deliberate change in culture. “When only the survivalists succeed, that’s an attrition model,” he explained. “There’s another kind of leadership. I call it a developmental model. The standards are exactly the same—high—but in one case, you use fear to get your subordinates to achieve those standards. And in the other case, you lead from the front.”

  On the battlefield, leading from the front means, quite literally, getting out in front with your soldiers, doing the same hard work, and facing the same mortal risks. At West Point, it means treating cadets with unconditional respect and, when they fall short of meeting the academy’s extraordinarily high standards, figuring out the support they need to develop.

  “For example,” Caslen explained, “on the physical fitness test, if there are cadets that struggle with the two-mile run and I’m their leader, what I’m going to do is sit down with them and put together a training program. I’m going to make sure the plan is sensible. Some afternoons, I’m going to say, ‘Okay, let’s go run,’ or ‘Let’s go workout,’ or ‘Let’s go do intervals.’ I will lead from the front to get the cadet to the standard. Very often, the cadet who was unable to do it on their own all of a sudden is now motivated, and once they start to improve, their motivation increases, and when they meet those objectives they gain even more confidence. At some point, they figure out how to do things on their own.”

  Caslen’s example brought to mind a story West Pointer Tom Deierlein told me of the even-tougher-than-Beast training he endured to become an Airborne Ranger. At one point in the training, he was hanging off a rock face—a climb he’d already failed once—with every muscle in his body shaking in rebellion. “I can’t!” Tom shouted to the Ranger instructor on the plateau above. “I expected him to shout back, ‘That’s right. Quit! You’re a loser!’ This guy, for whatever reason, instead says, ‘Yes you can! Get up here!’ And I did. I climbed up, and I swore to myself I’d never say ‘I can’t’ again.”

  As for critics of West Point’s new developmental culture, Caslen points out that the academic, physical, and military standards for graduating from West Point have, if anything, grown more stringent over time. He’s convinced that the academy is producing finer, stronger, and more capable leaders than ever before. “If you want to measure West Point by how much yelling and screaming goes on around here, then I’m just going to let you complain. Young men and women today just don’t respond to yelling and screaming.”

  Other than objective standards of performance, what else hasn’t changed at West Point in the last ten years? Norms of politeness and decorum remain so strong that, during my visit, I found myself checking my watch to make sure I was a few minutes early for each appointment and, without thinking, addressed every man and woman I met by “sir” and “ma’am.” Also, the gray full-dress uniforms worn by cadets on formal occasions remain the same, making today’s cadets part of the “long gray line” of West Pointers stretching back two centuries before them. Finally, cadet slang is still spoken fluently by West Pointers and includes such improbably defined terms as firsties for “fourth-year cadets,” spoony for “neat in physical appearance,” and huah for everything from “I understand you” to “gung ho” to “agreed” to “great job.”

  Caslen isn’t so naive as to think that four years of developmental culture at West Point will reliably turn 2s and 3s on the Grit Scale into 5s. But then again, the varsity athletes, class presidents, and valedictorians who make it through West Point’s two-year admissions process aren’t exactly the bottom of the barrel in grit. Importantly, he’s seen people change. He’s watched cadets develop. He has a growth mindset. “You never really know who is going to become a Schwarzkopf or a MacArthur.”

  * * *

  Two years after Pete Carroll called to talk about grit, I got on a plane to Seattle. I wanted to see firsthand what Pete meant when he said the Seahawks were building the grittiest culture in the NFL.

  By then I’d read his autobiography, Win Forever, in which he talks about discovering the power of passion and perseverance in his own life:

  Personally, I have learned that if you create a vision for yourself and stick with it, you can make amazing things happen in your life. My experience is that once you have done the work to create the clear vision, it is the discipline and effort to maintain that vision that can make it all come true. The two go hand in hand. The moment you’ve created that vision, you’re on your way, but it’s the diligence with which you stick to that vision that allows you to get there.

  Getting that across to players is a constant occupation.

  I’d also watched Pete talk about grit and culture in his many interviews. In one, Pete is onstage in an auditorium at the University of Southern California, returning as an honored guest to the school where he’d coached the USC Trojans to a record six wins in seven championship games over nine years. “What’s new? What are you learning?” Pete’s interviewer asked. Pete recounted discovering my research on grit and its resonance with his own decades-in-the-making approach to coaching. “In our program,” Pete said, his coaching staff reinforces a culture of grit through innumerable “competitive opportunities and moments and illustrations. . . . Really what we’re doing is we’re just trying to make them more gritty. We’re trying to teach them how to persevere. We’re trying to illustrate to them how they can demonstrate more passion.”

  Then he gave an example. In practice, Seahawks play to win—offensive and defensive players compete against each other with the full-throated aggression and destroy-the-enemy intensity of a real game. The ritual of weekly competition-level practice, dubbed Competition Wednesdays, can be traced back to Anson Dorrance, whose book on coaching Pete devoured when he was crafting his own approach. “If you thought of it as who was winning and who was losing, you’d miss the whole point. . . . It’s really the guy across from us that makes us who we are.” Our opponent, Pete explained, creates challenges that help us become our best selves.

  Outsiders to Seahawks culture easily miss that point. “Guys don’t understand it right away,” Pete said. “They don’t get it, but in time we work our way through it.” For Pete, this means sharing—in the most transparent way—everything that goes on in his own head, his objectives, the reasoning behind his approach. “If I didn’t talk about it, they wouldn’t know that. They’d be thinking, ‘Am I going to win or am I going to lose?’ But when we talk about it enough, they come to an appreciation of why they compete.”

  Pete admitted that some players may have more to teach than they have to learn. Seahawk free safety Earl Thomas, for example, came to him as “the most competitive, gritty guy you could ever imagine. . . . He pushes and practices with marvelous intensity. He focuses, studies, does everything.” But the magic of culture is that one person’s grit can provide a model for others. On a daily basis, Earl “
demonstrates in so many different ways what he’s all about.” If each person’s grit enhances grit in others, then, over time, you might expect what social scientist Jim Flynn calls a “social multiplier” effect. In a sense, it’s the motivational analogue of the infinity cube of self-reflecting mirrors Jeff Bezos built as a boy—one person’s grit enhances the grit of the others, which in turn inspires more grit in that person, and so on, without end.

  What does Earl Thomas have to say about being a Seahawk? “My teammates have been pushing me since day one. They’re helping me to get better, and vice versa. You have to have a genuine appreciation for teammates who are willing to put in hard work, buy into the system, and never be satisfied with anything but continuing to evolve. It’s incredible to see the heights we’re reaching from that humble attitude.”

  * * *

  By the time I got around to visiting the Seahawks’ training facility, my curiosity had doubled. Making it to the championship game in successive years is notoriously hard, but the Seahawks had defied the odds and made it to the Super Bowl again that year. In sharp contrast to the prior year’s win, which Seattle fans celebrated with a blue and green ticker-tape parade that was the largest public gathering in Seattle’s history, this year’s loss resulted in howling, weeping, and the gnashing of teeth—over what sports commentators deemed “the worst call in NFL history.”

  Here’s a recap: With twenty-six seconds on the clock, the Seahawks have possession of the ball and are one yard away from a game-winning touchdown. Everyone expects Pete to call a running play. It’s not just that the end zone is so close. It’s also because the Seahawks have Marshawn Lynch, whose nickname is Beast Mode and who’s widely agreed to be the single best running back in the entire NFL.

  Instead, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson throws a pass, the ball is intercepted, and the New England Patriots take home the trophy.

  Since Super Bowl XLIX was only the third football game I’d watched without interruption in my entire life—the second being the NFC championship game the Seahawks had won the week before—I can’t offer an expert opinion on whether, indeed, passing instead of running was the epitome of coaching misjudgment. What interested me more when I arrived in Seattle was Pete’s reaction and that of the whole team.

  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.

  * * *

  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.

  Before I can answer, another player says, “Well, man, maybe he’s just not capable of A’s.”

  I shake my head. “From what I’ve been told, your brother is plenty smart enough to bring home A’s. He was doing it before.”

 
The player agrees. “He’s a smart kid. Trust me, he’s a smart kid.”

  I’m still thinking when Pete jumps up and says, with genuine excitement: “First of all, there is absolutely no way you give that game to your brother. You got him motivated. Okay, that’s a start. That’s a beginning. Now what? He needs some coaching! He needs someone to explain what he needs to do, specifically, to get back to good grades! He needs a plan! He needs your help in figuring out those next steps.”

  This reminds me of something Pete said at the start of my visit: “Every time I make a decision or say something to a player, I think, ‘How would I treat my own kid?’ You know what I do best? I’m a great dad. And in a way, that’s the way I coach.”

  At the end of the day, I’m in the lobby, waiting for my taxi. Pete is there with me, making sure I get off okay. I realize I haven’t asked him directly how he and the Seahawks found the courage to continue after he’d made “the worst call ever.” Pete later told Sports Illustrated that it wasn’t the worst decision, it was the “worst possible outcome.” He explained that like every other negative experience, and every positive one, “it becomes part of you. I’m not going to ignore it. I’m going to face it. And when it bubbles up, I’m going to think about it and get on with it. And use it. Use it!”

  Just before I leave, I turn and look up. And there, twenty feet above us, in foot-high chrome letters, is the word CHARACTER. In my hand, I’m holding a bag of blue and green Seahawk swag, including a fistful of blue rubber bracelets stamped in green with LOB: Love Our Brothers.

  Chapter 13

  CONCLUSION

  This book has been about the power of grit to help you achieve your potential. I wrote it because what we accomplish in the marathon of life depends tremendously on our grit—our passion and perseverance for long-term goals. An obsession with talent distracts us from that simple truth.