Ben Bergeron - Unlocking Potential: How Great Leaders Get The Most Out of Individuals, Teams & Organizations

U N L O C K I N G

P O T E N T I A L

Unlocking Potential

How Great Leaders Get the Most Out of

Individuals, Teams & Organizations

Copyright 2021 by Ben Bergeron

Write Hand Media

All rights reserved.

ISBN:

Paperback: 9798759763246

Hardcover: 9798759794349

F R O M T H E B E S T S E L L I N G A U T H O R S O F

CHASINGEXCELLENCE

U N L O C K I N G

P O T E N T I A L

HOW GREAT LEADERS GET THE

MOST OUT OF INDIVIDUALS,

TEAMS & ORGANIZATIONS

B E N B E R G E R O N

with Christine Bald

For Nick Jeffries

The best teammate in the game

C O N T E N T S

foreword

trial by fire

ntroducton flow

chapter 1 trust

PART 1. CULTURE

chapter 2

values 55

chapter 3

codify 83

PART 2. VISION

chapter 4

align 119

chapter 5

engage 143

PART 3. EXECUTION

chapter 6

expose 171

chapter 7

coach 193

epilogue

lead 217

TRIAL

BY FIRE.

CrossFit New England, traditional

F O R E W O R D

T R I A L BY F I R E

What is the opposite of Christmas Eve? Thats what Im feeling as I drive to CrossFit New England (CFNE) on my first day of work. Given the ungodly hour4:45 a.m.you might assume my dominant emotion would be sleepiness. Or disbelief, which is how I felt when Ben Bergeron emailed me my coaching schedule last week. Five thirty and six thirty? In the morning? Every weekday? Yo. In the moment, however, any lingering tiredness or shock are being overridden by a much stronger emotion: abject terror. I am about to coach my very first class at one of the best CrossFit gyms in the world, a task for which I feel comical y unprepared. I have been coaching for years, but every gym is different.

How are classes supposed to flow at CFNE? How do they usual y warm up? How do they set up equipment? When is the bathroom break? The one CFNE class I attendedthree days agodid not 9

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provide nearly enough data to answer these questions. I feel like Im about to take a midterm exam after skipping every lecture all semester.

By the time I get to the gym, I am so nervous I can barely think. I have that terrible pre-competition feeling that is a hybrid of nerves and nausea. This is exacerbated when I walk in and note that there are, oddly, already a lot of people here. Its pitch black outside but shit is positively lit inside CFNE. There are so many people, in fact, that for a brief moment Im terrified that I misread my schedule. Does class start at 5:00 a.m? Am I late on my first day?

No, no, its okay. But what are all these people doing here already?

In an effort to find out, I make small talk with some of the members before class starts. Everyone seems to be named Mike; at least, I cant remember any other names besides Mike. I am smiling on the outside but basical y dying on the inside. All my organs are doing backflips. My heart is beating so loudly Im surprised no one else can hear it.

At exactly 5:30 a.m., Head Coach Harry Palley looks at me and asks if Im ready. Absolutely, I lie. He cups his hands to his mouth and bellows, Five thirty, bring it in! Its not until this moment that I realize how many people are actual y here. As the group circles up, my sense of dread deepens. There must be close to fifty athletes in this class. If Harry finds this unusual, he doesnt show it. To me, its not unusual. Its lunacy. Ive never coached a class 10

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larger than eighteen people. Everyone is looking at me as if they are keenly aware of this fact. Can I do this? I dont have a choice.

Its happening. I take a deep breath and start class.

A loud, confident voice that I recognize as my own instructs the class to grab barbel s and make two lines. I begin the warmup with burpees, which elicits immediate outcry. You would have thought I asked them to warm up with muscle-ups. Warming up with exercise at a fitness class? It is an outrage. One of the Mikes looks like he wants to call the police. In less than twenty seconds, I have managed to make everyone in this room despise me. Everything about this feels foreign. Up until this moment, I have never been a new coach. Even when I started at CrossFit Hierarchy, the Washington, D.C., gym I helped run for three years, I knew every member by name and had a relationship with them. By the time I left, I was loved and trusted. Standing in front of this group, miles away from either, Im hit with a daunting thought: I am startingover completely. I have no credibility with these people. Its going to take weeks for them to like me and months for them to trust me. This is not just going to be hard and uncomfortable today.

Its going to be hard and uncomfortable for a long time. I file that thought away for later and begin coaching.

The workout is two parts: a heavy three-rep front squat followed by a metcon (CrossFit parlance for cardio) of rowing, deadlifts and box jumps. Its been named Natick Hammer, pre-11

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sumably because its been designed to smash my will to live. The squatting is straightforward enough, but there are not nearly enough rowers, bumper plates or plyo boxes for this enormous class. This is not lost on Harry, who has been observing my class from afar like a lifeguard. I must look like Im drowning because he walks over and throws me a life raft. What do you think about changing the workout? he asks. Errrrr, I reply knowledgeably.

My dude, it took me two hours to write the lesson plan I have. Imnot emotional y prepared to freestyle on my first day.

Harry starts explaining how we can adapt the workout to teams of three. Hes saying words, but Im so rattled that I cant process any of them. I just stand there looking confused. At length, he realizes Im mental y handicapped and merciful y steps in to brief the class on how were going to change the workout. Just when Ive wrapped my head around the new format, Harry comes back.

Actual y, I dont think thats going to work either, he admits. I think we gotta do it as an EMOM instead. This is like being awake during your own surgery. I have no clue what hes talking about, and Im painful y conscious of how incompetent I must seem. By the time the class returns from the pre-WOD bathroom break, Harry has ful y taken command of the class. I feel like a failure.

Im a better coach than this, but Im not being allowed to show it.

This was not how today was supposed to go. There were not supposed to be fifty people here. CrossFit New England isnt supposed 12

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to run out of equipment. I wonder briefly if anyone has ever been fired after one class.

Everything about my first day was the result of poor leadership.

Leadership is about helping people succeed, and my first day at CFNE was pretty much the opposite of that. I couldnt be the coach I knew I was that day (or many days after that) because I experienced every class as a series of intense firefights, completely and utterly distracted by fear. The lack of any kind of onboarding process meant I had no idea what was expected of me or how to succeed. I had to figure it out on my own, using roughly the same method Thomas Edison used to discover the lightbulbby exhausting all the wrong ways first. For a brand-new employee desperately trying to make a good impression, this was fairly trau-matizing. For the next month, starting around 8 p.m. the night before I coached, I had extreme anxiety about the next days class.