Lessons from The Boys in the Boat

“It has to be about the boat.” A dying Joe Rantz spoke these words to author Daniel James Brown after Brown told Rantz that he wanted to write a book about Rantz’s life. Rantz had overcome substantial hardships early in his life to become a member of the University of Washington Huskies eight-man rowing crew that won the gold medal while representing the United States at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. His life story was remarkable. He lost his mother to cancer when he was four. Rantz was abandoned by his father at his stepmother’s urging when Rantz was a teenager. That left Rantz to fend for himself during the Great Depression. Nevertheless, he managed to provide for his own needs, finished high school, and enrolled at the University of Washington, where he tried to make the rowing team so he could earn a stipend that would help him afford college. At Rantz’s insistence, Brown’s book The Boys in the Boat uses Rantz’s life story to tell the larger story of the “boat”--a diverse group of young men with varying upbringings, social and economic status, physical talents and temperaments that coalesced into a singular team that conquered the rowing world. The story of the boat has lessons about teamwork to consider sharing with your teams.

Every job matters. Rowing is one of the most physically demanding sports. It requires strength, cardiovascular conditioning, and the will to persevere as races take an excruciating toll on the body. It requires technical proficiency with the rowing stroke. Yet excellence in individual traits alone will not produce a fast boat. Each member of the crew must excel at a specific role in synchrony with the other members. The member closest to the stern, called the “stroke,” must excel at rowing with consistency and rhythm to set the pace that all others follow. The pair closest to the bow is responsible for the direction and stability of the boat, and must also be excellent technical rowers. The rowers in the middle are the boat’s “engine.” They are the workhorses that focus on pulling their oars with as much force as possible. The coxswain does not row, but sits in the stern and provides strategy, direction, and steering.

When all the members are in sync, the boat feels light to the crew, and they can race with much less effort. However, if even one member is out of sync, the boat is difficult to row. No one is expendable. 

Do the members of your team understand the indispensable nature of their jobs? Consider asking your team members to write down for you their understanding of why their role matters to the success of the team. You may find that it sparks thoughts and discussion that lead to everyone better recognizing and embracing their position in the firm.

Pulling your own weight. Late in the book when the team is in Germany preparing for their races, Brown describes how each of the young men feels the pressure of knowing that the team has an opportunity to do something great yet understands that if he fails to do his part that he will let down the entire team. None of them wants to be the one who caused the team to fail. That motivated each of them to pull their own weight so that the boat could succeed.

Do the members of your team have a sense of the urgency that they each perform their jobs with excellence? Feeling that weight can create some pressure, but that pressure, communicated in the right way, can inspire them to perform their work with a renewed motivation that brings out the best in them.

There is no room for the Lone Ranger. There was a period in the story where Rantz was not performing well and risked being replaced in the boat. The problem was not a lack of effort, but rather too much effort. Rantz was trying to do too much on his own rather than getting in sync with the others and trusting that everyone was going to do his own job. His efforts were adversely affecting his ability to do his own job, which was detrimental to the success of the team.

The flip side of everyone pulling their own weight is for everyone to stay in their own lane and trust the other team members to do their respective jobs. In the practice of law, we cannot blindly trust the untrustworthy. One challenge to your team is to ask whether each member is conducting their work in a manner that builds team trust or detracts from it. Another challenge is to ask each team member to consider whether they are taking on roles that should not be theirs because they are unnecessarily failing to trust the team.

Joe Rantz learned much from his experience in the boat, and we hope these nuggets that we learned from Rantz and his team will benefit you and your teams.