Adam Kreek - Competing in the Olympics, Rowing Across the Ocean and a Values Driven Life
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Welcome to Beyond Speaking with Brian Lord, a podcast featuring deeper conversations with the world's top speakers.
Brian Lord:
I'm Brian Lord, your host of the Beyond Speaking Podcast today, our guest is Adam Kreek. Adam is one of North America's top management consultants and executive coaches. He's got degrees and certifications from Stanford University, UBC Sauder School of Business, And Queen Smith School of Business. He's a guest lecturer at the University of Victoria and teaches strategies and skills for leadership high-performance and perseverance to corporate and government teams globally. With the Olympics coming up we thought Adam would be a perfect fit. He's a two-time Olympian. He holds 60 international medals, including Olympic gold and multiple halls of fame inductions. In 2013, Adam made the first-ever attempt to row unsupported across the Atlantic from Africa to America and was the subject of the NBC Dateline documentary Capsize. Adam, thank you so much for joining us.
Adam Kreek:
It's great to be here, Brian.
Brian Lord:
What is, I guess, with the Olympics coming up, I know we'll talk about some of the business things, but as an Olympian, what are you feeling right now? And, and what is, what memories are brought back for you with the Olympics coming up?
Adam Kreek:
Well, one thing I'm feeling right now with these Olympics coming up is just a memory of the news cycle, which is more a side note. And that, you know, before every Olympics, there's a lot of negativity that comes into The Games. There's a lot of criticism and I think it's really important to recognize that that is a pattern. And you know, when I was a young athlete, I had great coaches and mentors who pointed out the news cycle. And that really helped me manage what the conversation would be and actually helped push that to the side. You know, one of the key you know, the key concepts that helped me as an Olympian and then certainly helps you know, my clients now as an executive business coach is the locus of control. So you need to focus on what you can control. So as an Olympian, you can't control what the news media is going to say. And if the negativity bias that they're going to have and all the news stories that we'll be covering leading up to The Games, but what you can focus is is, is the information that you do choose to consume and to, you can focus on the job that matters, which is, you know, preparing for The Games. So, you know, the athletes right now, which was like, you know, myself, when I was preparing for The Games, you know, a number of years ago, you know, they're, they're getting close to the end of what I call a super-compensation phase especially in the very physical events where they've pushed their bodies harder than they've ever pushed their bodies before in their life. And now they are scientifically and carefully tapering so that they will know powerful, juicy, strong limber, and the nerves will be ramping up, too. So the, you know, there'll be starting to anticipate it and then the next week or so the athletes that are competing at the first week of the Olympics will be actually showing up on the venues. And that's when the nerves really start to bubble.
Brian Lord:
How do you handle that? Sort of I know a lot of people right now have been going through tremendous stress and everything else- For an Olympian, you have to deal with that as well. What are those specific ways... You've already talked about sort of focusing, focusing out, realizing the negative is going to come. How do you get your mind to shift onto the positive?
Adam Kreek:
How do you get... There's... Well, there's a number of techniques. You know, one is recognizing that discomfort is going to come and welcoming it and being grateful for it being, being grateful for the discomfort, because you know that the discomfort is a tool, it's a tool to help you perform, you know, one of the phrases that we would often say on, on race day, especially because you'd be, you'd be very uncomfortable. You'd be pulsing with nerves. You'd say, well, today is a special day. And you know, today's a day just like every other day, but it's just a special day. And that way you could deal with the discomfort a little more you know, you know, I guess a little more gracefully would be a great way to describe it. And then you welcome it. You welcome the nerves. Yeah. And it's, it's recognizing that the nerves are there to help you. And when you have this, you know, this feeling of fear, it can be easily transmuted into in, into this feeling of courage into this feeling of volition into this feeling of drive. And there there's a lot of benefits. You know, one of the conversations I'd often have in my head is that you know, my body is producing all of this energy to help me. This stress is here to help me. My body is not trying to hurt me. It's my brain is recognizing that there is a future event that is coming, that is going to be difficult. And so my body is creating adrenaline. It's creating cortisol, it's creating all of this energy to, to help me do my job. And so it was my job as the higher being, you know, who had control over my body and awareness over my body to do some of the simple things that we all know we need to do in times of stress, you know, take deep belly breaths, breathe through the nose, you know, drink lots of water, take care, have self-compassion make sure that you're resting properly, taking time for yourself, setting healthy boundaries. Um, there are so many things that you can control in times of stress that when the nerves do come and then the discomfort comes it's you know, it's important to focus on the things you can control and welcome the energy of the body.
Brian Lord:
One thing that has been impressive about what you've done both in business and in athletics is staying at a high level. So I'm getting a lot of questions from clients. Now, some of whom you know, had really difficult years last year and some of them in you know, construction, I know you do a lot of talk for safety talks, that sort of thing. They're saying, how do we keep at this high level? And how does someone you know, sustain greatness?
Adam Kreek:
Well, how do you sustain greatness? There's, there are two forms of motivation that push us to greatness and there's extrinsic motivation. And then there's the intrinsic motivation that comes. Extrinsic motivation, I don't talk a lot about or teach a lot about it because I feel like that is natural. If you're a naturally competitive person, you are extrinsically motivated. You see someone else you want to compete against them. You want to beat them. You want to, you want to raise the bar. Likewise, if you're an individual who's within a large organization, the big organizations are set up with so many extrinsic motivators, you know, get the next job, get the next title, get the next promotion, get the next piece of social recognition. And, and there are so many different extrinsic motivators, you know, right. We're, we're seeking pleasure and seeking reward or avoiding pain, or we're looking to conserve energy. And those are the three main motivators that will motivate us extrinsically. But when we talk about sustaining success, successes sustain when we have intrinsic drivers that are actively harnessed. And I say, sustained success happens when we both harness extrinsic motivators and intrinsic motivators. You find the extrinsic motivators that are driving you forward and make sure that those extrinsic motivators are in full alignment with your intrinsic motivators. And one of the best ways I've found to define your intrinsic motivators and the cognitive space that we, that we hold is that it's the decisions we make you know, towards you know, the positive self-talk that we need to ingrain within us is to be very aware of our values, what we value and being very clear on the utility of values. And so I you know, when I was younger and when I was an athlete, intuitively I would, I would pair extrinsic motivation with intrinsic motivation. And as I moved into the world of executive business coaching, I discovered, you know, the tools and the language that was necessary to make sure that we were doing that on a regular basis. And I found that there's a lot of confusion and conflation between values and other ideas. And people think values are principles. People think values are characters. People think values are beliefs, and each of these are slightly different, concepts and, and how I like to define- And it's hard to define something cause you have to define it by, by other words, but, you know, values are these that these character traits that we hold of highest importance in our own life and our own personal truth that we use to make decisions both consciously or unconsciously. So when we talk about sustaining success, you can sustain success as an individual and you can sustain success as an organization. And so when you sustain successes as an individual, you're constantly making the right decisions. So you're making decisions that are in alignment with your personal values, because regardless of whether, you know, and you have identified, articulated, and affirmed your personal values, you will make decisions according to those values. And if you don't, you will suffer, you will suffer the pain, you'll suffer the failure, you'll suffer the,the lack of confidence that comes from not living your personal truth, not living your values. And you also need to make sure that your decisions that you set are in alignment with the,uwith, you know, with the goals that you set with the extrinsic motivators that you have. And then likewise, moving it up to an organizational standpoint, we're talking about a culture. So you have a culture of an organization. And we all know,uyou know, the emotional load and the energetic load that it takes to manage other people,especially our teams and our staff, and, you know, the people that we lead, if we can guide them to make better decisions, more often the energetic load that's placed in the stress load that's placed on us as leaders is lower. So by having a values driven culture and having individuals who understand how to apply values to their own personal life, you can then elevate that to the context of the organization. So now you have an organization that has goals, which are the extrinsic motivators of the organization, and you have an organization that's driven by values. And so when you have to make a decision within your organization, you say, well, do I work with Client A or Client B? Well, let's, you know, we have limited time. We have limited resources, we have limited energy, and we're constantly having to make decisions about where we put our energies. If you can make that decision through your filter of values, then you'll, you'll make the better decision more often. And then if,the people on your staff, the people on your team are making decisions, according to the values, then you get the managing load is less on you. They're making better decisions on their own more often. And the culture of the organization is, you know, eating the proverbial strategy for lunch.
Brian Lord:
When it comes, what are the values, maybe what are a couple that, that you have like, and how did you arrive at those?
Adam Kreek:
So I would say one value I have is generous impact. So this value of generous impact, I, I learned about it. That was actually a long time ago. It was back in my athletic journey. So, you know, like you said, before, I went to the Olympics, a couple of times, one, an Olympic gold medal. I won a number of world championships, and I was really lucky to be part of a team for about a decade who is just winning and winning and winning and repeating success. And I think a big part of that was that we were a very values-driven team, but through that context, and, you know, especially as a younger person you know, you discover your values through the high points and the low points of your life. And we had just won the world championships. We had gone to Seville, Spain as rowing in the men's eight. So these long skinny boats, and we, we go, we, we win the race. We we're the first men's eight you know, I'm a Canadian. So we were the first men's eight in Canada to have ever won a world championship. So we're going in the history books, you know, it's, you know, world's first heavyweight champion of the world, you know, walking around in Spain, you're in your early twenties, what could, what could be better? It was a really good day. But then it was about a week later, I was back in my hometown and I was getting ready for another year of training. We were working up towards the Olympics that were still two years away. And I just found myself, you know, empty, depressed, demotivated, not knowing if this journey was for me and really what that was telling me and what that was, was my values were out of alignment with my goals. You know, values are never achieved. You know, values needed to be lived. They're never achieved. They just always need to be expressed and used, and decisions need to be made according to them. And so after some, you know, some soul searching and some consultation with mentors, I realized that a very strong, personal value of mine is generous, generous, impact, so generous impact. And for me, the decision I made at that point in time was to become a Big Brother through Big Brothers and Sisters, and I found this little guy he's eight years old at the time. We still, we still have a relationship to this day and he's actually grown up I'm you can't see it on Zoom, but you know, I'm, you know, I'm about six foot five, two hundred and thirty-five pounds. And my Little Brother is even bigger than me. I would have never guessed when I started hanging out with him-
Brian Lord:
-His mentor needs to be tall.
Adam Kreek:
Yeah, exactly. I just passed a- that's a tall mentorship... But by having that impact, it, it really restarted my motivation restarted my drive and was enable in and enabled me to achieve my goals in my way, according to my own personal truth. And I found that you know, honoring this need to deliver a generous impact in all that I do has you know, has certainly directed me to my current career, you know, as an executive business coach and all the projects that I take on. And I know that if I'm not delivering a generous impact and all that, I do that I'm, I'm not honoring my personal truth. I'm not honoring myself. And I've, you know, I've become victim to self-sabotage. So that's you know, that's certainly one value that I hold and, you know, I've got a number of other ones, like vital physical sensations, you know, I need to feel alive. ˆ need to feel physical. I need to feel that energy, you know, and for me, that's, you know, that's involved in, you know, live presentations that I give it's involved in, you know, an exercise. And I, you know, every week and every day I'm going out and I'm doing something physical simply because that's, you know, that's my nature as you know, as a being and, you know, I've, I value growth and flow. So making sure that I I'm growing and it's in a, in a state that's sustainable and engrossing and I value loving connection. So I want to make sure that I'm connecting in a loving way to the people that I interact with. And so, you know, these are, you know, these are the values that I live by, and I guess the final one is persistent ambition. So I'm a very ambitious person. And although I'm friendly, I'm also very competitive and I have, there's a lot that I want to achieve and I feel the need to achieve in my life. So I need to make sure that I'm channeling that ambition in a way that's that, you know, that is persistent and, you know, honors that, that part of my nature. And again, you know, everyone's values are slightly different. And I've got a very defined method that I work people through. I was just working with the Centers for Disease Control earlier this week and ran a lot of their senior leaders through the personal values discovery process. And it's... I, I'm just amazed, I guess it serves my value of generous impact because it, benefit everyone benefits so much from understanding the personal values we benefit from. Like science is very clear on values. They show that when people understand their values, they have more willpower, they feel less pain. They're able to do things like quit, you know, quit smoking, start exercising. And there are actually real physical markers that they've found. They've run people through values, discovery, and affirmation exercises, and found that people recovering from heart surgery have lower markers of inflammation simply from identifying and living according to their values. And then from a business standpoint and a leadership standpoint, it's very clear that leaders who are clear on their values and communicate those values to those that they are leading are rated as being 40% more effective than those who do not. So there's a direct correlation between performance and, and, and values-driven life. And then also within, again, within an organization, it's a very empowering experience to go through when you recognize what your values are and you can structure your career and, and what you are, what your goals are within an organization that is compelling you to do things often when we're working in alert, large organization, there are lots of things that we don't necessarily want to do. And sometimes it's, it's too structured or too rigid and change doesn't have fast enough or change happens too fast, or, you know, there's a lot of things, again, coming back to the start of our conversations, there are things, a lot of things out of our control when you're working in a large organization. And that was very clear in the COVID crisis. You know, we're part of a larger society and, you know, we have this, you know, this disease pandemic that's spreading and, you know, we're recommended to shut down and not do the work that we've, you know, that we've done before in the same way that we've done before four. And, you know, in these times when they're things out of control and in these times when we're, we're enduring you know, when we're during a, you know, a crisis or when we're during change, let me say, when you're doing a change, change is not a crisis unless, you know, values have been violated and, you know, and bringing it back to, you know, the individual working in in the larger organization, you know, organizational change, isn't a crisis unless one of your core values has been violated. So when, when individuals are very clear upon their personal values, they're better able to be better equipped to endure change. And when an organization is changing in alignment with its values, then it can endure within it can drive, change that much faster, but it's, again, the larger the organization, the higher up the leader, the bigger, the microscope that you're under. And the more clear you have to be about truly what you value as an individual and what the organization values and how you're living and expressing those values. Because we see this all the time in organizations where a leader will express that they'll say, oh, we value teamwork. And then they go against that. And they're like, no, my way or the highway. And then it's like, well, why are you saying we value teamwork when you're acting like, you know, an aggressive individual and, you know, that can be okay, as long as it's articulated. And that's part of the culture, but it's, if it's not that scene, you know, one, two layers down the organization that leadership faux pas is immediately identified and all respect and credibility is lost by, by the leader. And, and then the culture dies. So, but when, when organizations have a very strong values-driven culture, just like when sports teams and athletic teams have a very strong values-driven culture, you can sustain success, you can endure change and you can, you know, keep it going for the longterm.
Brian Lord:
So I know you've been, you know, you've talked about, you know, teamwork and, you know, working within an organization, everything else. So I'm curious how that leads into your epic you know, a voyage of you know, working to go from Africa to the Americas. And can you just, cause that's just a crazy story. So can you, can you share that? And then also, if you can shoehorn your values into that, that'd be interesting. That's an amazing thing I love to hear about what goes into it, why do you want to do that? And then what it was like, you know, with that attempt.
Adam Kreek:
Well, I'll put it into context because I had just spent close to a decade pursuing, you know, an Olympic journey, you know, and an athletic journey is very intense. It's very individual forces you to search your soul forces you to grow in ways that you'd never thought possible, but there's also a decompression period that needs to occur after an Olympic journey. And you need to move on to that next thing in life. For me, I was moving on to, you know I guess a role in, you know, as an entrepreneur, I had started a biofuel company. People were starting to ask me to come to speak at conferences and, and do some training. And, you know, this was over a decade ago. And at that time I was still, I was missing the sport. So I got I decided I was going to get into ocean-style rowing. And I went to this race down in San Francisco. And we went and we raised from Sausalito under the Golden Gate Bridge and back. And it was great, it was a great race. It's good, fun. It's more of like a beer league-style rowing where you'd go with the race and you have some beer and a barbecue. And it was, it was just a good sort of community feeling. And at that, at that race, I met a guy by the name of Jordan Hanson. And, and up until this point in time, I had heard of people doing crazy things like this, of, of rowing across an ocean or climbing remote mountains or doing these adventurous remote things. And it, it seemed crazy to me. And then I was actually sat down with Jordan who had rowed across the ocean himself. And he explained, you know, the collegiality, the friendship, the connection with nature, the animals that would come up, the, you know, the joy of being in the wild with people you enjoy and it just, it just captured me in a captured my imagination. You know, what, what would it be like to be in a rowboat in a starry night, in the middle of the ocean, where you're closer to the astronauts in the space station than you are to anyone on land? What would that feel like? And not that idea captured my mind and captured my imagination. And that led to a, a five-year journey from ideation to execution, I suppose. So we started building a program, building a project. We had to put together a half a million dollars, you know, I'm not independently wealthy, you know, I've got a mortgage, a minivan, three kids. So I had to figure out how to put the money together to, to make a project like this work. And we managed to do that. We did that in, you know, and again, right in alignment with our values, we, as a team, we, you know, we valued you know, exploration in discovery and value connection with one another connection with the unknown the wilderness, you know, connection with, with God and all that's, you know, that mystery that's out there when you, when you pull yourself out of society, we were and we were, again, motivated by impact. We reached over 30,000 school kids with our educational programming. We partnered with eight different universities. We helped some people get their PhDs and master's degrees. We studied human psychology under duress. We were studying ocean science. We were studying human device interaction. We were working with NAOA- National Atmospheric and Oceanic Agency, you know, giving them weather readings. We're doing a lot of, a lot of stuff on this boat, you know, beyond just rowing 12 hours a day. And so it was a, yeah, it was a long journey of preparation. And it was a thrill to certainly launch from we launched from Dakar Senegal and you know, what a joy to see, you know, Africa slowly melt away in the horizon over a couple of days as it took some strokes and also kind of scary. And, and then you've, you know, then you go through a bit of an adaptation period, you know, the first couple of days are exciting. And then from say day three to 10, you're thinking like you stupid idiot, like, wow, why did you, what did you choose to do like this? This is ridiculous. You're on a little boat in the middle of the ocean alone with three other guys, and then you're uncomfortable. You're seasick, you're adapting. And then, then around two weeks in, in you know, you, everybody on the crew starts to adapt and you start to adapt and you're thinking, okay, this is uncomfortable and I can tolerate it. Okay. This is, I'm just going to get to the other side. And you think that's the way it's going to be for the rest of the row. It's not going to be enjoyable, but it's not going to be super, you know, a super self-loathing experience and a disastrous experience. And, but a funny thing happened around day 30 day 35, where everyone sorts of crossed over this threshold where our brains and our bodies adapted to, you know, the wind and the waves and the small space and the weather. And it, it truly became a, you know, a transcendent experience. One that was, you know, divinely connecting. We were, you know, you felt energized, you felt normal, but a good normal, you know, the sunrises were unlike any sort of sunrise you can see because the horizon is everywhere.
Adam Kreek:
And what you're doing is you're spending two hours or four hours or one hour, depending on the shift, staring at the sky, staring at the waves, watching nature change, you get into the rhythms of the moon and the stars and the sunrise and the waves. And it was a, you know, it was, that was just magical. And we'd have you know, whales would come and swim up to us, you know, dolphins, you know, flying fish, flying squid. And we were, you know, we'd gone out there. We conducted our science, we worked with the kids. And then, you know, day 70 day 73, we were going through a crew change unexpectedly when a funky wave came, smacked, smacked our stern and flooded, flooded, the sleeping cabin. And I was, I was sleeping in the sleeping cabin. My teammate, Pat, was brushing his teeth right up the the door. And before we knew it the boat was upside down.
Brian Lord:
Wow.
Adam Kreek:
Yeah, there you're trapped. It was really small, it's a really small space to be trapped in. So it was uncomfortable to say the least. Yeah. But we ended up getting, we deployed the emergency life raft. We ended up getting rescued. It was coordinated by the U.S. Coast Guard. So what a thrill to have the coast guard from Clearwater, Florida there, they diverted a boat called the MV Hygiene who came up next to us. And we were able to climb out that was 13 hours after the capsize. And we ended up getting commendations from the coast guard for our safety preparation and our deployment and the way that we were able to handle the emergency, which was also which is also wonderful. Cause we did, you know, made us really appreciate the safety training and the safety preparation. Cause you don't really understand how, how valuable it will be because you've, you're getting ready for this adventure. You've not necessarily done anything completely like it before. And we went to this group in the Pacific Northwest called Q3 in a town called Bellingham outside of Seattle. And they, you know, they train, they train the Navy or helicopter people or fishermen. And so we went through their training for 36 hours and we deployed life rafts and we were floating around and we just thought it was crazy. And we thought we were, you know, tough guys, you know, there, we are going to emergency training. This is never going to happen to us. This is kind of cool. And then the moment that the disaster happened, you know, the flashback to that training that we had gone through was so much more valuable than I could have even described. You know, you are, you know, your senses are heightened to a level that the only thing I would have a comparison to would be, you know, elite international racing because yeah. And probably even more so, because your life is on the line, you're like, if you mess up and you don't do this properly, it's, you know, it's over, so you better do it properly.
Brian Lord:
Oh, wow. Well, that's, that's an amazing journey. What's, what's one big takeaway that you share with people from that.
Adam Kreek:
Well, you know, there's one big inspirational takeaway and, you know, if we want some inspiration, you know, throw some inspiration bombs is that, you know, fear and doubt are the taxes we must pay to experience the incredible. And so often people would think that I'm a thrill seeker simply because I would choose to go out in big waves and big ocean and, you know, abandoned my family and the comforts of land and all of this. But in fact, the opposite is true in that I'm a seeker of peace. And what I've found living my life is that peace is on the other side of what we fear the most and that, you know, and if I could say the one thing that I feared the most when I was thinking about crossing the ocean was being trapped in that cabin as water flooded in. And I must say that I would have nightmares about that preparing for the ocean. And then when I actually lived through it, it was no problem. Right? You know, there is, and I'm going to step back just a little, little bit. So like in around Dave is day 50 or day 60 now sleeping in the cabin. And this is in contrast to, because before we capsized, we were picked up by big waves. We were thrown around, we had oars snap, you know, we had some other scary experiences that made us feel really uncomfortable and you know, unsure. And so there is, there's certainly times like that, where you're, you're pushed to the edges of your, your, your comfort in, from a security standpoint, but was around day 60 where I was sleeping in the cabin. And all of a sudden I hear this hooting and hollering from the guys on the deck. When they come out, you got to see this. And it's like, what? It's like, I'm sleeping. Oh, you gotta see this. So you, you crack open the little hatch door and you pop your head out. It's the middle of the night and it's a moonbow.
Brian Lord:
I've never heard of that.
Adam Kreek:
Yeah, neither had I until I saw one it's, you know, and it wasn't an acid flashback. It was actually a real natural phenomenon, actually, I think first documented by Aristotle, I believe, but it's a rainbow cast by the moon. And so it was, so if you can picture a starry sky, like a beautiful zero light pollution, and the stars are so bright, the Milky Way is just splashing across the sky. And there's a rainstorm in one corner. And as the rain is falling, the light of the moon is reflecting off the rain and casting a rainbow over the Milky Way. And it's, you know, it's one of those sites that, you know, leaves you speechless. And I, you know, you try to describe it, but it's hard to describe, but it was just one of those incredible peaceful connective moments. And again, if I wasn't willing to go through the fear and the doubt of, you know, the journey itself, I would never have the peace and connection of, you know, of the moonbow. And it's yeah. And I'd say that's one of the biggest takeaways. You know, fear and doubt are the tax. We must pay to experience the incredible. And, and as we recognize that, and as we go through the tough times in our life, and I think that's the, that's the greater metaphor, you know, in our own personal life or, you know, our boats can be capsized. We can break our oars, we can feel uncomfortable, we can be pushed into a corner. You know, you know, it's funny having gone through, you know, rowing across an ocean having you know, gone to the Olympics, you know, sometimes I laugh and I shake my head because, you know, middle-age can almost be more brutal than that, where you're trying to figure out how to like, raise kids, drive your career, figure out how to secure a house where you're going to live, you know, to build a life, to put all that sort of, you know, middle-aged stuff together the metaphors lay true. And they're so very useful. So as, as you're going through, you know, the, you know, the big waves and you're getting pushed around by the currents of life, you got to recognize that, you know, the incredible is around the corner. And if you can endure and, and show grace and persistence, you know, throughout the tough times then you're rewarded with an undeniable feeling of peace and, and connection when the inevitable good times do show their face again.
Brian Lord:
Great. Well, Adam, thank you so much for sharing your stories with us and, and your wisdom and experience and, and we really appreciate it. So thank you so much for coming on. Yes.
Adam Kreek:
Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure to have a conversation with you. Thank you.
Beyond Speaking is hosted by Brian Lord and produced by Eric Woodie
