Don't Wait for Someone Else to Fix It

CHAPTER TWOFollow the Leadership Logic Chain

It's a stunningly sunny day at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Korea. Rick Bower, head U.S. Olympic snowboard team coach, is standing at the top of the giant 22‐foot halfpipe, surveying the international crowd of thousands below him. All his male and female athletes had just qualified in the top eight for the pressure cooker finals of the Olympic medal competition. An impressive feat, to be sure, but Rick is particularly grateful for this moment as he reflects on the despair he felt four short years earlier. The 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, had been a vastly different experience for Rick. The U.S. men's halfpipe team, widely expected to win the gold and dominate the podium, returned home empty‐handed. “It was one of the low points in my career as a coach,” Rick shared. The weight Rick carried wasn't so much about his athletes’ performance but his own disappointing performance as head coach. Rick knew he had let his team down. He had allowed his emotions to betray him and thus compromised his leadership of the team.

Arriving in Sochi in 2014 with sky‐high expectations for his team's performance, Rick's heart sank as he and his team inspected the venue. Conditions were deteriorating rapidly. Usually, at top events like the Olympics, the walls of the 22 foot giant halfpipe would look like glass. Frozen solid and cut with an imposing, million‐dollar machine called a Zaugg Pipe Monster, halfpipes can cost up to $3,000,000 ...