Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

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

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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