their passion. That’s all we do.”
Two years after that Super Bowl, I got
on a plane to Seattle. I wanted to see first-
hand what Pete meant when he said the
Sea hawks were building the grittiest cul-
ture in the NFL. Making it to the champion-
ship game in successive years is notoriously
hard, but the Seahawks had defied the odds
and made it to the Super Bowl again that
year. In sharp contrast to the prior year’s
win, which Seattle fans celebrated with a
blue and green ticker-tape parade that was
the largest public gathering in Seattle’s his-
tory, this year’s loss resulted in howling,
weeping and the gnashing of teeth—over
what sports commentators deemed “the
worst call in NFL history.”
Here’s a recap: With 26 seconds on the
clock, the Seahawks have possession of the
ball and are one yard away from a game-
winning touchdown. Everyone expects
Pete to call a running play—the Seahawks
have Marshawn Lynch, widely agreed to
be the single best running back in the en-
tire NFL.
Instead, Seahawks quarterback Rus-
sell Wilson throws a pass, the ball is inter-
cepted, and the New England Patriots take
home the trophy.
What interested me when I arrived in
Seattle was Pete’s reaction and that of the
whole team. I wanted to know how a cul-
ture of grit continues not just in the after-
glow of success, but in the aftermath of fail-
ure. I wanted to know how Pete and the
Seahawks found the courage to continue.
He told me that it’s not just one thing.
It’s a million things. It’s a million details.
The most obvious is language. One of
Pete’s coaches once said, “I speak fluent
Carroll.” And to speak Carroll is to speak
fluent Seahawk: 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.
Everybody I met peppered their sen-
tences with these Carrollisms.
“Compete,” I was told, is not about tri-
umphing over others, a notion I’ve always
been uneasy about. Compete means excel-
lence. “Compete comes from the Latin,”
explained Mike Gervais, the competitive-
surfer-turned-sports-psychologist who is
one of Pete’s partners in culture building.
“Quite literally, it means ‘strive together.’
It doesn’t have anything in its origins about
another person losing.”
Mike told me that two key factors pro-
mote excellence in individuals and in
teams: “deep and rich support and relent-
less challenge to improve.”
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.
After one of the meetings, an assistant
coach caught up to me in the hallway and
said, “I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned
finishing to you. One thing we really be-
lieve in here is the idea of finishing strong.”
Then he gave me examples: Seahawks fin-
ish a game strong, playing their hearts out
to the last second on the clock. Seahawks
finish the season strong. Seahawks finish
every drill strong. For the Seahawks, “fin-
ishing” doesn’t literally mean “finishing.”
Finishing strong means consistently focus-
ing and doing your absolute best at every
moment, from start to finish.
At the end of the day, I was in the lobby,
waiting for my taxi. Pete was there with
me, making sure I get off OK. I realized I
hadn’t asked him directly how he and the
Seahawks found the courage to continue
after he’d made “the worst call ever.” Pete
later told Sports Illustrated that it wasn’t
the worst decision, it was the “worst pos-
sible outcome.” He explained that like
every other negative experience, and every
positive one, “it becomes part of you. I’m
not going to ignore it. I’m going to face
it. And when it bubbles up, I’m going to
think about it and get on with it. And use
it. Use it!” •From the book Grit: The Power of Passion
and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth.
Copyright © 2016 by Angela Duckworth.
Reprinted by permission of Scribner, a divi-
sion of Simon & Schuster, Inc.