Today, the question “Does it make the boat go faster?’ has become a virtual mantra in the world of sport.
But when the British rowing team began asking it in the runup to the 2000 Olympics, it was simply a focusing exercise, one designed to help the crew brush aside distractions and concentrate on what would help them win after disappointing finishes in Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996.
Critics told them they were crazy, that they had no chance of winning.
“But that wasn’t interesting; what we needed to look for was why we could [win],” Ben Hunt-Davis, the team captain, recalled in a 2021 podcast. “We just became really focused on looking for the evidence to show that we can change, we can improve, we can achieve.”
Steering a team’s focus like that —to what’s possible, what can help a team win — is the job of a good leader, says Pete Paciorek, head of leadership and character development at IMG Academy, who uses the British rowing team’s slogan to illustrate his point.
“You can’t be a leader if you’re only focused on yourself,” he says. “You have to be able to think about how this decision will affect the rest of the team. Will it make the team better?”
Making decisions from that perspective is tricky for many, if not most, people and even more so for student-athletes, who are young and have school work on their plates as well as sport.
Focusing on your team — and yourself
In the football program that Paciorek works with, “most of the top players who are qualified to be a team captain have a scholarship to a Power 5 college, so they need to continue to get better themselves, and it’s really hard to balance the two goals,” he says.
Gaining the focus necessary to do both requires instruction from coaches and teachers as well as hands-on training, Paciorek adds. Focus, one of IMG Academy’s five pillars for optimal mental performance, goes beyond the ability to concentrate on something. It also includes consciously selecting where and how to direct attention, and how to shift it from one point to another as needed, experts say.
“It’s on us as educators to teach student-athletes what a captain’s role is and then let them opt in or opt out,” Paciorek explains. “It’s hard to put your own ego aside when you’re 30, 40 or 50 years old and running a company or organization, so it’s not reasonable to expect that a 14-, 16- or 18-year-old would have the cognitive capacity to do that if we haven’t trained them.”
That training takes time, he says, just as it does for the mental and physical disciplines of sport.
“When you begin a new lifting style in the weight room, you start slowly, building the strength to gradually put more weight on the bar,” Paciorek says. “It’s the same with leadership capacity and skills. We can’t expect that student athletes are just going to get this.”
Gavin Nix, a football player graduating in 2025, says clearly envisioning goals and laying a strong foundation, then building on it every day, has helped him maintain his focus and work past disappointments and frustrations to become a leader.
“Consistency is everything,” he says, knowledge that he shares with others when they’re having their own moments of doubt.
“If I’m in the dorms, and there’s a new guy who’s struggling to get used to IMG Academy, for instance, I just try to uplift him,” he says. “A true leader is someone who can bring other people along on a journey of success, so that’s what I try to do each and every day.”
Primed for leadership
Paciorek, who holds a doctorate in character education and servant leadership, concurs. In teaching leadership, he relies on evidence-based frameworks, one of which is built around the acronym “PRIMED.”
The letters refer to prioritization of character, relationships of trust, intrinsic motivation, models of character, empowerment and long-term development.
The principles apply not only to coaches and team captains but to any leadership positions, since maintaining the focus needed to succeed requires deep self-knowledge as well as an ability to consider not only their own ambitions but the goals of the broader group and the individuals in it.
“After these kids’ careers in sport are over, they’re potentially going to be CEOs of companies and leaders of their families,” he says. “Seeing how applicable this approach is to their daily walk of life has been really impactful for the coaches and athletes that I’ve trained.”
The first step for people undergoing leadership training, Paciorek says, is learning to lead themselves. That requires identifying their purpose, which will provide a foundation for setting priorities and focusing on them as needed.
“If you don’t know who you are, why you’re getting up in the morning, then you don’t have any roadmap to where you want to go,” he adds.
Student-athletes have to engage in more than surface-level self-examination to find the answers they need for that map, Paciorek adds. He recalls helping one pro ball player realize that his front-line goal of making money was driven by a deeper desire to take care of his mother and support the community where he grew up overseas.
“The extrinsic motivators are easy to identify, but they’re very flighty,” he says. “They go up and down, whereas if you’re driven by a purpose that’s intrinsic, you’re going to be better able to stay connected to it.”
Winning over the locker room
That ties into the development of civic character, a term that often conjures images of volunteering in community organizations, but which Paciorek says is much broader and helps to set and regulate purposeful, sustained focus.
“When we’re talking with students about civic character, we’re trying to cultivate a sense of how you show up on a daily basis, how you treat your teammates,” he says. “Are you adding value into your team culture, or are you taking away from it? If you want to be a leader, but you can’t lead yourself and you don’t have a strong character, then no one’s going to follow you.”
Football players, he says, often talk about the idea of winning over the locker room, a prerequisite for focused leadership that can be ruthless in winnowing out those who aren’t suited for the role.
While coaches and administrators are often the last to find out if a star player is breaking the rules, violating curfew or committing crimes, Paciorek says, teammates know first-hand what’s happening.
“If you want to win over the locker room, you want to be a true leader, but you’re not carrying yourself with high moral standards and doing the right thing off the field, you’re going to have a hard time leading your teammates,” Paciorek explains. “They say championships are won in the off-season, and it’s the same with team captains. You can’t wait until the lights go on Friday night and expect to be the leader if you haven’t established that consistency in the locker room and on campus of being a person of strong character and a leader.”
Ready to learn how you perform in the clutch? Take IMG Academy’s on-demand focus course.
