World Champion Adventure Racer Tells CREW Audience How to Overcome and Win

Leaders can inspire the kind of mindset and build the kind of teams that drive organizations to adapt, overcome, and win as one in the face of times of extreme challenge and change. Robyn Benincasa, world champion adventure racer, 2014 CNN Hero, full-time firefighter, and 3x Guinness World Record Endurance Kayaker, shared the mindset and strategies that create consistent breakthrough performances, speaking to her life’s experiences at the 2023 CREW conference this week in Atlanta.

She made a career in what she described as a “super silly, ludicrous sport” where events are 600 to 1,000 miles long and do not involve engines.

Sleep is part of the strategy, and participants typically average 1.5 hours per day while competing sometimes for nearly two weeks straight. Teams of five compete and all team members must stay within five miles of each other.

Like business groups trying to solve problems and win, these races include unfamiliar terrain, pressure, challenging situations and conditions, and a timer.

Participants must focus on the hope of success rather than the fear of failure, or they will lose. In one event, Benincasa was caught by a teammate looking behind her while paddling down a river.

“He quickly grabbed my head, spun it forward, and said, ‘Winning is that way,’” she said.

Participants must be resourceful, finding new ways to win by leveraging their strengths. In one race that involved kayaking, Benincasa’s team joined their two kayaks to form one vessel and paddled their way to first place.

“Sometimes you just have to reboot within the rules,” she said. “In strategy, focus on what you can do, not what you can’t do.”

Benincasa has had six hip replacements – because four of them didn’t work. She was instrumental in funding the Project Athena Foundation, which supports those who are recovering from catastrophic physical injuries, such as amputations.

“It’s not about the setback, it’s about the comeback,” she said. “Very often, people will come out of an incident and say, ‘Ok, I survived.’ But now what? I want to help them with that ‘Now what?’”

Make Sure the Team ‘Suffers Equally’

A leader should create a situation where every participant “suffers equally” she said. And that is not necessarily exposing them to pain but making sure the leader plays to the strengths of one to help compensate for the deficiencies of another. This way the team is balanced and then moves forward together, equally.

“Everyone needs to be accountable to get each other across the finish line. You don’t bring your ‘best five’ to the event, you bring your ‘five best,’” she said.

“Your personal band of gold is knowing what you are best at more than what others might think,” she said. “There is often talk about improving your weaknesses, but I say, ‘Go with your strength and outsource your weakness.”