When Sébastien Sasseville, an athlete with type 1 diabetes, decided to take part in the Race Across America, solo, he knew he was embarking on the most difficult ultra-cycling race in the world. What he didn’t realize was that this experience, and the work that needed to be done ahead of it, would inform his thinking around a team-building model that had application beyond sports and deep into workplaces and boardrooms.
This crossing of the United States from west to east, in a time trial of no more than 12 days, forces the riders to stay in the saddle for about 21 hours a day. Truly a solitary challenge, but one that is impossible to accomplish without an exceptional team that follows and supports the cyclist night and day.
Together, Sébastien and co-author Gabriel Renaud, a high-performance athlete, corporate trainer, and member of the race team, have taken the model they used to build the Race Across America team and written Building Unstoppable Teams, a toolkit for building passionate teams that can accomplish the exceptional. Leadership, commitment, definition of objectives, group dynamics, adaptability, performance, motivation, and recognition are all components of successful team building and key pieces of the toolkit, but it all begins with getting the right people in place: the bees and eagles.