The award-winning CBS reality show can teach us a lot about working together toward a common goal
Amanda Cahal
Perhaps a day at your office doesn’t require balancing on a tightrope between the world’s tallest buildings, or shouting driving directions as your partner careens around Italy’s narrow, winding roads. But “The Amazing Race,” CBS’ hit reality show, offers countless lessons in teamwork that can be applied to less stressful, everyday workplace situations.
Ahead of Season 35’s finale on Wednesday, Dec. 13, the Daniels Newsroom turned to Amanda Cahal, an adjunct faculty member who teaches workshops open to the public about leadership, communication and emotional intelligence. Cahal drew on her experience at Daniels Executive Education for five lessons this season can teach about teamwork.
(Spoiler alert: The lessons below also contain information about Season 35. You’ve been warned!)
1. Know your task.
In the show, teams compete in challenges in cities around the world, getting clues for each task they must tackle. Knowing your task equates to the often-said phrase on The Race: “Read your clue.” As a viewer, we sit and shout at our TV, tossing the nearest snack food at the screen in extreme situations, when a team doesn’t fully understand the assignment. This season, a misstep in Frankfurt cost contestants Andrea and Malaina their spot on the show.
The clue said they needed to take a specific ferry and exchange some local currency for a bag of historical coins. Instead, the two found themselves on the wrong ferry, without the historical coins needed for the next task. By the time the duo realized the mistake and backtracked to fix it, it was too late.
It’s easy to judge this misstep from home, but it often can be just as easy to start running in a certain direction with our work teams (metaphorically, of course) without fully aligning on what the goal is.
“We see teams struggle over communication issues more than just about anything else,” Cahal said. “We know from Timothy Wilson’s book, “Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious,” that we have about 11 million bits of information coming at us at any one time, but our brains are only adequately able to process 40. When there isn’t open communication on teams, we are often operating on the (mistaken) assumption that we share the same goals and are all headed in the same direction.”
2. Know your partner.
When you’re lost in a foreign country, or your CEO asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, how do you react? Knowing how members of your team respond in stressful situations is critical to helping them through the tough moments.
Each season, “The Amazing Race” has “Roadblocks,” challenges that only one person on the team can take on. And often, the other member of the team is nearby, watching their partner complete the challenge. This season, in Vietnam, the teams were tasked with finding a specific tile amid a sea of thousands of unique designs. During the competition, some actively cheered for their partners, while others sat quietly. Some rushed their partners along, pushing them to find the tile faster so they could move on to the next challenge. Some partners clearly knew the best way to motivate their teammates to help them accomplish a seemingly impossible task. But if they didn’t, it showed.
Knowing how your team is motivated or discouraged will allow you to avoid accidentally doing harm in difficult situations, Cahal said. “Stress is just pressure manifesting on the inside,” she added. “Understanding how we and those around us operate under stress gives us really key insight.”
3. Pressure changes how you show up.
Knowing your partner is important, but it’s just as critical to know yourself! Showing up as your best can feel so simple when you’re having a great day, and your team is operating at its peak. But Cahal says it’s a different story when there’s a tight deadline, you’re short on sleep, or you are under pressure from management.
Cahal teaches a class on Insights Discovery, a psychological framework focused on how you operate in the workplace and how you prefer to communicate. She likes to point out the difference between how your Insights preferences show up on a good day versus a bad day. For example, someone who is diligent, consistent and thoughtful on a good day can come across as nit-picky, rigid or impersonal on a bad day.
While on The Race, teams often find themselves in situations that feel insurmountable. More often than not, that’s navigating a foreign country with only a paper map and their instincts. When stress builds, some know what they need to summon their “good day” energy, while others spiral.
On Season 35, the difference becomes clear in India. Friends Joel and Garrett cope with humor, joking that they didn’t expect to get so lost while driving themselves. Meanwhile, sisters Morgan and Lena yell at each other as they take a wrong turn. Cahal asks which car you’d rather be in.
“Had Morgan and Lena gone into the race with a better grasp on how they would show up in stressful situations, they may have found it easier to re-ground themselves when they were lost,” Cahal said. “Insights Discovery gives us a shared language to hold ourselves and others accountable. Instead of yelling or retreating further into our own thoughts when we’re stressed, Insights allows us to name the emotion and navigate through what we need in the situation to show up as our best self.”
4. It’s all about communication.
When working with a team, it’s hard to know what each person’s primary focus is, what else they might be working on or how their day is going. Rather than guessing what your team needs, simply ask. Communicating is critical to achieving success.
On The Race, it’s no different. Not fully talking through a decision can get teams in trouble. Other times, overthinking gets a team in hot water. Brother/sister duo Sheridan and Alexandra struggled with a lack of communication during the first Roadblock of the season—a word scramble after shuffling across a high wire in LA. Viewers watched as they debated who should do the challenge for a painful 15 seconds. And while they were technically communicating with one another, they weren’t saying much of anything. That delay, along with others throughout the day, cost them their spot on the show, and they were the first eliminated.
5. Ask for feedback.
The final teams standing on “The Amazing Race” have traveled across the globe, overcome challenges and figured out how to drive a stick shift.
How did this season’s final teams get to this point? They analyzed their performance every step of the way. At the end of each episode, viewers see interview clips in which the teams talk about what they learned from that part of the show. Many teams use notebooks or journals to document the things they think they need to pay attention to. Some apologize to their teammates or point out where they went wrong. This process of analysis is how teams ask for feedback, give it and grow stronger to hopefully win the $1 million.
The same goes for the office. While it can be tempting to finish a project and move on to the next one, pausing to ask for feedback—and give it in return—ultimately makes the team more effective for the next task.
Next time you’re getting ready to kick off a project with your team, or you’re seeking to build camaraderie with a group, take a step back, tune in to an episode of the greatest race around the world, and repeat host Phil Keoghan’s famous line: “The world is waiting for you; good luck; travel safe. Go!”
