How Winning Works

Robyn Benincasa has made an art form of extreme performance by competing and winning at the highest levels of sport and business. In her fi fteenyear career as a professional adventure racer, she has biked through jungles in Borneo, climbed Himalayan giants in Nepal, trekked across lava fields in Fiji, rafted rapids in Chile—and racked up multiple world championship titles along the way. In her spare time, she is a fi refi ghter and a sought-after keynote speaker on the subject of teamwork and leadership. In How Winning Works, Benincasa shows you how to climb to new levels of professional and personal success. She shares the eight essential elements of teamwork, learned through her extreme adventure racing, that create synergy with all the teammates in your life, from colleagues and customers to family members and friends:

TOTAL COMMITMENT
EMPATHY AND AWARENESS
ADVERSITY MANAGEMENT
MUTUAL RESPECT
“WE” THINKING
OWNERSHIP OF THE PROJECT
RELINQUISHMENT OF EGO
KINETIC LEADERSHIP

This field guide to success shares the same training tools and exercises that have become wildly popular in the leadership seminars Benincasa gives to corporations, including Starbucks, Deloitte Consulting, 3M, Verizon, Nestlé, Boeing and many others. Stories from her adventure racing also illustrate how winning teams interact under the world’s most extreme conditions, from jungles to mountain peaks.

Whether you’re trying to beat the competition to market with a new product, scale a looming mountain of deadlines or simply get your kids to clean up their rooms, the advice in this book will take you on an adventure you’ll never forget, and coach you over the fi nish line to success.

FROM HOW WINNING WORKS:

“SO MUCH OF WHAT SEPARATES ONE TEAM FROM ANOTHER IS NOT TALENT BUT THE ABILITY OF EACH AND EVERY TEAMMATE TO CONSISTENTLY CREATE SYNERGY. Once you understand how to generate synergy, you have a toolbox of effective skills to use in any situation and with any team, whether you’re working on a short-term project with colleagues or a successful, lifelong marriage. If you make a habit of building and maintaining that synergy, you will make a habit of achieving so much more than you ever could alone. My goal with this book is to mentor that team builder who lives inside you so you can create world-class teams everywhere you go.”

About the author:

ROBYN BENINCASA is a world champion adventure racer, a Guinness world record kayaker and a member of the only all-female fi refi ghting crew in the country. When not traveling, hiking, paddling, racing or fi ghting fi res, Robyn is a sought-after corporate speaker. In 2002 she launched World Class Teams, an adventure-based team-building company that brings the lessons of teamwork from adventure racing to the business world. She is also the founder of Project Athena, a nonprofi t organization that helps women who are survivors of medical setbacks live an adventurous dream as part of their recovery. Visit her at www.robynbenincasa.com.