#38 - The Responsibility Ethic: Turning Pain into Performance with Adam Kreek
Today’s guest is Olympic Gold Medalist Adam Kreek
Adam is tackling the problem of high achievers and leaders chasing big goals through grind, quick fixes, and toxic pressure—only to burn out, stall, or implode when failure hits. He’s working to show people how to convert adversity into fuel, align ambition with values, and pursue “Gold Medal Moments” in a way that is physiologically sustainable, emotionally healthy, and effective over the long term.
In today’s conversation Adam Kreek explores what it really takes to be “built for hard” in sport, work, and life. He walks through his origin story from an “average kid in an average town” to a world and Olympic champion in the men’s eight, including the high school coach who told him, “You’re an Olympian, you just don’t know it yet,” and why staying multi-sport and not going too hard too early built his durability.
Adam and Dr. Wells unpack the heartbreak of choking as favourites at the Athens Olympics, the emotional processing required after a deep failure, and how those lessons led to gold in Beijing via shared leadership, smarter preparation, and better physiology-informed race strategy.
They also dive into his 73-day Atlantic rowing expedition, “adventure therapy,” and how he now coaches executives and organizations using the principles from his book The Responsibility Ethic and his threshold-style “healthy failure” workouts for corporate athletes.
You will learn how Adam differentiates between cognitive learning from failure and physiological processing of failure—why long, steady aerobic sessions can be one of the best ways to metabolize the emotional load of a big loss so it doesn’t poison future performance.
You will learn the science-backed logic behind his Olympic race strategy: the interplay of creatine phosphate, anaerobic and aerobic systems in a 5½-minute all-out effort, how lactic acid and perception of pain spike around the 45–60 second mark, and how his crew exploited that moment psychologically to move on their competitors.
You will learn his concept of shared leadership—why great teams operate more like a jazz band than a rigid orchestra, passing influence around so no single leader’s breakdown sinks the boat—and how he translates that into executive coaching and strategic planning for organizations. You will also learn the structure of his threshold rowing workout for busy professionals, the idea of “healthy failure” versus unhealthy suffering, and how his Responsibility Ethic framework helps leaders set non-toxic, values-aligned “Gold Medal Moment” goals that take years—not weeks—to achieve.
You will discover that your perception of “being done” is wildly inaccurate—whether it’s in an Olympic final or a demanding project at work, most of us hit the panic button long before our true physiological limits, as Adam’s coach liked to say, “you’re only four-fifths dead.”
You will discover how pairing that understanding with clear values, deliberate recovery, and shared leadership lets you pursue big, hard goals without sacrificing health, relationships, or long-term performance.
Adam’s expertise helps solve the challenge of sustaining high performance when the stakes are high, the failures are public, and the pressure never really goes away. He gives leaders and teams a practical roadmap to process setbacks, structure training (physical and professional), and build values-driven systems so they can keep showing up at a Gold Medal level for years, not just one season.
Key take aways:
Failure must be felt in the body, not just analyzed.
Shared leadership makes teams resilient under extreme pressure.
Align big goals with your deepest values, not ego.
Stop when performance drops; that’s healthy failure training.
You’re capable of far more than your brain suggests.
“Luck is about being able to go 100% when opportunity shows its face.”
Today’s Expert Guest - Adam Kreek
Adam Kreek is an Olympic Gold Medalist, two-time Olympian and one of North America’s most in-demand leadership speakers and executive coaches. He won gold in the men’s eight at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, holds more than 60 international medals, and later made a record-setting attempt to row unsupported across the Atlantic Ocean, a journey featured in NBC’s Dateline documentary Capsized. Adam is the founder and principal coach of ViDA Executive Business Coaching, where he trains leaders from organizations like Amazon, Microsoft, Pfizer, Shell, GE, Mercedes-Benz, L’Oréal, YPO and EO. He is also the bestselling author of The Responsibility Ethic, recognized by Forbes as a top business book.
Adam’s work is distinct because he combines lived experience in some of the world’s harshest environments—Olympic finals, ocean storms, capsized boats—with deep business and coaching expertise. His Built for Hard™ framework and Responsibility Ethic are unapologetically practical: he blends performance psychology, values-based decision making, and embodied training habits into tools that leaders can apply immediately, from boardrooms to boat decks. Rather than offering hype or quick fixes, he focuses on self-leadership, shared leadership, and long time horizons—helping people define four-year “Gold Medal Moments,” avoid toxic goals, and build daily systems that make success and wellbeing more likely.
Choose one “Gold Medal Moment”—a purposeful, values-aligned goal that will take at least four years to achieve—and write it down in concrete, behavioural terms. Then, working backwards, identify one small weekly practice that builds toward it (for example, a 30-minute threshold-style session where you stop as soon as performance drops, or a recurring “reflection block” where you process wins and failures). Adam’s message is clear: when you take radical responsibility for both the goal and the system—training, recovery, values, and team—you dramatically increase your odds of hitting that long-term target without destroying yourself along the way.
Follow Adam Kreek on Instagram & Linked In.
Check out his website.
The Responsibility Ethic:
12 Strategies Exceptional People Use to Do the Work and Make Success Happen
In The Responsibility Ethic, entrepreneur, executive coach and Olympic Gold Medalist Adam Kreek shares 12 principles of self-leadership, the most important factor in driving results and achieving success.
This podcast contains advice and information relating to health and wellness. It should be used to supplement rather than replace the advice of your doctor or another trained health professional. If you know or suspect that you have a health problem, seek your physician’s advice before embarking on any medical program or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this podcast / interview / article as of the date of publication. The author and publisher disclaim liability for any medical or other outcomes that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this material.
