WolfPack by Abby Wambach
“Old ways of thinking will never help us build a new world.”
3 Main Messages:
Make failure your fuel
Lead from the bench
Find your pack
Three years after retiring from her incredibly successful career as a professional footballer, Abby Wombach gave an inspiring address to the graduates of Barnard in 2018. This book is, effectively, that speech. As a result it is a light book with a heavy punch and I was able to read it in under an hour. Not a good investment you might think, but actually the messages inside are concise, well explained and leadership gold.
In my recent research into developing strong leaders and impactful leadership teams, a message which comes through loud and clear is that there is a great difference between being a team of strong individuals and a strong team. In a true team, every individual helps the others in their team, sometimes to the detriment of their own target - they will inconvenience themselves for others. They will pass to allow someone else to allow them to take the shot, to meet the target or to hit their goal, because they know that then the whole team will benefit.
Abby gives many powerful messages in the book, which is split into eight succinct chapters, each with its own real life example and story of how she learned that particular lesson. This makes the book an immediately personal and relevant read. The messages of leadership which she learned in football can be applied in any leadership or team context.
One of the most powerful lessons I took from the books was in Chapter 5 - Champion Each Other where Abby describes how she is always running and pointing straight after scoring a goal. She is pointing to the players who set up the pass, the defence who were holding back the opponents and the coaches who thought up that play. No-one scores a goal on their own. The same can be said for businesses, schools and hospitals - in fact in any workplace. Every success is the result of a team effort. She tells us we should always be running to congratulate, or pointing at the ones in support.
As long as humans have existed, we have needed to collaborate in order to survive and this rule still applies today. Abby writes “Revolutions begin with a collective belief ….and are won with collective action.” To have a whole team focussed and working together towards the same common goals and celebrating each other's success is a powerful model.
Abby’s messages to carve our own path, be authentic and honest, grateful and ambitious, lead from the bench, make failure your fuel and find your pack all resonated with me. Her stories are funny and inspiring and she is self-deprecating and raw in her reflections and honesty.
As I said, this book is really a transcript of the 20 minute speech that you can watch on Youtube and any interview which she has done since then. I had already heard all of these messages when listening to Abby on Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast. Whether you watch, listen or read her thoughts and calls to the ‘Wolfpack’ there are succinct takeaways here - just as meaningful and important as those in any fully blown book.
