When people picture elite sport, they usually imagine the glory: the medals, the anthem, the moment everything comes together. What they don’t often see is the psychological turbulence underneath those performances – the doubt, fear, shame, and self-recrimination that show up when things don’t go according to plan.

Years ago, Third Factor founder Peter Jensen was working with a Canadian national team that was, by all measures, one of the best in the world. They were perennial contenders, a program with history and swagger. And yet, in the first days of a world championship, everything came undone. They lost to their arch-rivals badly, and the shock was devastating.

We’re always navigating the gap between what is and what ought to be. That gap hurts. But the hurt is meaningful. And if we can help people explore that meaning, we unlock the very thing that allows them to grow.

By the next morning, the athletes stood in the hotel lobby looking hollowed-out. Angry. Embarrassed. Anxious. They knew the tournament was short. They knew another loss could knock them out. And they knew they were at risk of spiraling.

This is the territory we work in every day – not just in sport, but in business, education, and leadership. People experiencing disappointment, failure, or the deep discomfort of not living up to their own expectations. As psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski wrote, we’re always navigating the gap between what is and what ought to be. That gap hurts. But the hurt is meaningful. And if we can help people explore that meaning, we unlock the very thing that allows them to grow.

What follows is how Peter helped that team turn a moment of psychological crisis into the fuel that carried them to a gold medal, not despite their negative emotions, but because of them.

01.

Acknowledge the pain and help people observe it

02.

Move toward compassion, not criticism

03.

Help them find the meaning inside the pain

1. Acknowledge the pain and help people observe it

When Peter asked the players how they were feeling that morning, they didn’t hold back: awful, embarrassed, sad, angry. A typical response might have been reassurance: You’ll be fine, shake it off, don’t worry about it. But reassurance rarely helps; it often makes people feel more alone in their emotions. Instead, Peter simply said: “Yeah. You look awful.”

 

It may sound blunt, but it wasn’t judgmental. It was observational. It told the players: I see you. What you’re feeling makes sense. Let’s look at it together.

  When the strength coach announced they’d be doing lunges at practice, Peter asked: “How are you going to look doing lunges? How will your teammates know you’re back?”   These were reflective questions not about the loss, but about how they were showing up in response to it. They invited the players to step outside themselves and observe what was happening internally.   This is the first job of a coach in hard moments: Help people dis-identify from the emotion without dismissing it and let them see the feeling rather than become the feeling.

2. Move toward compassion, not criticism

Negative emotions become destructive not because they exist, but because we weaponize them against ourselves. We interpret them as proof: I’m not good enough. I’ll never perform. I don’t belong here. A coach must interrupt that spiral.   Peter did this in an unexpected way. That morning, a staff member had told a long, mundane story about buying a T-shirt on sale. The players had zero patience for it. Peter asked the staff member to tell the story again to the entire team. Afterwards, he asked: “Why did he buy that T-shirt?”. Eventually someone answered: “Because he got a good deal.”   Peter replied: “Right. He wasn’t going to overpay. He knows what shirts are worth. You guys are overpaying right now.”   No judgment. Just compassion and perspective. The point was simple: Don’t pay more than the moment is worth.    You lost a game. It hurts. But don’t add interest by beating yourselves up. A coach helps people see the whole truth, not the narrow, distorted version they’re stuck inside.

3. Help them find the meaning inside the pain

That afternoon, the team played a weaker opponent and won only 2–0. Instead of relief, they felt further proof that they were failing. So Peter gathered them and asked each player to share what it meant to represent their country. What surfaced were stories of parents driving endless hours to practices, communities fundraising to support them, comebacks from injury, and dreams that had taken years to build. It was emotional. And it was clarifying.   The problem wasn’t that they had lost a game. The problem was that they weren’t living up to what the opportunity meant to them. And when people reconnect with meaning, they reconnect with agency. They can choose how to move forward. From that point on, Peter reinforced that meaning daily:   At practice: “An American player woke up today preparing to face you in the gold medal game. How are you preparing?”   In the weight room: “Can you improve 1% today? What will you do to show you’re getting better?”   By naming their pain and understanding its purpose the team turned the emotional energy inward, toward growth instead of self-attack. They never lost another game. They won the gold medal.

When negative feelings become a weapon

Negative emotions are not the problem. What hurts performance is when people interpret those emotions as evidence of inadequacy: “I failed, therefore I’m a failure.”   This is the voice of the critic – a destructive internal narrator that convinces us we’re incapable of growth or unworthy of success. A coach’s role is to challenge that voice by asking better questions: That’s how people reclaim their will – what we call the third factor: the inner capacity to direct your own development.  

The takeaway for leaders and coaches

Whether you’re leading a national team or a project team, the principles are the same:  
  • Acknowledge negative feelings without trying to eliminate them.
  • Help people step back and observe their internal state.
  • Guide them toward understanding what the discomfort is pointing to.
  When we do this, people stop treating hard moments as evidence of failure and start treating them as invitations to rise.   Crisis becomes a catalyst. Pain becomes fuel. And performance becomes possible.

Meet our expert: Garry Watanabe, Principal Trainer & Sport Lead

Garry Watanabe is an expert on coaching and performance under pressure. A former corporate lawyer, Garry spent eight years as an elite swimming coach in Southern California, has a Master’s Degree in Sports Psychology, and has worked with thousands of executives in organizations like Deloitte, RBC, and Acuity Brands. As Third Factor’s sport lead, Garry supports the performance of Olympic and Paralympic athletes, and teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and Queen’s University.

“What is the difference between leadership and coaching?”

This is such a great question. These two terms are thrown around a lot and often used interchangeably. Here’s how I think about it. Leadership is what you do and say to help a group of two or more people stay focused and motivated as they move toward a common goal. You play a role in choosing that goal and providing the direction and energy to get there. Coaching, on the other hand, is different. The word “coach” comes from Kocs, a town in Hungary famous for making horse-drawn carriages – vehicles built to carry people from where they are to where they want to go. That’s what a coach does too: helps someone travel from their current state to their desired destination. Here’s an example to illustrate the difference. Suppose you believe whitewater rafting is a transformative experience — one that tests personal limits, builds trust, and sparks pure joy. You think everyone should experience it at least once. So, this summer, you decide to make it happen for the community of people around you. You share your vision: why it matters, how exhilarating it will be. You enlist people in your adventure, pull together teams to plan and execute. You keep the idea alive when energy dips, refocus the group when distractions arise and keep the momentum moving forward That’s leadership. Now imagine a different scenario. Someone comes to you. They’ve always wanted to go whitewater rafting but never made it happen. Maybe they’re hesitant — unsure where to start, or even intimidated. You help them explore why this matters. You work with them to identify realistic next steps. You talk through what’s holding them back — fear, time, uncertainty — and how they might move past it. You offer encouragement, check in, and hold them accountable as they move toward the goal. That’s coaching.

The insight: It’s about who chooses the destination

Leadership is about having a vision, enlisting others, keeping the group on course and sustaining motivation on the journey. Coaching is about helping someone clarify their destination, navigate their obstacles, and keep going when the waters get rough. Is there overlap? Of course. Am I missing something? Almost certainly. Both leadership and coaching are about movement – helping people go from here to there. The question is: who chooses the destination?    

Key Takeaways:

  • Leadership is about setting a vision, mobilizing people, and sustaining group motivation toward a shared goal.

  • Coaching focuses on helping an individual move from where they are to where they want to go—clarifying goals, removing barriers, and offering support.

  • Leadership involves choosing direction and rallying others; coaching helps someone articulate their own destination and progress toward it.

  • Both involve movement and growth, but differ primarily in who defines the goal.

John Wooden is often called the greatest coach of all time. He won ten National Championships in twelve years during his tenure as head coach of the UCLA Bruins men’s basketball team. At one point, he won seven championships in a row. The next longest streak is two. With his college roster substantially turning over every year, Wooden’s secret weapon was adaptability: when he had two 7-footers in Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, he focused on parking these ‘bigs’ near the basket and feeding them the ball. When he had a shorter roster, he adapted to focus more on shooting from the high post. Hundreds of very good coaches have not fared as well: their system ‘clicks’ with a star player and they have great success, and then the star moves on and they continue to try to run the same playbook – while their success, career, and reputations diminish. As Wooden succinctly put it: “failure is not fatal, but failure to change can be.” John Wooden, Lew Alcindor, Lynn Shackelford, Kenny Heitz, Lucius AllenJohn Wooden with Lew Alcindor, Lynn Shackelford, Kenny Heitz, and Lucius Allen; Los Angeles Times, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Wooden was coaching basketball, but he was also dispensing essential career advice. What he understood was that if you want to be future-proof, the steady refinement of one set of skills isn’t enough. As Kelly Bradley, the CHRO of RBC, Canada’s largest bank, recently shared: “we talk about [acquiring new skills] as building range. Expanding skills and experiences gives individuals more options and the organization more flexibility. In a world where change is constant, range becomes a strategic advantage.”
“In a world where change is constant, range becomes a strategic advantage.”
Now more than ever, a future-proof career hinges on the ability to acquire new skills that allow you to adapt to a new reality. So, can you get better at building range? Well, that’s where meta-skills come into play.

Skills and Meta-Skills in Action: The Pharmacist

Consider someone who has been a pharmacist for the past 20 years. They came out of University with a Chemistry degree and started working in a job that required two primary skills: chemistry to compound the medication and math to count pills and work the cash register. As technology advanced, the compounding and dispensing part of the role became more automated, and the role of pharmacists expanded greatly to include services like medicine reviews for Seniors, diabetic counseling, celiac counseling, flu shots, diagnosing and prescribing, and more. Suddenly, being a pharmacist also required customer service (or even sales) skills, and the process savvy to manage an automated dispensing process. Fast forward, and we can easily imagine the role evolving to require mental health counseling skills, tech savvy to perform diagnostics to deliver personalized medicine, and more.  
Figure 1 – A Pharmacist’s Journey: Skills vs. Meta-Skills
Chart displaying meta-skills at various points in learning growth cycle These different sets of skills anchor execution at different points in time – but what enables our pharmacist to evolve from one set of skills to another and remain successful over time are meta-skills. These are the capabilities that allow someone to consistently and repeatedly let go of old skills that have anchored their success and acquire and learn new ones.

Getting Better at Building Range: Three Imperatives

The discipline of evolving and building range can be broken down into three imperatives: see clearly, move quickly, and stay the course.

01.

See clearly Build self-awareness and empathy.

02.

Move quickly Strengthen flexibility, creativity, and learning capacity.

03.

Stay the course Cultivate resilience

01. See Clearly

Acquiring new skills starts with developing a great radar: Where am I strong? Where am I falling behind? What do I need to work on developing? Self-awareness is half of the battle, but an under-appreciated meta-skill is honing the ability to listen to critique with empathy rather than resistance. When someone points out a gap or limitation in your skill-set – instead of pushing back, consider “what are they seeing that I’m not? How could that help me identify a skill I need to build?”

02. Move Quickly

Strengthening learning capacity is at the heart of moving more quickly to build range. The faster you can move up learning curves, the easier it is to acquire new skills. There are many great resources that can help you get better at learning – but one of my favourites (which also happens to be free) is the Learning How to Learn course taught by the wonderful Dr. Barbara Oakley.

03. Stay the Course

Finally, the journey of evolution is not a straight line. Adults hate being at the bottom of learning curves, and the journey up those curves is fraught with pressure, discomfort and setbacks. It is much more comfortable to refine one skill set over time than it is to build range. One of the most effective ways to build resilience is to focus on relationships: who else is working towards the same goals as you? Who can you learn alongside? Who will push you, support you, and absolve you of the guilt we all feel from not being enough? Identifying 2-3 people who can be in your ‘training group’ can be a well-spring of resilience.

Meta-Skills: Crystal Ball Optional

Jeff Bezos famously said that he built Amazon around the belief that at no point would people want to pay higher prices or have worse product selection. As he stated at the time: “I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’… I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is the more important of the two.” Meta-skills are that rare example of something that will not change. There is no crystal ball required to see that the future will be different than the present, success in that future will require new and different skills, and an ability to spot critical skills, rapidly learn, and stay the course through the learning curve will be an advantage.
“Individuals who invest in strengthening their awareness, learning capacity and resilience can become irreplaceable”
Investing in meta-skills will pay a guaranteed return for both organizations and individuals. Organizations that invest in building meta-skills at scale will be rewarded with a talent pool that can adapt to new requirements and deploy new capabilities with greater ease and speed. Individuals who invest in strengthening their awareness, learning capacity and resilience can become irreplaceable.