A senior leader recently told me he wanted better collaboration in his organization. He said his people often found working together exhausting. He asked me for advice. Specifically, how could collaboration be made more “comfortable” when there seemed to be so much tension, conflict and competing priorities on the team? Before I could answer, he suggested that maybe collaboration would be easier if the person on the other side of the table were more open, more interested in alignment and more willing to see other people’s perspectives. Two thoughts came to mind. First, at Third Factor, we just completed a research project on collaboration. One finding stood out: 95 per cent of people believe they are better at collaboration than others. Almost no one thinks they are the problem. Second, the best collaborators I’ve worked with don’t try to make the process easy. They strive to make it effective. And there’s a big difference. I recently asked Olympic ice dancer, coach and commentator Tracy Wilson how she approaches collaboration under pressure. Her response: “Breakdowns are when you break through.”

“95 per cent of people believe they are better at collaboration than others. Almost no one thinks they are the problem.”

The people she most enjoys working with challenge each other, hold different views and are willing to have tough conversations. Working through those moments brings people together rather than pulling them apart, she says. In other words, great collaboration isn’t about avoiding tension or making things feel smooth. It’s about how people handle the tension that’s already there. The difference between good and great collaborators shows up in what they focus on – especially when things get hard.

Do We Have the Right People?

When collaboration becomes challenging, leaders often ask themselves, “Do we have the right team mix? The right skills and personalities? Are roles clear?” These seem like fair questions, but research suggests they don’t tell us much. In 2012, Google ran one of the most rigorous team studies ever conducted. Project Aristotle studied 180 teams to determine which mix of people produced the best results. The outcome: there was no clear link between team composition and performance. It didn’t matter whether people had similar or different personalities, or whether they were friends or strangers. None of it predicted success. Google concluded that who is on a team matters far less than how the team works together. That shifts the question from Who do we have? to What happens between them? After more than a year of research, Project Aristotle found that group norms – not individual talent or personality – drive team effectiveness. Two norms matter most. The first is psychological safety. Team members need to feel safe to speak up, take risks, admit mistakes and challenge ideas without fear of embarrassment or punishment. Without it, individual intelligence never becomes collective intelligence because people stay silent. The second is conversational equity. Put simply, everyone gets to speak. Meetings don’t default to the loudest or most senior voice. Instead, people notice who hasn’t spoken and invite them in. High-performance collaboration, it turns out, depends on who speaks, who listens and what happens when things go wrong – not who’s in the room.

From “I” Gaps to “We” Gaps

This is where Third Factor’s survey of 164 leaders adds something useful. When we asked strong collaborators what skills they wanted to build, they pointed to skills that connect people – listening more deeply, creating clarity, building alignment and understanding others’ needs. They focused on the space between people. We called these “We gaps.” When we asked weaker collaborators the same question, their focus shifted inward. They wanted to speak up more, present ideas more clearly, build confidence and overcome shyness. These were “I gaps.”

“The person in “We gap” mode is curious about what hasn’t been said. They track the energy in the room and notice who hasn’t spoken. When they do speak, they ask questions that bring others in, not questions that make them look smart.”

You’ve likely seen both in meetings. The person in “I gap” mode quietly rehearses what they’ll say while someone else is talking. They’re focused on their own next move. The person in “We gap” mode is curious about what hasn’t been said. They track the energy in the room and notice who hasn’t spoken. When they do speak, they ask questions that bring others in, not questions that make them look smart. This distinction is at the heart of what makes a great collaborator. It’s not about having the most to say, it’s about paying attention to what the group needs.

What Great Collaborators Do Differently

The shift from “I gaps” to “We gaps” separates great collaborators from good ones. When teams struggle, strong collaborators don’t look for more influence for themselves. They work to strengthen the relationships, systems and habits that help the group perform. To see how this plays out, I often think back to Tracy Wilson. She told me about two Olympic skating champions she coaches. At the end of practice, neither leaves right away. Instead, they stay and fill in the ice divots together. These are athletes at the peak of individual performance, each competing for the same gold medal. Still, they choose to take care of each other and their shared environment. As Tracy explains, top performers push, inspire and learn from each other. They believe that they were better because of each other, because this is the culture that has been created. Great collaborators think the same way. They spot pressure points early and work together to address them before they grow. Another coach I spoke with made a similar point. Mel Davidson, one of Canada’s most decorated hockey coaches, helped the national women’s team win four Olympic gold medals and one silver medal. One of the tough challenges her teams face is final cuts. Olympic Hockey teams rely on alternates – players who put their lives on hold, do all the work required to be ready for the Olympics, but unless a teammate gets hurt, will not play and will not win a medal. Early on, Mel told players what she expected from alternates. The message didn’t land. So she changed her approach. Long before final cuts, she brought the team together and asked: What do you expect from alternates? How should they act? She stopped asking players to meet her standard and asked them to define their own. And it worked. By shifting from “What do I expect of you?” to “What do we expect of each other?” the team did the work together. Mel created the conditions to build a shared clarity on expectations. [Note: This dynamic of creating accountability through shared expectations can be further explored in Great Leaders Make Accountability Feel Like a Team Sport].

Trust Accelerates Everything

Scott Vicary is a senior executive I’ve worked with for nearly 20 years. Every time he steps into a new role, he runs a team kickoff focused on alignment and trust. What sets him apart is that he doesn’t hand the team a set of values. He asks them to create it together. As he told me, “They need to feel like they own it. They created it. They’ve got some sort of piece of it they can take with them. When the team creates the values and approach, they carry weight. When they’re handed down, they’re just words.” Scott is also clear about what gets in the way. At a recent meeting, he said, “Just because you have roles that require other people to do things for you doesn’t mean those people will simply listen and comply. The only way we are going to drive innovation and change is if we build relationships based on trust and respect. Without trust and respect, there is no mutually willing effort. And without mutually willing effort, nothing truly innovative gets done.” Scott embodies what makes a great collaborator in senior leadership: he doesn’t treat trust as a soft idea. He treats it as the operating system for everything else.

“That shift doesn’t happen by accident. It occurs when leaders focus on what happens between people, rather than on how individuals perform.”

When collaboration breaks down, Scott focuses on the space between people, not the people themselves. He asks team members to put themselves in each other’s shoes and assume others are acting in the group’s best interest. In his experience, most issues start to resolve when people do this. After a recent kickoff, Scott sent a note that captured the “We gap” in plain terms: “Our success doesn’t rely only on our plans or expertise – it depends on how well we work with the groups around us. Trust accelerates everything.” He also defined what trust looks like: be clear, be consistent, communicate openly – especially when things get hard – assume positive intent and listen carefully under pressure. Scott shared one moment that stuck with him. After a series of wins, one of his managers was invited to breakfast with the board and asked what drove the results. The manager didn’t list his achievements. He said, “I have the support of my leadership and the support of all my peers.” Scott called that a small piece of gold. It shows what’s possible when people shift from mine to ours. That shift doesn’t happen by accident. It occurs when leaders focus on what happens between people, rather than on how individuals perform. The gap between good and great collaboration isn’t filled by better team members or by making things more comfortable. It’s filled by people who pay attention to what happens between them. That’s a shift we can all make.

Key Takeaways:

You’re probably not as collaborative as you think. 95% of people believe they collaborate better than others. Almost no one thinks they’re the problem.
Who’s in the room matters less than what happens between them. Team composition doesn’t predict success, group norms do. Psychological safety and conversational equity drive high performance.
Great collaborators focus on “We gaps,” not “I gaps.” They pay attention to what the group needs — who hasn’t spoken, what’s unsaid, where tension is building — not their own next move.
Effective collaboration isn’t comfortable, it’s purposeful. Great collaborators don’t avoid tension. They work through it, and that’s what builds stronger teams.
Trust is the operating system, not a soft add-on. Clarity, consistency, and positive intent — focused on the space between people — accelerate everything else.

Before every season, Dallas Eakins sits down to think about what kind of “infection” he wants to spread among his players. It’s not the image you expect from a pro hockey coach. But that’s how he puts it. Dallas has coached in some of hockey’s highest-pressure environments. He’s the former coach of the Anaheim Ducks and Edmonton Oilers. Today, he’s GM and Head Coach of Adler Mannheim in Germany. He knows that in locker rooms it’s easy for the germs of fear, panic and “don’t screw up” to get airborne. Early in his career, that sometimes happened.

“They will never care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

He’d come in armed with systems, standards and structures. His expectations, he thought, were crystal clear. But when the team hit a rough patch, he could feel it: Players were complying with the plan, not owning it. They were doing what was asked, but they weren’t bringing the honesty, grit or collaboration that was needed. Looking back, Dallas is blunt: He was leading from systems and standards first. Care came second. Over time, he switched the order. “They will never care how much you know,” he says now, “until they know how much you care.” He still runs a tight ship. The standards are high. But now he starts with care, gets disciplined about consistency, and lets trust show up as a byproduct. And when that happens, something important shifts: Accountability stops being something he does to the team and becomes something the team does with and for each other. That’s the journey this article is about. And it’s one that’s seen over and over, from NHL locker rooms to university parking lots to a sweaty beep test in a Swedish sports hall.

Coaches West: Jeff Daniels & Dallas Eakins (right), American Hockey League (AHL), 2013 All-Star Skills Competition. American Hockey League (AHL), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A Consistent Pattern

In every case, the pattern is the same:

01.

Start with Care. Really know your people and their experience.

02.

Be Disciplined to Stay Consistent. Show up the same way in the highs and lows, while holding high standards.

03.

Let the Team Hold the Line. They naturally hold each other accountable because they feel the care and see it, consistently.

01. Start with Care

Really know your people and their experience. Care is not a motivational speech at the start of the season. It’s not saying, “My door is always open,” and then being permanently unavailable. Care is deeply unglamorous and wonderfully specific. When Dallas talks about caring, he means:

Know players as humans: their families, their histories, the stuff that keeps them up at night.
Notice when someone walks in a little off. Take the time to check in.
Understand that the same message lands differently with a 19-year-old rookie than it does with a veteran on his fourth team.

That’s not “being nice.” It’s gathering data. Because the minute you understand someone’s reality, you can design the way you lead them. I felt this viscerally on a very different stage: move-in day at my daughter’s university. We arrived on campus with our car full of bins and feelings. My inner soundtrack was looping: I hope she’s going to be okay. Is her room okay? Are the people okay? Is she okay? It was chaos – traffic, honking, parents doing the slow drive of mild panic. And then we met the red-shirt crew. A team of student volunteers swarmed our car – waving, smiling, introducing themselves, asking my daughter about her program and residence, unloading everything into carts. Within minutes, our car was empty and her stuff upstairs. More importantly, she was smiling. The energy in her body had changed. So had mine. In 10 minutes, nothing fundamental about her life was different. Same dorm, same unknowns. What changed was this: a group of people had clearly thought about her experience and built around it. That’s care as a verb. Leaders who start with care:

Plan for how people feel on day one, week one, month one.
Name realities in the room (“you’re new”, “this is a lot”, “this stretch is brutal”) so people don’t have to pretend.
Ask questions that make it about the person, not just the task.

It doesn’t mean lowering the bar. It means people don’t have to waste energy hiding where they really are. And that’s what sets you up for the second move.

02. Be Disciplined to Stay Consistent

Show up the same way in the highs and lows, while holding high standards. Care gets people to lean in. Consistency is what convinces them you mean it. This is where Dallas’s “infection” metaphor comes in. Before walking into the room, he’ll ask himself: “What do I want people to breathe in from me today?” If the team has lost five straight, it is easy for a leader to walk in tight, reactive, and unintentionally spread panic. If he lets media chatter or his own inner critic become his story, the team will inhale that anxiety. So Dallas works on his internal hygiene:

Is this thought helping, or just scaring me?
Is this my story, or someone else’s?
What is actually true about how we’re playing?

The goal isn’t to be robotic. It’s to be predictable in the right ways: Players may not know what the next drill is, but they know he’s not going to humiliate them, disappear emotionally, or swing wildly from praise to blame based on one result. That kind of consistency is a form of care. And it unlocks something important: People start to take more risks, tell more truth, and tolerate higher standards because they’re not bracing for who’s going to walk through the door today. I saw a similar pattern with the women’s floorball team I worked with at Pixbo in Sweden. Every season, we ran the dreaded beep test. At first, it was all the usual things: tight shoulders, nervous jokes, the temptation to disappear. Everyone knew it mattered, but it felt like a test to survive. So we focused on being boringly consistent in between:

Clear expectations about effort.
The same type of debrief after good days and bad.
The same message: You matter on your best day and your worst day.

By year two, beep-test day felt different. Players were still nervous, but they walked in ready. No mysterious “sick days.” Less avoiding eye contact. A quiet pride in even showing up for it. Consistency didn’t make it easy. It made it safe enough to go hard.

03. Let the Team Hold the Line

They naturally hold each other accountable because they feel the care and see it, consistently. When care and consistency have been there long enough, something lovely happens: Accountability stops being a solo act. Back to that beep test. As players started to drop out, they didn’t head for the showers or go look at their phones. They started cheering for whoever was still running. I remember one player who carried a lot of anxiety. When she finally hit her limit and stepped out, you could see the disappointment in her whole body – hands on knees, head dropped. Within seconds, two teammates were at her side. One put a hand on her back. The other said something like: “You were further than last time. You’ll get past it next time. We’re right here.” That’s not, “Oh well, who cares about the test?” It’s, We care about you too much to pretend this doesn’t matter. And we care about you too much to let this moment define you. That’s what it looks like when a group starts to hold the line together:

They protect each other’s dignity and the standard.
They challenge each other from a place of belief, not frustration.
They don’t let someone quietly slide below what they’re capable of.

In Dallas’s language, they’ve “caught” the culture. Players are now the ones asking, “Is this who we are?” after a bad period. Veteran guys are the ones pulling a rookie aside to say, “We don’t do it that way here, and here’s why.” The leader hasn’t stepped back from standards. If anything, the bar is higher. But the weight of holding it no longer sits on one pair of shoulders.

Bringing It Back to Your Team

So if you’re a coach, manager, captain or the unofficial “glue” on your team, here are three simple questions to sit with:

Where, specifically, do people first experience your care? If someone new walked in tomorrow, what would show them, “You matter here. You’re not just another body on the roster”?
If we followed you around for a month, what patterns would we see? Not just on your good days, but on the tired, stressed, messy ones too. Would people say, “I may not love every decision, but I always know which version of them is going to show up”?
Where have you already seen the team hold the line together? Think of one moment where teammates raised the standard with each other, so no leader was required. What groundwork did you already lay to make that possible?

At the end of the day, if we want people to tell the truth, hold high standards, and stay in it when it’s hard, they must feel we’re in it with them, not just watching from the bench. Care is what signals that. Consistency is what proves it. And trust – the kind that leads to real, shared accountability – is what grows from there. The plans for the Tokyo Games have been in the news a lot lately. In this video, our founder, Peter Jensen, shares his perspective on the preparations taking place within Team Canada.

Rather read than watch? Here is the full text of Peter’s update: Greetings! Well, it’s certainly been a while. And a few things have happened this past year, to put it mildly. I thought I’d give you an update from my perspective on the Tokyo Olympics. I believe unless something else dramatic changes, and that’s certainly a possibility, that the Olympics will proceed, but they certainly will not resemble, for the participants at least, a normal Olympics. As a spectator watching on television, you’ll see a lot of what you would normally see with the exception of loud crowds and loud noises. In the latest installment, they’re hoping to have people in the stands but get this, they’re not allowed to cheer. And that’s obviously for COVID reasons. Quite frankly, the COC is doing its best to encourage parents, family, and friends not to attend the Olympics in person because they won’t have access to the athletes and their children. Likely, it will be like the World Junior Hockey Championships, where gatherings will be held afterward online – so you might as well stay at home. What do we know from the athlete’s perspective? We know that they’re only allowed in the village five days before their event and they must leave when the event is over. Obviously each country will have their own bubble. It will not be a normal Games in terms of the athlete’s experience.

“The athletes need to be able to prepare for something very different than they’ve imagined their entire life”

The opening and closing ceremonies are still up in the air. Mid February, the IOC will publish a playbook outlining their plan. Now from a psychological perspective, the athletes need to be able to prepare for something very different than they’ve imagined their entire life. I’m sure you’ve had the experience, especially early on in the pandemic, of going to do something you normally do and then realizing, “Oh I’m not driving anywhere. I simply have to go on my computer and go online.” Those images of how we used to do things stay very strong for a long period of time. But once we start doing things differently, those things become the inner images. The athletes don’t have the advantage of that because we still don’t know enough detail to paint a clear picture of what it’s going to look like to be in Tokyo. It will get clearer over the coming months. And it will definitely not be a level playing field. Some of the countries will prioritize the athletes in terms of vaccinations, others will not. Some countries have been allowing their athletes to train in groups, others, including Canada, have not. One of the biggest things is that test events that normally are held in the Olympic venues to help athletes prepare for the Olympics, will not be held. It’s been ages since any of our athletes have had the opportunity to compete. And so, as I’ve said, A lot of changes and a lot of variables. There’s no doubt you’ll hear a lot about this in the coming months. But the Olympics are usually about overcoming hardship and hope, and my goodness, we could all use a little of that. The nature of work has changed. And for many, things won’t be going back to “normal” – ever. As people adapt to their new realities, the mix of new responsibilities, new communication systems, changes to meetings and protocols and the associated ambiguity can lead to friction, anxiety and stress. When we think about collaboration, we often go straight to tools and technology. But guess what? Your organization is full of human beings, and as humans our ability to work together begins with our individual interactions. Before any technology can enable effective collaboration, the people using it need skills to understand, engage and appreciate the people they work with. In this interactive, 60-minute online session, Cyndie Flett will explore the mindsets and behaviours that lead to productive and collaborative interactions, break down how individual interactions set the tone and influence how effectively a group works together, and look at a few practical tools you can use to manage relationships and enhance collaboration so you can achieve more of the results you want, and manage your own health and wellbeing along the way You should attend if:

You are a senior leader, learning & development practitioner, or HR professional responsible for enabling collaboration at an organizational level
Rapid change to when and how you work is causing friction within the teams you lead
You need solutions for enabling effective collaboration that transcend modes and methods of work
You want to build your own capability for working more productively with others

About the presenter:

Cyndie Flett is one of Canada’s leading experts on coaching. As the former Vice President of Research and Development for the Coaching Association of Canada, and Director of the National Coaching Certification Program, Cyndie has dramatically impacted the way that literally millions of coaches are educated across the country.

We have long said growth is what gives meaning to pressure. During difficult times, the people who are most likely to stay committed are the ones who have clarity and feel like they’re moving forward with their personal development. And the person with the greatest ability to provide clarity and help drive that development forward is their leader; their coach. In this interactive, 60-minute online session, one of Canada’s leading experts on coaching, Cyndie Flett, will explore the strategies great coaches use to ensure clarity, inspire and develop their people even when faced with significant uncertainty. And, she’ll introduce the tools leaders can use to overcome the logistical challenges of building engagement while working remotely. This session is about people – not technology. The environment has changed, but people’s basic needs haven’t. You will come away with a better understanding of the role coaches play in supporting people to rise to the occasion while meeting them where they’re at. You’ll also gain practical tools you can immediately apply in your environment, backed up by examples and best practices from top coaches. Participants will learn:

What “overcommunication” really means and the specifics of what information people need to hear, when they need to hear it, and how it needs to be delivered.
How to use focusing and clarifying questions with examples that can be used immediately.
How to overcome common blocks to giving effective feedback when leading remotely.
Tools and strategies for building a communication system and overcoming the logistical challenges that leaders of remote teams face.

About the presenter:

This Friday marks the 10-year anniversary of the Closing Ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. Here at Third Factor, we were incredibly proud to directly and indirectly support many of the athletes and coaches that would go on to become household names. Ten years later, we are still committed to supporting Olympic and Paralympic athletes and coaches in their bid for the podium. And three incredible stories from the 2010 Games continue to influence our understanding of the power of pressure and the way we interact with our clients across all areas of our business.

Changing a Canadian mindset

Prior to the Vancouver Olympics, Canada was known in Olympic circles for one notable achievement: it was the only nation in the world to host the Games without a local athlete winning gold. In fact, Canada had achieved this feat twice; first at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal, and again at the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary. When Vancouver won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Games, Canada’s 13 winter national sport organizations were determined to change that reputation. A report by sport management consultant and Olympic Hall of Famer, Cathy Priestner Allinger, found that Canadian athletes ranked top-five in the world the year before the games were far less likely to go on to win an Olympic medal than international athletes who were performing at the same level.

“Canada’s challenge wasn’t producing world-class athletes; it was producing world-class athletes who could perform with all the distractions and pressure of the Olympics”

In other words, Canada’s challenge wasn’t producing world-class athletes; it was producing world-class athletes who could perform with all the distractions and pressure of the Olympics. Brian Orser was one of Canada’s star athletes at the Calgary Games in 1988, and he spoke to us about the pressure of competing in front of a home crowd.

To help Canada’s performers prepare for the pressure of Olympic competition, the not-for-profit organization Own the Podium was formed to provide and fund support structures designed to give Canadian athletes the preparation that would allow them to access their best performances in the face of Olympic pressure. Own The Podium was a spectacular success. At Vancouver, Canadian athletes won 26 medals, including a record-setting 14 gold medals, placing Canada third overall. Since that time, Canadian athletes have been ‘converting’ at a rate of around 70% and Canadians now enter Olympic Games with an expectation that they could indeed, be the best in the world.

The impact of self-awareness and communication strategies

We had always believed that self-awareness was a critical component of team performance, and there was no doubt on the subject following our work with the Canadian Women’s Olympic Hockey Team at the Vancouver Games. In 2010, the team was looking to defend its gold medal from the Turin Games four years prior. They were also preparing to face their American arch-rivals who had bested them at the world championship the year before. As the team’s mental performance coach, Third Factor Founder, Dr. Peter Jensen, was tasked with helping the team perform through the high-stakes tournament while under intense scrutiny from the home crowd. To help keep the team running like a finely tuned engine, he elected to bring in our collaboration guru, Peggy Baumgartner, to guide the team through our Self-Aware Team process. Through the program, the team was able to gain a better understanding of their tendencies – both individually and as a team under pressure. And, they leveraged that new understanding to design systems to keep communication flowing effectively when the pressure mounted. The players remember it as a challenge that was both extremely difficult, and extremely worthwhile.

With a strategy in place, the team was able to communicate and stay consistent whether things were going well or poorly. They were able to work their way through the ups and downs of Olympic competition and successfully defend their gold medal on home ice. What we learned is that when you have a high functioning team – even one that’s among the best in the world – one of the most powerful ways to further enhance their performance is to increase their self-awareness and communication skills.

The convergence of health and performance

For us at Third Factor, there was a hidden storyline we were following that was far more significant than the Olympics. One week prior to the start of the Games, Peter Jensen was with the Women’s Olympic Hockey Team in Jasper, Alberta, at their pre-Olympic camp when he received confirmation that he had throat and neck cancer.

“Peter had to keep the information from the team so as not to become an enormous distraction”

Peter had to notify the leadership at Hockey Canada and, with their blessing, continued to support the mental performance of the Women’s Olympic Hockey Team. As they headed into their most important competition of the four-year cycle, Peter had to keep the information from the team so as not to become an enormous distraction while simultaneously teaching skills, being at his best and dispensing regular doses of his usual sense of humour. Peter is currently cancer-free and maintains a crazy busy schedule delivering keynote speeches to audiences big and small around the world. Peter wrote about his experience in his own words in his whitepaper, When Health and Performance Converge: What I (re)Learned From Cancer. It’s a great read if you’re curious to learn more about how he was able to stay resilient through such a difficult time. To those of us at Third Factor, the 2010 Vancouver Games are a reminder that Peter doesn’t just teach people how to handle pressure, he lives and breathes the content. On November 19th, 2019, 75 leaders from Toronto’s business and HR communities gathered at OCAD U CO for a discussion on team resilience. Here’s what they learned:

Leading the discussion, Third Factor CEO Dane Jensen brought together the voices of elite athletes and coaches to talk about what separates those teams that are able to rebound from failure to reach even higher levels of performance from teams that tend to crumble or falter in the face of failure. Drawing on insights from our work with high-performing sports teams, including the last four medal winning women’s Olympic hockey teams and the men’s and women’s national soccer teams, Dane identified what it takes for teams to not just perform but also to recover and be resilient. These are the four traits we’ve observed that characterize resilient teams, or differentiate resilient teams from those that are less resilient: 1. Negative emotion. Resilient teams process negative emotion in a way that leads to harder work and higher standards as opposed to detachment or combustion. They frame it so rather than being scared of negative emotion, they choose to lean into it, work with it, and see it with a sense of challenge, control and commitment. 2. Communication. The teams that recover quickly from setbacks communicate differently because they have worked consciously on awareness. They’ve surfaced their communication styles and worked on having performance conversations in the good times. 3. Relationships. Teams are more resilient when they work diligently on building relationships, even if that’s just 30 seconds for each person every day. 4. Shared purpose. Teams work best in the face of failure when they have a clear a line of sight to shared purpose. They don’t do hard work for it’s own sake, but because they choose to connect it to something that actually matters to them. Approximately 1 in 5 Canadians identify as having a disability, and this number will continue to rise as our population ages. At Third Factor, we have a long history of working to reduce barriers for people with disabilities and we want to shine some light on an initiative we’re participating in this week: the annual Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Leadership Forum. Inspired by the belief that anything is possible, Rick Hansen began the Man In Motion World Tour in 1985, wheeling 40,000km over two years. The Rick Hansen Foundation, established in 1988, has made transformational change in raising awareness and removing barriers for people with disabilities, and funding research for the cure and care of people with spinal cord injuries. Today, the Foundation focuses on improving accessibility to create a world that’s accessible and inclusive for all. In service of this, Rick and the Foundation have brought together a group of leaders from the disability community to collaborate on making Canada the most accessible country in the world. The forum has met annually for the past 4 years to leverage their unique organizational strengths, exchange ideas, build practical recommendations, assess progress, and identify priorities for the coming year. Since this group first came together we’ve been privileged to work with Rick and his team at the Rick Hansen Foundation to help design the day, making sure that we’re engaging all the stakeholders appropriately and sending them back to the real world with a renewed sense of commitment towards an inclusive and accessible world for people of all abilities.

Third Factor CEO Dane Jensen and Rick Hansen This year, the focus will be primarily on discussing what it means to be a collaborative community of organizations. How do we think about combining our efforts to make sure that we are punching above our weight and not just acting as a number of independent organizations? We are stronger as a whole and through better corporate collaboration, we can accelerate the pace of progress for people with disabilties. This year also marks the launch of the Accessibility Professional Network, a membership network created to bring together accessibility professionals, consultants, students and anyone passionate about creating a Canada that’s accessible for all. The network will host its first Annual Accessibility Professional Network Conference on Oct. 31-Nov. 1 in Toronto, which will provide a platform to learn about national and international initiatives in accessibility and contribute to enhancing the field of accessibility in Canada. Canada is a better place to live because of the important work that Rick and the Foundation have done to raise awareness and remove barriers, and we’re pleased that we’re able to contribute to a movement that’s making a real difference in the lives of people with disabilities in this country. If you’re interested in doing more to improve accessibility within your organization or community, learn more at the Rick Hansen Foundation.

“95 per cent of people believe they are better at collaboration than others. Almost no one thinks they are the problem.”