Meet our expert: Peter Jensen, Founder

Peter Jensen Gold Medal
Peter Jensen is an expert in leadership and performance under pressure. A PhD in Sport Psychology, he has attended eleven Olympic Games with Team Canada and helped athletes achieve peak performance, including four consecutive Olympic medal-winning women’s hockey teams. He teaches with Queen’s Smith School of Business, works with Fortune 500 organizations globally, and helps leaders and teams apply the lessons of elite sport to drive sustained performance and growth.

“What Is The Olympic Experience Really Like Behind The Scenes?”

People often ask me what it’s like being at the Olympics, and I usually start with this: No one ever comes back saying, “That wasn’t very good.” The Games always live up to their billing. The Olympics are as big, as intense, and as meaningful as people imagine. Importantly, the experience doesn’t begin when the opening ceremonies start. It begins long before anyone arrives.

The Games begin before the Games

One of the biggest misconceptions is that pressure suddenly appears for athletes at the Olympics. It doesn’t. It accumulates long before. I used to tell athletes that the start of an Olympic year feels like walking around with an empty backpack. As the year progresses, they start putting things into it without realizing it. Expectations. Hopes. Comments from others such as “You’re the favourite” or “Don’t let us down.” None of it is meant to be harmful, but it all adds mental weight to the backpack. If athletes don’t learn how to empty that backpack, they won’t perform well when it matters. That’s why preparation must include simulation. Before major championships, we would recreate the full competition environment – crowds, judges, uniforms, even the order in which athletes compete – and then debrief it together. One of the most powerful moments for me was watching younger athletes realize that even world champions get nervous. Experience doesn’t remove pressure. It changes how you respond to it.

Arrival: awe, structure, and distraction

Arriving at the Olympic Village feels a lot like taking a child to university for the first time. You step off the bus, people help with your bags, you’re shown where you’ll stay, eat, and where everything else is. Then comes the flag-raising ceremony: your anthem, your team, the first moment you fully register that you are at the biggest sporting event on the planet: the Olympics. That moment matters. It grounds you. It also amplifies everything you’re carrying. The village itself is extraordinary. You eat meals with athletes from all over the world. In the Summer Games especially, the scale is overwhelming. It’s inspiring and distracting at the same time. Learning what to engage with, and what to tune out, is part of performing well.

Walking into the opening ceremonies

One of the most formative experiences I’ve had was walking into the opening ceremonies. I did it first in Calgary in 1988, and later again in Vancouver in 2010. Walking into the Games in your own country is unlike anything else. The roar of the crowd isn’t just loud – it’s personal. These are your people. The support is energizing, but it also adds another layer of expectation. My experience at the Olympics has caused me to change how I work with athletes. When I talk about the Games with them, I’m not describing something abstract. I know what it feels like in your body to be there: the adrenaline, the noise, the pride, and the responsibility, all at once. It has reinforced something I’ve believed for a long time: preparation isn’t just about skill. It’s about knowing how to respond when emotions are high and attention is pulled in every direction.

The reality of daily performance

Most days at the Olympics look nothing like television. They’re built around routines: meals, practices, travel, waiting, and adjusting to constant change. Schedules shift. Buses run late. Events are delayed. Ice gets damaged mid-competition and must be resurfaced. Competing at the Olympics is largely about learning how to manage time and how to return to your routine when that time is disrupted. When delays happen, the question I always ask athletes is simple: Where would you normally be in your preparation right now? Then we go back there, mentally and physically, and continue as planned. Consistency creates stability when conditions aren’t stable.

Moments you never forget

Some of the most powerful Olympic moments never make the broadcast. One that has stayed with me happened late at night in Calgary after Elizabeth Manley won her silver medal. Hours earlier, the crowd had been deafening. Now it was just the two of us walking through an underground residence tunnel. Two cleaners looked up, saw her medal, stepped aside, and quietly clapped as she passed. No cameras. No noise. Just recognition. That moment captured the Olympics better than any podium moment ever could.

What leaders can learn from the Games

Behind the scenes, the Olympics are not polished or predictable. They’re demanding, human, and full of disruption. The athletes who thrive aren’t the ones who wait for perfect conditions. They’re the ones who know their routines, understand themselves under pressure, and can return to what matters when things go sideways. That lesson applies far beyond sport. High-stakes moments rarely unfold as planned. Performance, whether on the ice or in an organization, comes down to preparation, adaptability, and the ability to stay grounded when the noise gets loud. That’s the part of the Olympics you won’t see on TV. This article is part of Third Factor’s Story Behind the Story series, in which we unpack the stories behind both iconic and under-the-radar Olympic and Paralympic moments. In this feature, Third Factor Partner Sandra Stark shares the mental performance work she and Peter Jensen did with Canadian figure skaters Brian Orser and Tracy Wilson ahead of the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics to help them manage pressure and perform when the stakes were highest. — The 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary were one of the most pressure-filled environments Canadian athletes had ever faced. Canada had never won an Olympic gold medal on home soil, the expectations were immense, and national attention was relentless. Nowhere was the spotlight brighter than on figure skating. Brian Orser entered the Games as the reigning world champion and the central figure in what the media called the “Battle of the Brians,” a highly publicized rivalry with American Brian Boitano. He was Canada’s flag bearer and one of the country’s best hopes for gold. Everywhere he went, strangers reminded him what the country expected – “don’t let us down.” At the same time, ice dancers Tracy Wilson and Rob McCall were carrying a different kind of pressure. Canada had never won an Olympic medal in ice dance, and breaking the long-standing dominance of the Soviet teams was widely viewed as unlikely. What the public saw was composure under extraordinary pressure. Orser delivered a near-flawless performance to win silver by the narrowest of margins, and Wilson and McCall captured an unexpected bronze, part of a remarkable showing in which figure skaters won three of Canada’s five medals. What most people didn’t see was the internal challenge both athletes were managing.  Whenever something important is on the line and the outcome is uncertain, arousal – the body’s activation level – increases. The heart rate rises. Muscles tighten. Attention narrows. Up to a point, this activation improves performance. But when arousal climbs too high, execution suffers. Timing slips. Decision-making tightens. Small errors multiply. This is why elite performers don’t just train physically. They train to manage their activation level so they can perform at their best when the pressure is highest. The goal isn’t to eliminate nerves – that isn’t possible when something really matters – but instead to keep arousal within a functional range. In service of this, two years before the Games, the Canadian Figure Skating Association made mental preparation a priority. They brought in Peter and I to help athletes identify the moments that would elevate their arousal and develop specific plans for managing their arousal when those moments arrive. Here are two of the techniques that we used, as relayed in conversation with Brian and Tracy.

Lesson #1: Plan for Reality Instead of Avoiding It

After the World Championships in Geneva, where Brian was not happy with how he skated, Peter asked him how he was preparing mentally before skating. Brian explained that he “had all the showers turned on in the dressing room so he wouldn’t hear how the Russian skater [who went ahead of him] had done.”  Standing in the noise of the shower, Brian imagined the Russian had skated brilliantly. In reality, the Russian had fallen on both triple axels. In trying to avoid reality, Brian instead magnified his anxiety. “That was the turning point,” Peter explains. From then on, Brian’s training approach shifted: instead of trying to shut out uncertainty, Peter worked with Brian to plan for it. Together they laid out exactly what he would do after warm-up: walk through his program, rehearse key jumps, and – most importantly – rehearse the opening segment he was about to skate. In figure skating competitions, skating order matters – and skaters don’t learn their order to skate until the day before they skate the short program. If you skate late, you may have an agonizing half-hour wait after your warm-up to compete. If you skate early, you may not even leave the ice – which feels incredibly rushed. Brian hated skating first – but instead of hoping it wouldn’t happen, Peter helped him normalize it by creating a plan for each scenario:  “We developed a routine that worked for me,” Brian explains. “A skating-first routine, a skating-sixth routine. We were prepared for any scenario.” The plan removed the uncertainty and second guessing that could creep in. Once Brian had clarity on what he was going to pay attention to and practised it; he could maintain control over his arousal level. This wasn’t about calming down, it was about restoring control. In particular, they agreed that if Brian drew his dreaded skating-first slot, he would skate only part of the warm-up, step off the ice, and walk through the opening of his program – physically and mentally – with skate guards on. He would mentally rehearse through to his first major jump, then return to the ice once his warm-up ended.  At the Olympics, that exact scenario played out. Brian skated first in the short program – and won it convincingly. Anyone watching would never have known how uncomfortable that situation was for him. Listen to Brian talk about the steps that lead to a great performance:

Lesson #2: Train For High Arousal Instead of Trying to Eliminate It

Tracy Wilson knew exactly when her arousal would spike: the moment she stepped onto the ice and heard her name announced in a packed Calgary arena. “Nothing would get me more jazzed up than hearing ‘Tracy Wilson, Rob McCall, Canada,’” she recalls. Instead of trying to suppress that reaction and stay calm, she trained for it. Tracy used vivid mental imagery, rehearsed repeatedly in everyday moments: driving to the rink or lying in bed at night. “I hear the announcement and I observe how I feel,” she explains. Then she ran a specific attentional cue: “I hear the noise … I’m going to go under the noise. It’s there. It’s going to go over. It’s going to go behind my back and down.” This wasn’t intellectual visualization. It was sensory and physical. Because the body responds to imagery as if it’s real, repetition trained her nervous system to respond automatically.  Peter and I saw this pattern repeatedly: performers assume the goal is to eliminate nerves. But when something matters, high arousal is inevitable. The skill is learning to perform with it and keeping it within a functional range by directing attention to where it belongs. Tracy’s imagery did exactly that. It kept her focus on skating to centre ice, waiting for the music, and entering the opening movements, rather than drifting toward outcomes, judgments, or expectations. Listen to Tracy discuss training and preparation for emotional moments:

What This Means for You

The more important something is, and the more uncertainty it contains, the higher your activation will rise. The question isn’t whether you’ll feel pressure but rather how you will respond to it. And how you respond in the moment is a function of how you’ve trained and what you’ve practiced:  Orser used structure to manage waiting and uncertainty. Wilson used imagery to regulate the surge that came with public introduction. Different methods, same objective: directing attention toward controllable actions and away from the thoughts and feelings that lead to overwhelm. Whether you’re stepping onto Olympic ice or into a high-stakes meeting, the principle is the same: you don’t rise to the occasion, you default to what you’ve trained. Here are four ways to apply the principles of mental preparation to your reality:  

Build Resilience In Your Organization

Bring the skills that elite athletes use to build resilience and perform under pressure to your organization. Contact us to learn more about our resilience programs.

Bring skills that elite athletes use to build resilience to your organization. Contact us to learn more.

This article launches Third Factor’s Story Behind the Story series, in which we unpack the stories behind both iconic and under-the-radar Olympic and Paralympic moments. For our first feature, Third Factor CEO Dane Jensen sat down with Tessa Virtue – two-time Olympic champion and, with her partner Scott Moir, the most decorated Olympic figure skaters of all time. — From the outside, the story of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s career is simple: show up every four years and win. Gold in Vancouver, silver in Sochi, then, after retiring and un-retiring in spectacular fashion, gold in PyeongChang via one of the Winter Olympics’ all-time iconic performances.  But the story behind gold in 2018 is strikingly different than gold in 2010. The lead-up to 2010 in Vancouver was marked by overcoming both injury and conflict: “I had surgery to combat an overuse injury in my legs, and throughout the recovery process Scott and I stopped speaking. We just lost trust.” At the Olympics, Tessa was “counting the number of steps it would take to get to the cafeteria because I knew if I walked those 300 paces, I wouldn’t be able to practise or compete. And so, it felt like the ultimate Hail Mary just worrying about making it to the end of a program.” In the end, talent and hard work – on both recovery and the relationship – aligned to produce one shining moment. Tessa and Scott were crowned the youngest ice dance champions in Olympic history.  It was an incredible performance – and one that felt like it would be hard to repeat. “Stepping off the podium in 2010 … I’m not sure I really felt like a winner, if I’m honest,” she says. “There were a lot of factors that had to come together for us to win, and I’m not really sure if I knew stepping off the podium in 2010 that I could replicate that.” 
“We can BE the best, even when we’re not AT our best.”
At PyeongChang in 2018, on the other hand, “before our music even started, I felt different. I felt like a high performer, and I didn’t feel like I needed the judges’ results to prove that for me.”  And contrary to the feeling after the 2010 Games, after 2018, “there was real joy and satisfaction that came from the hard work, from the pressure, from all of the things that I would’ve found totally depleting two, four, eight or 12 years earlier.” So what changed? In our conversation with Tessa, three evolutions stood out: embracing discomfort rather than focusing on the number of hours spent in training; a deliberate shift in mindset from chasing perfection to pursuing excellence; and – above all else – a reclamation of personal power. 

01. Creating discomfort vs. over-training

After the over-use injuries and surgeries that characterized 2010, the comeback in 2018 was built on less training time – three hours a day instead of 12 – more recovery time, and using the limited training hours to deliberately create imperfect conditions to sharpen their resilience. Whether it was leaving the ice unflooded and chipped, pumping in crowd noise, or falling on command to practise recovery, each practice built confidence that, as Tessa says, “we can BE the best, even when we’re not AT our best.” Here’s Tessa discussing that process:
 

02. Pursuing excellence vs. chasing perfection

In Tessa’s words, “We needed to stop chasing perfection and instead pursue excellence … and once we took perfect off the table, we thought excellence was possible.” Their daily goal became showing up at an “8 out of 10”; not in effort, but in execution. Reframing their approach unhooked them from the impossible standard of perfection and freed them to connect with the joy and challenge of consistent excellence.  Listen to Tessa talk about this shift:
 

03. Becoming drivers vs. passengers 

At the heart of Tessa and Scott’s story behind the story is reclaiming a sense of agency and self-efficacy. After years of being “good little soldiers,” for their 2018 comeback, they stepped into the driver’s seat: assembling their own team, setting their own standards, and “operating as if we were the CEOs of our own business,” she says. “We had agency and autonomy, we really were steering the ship.” That changed their experience leading up to the Games and, she believes, made the ultimate win more fulfilling. Listen to Tessa talk about this shift:
Of course, the effectiveness of these shifts is not limited to sports. We can all benefit from: When Tessa and Scott made these shifts, the impact was transformative. In Tessa’s words, “I felt like I had the recipe for what it meant to be excellent.” Given the results, it’s a recipe that’s worth testing out for yourself.   Want to go deeper? Watch Tessa’s full conversation with Dane here:
 

Build Resilience In Your Organization

Bring the skills that elite athletes use to build resilience and perform under pressure to your organization. Contact us to learn more about our resilience programs.

Meet our expert: Karyn Garossino, Associate Trainer

Karyn Garossino
Karyn Garossino is an expert in performance under pressure and leadership development. A former Olympic figure skater and five-time World Championship competitor, Karyn holds a Master’s Degree in Psychology and Adult Education and has spent 40+ years being coached and coaching others. She works with leaders across business and government, teaches with Queen’s Smith School of Business, and helps individuals and teams transform pressure into growth.

“How do you collaborate with someone who is different from you in personality, style, or approach?”

When someone thinks, communicates, or behaves differently than you do, collaboration can feel difficult, frustrating, or even impossible. If handled correctly, however, you can flip these differences into opportunities that benefit both parties. Doing this effectively starts with understanding what collaboration is and is not. Collaboration is not compromise. Collaboration is the act of working with someone to produce or create something. Compromise often means splitting differences and giving up something you value so that each side “meets in the middle.” That’s give-and-take, but it’s often at the cost of optimal outcomes. Collaboration is something quite different. It’s a win-win mindset that grows the pie instead of dividing it. In genuine collaboration, both individuals bring their strengths, expertise, and perspectives to the table in a way that creates a better solution than either person could have produced alone. Collaboration requires: That willingness is essential. Research tells us that the most important factor in leveraging differences is Psychological Safety – meaning people need to believe they can share ideas, ask questions, raise concerns or admit mistakes.  So an openness on your part to practice genuine inquiry, rather than defend or persuade, will pay huge dividends. When collaboration works, both parties feel heard, and the result is broader, more innovative and more effective than a simple compromise.

Diversity: The Advantage and the Risk

Differences in personality, style, and perspective are not obstacles; they are assets. Research shows that diverse teams often outperform homogeneous ones because they bring varied perspectives, unique knowledge, and deeper problem-solving capacity. However, diversity only leads to better performance when it’s managed properly. Without effective interactions, differences can amplify conflict, miscommunication, and breakdowns in cohesion. That’s the risk McKinsey and others have highlighted: diverse teams can either perform brilliantly or fail spectacularly depending on how they engage with one another. So the first step in collaborating with someone different is not to wish away those differences; it’s to welcome them, and reframe them as advantages. See differences not as barriers, but as opportunities to expand what’s possible. When someone’s style or perspective differs from yours, that’s not a threat; it’s new data. It’s an invitation to learn something new and explore another approach. To do this, you must be intentional about: One way to think about this is that it is about sitting on the same side of the table as the other person – instead of across the table. This can be either literal (in the case of in-person collaboration), or metaphorical when we are on the phone or virtual. When we try to collaborate while facing off against each other by defending our turf, comparing our solutions, or debating who’s right, we create an us-versus-them dynamic. That’s not collaboration, it’s negotiation. Instead: Sitting side by side helps shift your brain out of opposition and into shared exploration. It also signals a partnership orientation: “We’re in this together.” Pair this with curiosity-based questions like: These shifts – mindset first, then practical behaviour – are how collaboration becomes real. And yes, this takes time and self-management on your part. However, productive results and improved relationships will be your reward.  

Key Takeaways:

  • Collaboration ≠ Compromise. It’s Expansion. If you’re “meeting in the middle,” you’re probably shrinking the outcome. Real collaboration grows the pie by combining strengths, not trading them off. The goal isn’t to protect your idea, it’s to create a better one together.

  • Differences Are Data, Not Disruptions. When someone’s style or thinking throws you off, that’s not friction, it’s information. High-performing teams treat difference as an input to improve the solution, not a hurdle to overcome.

  • Psychological Safety Is the Multiplier. Diversity only pays off when people feel safe to speak, question, and challenge. If you’re defending or persuading, you’re shutting down performance. If you’re curious and inquiring, you’re unlocking it.

  • Get on the Same Side of the Table, Literally and Mentally. Opposite sides create opposition. Side-by-side creates partnership. Shift your posture, share the surface (whiteboard, doc, screen), and aim your energy at the problem, not the person. It’s a simple move that changes the whole dynamic.

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.

The Meta-Skilled Organization: Building the Capability to Evolve

Skills allow us to execute. Meta-skills like empathy, resilience, creativity, and self-awareness allow us to evolve. As organizations and industries face increasingly rapid change and disruption, in which job descriptions are fluid and agility is essential, these meta-skills are increasingly at the heart of sustained success. The ability to adapt is what makes us future-proof, and what separates individuals and teams that endure from those who are replaced. In this webinar, Third Factor CEO and author of The Power of Pressure, Dane Jensen, will illustrate how the capability to evolve can be broken down into six core meta-skills and outline practical skills and strategies you can use to cultivate your own ability to adapt. You’ll gain new insights into what’s really required for future-proofing yourself and your organization, and discover six core meta-skills across three categories that foster personal evolution. You should attend if:
  • You want to build your team or organization’s resilience to rapid change
  • You’re responsible for change management at a project or organizational level
  • You’re charged with building competencies of adaptability, flexibility, innovation, or problem solving
  • You want to build your own capability to adapt to an uncertain future

The Meta-Skilled Organization


Sorry we missed you

This event has passed, but it won’t be the last. Be the first to know about future webinars from Third Factor by entering your information below.

About the presenter: Dane Jensen is the CEO of Third Factor, the author of The Power of Pressure: Why Pressure Isn’t The Problem, It’s The Solution, an acclaimed speaker, an instructor at Queen’s University and the University of North Carolina, and a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review.

How Leaders Enable High-Performing Hybrid Teams

The transition to a hybrid work model is replete with hazard and risk: Can our people adapt to yet another major change in the way we do business? It also presents a unique opportunity to create new systems that work for companies and people – a culture of high performance in which people are truly committed. To capitalize on this opportunity, organizations need leaders who are motivated by a compelling vision of what’s possible and can adapt their skills to shape their environment. In this webinar, Third Factor Principal Trainer, Garry Watanabe, will uncover the opportunity present in the transition to hybrid work and showcase how leaders can get the most from it. The session will explore the challenges and advantages of hybrid work from a leader’s perspective, present an approach for building consensus and commitment in the face of novel problems, and introduce strategies to overcome some of hybrid work’s biggest challenges. You’ll leave with an exciting vision for a high-performing hybrid culture, a clear understanding of your people leaders’ assets and challenges in a hybrid environment, and insight to how leadership competencies can be adapted for hybrid teams. You should attend if:
  • You’re responsible for maintaining employee engagement in the transition to a hybrid work environment
  • You’re responsible for developing leadership competency for a hybrid model of work
  • You’re a senior leader concerned about hybrid work’s impact on performance
  • You want new ideas and practical tools for leading your own hybrid team

How Leaders Enable High-Performing Hybrid Teams
Sorry we missed you

This event has passed, but it won’t be the last. Be the first to know about future webinars from Third Factor by entering your information below.

About the presenter: Garry Watanabe is a lawyer, an instructor at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, an inspirational speaker, and holds a Masters Degree in Sport Psychology. Whether he’s on the pool deck, in the classroom, or at the lectern, Garry is the consummate coach.

3×4 Coaching

As supply chain issues and staffing challenges continue to hammer organizations, there are two critical moments that determine whether people will stay committed and rise to the challenge: The crisis of engagement, when people realize their path forward is harder than they thought it would be; and the crisis of meaning, the emotional low that makes them question whether to continue. To stay committed and see the journey through, people need three things from their leader: clarity on what they’re supposed to be doing and why it matters; the skills and abilities to be confident in their job; and a sense that they’re seen and appreciated. In this webinar, Third Factor Principal Trainer, Garry Watanabe, will synthesize our 30 years of experience working with world-class coaches and reveal a simple framework to give leaders the mindset, skills and tools to keep people committed – and ultimately drive results. You’ll leave inspired with fresh ideas for addressing problems caused by the “great resignation” and other pandemic-related disruption, and a clear image of how you can use coaching at all levels of your organization to fight burnout and keep people engaged. You should attend if:
  • You’re responsible for maintaining employee engagement and retention despite serious disruption
  • You’re an L&D practitioner frustrated by other coaching programs that deliver poor results
  • You’re a senior leader looking to drive performance without sacrificing a positive culture
  • You want a new approach for getting commitment and results from the people you lead

Coaching in Critical Moments
Sorry we missed you

This event has passed, but it won’t be the last. Be the first to know about future webinars from Third Factor by entering your information below.

About the presenter: Garry Watanabe is a lawyer, an instructor at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, an inspirational speaker, and holds a Masters Degree in Sport Psychology. Whether he’s on the pool deck, in the classroom, or at the lectern, Garry is the consummate coach.