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.

Meet our expert: Tracy Wilson, Olympic Figure Skater, Broadcaster & Third Factor Sport Advisor

Tracy Wilson how to support someone after failure?
Tracy Wilson is an Olympic bronze medallist and one of Canada’s most respected figure skating coaches and broadcasters. Alongside her late partner Rob McCall, she won seven consecutive national titles and made history as the first Canadian ice dancers to reach the Olympic podium. Following her competitive career, Tracy coached world-class athletes including Olympic champions Yuzuru Hanyu and Javier Fernández, and became a trusted voice for audiences on CBC, NBC, and TSN. As a member of the Third Factor Sport Advisory Board, she brings invaluable perspective on the mindset and methods that help athletes thrive under pressure.

“How do you support someone after failure, especially when the stakes are high and the moment has already passed?”

Knowing how to support someone after failure is one of the hardest things a coach, leader, or mentor has to do. There is no rewind button. The moment has passed, the result is set, and the person in front of you is somewhere between devastated and numb. What do you do?
At the recent Third Factor Client Appreciation Dinner in Toronto, Tracy Wilson was asked how she handles an athlete who has just fallen apart in a big moment. Her answer was honest, grounded in decades of experience in high-performance sport, and it applies just as much in the boardroom as it does on the ice.
Here are six principles drawn from that conversation.

01. There is no one right way to respond

The first thing Tracy will tell you is that there is no script for this. Knowing how to support someone after failure starts with understanding who is in front of you and where they are emotionally before doing or saying anything else.
She acknowledges the complexity directly: “It does depend on the athlete. And at my age, watching what I’ve watched, sometimes these big failures can turn you around and get you going in a better direction. You learn things about yourself. If you can hang in there, it can shoot you right up.”
But she is equally clear-eyed about how difficult it is to communicate that truth in the moment. The insight that failure can become fuel is real, it just can’t always be delivered right away. The job isn’t to rush in with a lesson. It’s to figure out what this person needs, right now.

02. Be present

In the immediate aftermath of a big failure, Tracy’s instinct is not to talk, it’s to listen. Or simply to be there.
“So then it’s really hearing them out. Asking questions, or actually being okay just to sit. And sometimes I have moments where you’re sitting with somebody and it is super uncomfortable, and you’re just focusing on your breath, because you just want to be there. You just want to be a calm presence.”
That phrase, “a calm presence” is worth pausing on. The temptation for coaches, leaders, and mentors is to fill silence with solutions. But in the immediate wake of failure, what most people need is not a fix. They need to feel that someone is with them in it.

03. Help them find what else is true

Once the initial storm has passed, people often start telling themselves a catastrophic story: it’s over, I blew it, I’ll never recover. Tracy’s most consistent move is to gently challenge that narrative. Failure has a way of narrowing our vision, and part of a coach’s or leader’s job is to widen it again.
She pointed to a specific example: someone close to her who failed a major school medical exam by a single point and was convinced his path to medicine was over. Tracy’s role was to help him find a more complete picture of reality.
“It was just trying to help somebody find the truth, because oftentimes it’s exaggerated. When they said to themselves, “This is the worst thing. I can never do this now. It’s over.” And all I am really helping them find is what else is true.”
That simple question, “what else is true?” doesn’t dismiss the failure or minimize the pain. It creates a little space around the story, space where possibility can re-enter. It helps them remember what else is true about themselves: “I am knowledgeable. I am tenacious. I really care about this. I work really hard.” It works just as well in a performance review debrief as it does rinkside.

04. Use hindsight and your own failures

One of Tracy’s most effective tools is perspective: using the person’s own past, and her own.
“The other thing I try to remind them of is hindsight. Have you seen this completely different in the past? And then I try to use examples of past failures I’ve had.”
There is something disarming about a coach or leader who has failed. It signals that failure is not disqualifying but part of the path. When Tracy draws on her own failings, she is not being humble. She is demonstrating that high performance and setback co-exist in every serious career – in sport and in business alike.

05. Help break the spin

After a setback, people tend to replay it over and over. That loop can be hard to break. For anyone caught in that circular thinking, Tracy often recommends something simple.
“Sometimes journalling helps, just to sort of write it down. For me, that would get the spinning out.”
The goal isn’t deep reflection or insight, it’s simply to externalize what’s churning internally so it stops consuming all available bandwidth. For leaders supporting a team member after a setback, even encouraging someone to write down what happened can be enough to shift them out of the spiral.

06. Hold the belief for them

Ultimately, Tracy’s message to anyone supporting someone after failure is one of belief in their resilience, even when they can’t access it themselves.
“You’re stronger than you know. Hang in there, and you’re gonna get to the good stuff.”
Alongside that: question the negativity. Ask whether the catastrophic narrative is actually true. Ask what else is true. Hold both. And when the person in front of you can’t find their own footing yet, your job is to stand on solid ground for them.    

Key Takeaways:

  • There is no script. How to support someone after failure depends on who they are and where they are in the moment. Read the person before reaching for the playbook.
  • Presence over prescription. In the immediate aftermath of failure, a calm, quiet presence is often more valuable than advice. Being comfortable sitting in discomfort is a leadership skill.
  • Ask “what else is true?” Failure narrows vision. The role of a coach or leader is to gently widen it again – not by dismissing the pain, but by creating space for a more complete picture.
  • Draw on your own failures. When leaders and coaches share their own setbacks, they signal that failure is survivable and that the path forward is real.
  • Help break the spin. Writing things down can interrupt the circular thinking that often follows a high-stakes failure.
  • Hold the belief for them. Sometimes people can’t access their own resilience. That’s when a coach or leader holds it for them, until they can hold it themselves.
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, Olympian and Third Factor Associate Trainer Karyn Garossino discusses the importance of control and how it shaped her approach to competing at the Olympics. –

“In high-performance sport, and in fact much of all high performance, consistency is the holy grail.”

–Karyn Garossino

From the outside, Karyn and Rod Garossino’s ice dancing performance at the 1988 Calgary Olympics looked like a hometown dream. A brother and sister from rural Alberta. Competing for Canada. An Olympics on home ice. Five flawless performances on the biggest stage in sport. What people saw was excellence. What they did not see was how hard it was to stay steady enough to deliver it. For Karyn, the Olympics were shaped by two moments she could never have predicted. One came before the competition even began, while athletes waited to enter the opening ceremonies. The other came standing at centre ice, when a roaring hometown crowd would not stop cheering. Together, these moments revealed something essential about high performance: preparation matters, but so does an ability to adapt when things do not go as planned.

From Carstairs to the Olympic Stage

Karyn and her brother Rod grew up in Carstairs, Alberta, where skating was simply part of Prairie life. What started as a love of the sport became a serious pursuit, supported by strong coaching, family commitment, and years of disciplined training. In 1981, the pair won junior ice dance gold at the Canadian National Skating Championships, and throughout the decade, they competed at the highest level in Canadian, international and World Championships. Then Calgary won the bid to host the 1988 Olympic Games. Suddenly, the idea of competing at a hometown Games became real. As that moment got closer, so did the pressure. Like many athletes facing a once-in-a-lifetime moment, Karyn prepared not only physically but mentally for what it would feel like to perform under a global spotlight.

Different Fabric. Same Cloth.

One of Karyn’s most vivid Olympic memories came before the competition started. Athletes from around the world gathered in a staging area ahead of the opening ceremonies. Each team was dressed in its country’s colours. But as the wait stretched on, things got a little playful: jackets were briefly traded, hats and scarves were exchanged, and the differences between teams started to fade.

“We were wearing different fabric, but were cut from the same cloth.”

What Karyn felt in that moment was a deep sense of connection and the awe of belonging to the historic Olympic movement. These athletes represented different nations, but they shared similarities – years of sacrifice, discipline, routine, and the pursuit of excellence. In her words, “we were wearing different fabric, but were cut from the same cloth.” One by one the nations left to join the ceremonies saving the host country to march in last. Then Team Canada entered the stadium. The sound of 85,000 people thundered through the building. In that instant, she realized something else: This was not just her Olympics, or even just the athletes’ Olympics It was our Games. The moment belonged to everyone who had made it possible: athletes, coaches, families, volunteers, organizers, sponsors, and an entire country. What she expected to feel as an individual competitor became something much bigger: the incredible honour of wearing red and white and representing the extraordinary collective effort of a nation.

The Crowd Wouldn’t Stop Cheering

If the opening ceremonies created awe, the competition brought a different kind of pressure. When Karyn and Rod were announced onto centre ice, the crowd erupted. That part was expected. What was not was that the cheering didn’t stop. Normally, once skaters take their position, the arena quiets and the music begins. But this audience kept cheering, waving flags, and feeding even more energy into the building. The music could not start until the arena settled, so Karyn and Rod stood in position and waited. And waited. For a brief instant, they felt the weight of what was happening. They exchanged a smile and a shared realization: Oh my God, we’re at the Olympics. It was a deeply human moment. But it was also risky. Because even positive energy can get in the way of performance. The challenge was not only handling fear or adversity. It was managing excitement, emotion, and the significance of the moment. Karyn knew they had to get back to what they had trained for. They turned to breathwork, a skill they had practised for years to steady themselves under pressure. Within three exhales, they were back in form. Their activation level dropped. Their focus returned. Their physiology settled. The crowd eventually quieted, the music began, and they performed brilliantly. They achieved a 12th-place Olympic finish. The next year, they would win gold at the senior Canadian Championships. Looking back, what lessons did Karyn learn from her Olympic experience that are helpful to anyone facing high-performance situations? Here, she helps us understand three practical takeaways:

Lesson #1: Consistency Is Built Before the Moment

Karyn describes consistency as the holy grail of high performance: the ability to deliver what you are capable of in any condition, not just ideal ones. That consistency was built long before the moment arrived. Karyn and Rod prepared not only their skating but also their mindset. Through imagery and planning, they anticipated the noise, emotion, and pressure of the Games so they would not be overwhelmed. That is a critical lesson for any high achiever – whether in sports or business. The goal is not to hope everything goes perfectly. It is to be ready when it doesn’t. Consistency is not about controlling the environment. It is about training how to respond to it. Listen to Karyn describe how consistency is built before the moment:

Lesson #2: Control What You Can Control

One of Karyn’s clearest lessons from Calgary is simple: high performers must learn to distinguish between what they can control and what they cannot. She could not control the crowd. She could not make the audience quiet down. She could not change the scale of the moment. What she could control was her own internal state. That distinction matters because pressure grows when we fixate on things we cannot change. Recovery begins when we return to what we can manage: our breathing, our attention, our preparation, and our next move. In that moment on the ice, the solution for Karyn was not to fight the environment. It was to return to the training that brought her to the Games. Listen to Karyn distinguish what you can control and what you cannot:

Lesson #3: Breathwork Is a Performance Skill

Karyn is clear that the breathing exercise she used in Calgary was not improvised. She had practised it for years. Its purpose was to manage the body when the outside world became overwhelming. Slow, controlled breathing gave her a direct way to regulate her physiology and recover focus. Her method was simple: breathe low and breathe slow. Under pressure, breathing rises high into the chest and speeds up. But when breathing starts lower in the body, from the diaphragm, and the exhale lasts longer than the inhale, the body begins to relax. That matters because physiology drives performance. If your body is overstimulated, thinking narrows and execution suffers. When your physiology settles, your trained skill improves. In Calgary, three breaths were enough because Karyn and Rod’s skills were already there. That is what makes breathwork so powerful: it is not just a calming technique; it is a trained performance tool. Listen to Karyn provide insight into how breathwork is a performance skill:

Practical Tool: Return to Centre in Three Breaths

When pressure rises unexpectedly, use this simple reset: This is not about becoming calm for its own sake. It is about executing what you’re capable of and meeting the moment with excellence.  

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.

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 Principal Trainer & Sport Lead Garry Watanabe speaks with Canadian bobsledder and High Performance Director Jesse Lumsden about a key idea: top performers don’t hope pressure will go well. They train for it long before it arrives. — From the outside, Olympic bobsleigh looks like a pure power sport. Fans see explosive athletes sprint beside the sled, jump in cleanly, and race down the track at high speed. Races are decided by hundredths of a second. It seems like strength and speed decide everything. But power alone isn’t enough. It must be applied with precision. The smallest mistake can cost a medal. As High Performance Director of Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, Jesse Lumsden is responsible for building an environment where athletes can use their power with precision. He prepared for this role through a wide range of experiences. Lumsden was once a standout running back in the CFL. He later switched to bobsleigh and became a world champion and three-time Olympian. After retiring from sport, he spent four years working at a fast-growing fintech company before returning to high-performance sport. Today, he applies lessons from football, Olympic sport, and business. For Lumsden, the biggest adjustment between football and bobsleigh was time. A football game lasts 60 minutes. A bobsleigh race can be won or lost in the first five seconds. Those first seconds happen under maximum pressure, maximum expectation, and maximum physical arousal. Success isn’t just about power. It’s about helping athletes access that power by making pressure feel familiar. Because pressure doesn’t break performance. Unfamiliar pressure does.

Behind the Scenes: When Effort Becomes the Problem

The start of a bobsleigh race creates a paradox. Athletes must be aggressive and explosive. But if they try to force the moment — if adrenaline turns into tension — they slow down. Timing slips. Co-ordination breaks down. The extra effort meant to improve performance actually hurts it. This became even clearer to Lumsden in Olympic sport. In professional football, games happen weekly. In the Olympics, pressure builds for four years toward one moment. That long buildup can either sharpen performance or overwhelm it. “If you’re not mentally prepared,” he explains, “if you haven’t done the work between the ears as much as you have in the gym, your mind is going to break before your body does.” The answer isn’t to remove pressure or hope it feels manageable. The answer is to make sure pressure never feels new.

Lesson #1: Pressure Shouldn’t Be Saved for Game Day

In Olympic bobsleigh, the start is critical. A bad start can cost the race. It also happens in the most intense environment athletes face all year. If that intensity appears for the first time on race day, the nervous system reacts as if it’s under threat. Muscles tighten. Timing speeds up. Focus shifts from execution to survival.

“We’ll throw metaphorical sticks in the spokes to see how people respond… Manufacturing some adversity in the training environment helps build that resilience.”

So teams train for it. “On the bobsleigh side, we manufacture adversity in our training environment,” Lumsden says. “We’ll throw metaphorical sticks in the spokes to see how people respond. We’ll put a hold on the track and turn the noise up really loud. Manufacturing some adversity in the training environment helps build that resilience.” Unexpected delays. Loud noise. Compressed timelines. Sudden changes. These are added on purpose. The goal isn’t to make practice harder just for the sake of it. The goal is to make high-pressure conditions feel normal. On competition day, the body recognizes the intensity. But instead of reacting to it, athletes focus on execution. So the real danger isn’t pressure. It’s surprise pressure. Listen to Jesse describe how pressure shouldn’t be saved for game day:

Lesson #2: Manufacturing Adversity Builds Confidence

When pressure rises, confidence doesn’t come from positive thinking or motivation. It comes from evidence. Athletes need proof they can perform when things aren’t perfect. In high-performance sport, problems are guaranteed. Equipment fails. Schedules change. Mistakes happen. If athletes only train under perfect conditions, any disruption feels like a threat. Manufacturing adversity changes that, Lumsden says. “You do it not because it’s going to happen, but if it does, you’re more prepared … it becomes not a panic moment, but a moment of ‘I’ve been here. Let’s go do our job.’” When athletes practice amid noise, fatigue, uncertainty, and disruption, competition feels manageable. Emotions stay steadier. Decisions stay clear. Execution stays sharp. That’s real confidence. Not the belief that everything will go well, but the knowledge that you can perform even if it doesn’t. Listen to Jesse describe how manufacturing adversity builds confidence:

Lesson #3: Optimal Performance Comes from Controlled Intensity

Under pressure, most people try to push harder. More effort. More urgency. More control. In bobsleigh, that backfires. The start of a race requires maximum power, but it also demands rhythm and coordination. When athletes tighten up or force the moment, their speed drops.

“If you’re not mentally prepared… your mind is going to break before your body does.”

The same thing happens in business and leadership. High-stakes moments often cause people to rush, over-control, or narrow their focus too much. They try to raise performance but end up lowering clarity instead. As Lumsden says: “If you’re not mentally prepared… your mind is going to break before your body does.” Elite performers learn to operate with high intensity and low tension. Aggressive but composed. Urgent but controlled. That ability doesn’t come from trying to relax in the moment. It comes from repeated exposure to pressure until the body learns how to stay loose at full speed. Listen to Jesse describe how optimal performance comes from contolled internsity:

Practical Tool: Manufacture Adversity

One of the most useful lessons from Jesse Lumsden’s experience is simple: Don’t wait for high pressure to show up. Introduce it on purpose. Manufacturing adversity means building controlled challenges into your preparation. Instead of always practicing in calm, predictable settings, recreate the stress you might face later. For example: The point isn’t to make things harder for no reason. It’s to build familiarity. If you’ve already performed under tougher conditions than you expect to face, the real moment feels manageable. Your focus stays on the task, not on your stress response. Over time, this creates a deeper kind of confidence. Not optimism. Not motivation. Evidence. You know you can perform because you’ve done it before — under pressure. That’s the advantage behind Lumsden’s approach: Pressure doesn’t break performance. Unfamiliar pressure does. Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, once described the evolution of organizational change in a visceral way that has stayed with me. He said change used to feel like crossing a river. You stepped off solid ground, navigated the current, and eventually reached stable ground on the other side. Today, it feels more like crossing an ocean. The waves come from every direction. Just as you get past one, another wallops you. Then another. Forget about the shoreline. There’s none in sight. That image captures what leaders are experiencing now. We are not managing one big disruption, then going back to normal. We are operating inside a permanent state of flux. We’re managing today’s business while trying to build tomorrow’s amid unprecedented economic, technological and societal changes. Over three decades of working in high-performance environments, I have learned that while we cannot control the waves, we can control how we respond to them. Three practices can make a meaningful difference.

01.

Start With Mindset. Then Respond.

02.

Prevent Isolation.

03.

Create A Culture Of Feedback.

01. Start With Mindset. Then Respond.

Nobel-prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman observed something deeply human about surprise. When unexpected events occur, people tend to believe the lesson is that they now know what to do in similar circumstances in the future. We assume the mistake was a lack of information or insight. But this is the wrong conclusion. The real lesson is that the future is inherently surprising. No matter how prepared we are, some events will catch us off guard. That realization changes everything. When leaders shift from asking, “How did we miss this?” to saying, “Of course something unexpected happened,” they build resilience in their teams. They create space for response instead of reaction.

“Over three decades of working in high-performance environments, I have learned that while we cannot control the waves, we can control how we respond to them.”

Jocko Willink, a former U.S. Navy SEAL commander, trains his teams to respond to setbacks with a single word: “Good.” If a mission is delayed, good — there is more time to prepare. If resources are reduced, good — it forces simplification. “Good” is not meant to dismiss difficulty. It is meant to redirect energy toward action. Serial entrepreneur Brad Jacobs learned a similar lesson in his twenties. When he once presented his mentor, Ludwig Jesselson, with a long list of business problems, Jesselson responded bluntly: “If you want to succeed in business, you must get used to problems. That is what business is all about: solving problems.” Jacobs would later say that this advice shaped every leadership team he built. Still, mindset alone is not enough. Letting go of an outcome people were deeply invested in is not a purely intellectual act. It is emotional. Frustration, disappointment and fear surface quickly when plans unravel. That is why elite performers rely on ritual. Defensive backs in the NFL sometimes use a mental “20-second clock” to feel the impact of a play and then release it. NHL star Connor McDavid, after a difficult shift, removes his helmet, runs his fingers through his hair once, and resets. Performance psychologist Jim Loehr found that elite tennis players use the 25 seconds between points to perform deliberate physical and mental routines that lower their heart rates and restore focus. In business, the ritual will look different. But leaders who help their teams develop a deliberate reset — a clear transition from what just happened to what happens next — build resilience into their culture.

02. Prevent Isolation

When people struggle with change, they rarely announce it. More often, they withdraw. They stop asking questions. They avoid drawing attention to what they do not yet understand. They tell themselves they will figure it out before asking for help. How to prevent isolation Competent adults do not like feeling incompetent. When change triggers that feeling, the instinct is to work harder in private rather than admit their struggles in public. Yet isolation slows learning. People move up learning curves faster when they receive feedback, hear about best practices and learn what to avoid. Progress accelerates when difficulties are shared. A leader’s role, then, is not to rescue but to interrupt the silence. When someone says, “I haven’t really started yet — there’s so much to learn,” the instinct may be to give them a pep talk. A better move is to ask, “Where could you start?” That question helps identify a small, manageable step the individual could take. By breaking the overwhelming into bite-sized bits, something important will start to happen. Progress will become visible, and confidence will follow. And confidence changes how people experience change itself.

03. Create A Culture Of Feedback

In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle depicts one of the most remarkable examples of rapid team problem solving under pressure. On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232 suffered a catastrophic loss of hydraulic control over Iowa. The odds of that failure were estimated at one in a billion. There was no checklist for it. No training scenario had prepared the crew. The plane’s pilot, Captain Al Haynes, did something critical in that moment. He did not attempt to solve the problem on his own. First, he accepted help from an off-duty flight instructor who was a passenger. Then he asked his crew, “Does anyone have any ideas?” What followed was a real-time exchange of up to 60 pieces of information a minute among the crew – what was working, what was not, what they needed next – solving problem after problem to fly their dying aircraft to an airfield where they had a chance. Together, they crash-landed the aircraft in Sioux City. Of the plane’s 285 passengers, 185 survived. The accident could have been far worse if not for the crew’s actions. Later, experienced test pilots attempted to replicate the landing in simulators. None succeeded. The difference in the landing was not skill alone. It was communication. The crew members who survived weren’t more skilled than the test pilots. They had better information because they asked for it, shared it quickly with one another and integrated it into their operations.

“The challenges organizations face are too complex and too fast-moving for any one person to solve alone.”

For leaders today, the lesson is clear. The familiar phrase, “Do not bring me problems; bring me solutions,” is largely obsolete. The challenges organizations face are too complex and too fast-moving for any one person to solve alone. The capability you need is already inside your team, your colleagues, your organization. As a leader, it’s your job to unlock it. Build a team where giving and receiving feedback is simply part of how work gets done – where people are comfortable bringing problems forward, knowing the group will help solve them.

There’s only one certainty

We can be certain of one thing: the waves are not stopping. The shore will not always be close. Sometime over the next several months, something none of us anticipated will test our well-laid plans again. The question is not whether uncertainty will appear. It is whether we treat it as a temporary interruption or as the environment itself. Leadership in this era isn’t about having a better crystal ball. It’s about building habits that hold when predictions fail – the habit of coaching your team to reset quickly; helping your people to reach out instead of retreating; and building a culture where feedback and open idea exchange are the norm, not the exception. These practices do not eliminate uncertainty. But they change how we move through it. And sometimes that’s enough to keep us moving forward in turbulent seas.  

Key Takeaways:

  • Expect the unexpected. The lesson of surprise isn’t that we missed something. It’s that the future will always contain surprises. Build teams that respond quickly instead of searching for blame.

  • Shift to response mode. When plans break down, redirect attention to the next action. Progress starts the moment the team moves from reaction to response.

  • Reset quickly. Elite performers use small rituals to move on from mistakes. Leaders can help teams create deliberate resets that refocus attention on what happens next.

  • Interrupt isolation. Change often causes people to withdraw. Leaders accelerate learning by encouraging small starting points and open conversation.

  • Make feedback normal. Complex challenges require shared intelligence. Teams perform best when problems and ideas move quickly between people.

Meet our expert: Dane Jensen, CEO

Dane Jensen is an expert in leadership and performance under pressure. He is an acclaimed speaker, an instructor at Queen’s University and the University of North Carolina, is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, and is the author of The Power of Pressure: Why Pressure Isn’t the Problem, It’s the Solution. Alongside his corporate work, Dane serves on the Board of the Canadian Paralympic Committee.

“Our organization recently announced 5% across-the-board budget cuts. The CEO indicated that there will be further, deeper cuts coming over the next couple of years – but there is no information about when they will come, who they will affect, or how deep they will be. How do I keep people motivated with all this uncertainty?”

First and foremost – this is a very difficult situation. It’s one thing to deal with cuts, but another entirely to have future cuts hanging over the business like the sword of Damocles. Research out of University College London showed that the body exhibits significantly higher levels of physical stress – high cortisol, muscle tension, etc. – when there is a 50% chance of receiving pain (an electric shock in the case of the experiment) vs a 100% chance. When we need to live with this stress over a prolonged period it can be very draining. While there is no easy answer here, there are a few strategies that can help:

01. Acknowledge reality

While it might seem counter-intuitive, it is important to sit with the team and acknowledge the danger rather than ignoring or dismissing it. The Stoics advocated a technique called ‘negative visualization’ in which we play out potential negative outcomes in advance to rob them of their power to create irrational distress. It is far better to work as a group and process reality– “what are the scenarios we are most worried about here? How would the cuts play out? What would it mean for us?” – than to have members of the team playing their own disaster movies in their heads at night on repeat.

02. Keep attention focused on controllables

With reality on the table, the most helpful thing a leader can do is to keep the team’s attention focused on what is within their control. Helplessness is at the root of the negative impact of stress, and the goal here is to feed a sense of agency. There are two parts to this discussion: ‘where can we act to influence how this plays out?’ and ‘what is out of our control that we need to let go of?’ Clarity on what we are not going to focus on is as important as clarity on where we do want to focus.

03. Help people find a reason to commit

Motivation is energy, and energy comes from having a good answer to the question ‘why am I doing this?’. For people to lean in and commit they need to be able to answer at least one of two questions: Helping each person on the team clear a line of sight to how this period could help strengthen or develop them, and how their efforts will contribute to others, is a very valuable use of a leader’s time. Through it all, the leader’s job is to help people focus their attention productively: to avoid the night-time doom loops by surfacing and processing fears head-on, identifying the things that are a waste of time and attention and redirecting to controllables, and helping people surface and clarify what makes devoting effort to the team’s goals a meaningful use of their energy. Good luck to you – it is not an easy situation you find yourself in, but it is also in these periods that we build leadership muscle. Connecting with how this will serve a purpose in your growth, and recognizing that your effort will make a huge difference to your team is just as important as how you help your team frame it.  

Key Takeaways:

  • Uncertainty is often more stressful than bad news. Leaders must recognize that ambiguity itself is the pressure their teams are experiencing.

  • Name the reality instead of avoiding it. Shared clarity reduces unnecessary psychological strain.

  • Direct attention to what can be controlled. Leaders build resilience by clearly separating what the team can influence from what must be let go.

  • Connect effort to purpose. A clear “why” sustains commitment when circumstances are uncertain.

  • Leadership is attention management under pressure. The role of the leader is to channel energy toward meaningful action.

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.

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.