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.

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 is part of Third Factor’s Story Behind the Story series, where we look at remarkable Olympic and Paralympic achievements and the athletes who made them happen. This time, we’re featuring Brian and Robin McKeever. Together, they’ve won 16 gold medals in Para Nordic skiing. — Brian McKeever is one of Canada’s most accomplished skiers, winning gold at every single winter Paralympics since Salt Lake 2002 (6 in a row), and is now part of the coaching team heading into Milan Cortina. Brian was 19 when he began losing his vision to Stargardt disease. He competed in Para Nordic skiing’s visually impaired category, where athletes ski at full speed but rely on a guide to navigate the course. That guide was his older brother, Robin. Robin wasn’t a helper on the sidelines – he was an elite skier in his own right. As Brian’s guide, Robin skied directly in front of him during races, setting the pace, choosing lines, calling terrain, and making split-second decisions that affected them both. If Robin made a mistake, Brian paid for it. If Robin wasn’t fast enough, they couldn’t win. To spectators, the McKeevers’ racing looked effortless: two skiers lined up and moving in sync, linked by trust and quiet communication. What wasn’t visible was how much work it took to build that easy relationship – or how important kindness was to sustaining it. Brian raced on the same courses and distances as Olympic cross-country skiers. The physical demands were the same. What differed was how results were calculated. In Para Nordic skiing, athletes are classified by disability type, and finishing times are adjusted using a percentage system, like a golf handicap. For Brian, that system created a unique challenge. Because he was in the least severe vision-loss class, his finishing time was counted at 100 per cent. Athletes with more vision loss had time removed, sometimes significantly. As a result, Brian and Robin often had to win races by minutes to win overall. Guiding made their reliance on each other unavoidable. In Brian’s category, Robin skied directly in front, choosing the line while Brian drafted behind him. The draft helped – but only if the guide was fast enough to lead. If Brian had to hold back because his guide was not skiing fast enough, there was no way he would win, which meant that Robin had to ski at a level that matched one of Canada’s top able-bodied skiers. As Brian puts it, “I’m not winning without a good guide.” This wasn’t an individual event with assistance. It was a shared performance.

Kindness Is the Mechanism That Lets Standards Hold

When choosing who to work with, one thing mattered most to the brothers. “Skills can be learned,” Brian says, “but the right compatibility is [most] important.” For Brian and Robin, compatibility meant being able to handle feedback without eroding trust. It wasn’t about being agreeable, it was about keeping standards high while delivering feedback with kindness. “There could be criticisms, there can be hard conversations,” Brian explains. But when feedback came with “kindness in their hearts and how it’s being presented,” it became “much easier to listen to it and to debrief, and figure out a better way forward.” That difference mattered for learning. With trust in place, someone could say, “Hey, I think if you do something this way, you’ll be faster,” and it would be heard as help. As Brian says, “we all get better together.” Robin noticed the same effect. Strong trust meant “less micromanaging.” Standards didn’t drop; roles were clear, intentions were trusted, and learning could continue under pressure. Here’s Brian sharing about the importance of kindness to their culture:

Kindness Can Raise the Bar

One of the most important moments in Brian’s Paralympic career happened because a competitor took the time to help him. Early in his Para Nordic career, Brian sometimes raced without a guide. In one event, he finished just “30 seconds behind the top guy in the world.” Afterward, the German athlete and his guide told him, “You need to have a guide, because today with a guide, you might have won.” Brian remembers thinking, “Why would another nation be helping me out on this?” The answer was simple: they were “just excited to have competition.” That advice changed Brian’s path. Because of that conversation, he asked Robin to guide him, beginning “10 years of pretty fun work racing together.” Sometimes kindness doesn’t make sport easier. It makes it better. On why others helped them out to raise the bar:

Trust Is Built in the First Failure, Not the First Success

Their first World Cup together took place at the Salt Lake City Olympic course in March 2001. It was unusually warm – about 15 Celsius, Robin recalls – and the snow was wet and unpredictable. On a fast downhill, something went wrong. Robin reached the bottom and realized, “Brian’s not there.” He waited, then started hiking back up the course. He heard Brian yelling. What he saw first wasn’t Brian, but “a ski sitting off the edge of the trail.” Brian had caught an edge in the “sloppy snow,” gone off course, and ended up “hanging off of a tree upside down.” Robin climbed down, removed the skis, and pulled him back up. From Brian’s side, he stepped outside the track to get a push and hit the “mashed potatoes” snow: “My ski stopped and I kept going.” The tree became “the only thing stopping me from sliding headfirst down a steep mud slope.” He held on and waited for Robin. “I figured he’d eventually figure out I wasn’t there,” Brian says. Robin later called it “a very big failure on day one.” What mattered was what followed. “We laughed about it.” No blame. No anger. That moment set the tone. Trust wasn’t automatic – even between brothers. It was built through shared experience and protected by how mistakes were handled. Kindness showed up early, not as softness, but as steadiness. Here’s Robin sharing their early guiding failures:

Autonomy in Preparation. Alignment in Execution.

The McKeevers succeeded because they didn’t pretend they were the same athlete. As Robin explains, “We have overlapping roles that work together … we have the same end goal, but we still need to arrive there in slightly different ways.” That showed up in training. “We have our own training programs,” he says. “It’s not exactly the same, but we still need to arrive at the same point where we can ski together, race together, and communicate in order to achieve a team victory.” Brian puts it plainly: “I can ski by myself. Robin can ski by himself, but he’s there to help me. And we are winning this together. We’re not doing this individually.” Giving each other space reduced friction. Coming together at the right moments kept them aligned. Trust and looking out for each other were the glue that made both possible.

What Leading With Kindness Looks Like in Practice

The McKeevers’ story reveals three practical behaviours that translate directly to leadership and teams:

01.

Reset without blame when something goes wrong.

02.

Deliver feedback as performance support, not personal judgment.

03.

Clarify ownership to reduce micromanagement and create alignment.

01. Reset without blame when something goes wrong

When Brian crashed off the course in Salt Lake City, the response wasn’t panic or finger-pointing. Robin described the day as a failure, but one they laughed about and moved on from. That response preserved trust in a moment where it could have fractured.

02. Deliver feedback as performance support, not personal judgment

Hard conversations were unavoidable, but when framed with respect, people stayed receptive. The feedback that mattered most was specific and performance-focused: if you do this differently, you’ll be faster.

03. Reduce micromanagement by clarifying ownership and alignment

Trust allowed Brian and Robin to prepare in their own way while still arriving at the same execution point. Different paths. Same outcome. This is kindness without lowering the bar: respect that keeps people engaged, paired with precision that drives improvement. In the McKeevers’ case, kindness turned trust into medals, and a partnership into a lasting competitive advantage. —- Brian will be coaching the Canadian para-Nordic team as they go for gold in Milan-Cortina starting on March 10 (see the team schedule here), while Robin will be supporting the Canadian Nordic team as a member of the coaching staff.  

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.

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


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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.

Prior to now, hybrid working environments have never existed on a wide-scale basis. With few proven best practices to rely on, you need to work together with your team to create a new playbook for how to get the best out of the team and its individual members.

By necessity, this involves a lot of experimentation. To capture the lessons from these experiments, it will be essential that your people are willing to ask questions to gain clarity, share ideas on how to do things differently, and voice concerns when things aren’t on track. And this can only happen if your team members believe they are safe to do so.

Unfortunately, biology is not on your side. By default, people want to avoid looking ineffective or incapable to their leader. To foster psychological safety on your team, it’s not enough to encourage your people to speak up. You need to consistently demonstrate that it’s expected, appreciated, and rewarded.

Level the playing field

Like it or not, your people are hard-wired to view you as a threat. The amygdala, sometimes referred to as our “lizard brain,” is constantly scanning the environment for threats – and, according to Your Brain at Work author, Dr. David Rock, social threats like an imbalance of power are no exception. As much as you tell your people they can be honest with you, the amygdala will override the logical part of the brain until it has witnessed a pattern of behaviour consistently enough to convince it you’re not a threat.

“Telling people to speak their mind won’t yield any results if they haven’t seen a predictable pattern of behaviour from you that it’s safe to do so.”

In other words, telling people to speak their mind won’t yield any results if they haven’t seen a predictable pattern of behaviour from you that it’s safe to do so. You have to show them, over and over again, that the only thing that will result is a better work environment.

To sow the seeds of psychological safety, you need to set clear expectations with your team, ask for specific input on a regular basis, and practice responding positively – even when you don’t like what you hear, the timing is bad or the input is delivered in a way that triggers you.

Change the frame

People are unlikely to speak their mind when given a vague invitation for feedback. Consider the response you get when you ask someone “How are you?” Most of the time the reply is some version of “Busy but good.” or “Could be worse.”

Change the frame by explicitly stating that as the team adapts to a hybrid model, there will be much to learn and it is critical that everyone shares what is going on from their point of view. Emphasize that for the team to be successful, people need to speak up. Be clear that the expectation is that people will share ideas, ask questions, voice concerns, and admit mistakes.

“Be clear that the expectation is that people will share ideas, ask questions, challenge consensus, and admit mistakes.”

Walk the talk

After framing the expectation, reinforce it by consistently asking people for input. Instead of asking “any questions?”, which tends to garner nodding heads and silence, ask a variety of specific questions to surface where people are at.

Recognize the effort and impact

When people do voice their opinion, reinforce that behaviour by specifically describing what they’ve done right, illustrating the behaviour’s positive impact, and expressing appreciation for the effort. When it’s warranted, be sure to acknowledge the emotional component as well.

Manage your outside voice

In some cases, encouraging this behaviour might be difficult. Suppose that you are just wrapping up a planning meeting at one of your in-person days in the office when Janelle excitedly suggests a new approach. Aside from the terrible timing, the idea itself raises huge red flags for you.

Internally you might be thinking “going that route would be a complete disaster!” But if your inside voice becomes your outside voice, you’ve just made the environment a little less safe for people to provide input.

To help you convey that input is welcome, even in moments when you’ve been triggered, a simple 3 step process can help.

  1. Pause: take a moment to breathe and ask yourself what the moment needs from you.
  2. Acknowledge: a simple thanks is often enough.
  3. Respond: in most cases you will need to get more clarity, provid clarity, or delay the matter and revisit later.

They’ll believe it when they see it

When people feel safe to share ideas, voice concerns, admit mistakes and ask questions, you have better access to the information you need to keep your team on a path to high performance. Foster psychological safety on your team by framing input as essential to success, asking for the input you need, and recognizing your people for doing the right thing.

Learn skills for leading in a hybrid world

Leaders who are able to leverage the advantages and mitigate the challenges of hybrid work will build high-performing teams at a time when engagement and commitment are at risk.

Learn practical skills for leading hybrid teams in our program, Leading in a Hybrid World.

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
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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
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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.
As people leave their jobs in record numbers, organizations are facing two urgent challenges: increase engagement to reduce churn; and prepare those who stay to adapt to the rapidly changing needs of the business. The solution to both of these challenges is to invest in people and get them excited about their own growth and development. People are more likely to stay – and more resilient to changing demands – when they feel a sense of growth, contribution and connection. But with 40% of employees saying they’re likely to leave their job within 6 months1, time is running out. Career Conversations is a highly interactive one-hour session that puts people leaders at the centre of a strategy for helping employees develop a clear and compelling view of their path forward in the organization. Leaders are introduced to the “why,” “what,” and “how” of career conversations, and begin engaging with their people before the hour is up. The program can be quickly implemented and scaled to the entire organization, effecting rapid, positive change. In this 60-minute webinar, Third Factor Associate Trainer Rishi Behari will introduce the Career Conversations program and unpack the leader’s toolkit for holding effective developmental conversations with their people. You’ll leave with a compelling image of what effective career conversations look like, new skills for converting that image into action, and a plan for holding career conversations with clear goals and accountability built in. You should attend if:
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About the presenter:

Rishi Behari is a professional coach, consultant, teacher, facilitator and speaker who has carved out an unlikely career path amidst adversity, pressure, and uncertainty, having grown up in an interracial family in the heart of the Canadian prairies.

Rishi has dedicated his professional life to helping others discover and realize their passions, dreams, and potential. He is known for injecting personality, humor, wit and infectious energy into his work and teaching. He draws from his and his students’ personal experiences in order to create an open, engaging and safe environment for leaders at all levels. His relentless desire to explore, innovate and challenge the status quo have made him a multidisciplinary force for igniting positive change in people and organizations.

Rishi comes to the Third Factor team with an impressive and eclectic background across industries, having worked with some of the top schools, businesses, and organizations in the world. His range of experiences include raising ten thousand dollars at the age of nineteen to fund his first entrepreneurial venture, appearing as a business expert on live international television, helping to establish the world’s first premier business program in artificial intelligence, sitting on the advisory board for Canada’s first student-run AI startup incubator, working in the not-for-profit sector to fight systemic inequality and discrimination, teaching in academia and over five years as the VP of a multinational consulting firm.

Rishi is a former university athlete in soccer, and an avid sports and travel enthusiast, having traveled to two World Cups of Soccer, the European Cup of soccer, and the Winter Olympics. His academic credentials include BAs in psychology and sociology and an MBA from the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University and IE Business School in Madrid, Spain.

1 Source: McKinsey