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Radhika Panjwani is a former journalist from Toronto and a blogger.
On Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, Dr. Kimberley Amirault-Ryan was starting her job as a mental-performance consultant with the New York Rangers.
She and 150 people – from 11 different countries – showed up at Madison Square Garden for the first day of training and were welcomed by Glen Sather, president and general manager of the NHL team.
Mr. Sather knew many people were new to the city. He calmly talked to each individual about the catastrophic events unfolding. Even though Mr. Sather was offered a helicopter so he could evacuate, he refused.
“He was so human and caring,” Dr. Amirault-Ryan recalled. “When you have a conversation with a true leader, they are fully present and listen to you with every cell of their body. There’s no greater gift you can give anyone than your full time and attention.”
Championship-winning mindset
Dr. Amirault-Ryan is a performance consultant to the NHL, NBA and Olympians, and is also an executive coach. She has nurtured individuals and teams through slumps and poor performances by introducing habits and behaviours needed for success.
Professional teams routinely seek her during drafts and ask her to be involved in the hiring of coaches and general managers. she said she almost always asks the candidates to share their darkest moments, and what would they do should that lapse in judgment or character reach the media. The idea is not to make them uncomfortable, but to understand if they can come up with a solutions-based response. Similarly, when choosing an athlete, she said she’s interested in the adversities the athlete has overcome.
“Everything rises and falls with leadership,” Dr. Amirault-Ryan said. “When I started in pro-sports, I mistakenly thought you connected to people through your success. Then I realized, we connect to people through our vulnerabilities and insecurities.”
Whether it’s on the sports arena or within corporate settings, high-performance teams share several common characteristics, she said.
Four characteristics of winning teams
- Decisions are centred around what’s best for the team. Individuals put the team before themselves.
- Teammates and employees feel valued and appreciated.
- A team’s ability to pivot, focus and refocus when things go wrong.
- Leaders inspire and help team-members as opposed to becoming angry or annoyed.
Pressure builds diamonds
“Winning teams embrace pressure as a privilege,” Dr. Amirault-Ryan said. “We all have the choice to be either a thermostat or a thermometer. We can either control our own ‘temperature’ or let outside factors influence us.”
In a blog post, author Malcom Lemmons writes traits that help him in his entrepreneurial journey are the ones he learned as an athlete.
“No one can accomplish anything great alone,” he writes. “It just doesn’t happen. You can have the best individual players, or you yourself might even be the best ‘player’ in one area, but a solid, cohesive team is always necessary to reach the highest level in any game you’re playing.”
Mr. Lemmons, a professional basketball player, says that to be successful, every business team must mimic a winning sports team. The values that helped his team win games are the ones helping his business, and include:
One mission: Every team he ever played with wanted one thing – a championship – and every athlete came into the practice sessions with that mindset, he writes. Similarly, in the business world, leaders must ensure their mission or goal is conveyed – because if even one individual ignores that and follows their own agenda, it can jeopardize the outcome.
Master your role: In the basketball court, it’s not possible for every player to be a leading scorer; but on a championship-winning team, every player knows exactly what their role is. In business, too, everyone cannot be the CEO, but every team member has a valuable role.
Communicate effectively: Communication builds better relationship and creates a stronger team.
No one is greater than the whole: “Despite how talented or skilled someone might be, they can never be viewed as someone who is indispensable or irreplaceable, because that attitude will destroy any team in the long run,” Mr. Lemmons says.
What I’m reading around the web
- Google mandated its employees return to the office three days a week, and according to a CNBC article, there didn’t appear to be a dull moment across the company’s various campuses. Marching bands, gridlocks and celebratory breakfasts were some highlights.
- A BBC article chronicles the look of disbelief on people’s faces when they watch Patrick Paumen, a security guard from the Netherlands, pay for something in a shop or restaurant. Mr. Paumen doesn’t pay with credit or debit cards; instead, he places his left hand near the contactless card reader. In 2019, the 37-year-old had a contactless payment microchip injected under his skin.
- If you have been watching Jeopardy!, you’ve likely been impressed by University of Toronto alumna and Halifax native Mattea Roach. Ms. Roach’s winning streak has made her eligible to compete in the game show’s annual Tournament of Champions, a CTV News article says.
- Apple’s M1 Ultra Chip, according to an article in Wired, has some 114 billion transistors packed into more than 100 processing cores and is connected to 128 gigabytes of shared memory. The “Frankenstein’s monster,” with two identical M1 Max chips, is stitched together with a silicon interface that works like a bridge. This Lego-like approach is an example of the computer industry’s newest and path-breaking chip-technology techniques that helps boost processing power.
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