January, 2025
She shoots. She scores. I’m talking about Hayley Wickenheiser: Olympic gold medalist, Toronto Maple Leafs’ assistant manager, and physician – a true badass.
🙌🏽 I had the pleasure of working alongside a killer team to organize a leadership conference for over 250 healthcare leaders. Such all-stars. Shoutouts to Jayshree, Denise, Rekha, Tara, Saaliha and the ever-talented Media Services team.
One of the ingredients of a high-performing team is knowing each other’s strengths. The other piece to this is leveraging those strengths. What good is it to ‘know’ if you’re not going to ‘leverage’?
Hot damn did we leverage each other’s strengths.
🏒 Our keynote, Hayley. She spoke about her and Team Canada’s journey to winning gold at the Olympics, becoming a physician – and the lessons of grit and teamwork in high-performance sports and healthcare.
What stood out were three things:
- Suck a little less
- Burnout is when you’re not aligned with your work. But work in bursts not burnout.
- The need to go through difficult times together, which builds team resiliency.
The lessons Hayley shared are critical for leadership development and team resilience in both sports and healthcare.
Suck a little less
While Hayley mentioned “suck a little less” in a light-hearted way, it resonates big time because it actually honours powerful concepts:
- Progress over pace
- Continuous improvement
- Chunk it down to baby steps
These aren’t just buzzwords. They’re practical strategies for tackling any big goal, whether it’s personal growth, a work project, or starting a business.
How so? The WIN Method takes the ideas above, and is a practical personal growth strategy to work through them. It’s something I learned from my friend Brandon Lee.
💥 We’ve all heard that knowledge is power. That’s not entirely true. APPLIED knowledge is power. Applied knowledge includes the ability to reflect and correct.
You can do exactly that with the WIN Method.
Here it is in three simple questions:
- W – What did I do Well?
- I – What can I Improve?
- N – What can I do different Next time
Questions three is all about creative possibility. And when answering the last question, on a scale from 1-10, rate how realistic your answers are, and then rate the likelihood of you following through on each. For anything below an 8, re-think your approach.
Whether it’s a work project, personal growth or a new business, small steps lead to big wins. Take Hayley’s advice: “Suck a little less,” and use the WIN Method to conquer your potential one step at a time.
ConquerCast
For me, ‘suck a little less’ came into play months ago when I started ConquerCast.
Fear showed up as thoughts like, “What if no one listens?” Self-doubt body slammed me and said, “Who am I to start a podcast?” And imposter syndrome had me questioning whether I had anything of value to add to the conversation.
On top of that, balancing this with my other commitments made it feel like there was never going to be enough time.
I’m also too stubborn to stop if I’ve set my mind on something 😁.
The first episode was released, then another and another. All the while refining my approach, process, preparation and format.
Fast forward to today and I’ve recently received feedback such as:
“This episode is great Parm. You’re good!”
“Thank you for highlighting my story. I’ve been on other podcasts before – your planning process and format is very organized and made me feel that much more prepared.”
Having the support from one of my friends who pushed me a lot to get this started was a massive help also.
Starting ConquerCast wasn’t just about launching a podcast. It was about living what I preach and teach – taking small steps, embracing growth and showing up to conquer your potential, even when fear is present!
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