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Cassie Campbell-Pascall on consistent leadership and finding the right path
by ORBA/OAPC
Cassie Campbell-Pascall on consistent leadership and finding the right path
A three-time Olympic champion and eight-time world champion, Cassie Campbell-Pascall is the only Canadian team captain to have led her team to two Olympic gold medals. Following her retirement from hockey, she turned to broadcasting, taking a position at Hockey Night in Canada and becoming the first woman to provide colour commentary on the Saturday night broadcast. Campbell-Pascall has become a trailblazer for women in sports as well as making it her mission to build relationships with organizations that are focused on improving the lives of everyone in her community. She devotes much of her time to partnerships with Ronald McDonald House, the Scotiabank Girls Hockey Fest, and now with the analytics department of AWS (Amazon Web Services) and the NHL.
She is a member of the Board of Directors for the new Hockey Canada Board and has raised millions of dollars for Ronald McDonald House Canada among other charities. In 2016, Cassie’s contributions were recognized with an appointment to the Order of Canada.
On February 7, 2023, the second day of ORBA’s conference opened with a keynote address by Cassie Campbell-Pascall where she drew on decades of personal, athletic and professional experience to share her insights into consistent leadership and finding the right path for you and your business.
Our Way
It’s not surprising that there seems to be a general level of anxiety in the world these days. We’ve been through three years of COVID and we’re not even sure how to process that or what it means to be on the other side. We may be questioning what we are doing, what path we’re on, and whether we are being effective and consistent as leaders and in our personal lives.
I think we are all looking for the right path. Depending on the day, it may feel as if our path is going this way, then that way, then straight, then backwards. While there may not be one correct way of doing things, there is a correct path, and the correct path is just trying to be consistent. It’s showing up and doing the best that you can do in the given moment.
We learn the most about ourselves when we embrace challenges. That’s what creates a change in a direction that we need to go and helps us find our path.
I went through a period where I was the management consultant for our national women’s hockey team. It had gone through a tough time where we weren’t winning and the expectation, of course, when you play for Team Canada is that you win gold. Then COVID hit, and the athletes were training while not knowing if they were even going to the Olympics. Everything was changing and events were being cancelled. The path was unknown. So we came up with our path – a path leading to the Olympic games. And in case you’ve forgotten, we won those games. ››
The players of the national women’s team came up with a slogan, Our Way Feels Like Family, with five points outlining what Our Way meant to them. When they started to get off the path, they could simply look at each other and say Our Way, and everyone would know what it meant.
Perspective
One of the great things about playing for a national women’s team and even going on to be national broadcaster as a female in hockey is that you have to have the ability to learn from challenges. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to learn from COVID, but I know that someday I will. And one of the things I learned through playing is about perspective.
When you play for Hockey Canada and you play for our country and you go to
Our Way Feels Like Family
Our way creates an environment where we can have fun, feel safe, grow, learn, work as a cohesive unit in accomplishing our goals and get better every day.
Our way is being united in our commitment to the iterative process that this year will be.
Our way is being and playing consistently – showing up every day with a purpose and great habits.
Our way is embracing the ups and downs and staying committed and patient with our game plan.
Our way is unstoppable.
When it seemed things were getting a little tough or there was no path to follow, the team could go back to what Our Way meant. If someone was having a bad day and needed a little pickme-up, all you had to do was tap them on the shin pads and say Our Way.
a world championship or Olympic games and you do not win, you feel like you are not welcome home because the expectation in this country is gold or bust. That’s the expectation; that’s the pressure that we face.
I remember the very first Olympics for women’s hockey in 1998. We lost, finishing second. Our men’s team finished fourth. The next day I had a drug test and it ended up being the best day of my life because I ran in Susan Auch, a great Canadian Olympian from Winnipeg, Manitoba, two-time silver medalist plus a bronze medal in speed skating. She was my hero.
She looked at me, gave me a big hug and said, “Cass, congrats on the silver medal last night.” I looked at her and said, “Susan, it’s not like a speed skater where you get a time and you get to stand on the podium and see your flag. It doesn’t work that way for us. We lost. We lost the last game.” And she looked at me and said, “Cass, how many people in this world don’t get to be Olympic athletes, and how many Olympic athletes don’t get a chance to be medalists.”
And that’s the truth. Some people win and some people don’t. But we can learn from any challenge given to us by learning about perspective. What do we need to do a little bit differently? How do we make ourselves and our teammates just a little bit better? As an athlete, we embrace challenges because that’s where we’re going to learn the most about ourselves. That’s what creates a change in a direction that we need to go. That’s going to help us with our path.
Effective Communication Eliminates Stress And Anxiety
Cassie Campbell-Pascall’s four rules of eliminating stress through communication:
1. Eat your crow while it is young and tender. Apologising means that you value the relationship. By saying sorry you start effective communication and get the ball rolling in a positive fashion.
2. Avoid thoughts of special entitlement no matter who you are.
Finding your path is about being a contributor. Start your day believing that you are going to make a contribution that day. If you can’t do that, make someone else believe that they will make a contribution that day. Because then you’ll have made a contribution.
I am the first Canadian hockey captain to lose a world championship in 2005. We lost 1-0 in the shoot out. I came home to find that on the front page of the Toronto Star and other newspapers across the country was the ugliest photo of me ever taken. In the photo, we had just lost and I was wiping some tears from my face.
My dad was so angry he cancelled his subscription to the Toronto Star. And I said, “Dad, isn’t it unbelievable? Women’s hockey is on the front page of the newspaper.” I called my husband and told him about the ugliest picture of me ever taken, and he said, “Cass, I hate to tell you, but it’s not just on the front page of the Toronto Star.” It was across the country. Women’s hockey – we made it! ››
Even if you’ve been in the company for 30 years, the best idea in the company can come from the person who just started that day. Leaders show that everyone’s thoughts are welcome. They want input from people around them. If you’re feeling entitled, you won’t get all the information that you need to hear.
3. Don’t be a one-upper. Are you really listening to what someone is saying or are you thinking about what your response is going to be? We need to listen and to hear.
4. Spend less time finding the blame and more time fixing the problem.
If we focus solely on the problem, we’re going to take a wrong turn and go in the wrong direction. But if we focus on solution-based, consistent leadership, we will go in the right direction, get on the right path, and give ourselves the best chance to succeed.
Remember this was my last Olympic year and I knew it. I cut that picture out and put it in my wallet. When I was going for training and I knew it was going to be a tough day, I would put that picture in my stall. And that was my challenge in sport. Like my challenge in the first Olympics for women’s hockey where we were expected to win gold gave me perspective, this one gave me motivation. I didn’t want to feel like that again, standing on the blue line listening to the wrong national anthem as the wrong flag was raised to the rafters.
So embrace challenges. They’re not there to kill us though some days it feels that way. They’re there to somehow make us better, and if we approach it that way, it can turn into something positive.
Opportunities
I’ve been in broadcasting now for seventeen seasons and it’s been such a blast. I remember my very first experience on Hockey Night in Canada on October 14, 2006. When
I was a player, I worked for TSN and I would dabble in some of the women’s hockey coverage they had when I wasn’t playing. Then all of a sudden I’d finished my career and Hockey Night in Canada called me. I hadn’t studied broadcasting or worked my way up, I just started on the biggest and greatest sports show that this country has ever seen.
On my first day on the job it was the battle of Alberta. They used to tape the interviews in advance, and my very first interview was with Craig MacTavish. I was nervous, and when I started the interview, I couldn’t remember his name. His immediately leant over and said to me, “Cass, it’s two hours until the game and I have time. We’ll just do this again. It’s no problem.” We did the interview, everything went well, and it aired.
On my second day on the job, I travelled to Toronto where the Calgary Flames were playing the Toronto Maple Leafs. Harry Neale got snowed in the night before and couldn’t make the game. They asked me to stand in for him and be a colour analyst on Hockey Night in Canada. So there I was with Mr. Bob Cole calling the game in Toronto. Mats Sundin got a hat trick that night, scoring his 500th goal in overtime. Mark Giordano scored his first two goals ever in the national hockey league. It was an incredible game. And I called a goal before it happened.
This was an opportunity that I almost didn’t say yes to, and it led to 17 years broadcasting. I could have said no that day because it felt too much out of my comfort zone. You just never know. The greatest opportunities tend to just hit you right over the head and you need to jump in and take them no matter how big or how small. That’s about being consistent; that’s about finding your path.
Contributing
Finding your path is also about being a contributor. I’ve had mornings where I get up and wonder how I am going to get through this day. We all have them. Other mornings we get up and we feel like we are going to solve the world’s problems.
The important thing is that at some point before you start your day, you need to believe that you are going to make a contribution that day. If you can’t do that, make someone else believe that they are making a contribution. Because then you will have made a contribution.
It could be a little thing – a card or a note; an invitation for coffee; a compliment or acknowledgement of a job well done. Little words like thank you, please –all those are signs of appreciation and making people feel like they are making a contribution.
Finally, leadership is about recognizing when we are not going in the right direction, then working together on finding solutions. That’s leadership, that’s consistency, that’s about finding the path.
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