Working in the world of high-performance sports, one of the most crucial elements of the success of a high-performance environment is the level of respect in the room.

Respect is an interesting concept as it carries two sides; how you respect others, and how you respect yourself.

In some instances today, respect is a lost art. As we’ve gotten more and more distracted and influenced by different forms of media we’ve slowly lost a sense of respect for ourselves and for those we interact with every day.

Something as simple as listening attentively to the person you are interacting with, and actively engaging in your conversation is evaporating right before our very eyes these days. People today are more apt to be focused on their phone, or diverted by their phone when something or someone far more important is sending them a message.

I am old enough to remember when the cellular phone became a reality in our lives and I swore then that I would never have one because I was so disappointed in the way it distracted people from the people who were right there in front of them! 

Though I too have become a “user” of the technology, I find myself realizing more often how much it has contributed to my disrespect of those who have chosen my company.  I have become one of them!

Things like opening the door for someone else, waiting your turn for the opportunity to get on a train, or letting someone take their bag off the luggage carousel before you are just simple manifestations of respect that seem to have disappeared from people’s functional vocabulary.

One of the most interesting expressions of self-respect is how you carry yourself, your demeanor, your dress, and even how you walk. It’s fascinating to watch old movies or documentaries and to see how people carried themselves and dressed only 40–50 years ago. 

Men wouldn’t walk out of the house without a collared shirt on, thus the adage blue-collar and white-collar work. 

Women were always well appointed, hair done, dressed well, and never to leave the home unprepared. 

Nowadays people regularly wear sweatpants out on a date qualifying as “Athleisure” wear which it turns out is more than acceptable, even fashionable.

Now I’m not saying we all need to get back to being all buttoned up, but the bottom line here is we’ve been progressing along a slippery slope towards less and less respect for our personal appearance, respect for ourselves, and respect for those around us, and with whom we work.

Respect starts with us, how we carry ourselves, how we treat ourselves, and especially with how we treat others. As goes one of the most fundamental values of every religion in the world, do unto others as you would have done unto you. We’ve begun to lose sight of this fundamental value, slowly being eroded by the entropy of social influence.

We all need to take a moment and take stock of how we carry ourselves. 

Are we taking the time to listen to those with whom we interact? 

Are we being patient with people? 

Are we giving them the benefit of the doubt? Are we practicing empathy and understanding that we don’t really know what has occurred to this person on this day before we interacted with them? 

And if we are distracted by things that in some instances are more important, do we take the time to apologize for being distracted, or do we just expect that people will understand?

Those wonderful words; please, thank you, may I, sorry, these words go a long way in displaying a true sense of respect for our fellow human beings, and even though they take little or no effort to employ, it seems we are less and less apt to use them.

So when you wake up tomorrow, maybe take the time to require yourself that you get ready for your day, bring a sharpness to the way you carry yourself, look people in the eye when you speak with them, take the time to listen to them, and be cordial in the manner in which you speak. 

You might find that these random acts of respect generate reciprocity, and when they don’t, just let it be their loss, not yours!

Respect for ourselves and respect for our fellow human beings is a fundamental premise of human relations, it’s one of those core elements in building a culture of success.

Try it, you might like it 😉 

Working in the world of human performance where athletes try to set world records, beat and compete with the best, and challenge for championships has given me a unique perspective.

Just like in every other domain of life, in sport there are disagreements, misunderstandings, arguments about what happened, who did what to who, and what should or should not have been done.

Short of the accuracy of timing, or the ball crossing the goal line (and even those sometimes have photo finishes or instant replays to settle the score), in most instances what happened is all a matter of perspective. What you saw, or the coach saw, or the opposition saw or heard for that matter, is all framed in a perspective born of bias, and of memory.

All of us have grown up whether we want to admit it or not with certain social biases driven from our experiences throughout our lives, and driven by the opinions and biases of people we looked up to as we grew up. In some instances we simply adopted, adapted, or accepted those biases as our own, leaning towards the same viewpoint as our parents.

For instance, if our parents were bigots, then quite often we accepted those thoughts as real and true…..inarguable.

Alternatively, we might have decided that what our parents thought, or our grandparents or our teacher’s thought was malarkey. 

We made our own decision that we would not be swayed by their bias and so we adopted the opposite perspective, another viewpoint so to speak. Was it the right viewpoint? Were our parents wrong, or were they just seeing things from the eyes of their own biased perspective?

When we add to this that much recent research in the area of memory has revealed that our subconscious mind likes to colour or functionally replace information we may not have seen or experienced in order to complete the stories we recall. 

Considering this we begin to understand that there is very limited certainty in most discussions or arguments, just shades of gray biased by perspective.

The fallibility of our recollection has been challenged so much so that eyewitness testimony, which for so long was considered the key to establishing doubt or certainty in a court case, is often no longer admissible or considered relevant in a court of law.

So if we realize that in any given situation in which there is disagreement, there will always be bias and discrepancy in recollection, we start out knowing that we may be wrong. If we start with that baseline, then our challenge becomes an opportunity to learn, instead of denying.

How do we learn? How do we open our eyes to other perspectives? How do we challenge our recollection or bias?

We listen.

Yep, that’s it! We listen intentionally, with a true desire to understand what another person is saying, even when they are not doing a great job of listening themselves. We put away our desire to be right, to know the answer, or to put them in their place, and we just listen.

Then we ask questions.

Yep, before you start telling the other person what has been festering in your mind and needs to get out. What you believe to be the solution, or the correct answer, take some time to ask questions about how that person got to that place in their mind. 

Don’t tell them what you think, listen to why they think the way they think. Listen and understand their viewpoint and even when you disagree with it vehemently, recognize that it comes from a place of bias and uncertainty in them as well.

Empathy is the most valuable emotional center point for any discussion. Doing our best to understand the other person should be our goal every time. Recognize that they may be coming from a negative space, or a different world of experience that is clouding or freeing their recollection.

Finally, recognize our own state of mind when we enter into such discussion. Our state of mind clouds our viewpoint and often challenges our ability to think and express ourselves clearly. If we are amped up because of a challenging day at work, or something has us in a place of negativity, then our opinions will be coloured once more by our mind’s eye.

An emotional triad worth considering every time you perhaps disagree with someone else’s perspective is first be kind to yourself and understand where your mind is coming from, then recognize that the person across from you has their own bias and state of mind, and finally recognize that no one, not you, nor the person you are talking to knows anything with total certainty. 

Practicing this triad when connecting with others will often bring a sense of calm and kindness often missing in communication today.

Yes, You may never be right again, but that’s ok!

Hello, 60!

Wow, it’s really here, 60 trips around the sun have been incredible.

All the things I’ve seen and done in 60 years, crazy!

I was born December 3rd, 1963, just days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  It’s an event that has always intrigued me, maybe because my angel was coming down while his had just risen?

The 60s were a tumultuous time, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated as well, Malcolm X, and Jimmy Hoffa disappeared!?  And the Vietnam War was a fixture of the times surrounded by the hippy-counter-culture.

Canada wasn’t quite so intense.  

Born in Ottawa, I was adopted by my parents and soon after found myself in Singapore, the new son of a neophyte diplomat and his fish out of water wife (she didn’t love the foreign service).

Back to Canada in the late 60s, adjusting to the snow with my new adopted brother.

The late 60s early 70s began with Man on the Moon!  One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!

We moved to England, my father’s diplomatic career in high gear, my mother’s unhappiness in full view.

Then the wheels fell off at the Watergate hotel, and so too in my parents’ marriage.

By my 16th birthday I was the man of the house, and I grew up fast, my brother didn’t. He struggled.

Everything blew up, and the only thing holding me on the ground was playing football and the deep connection with friends.

I loved music and conversation, and at one point I thought I might become a radio talk show DJ, but that dream got shelved, not something my father wanted for me…….

So, I fell into Athletic Therapy, Strength and Conditioning too…..who knew either of these things we even professions when I was a kid. Someone just taped my ankles and when they got sprained, I iced them until I could run again!

And thus began an incredible career, never contemplated, always inspiring.

I’ve seen a lot of stuff in my 60 years

• Man on the moon
• Canada vs Russia – Paul Henderson and the boys!
• More PM’s than I can count and 11 Presidents
• The Home Computer and the Laptop
• Elvis, Lennon, Jackson, and too many others too early
• Regan, Princess Diana, OJ
• 9/11
• The Cordless Phone and the answering machine
• Vinyl, tape, cassettes, 8-track, DVDs, and Digital
• Rabbit ears, cable, satellite, 1000 channels, streaming
• The Internet, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.!
• Too many wars
• Pin-ball, Pong, Super Mario, Video Gaming
• The cellular phone
• The iPod, iPhone, iPad, I can’t imagine!
• All the Super Bowls and the halftime shows!
• Many Grey Cups (been around longer than the Super Bowl)
• Hockey Dynasty: Bruins, Canadiens, Flyers, Islanders, Oilers, Devils, Penguins, Red Wings, Avalanche, Black Hawks, Kings, Lightening.
• Orr, Lafleur, Gretzky, Lemieux, Crosby, McDavid
• And the list goes on……..

My career really began in 1988, 35 years ago I became a certified Athletic Therapist, and shortly after a certified strength and conditioning coach.

I created my own job at Concordia University as the first full time hire as an S+C coach in Canada.  It really wasn’t a thing back then.  A few people in Olympic sport, but few and far between.

I’ve seen it all blow up in Canada over the course of the last 30 years. It’s really quite incredible to see where the world of human performance has gone in such a short time, but then again, so has the world in general.

In my time, I’ve traveled the world, and seen many interesting places and things.  I’ve been to several Olympic Games, World Cup races, cities, arenas, and fields.

I’ve been blessed to work with some of the world’s greatest athletes, doing things that are just so unimaginable, and doing it with grace, power, and speed! (it really is something incredible to see the best of the best do what they do best, what an honor!).

I’ve seen triumph and despair……I’ve seen it all, been at the bottom looking up, and the top looking over it all.

I am blessed to have worked with incredible people, and to have so many really good friends who matter to me, I hope they know how much.

But the best things that ever happened to me…..meeting my best friend and partner, Jaime, and having our incredible daughter Gretchen. 

The last 20 years of my 60 so far have been the best, and I have no doubt there is more amazing stuff to come.

Now my intention is to give back as much as I can, help others reach higher, and use all 60 years of experience to provide insight to those who care to listen.

“Some men see things as they are, and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?” RFK