Mental Health for Performance

“It all falls back to relationship for me.” 

Vickie Woosley , full-time psychologist with the NHL’s Nashville Predators, said that and she believes it with everything in her. In fact, she believes that relationship is of utmost importance if leaders ever want anyone to follow them. If they don’t have a relationship with you, why would they ever want to do anything for you? Great question. 

So, how do you go about building relationship? And once you do, how can you ensure that those in your care are mentally well enough to do whatever is asked of them? Well, Vickie has all kinds of answers to that question, which have come from her 21 years as an undercover agent with the FBI and now, working with a bunch of big, tough hockey players who have to be mentally well to even hope to compete. 

How to be your very best in the highest-pressure situations is something Vickie knows so well and the conversation in this episode will prove that and give you an inside look at how you and those you lead, can do it  too. 

“People want to know that they matter.” 

Something Melinda Harrison works on with high performance athletes transitioning out of sport and into the real world all the time. As an Olympic swimmer herself, she knows of what she speaks. She herself struggled with finding her way once she retired from sport. So, how can you help lead high performers in YOUR organization? How can you ensure that they feel like a valued member of your team… even in the learning stages? How can individuals who only know an “all in” mentality, feel like they’re ever successful again in this thing we call life?  

Well, that’s why Melinda did the work. That’s why she asked so many questions of successfully transitioned athletes and then, decided that she HAD to put the answers into a book. 

Now, whether you ARE or WERE a high-performance athlete, you are close to one, or maybe you just hired one… this is a listen you are NOT going to want to miss.

“I’ll retire when it becomes work.”

That’s what CEO and President of Golden West Broadcasting,

“Our mission is to make marketing better”.

“Our social purpose is to inspire the social consciousness of

Kiirsten May said both of those things about the company that she

Just 6 years ago, they risked doing their own thing and now, 37

The list of positives, when it comes to Uphouse Inc, is long and

“The whole thing was just an adventure from the beginning.

The Honourable Janice Filmon DID say that and you are in

She was Manitoba’s twenty-fifth Lieutenant Governor – only

She is so many things – but perhaps the greatest thing about

Janet McMahon is our guest today. She is also Sport

So how do you get people to choose excellence, to work

“Mental

What an incredible season of guests here on our Mental

Her insights here are perceptive and helpful and give

“Success for me is defined by impact. Whether it’s impact in

What an incredible perspective on success. He measures it by

Thank you to Pinnacle, your recruitment firm that has been

Susan Cockle is a Mental Performance Consultant, professional member of the Canadian Sport Psychology Association and Registered Psychologist with over 2 decades of experience.  She works in private practice in Edmonton, Ab.  and is the Mental Health Lead for the Canadian Paralympic Committee (for Tokyo, Beijing, Santiago, Paris) and consults on mental health and performance for various National Sports Organizations including; Volleyball Canada, Canada Basketball, and Canada Soccer.

Susan is also certified as a High Performance Practitioner, by Sport Scientist Canada, at the Senior Level. And she is a psychologist for the Canadian Centre for Mental Health and Sport.  Susan has prepared athletes and coaches for 5 Olympic and Paralympic Games (London, Rio, Pyeongchang, Tokyo, Beijing). She is particularly interested in how mental health impacts sport performance and how working on both mental skills, as well as mental health, can aide high performance outcomes and quality of life.

“The real leading factor are the core values of commitment to each other and discipline and a culture of respect, of authenticity really sharing who you are, being who you are, but also managing and respecting the diversity of the group. And that was central to our philosophy that no one person is more important than another. And that’s just shaped my whole theory around leadership.” – Dr. Jennifer Walinga

If you are here to learn about leadership, teamwork and success from the inside out, then you are in the right place. Dr. Jennifer Walinga is all about safe spaces in sport, work and life. She’s an Olympic gold medalist and world champion in the sport of rowing. She’s a professor at Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC and runs a consulting firm called Integrated Focus and she is thrilled to have a chance to share her story and all that she has learned along the way.

Enjoy the listen thanks to Pinnacle. Your recruitment firm that has been proudly on the job for the past 20 years.