Teams That Swear

What can leaders learn from working 25 straight days at the Olympic Games?

In this episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeon sits down with Vanessa Lee, Director of Communications and Media Relations for the Canadian Olympic Committee.

Vanessa shares what she learned supporting Team Canada at one of the world's biggest sporting events, why every role matters, and how leaders can make invisible work feel seen.

They also explore the personal side of leadership and career transition. After spending more than 20 years as a journalist, Vanessa lost the job she had dreamed about since she was twelve years old. She opens up about rebuilding her identity, navigating uncertainty, and how that experience ultimately led her to Team Canada.

In this conversation, you'll hear:

• Why there are no small roles on a high-performing team
• How leaders can make invisible work visible
• The importance of relationships in hybrid and distributed teams
• What a simple mental health check-in can communicate to your people
• How Vanessa rebuilt after losing what she thought was her dream job
• Why communication, context and clarity matter more than most leaders realise
• The leadership lessons hidden inside one of the biggest sporting events on the planet

Whether you lead a senior executive team, a sporting organisation, or a team spread across multiple locations, Vanessa's insights offer a practical reminder that people perform best when they feel seen, valued and connected.

Want to understand how your team is really working?

The AB Team Dynamics Assessment measures the two things that matter most in team performance: Relationships and Clarity.

It helps leaders identify strengths, blind spots and opportunities across areas such as trust, feedback, conflict, communication, priorities, role clarity and alignment.

Learn more here:

AB Team Dynamics Assessment

Before July, most teams review performance, budgets and strategy. But very few review how they are actually working together.

Before July, your team will probably review its performance, financials, strategy and priorities.

But there is one conversation most teams never schedule.

The honest conversation about how the team is actually working together.

In this practical episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeon shares four questions every leadership team should ask mid-year to surface what is working, where energy is leaking and what needs to be said before the next quarter begins.

Because rarely do teams fail because of strategy alone. More often, they get stuck because of unclear expectations, weak alignment, avoided conversations or relationship tension that nobody has properly named.

This episode is designed for senior leaders who want a simple, useful way to reset their team before small frustrations become bigger performance issues.

You’ll hear:

• Why mid-year is the perfect time to review team dynamics, not just business results
• The four questions Adrian uses to help teams have more honest conversations
• How to make the conversation safe enough for people to be genuinely useful, not diplomatically careful
• Why the leader’s response to the first hard thing said can shape the whole room
• How a Team Pulse Check can help your team have the conversation properly

If you want a team that swears by each other, not about each other, this is one of the conversations worth putting in the calendar.To discuss a Team Pulse Check or the AB Team Dynamics Assessment, email Adrian at [email protected].

And if this episode gave you language you can use with your team, follow Teams That Swear wherever you get your podcasts. It helps more leaders build teams that swear by each other, not about each other.

Silence is not alignment. This episode puts a commercial cost on assuming your leadership team is fine without properly checking.

The team that worries Adrian most is not the one that is struggling. It is the one that assumes it is fine.

In this episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeon challenges one of the most expensive assumptions senior leaders make: that because nobody is complaining, everything must be working.

The real issue is that people often manage up. They protect relationships. They decide what feels safe to raise and what is easier to leave alone. So the leader, even a good one, can end up making decisions based on a polished version of what is really happening.

Adrian also unpacks a common leadership team pattern: leaders say their team is fine, but the business is struggling with silos, slow collaboration or inconsistent execution.

His challenge is simple: if the leadership team is genuinely aligned, why is the rest of the business not reflecting that?

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why silence is not the same as alignment
• How silos below the leadership team often reflect silos within it
• The hidden cost of poor decision-making processes
• Why team data can create safer, clearer and more useful conversations
• How to find out where the strengths and pressure points really sit inside your team

If your leadership team is making decisions slowly, revisiting the same issues or struggling to collaborate across functions, this episode will give you language for what might really be going on.

To discuss a Team Pulse Check or the AB Team Dynamics Assessment, email Adrian at [email protected].

And if this episode gave you language you can use with your team, follow Teams That Swear wherever you get your podcasts. It helps more leaders build teams that swear by each other, not about each other.

Your people might be performing. But is your team actually working well together? This episode helps leaders spot the quiet gaps that individual performance can hide.Most leaders have a view of how their team is working.

But is it the same view the team has?

In this episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeon unpacks one of the most common risks inside leadership teams: when everything looks fine on the surface, but underneath, clarity, alignment and trust are quietly slipping.

The meetings are happening. The reports are getting done. People are hitting their numbers. Nobody is complaining.

But decisions keep getting revisited. People are working hard, but not always in the same direction. Some conversations happen after the meeting instead of in the meeting. And the leader is left sensing something is off, without having a clear way to name it.

Adrian explores the difference between knowing your people and knowing your team, and why senior leaders often make decisions based on an incomplete picture.

You’ll hear:

• Why individual performance can mask team dysfunction
• How small team dynamics issues become expensive over time
• Why a leadership team needs a regular tune-up, not just a review when something breaks
• How the AB Team Dynamics Assessment and Team Pulse Check help leaders understand what is really happening inside their team

If you want a team that swears by each other, not about each other, this is the kind of conversation worth having before the cracks become costly.

To discuss a Team Pulse Check or the AB Team Dynamics Assessment, email Adrian at [email protected].

And if this episode gave you language you can use with your team, follow Teams That Swear wherever you get your podcasts. It helps more leaders build teams that swear by each other, not about each other.

What team analytics expert Ben Darwin teaches leaders about talent, growth and shared understanding.

A Formula One engineer was poisoned by the wrong coffee machine, and the wrong tyres started going on the car.

That story came from my latest conversation with Ben Darwin, team analytics expert and co-founder of Gain Line Analytics.

It sounds ridiculous at first, but Ben’s point was sharp.

Small gaps in shared understanding can create consequences much larger than leaders realise.

In this episode, we unpack:

• Why performance problems are often team dynamic problems in disguise
• Why new talent needs context before judgement
• Why growth is the enemy of understanding
• Why cohesion is not chemistry
• How leaders can build more deliberate shared understanding inside their teams

If your team has grown, restructured, added new leaders or become harder to align than it should be, this conversation will give you a different way to look at what is really going on.

Personality profiles can help you understand your people and the differencesin strengths, weaknesses, initial reactions, and natural tendencies. But theydo not always show you the gaps in how your team actually works together.

In this episode of the Teams That Swear™ podcast, Adrian Baillargeon explores the difference between individual insight and team-level insight, and why teams need more than personal profiling to understand what is really happening in the room.

He unpacks the gaps teams often avoid raising in meetings: feedback that does not land, decisions that are not fully committed to, tensions people can feel but do not name, and patterns that remain hidden until someone creates a safer way to surface them.

If you lead a team and want a clearer picture of what is really going on, the , the AB Team Dynamics Assessment is designed to give you that starting point. It helps surface the patterns your team may sense, but struggle to talk about clearly. To learn more about the assessment or book an initial conversation click here

If you lead a team, you will recognise this moment when the result falls short and the energy in the room shifts. I recently sat down with Michael Crooks, who helped prepare TeamAustralia for the World Baseball Classic.

They just missed the World Baseball Classic finals, yet the group grew closer.

That outcome says a lot about the standards inside a team and the leadership behaviours that keep people aligned when things do not go to plan.

In the episode, we unpack practical leadership behaviours, including:

• How to maintain standards without creating tension when performance dips.
• The questions to ask when expectations are not being met.
• Why giving people space after a setback often leads to better thinking.
• How preparation in the lead-up builds trust when results fall short

If you are responsible for results and people, this conversation will feel relevant.

Because leadership is not tested when things go well. It shows up when they do not.

I don't know about you, but to me, it feels like the world is going crazy. 

Crazy wars. Crazy petrol prices. AI impacts and AI stories. Crazy increases in the cost of living. And craziness on ice. When has Canada ever lost gold medal games at the Olympics to the U.S. in the women's, men's, and Paralympic ice hockey teams? Never. Until now. This is not ideal.

Whether we notice it or not, all this extra noise can affect us neurologically, emotionally, and mentally. When people are overloaded, decision-making slows, patience shortens, and focus drifts. Not because capability disappears, but because the brain is already working overtime to manage uncertainty. The thing is, most of the time we don't realise this consciously. 

It shouldn't be a surprise that research from Gallup shows that only 23 per cent of employees globally are engaged at work, while stress levels remain near record highs. That is not a motivation problem. It is a cognitive load problem.

In this episode of Teams That Swear, I unpack how anxiety often shows up as over-analysis, hesitancy to make decisions, and four practical leadership moves to help you steady the team when everything outside feels unpredictable. Our brains love certainty, and the tips will help you and your crew create clarity. 

It's important to realise that strong teams do not pretend pressure doesn't exist, or ignore it. The intent of the podcast is to help face the craziness together, speak honestly, and stay aligned on what matters most.

That is how teams move from swearing about each other to swearing by each other.

Pressure doesn’t usually create bad leadership. It simply exposes habits we haven’t refined yet.

That was one of the biggest takeaways from my conversation with Glenn Flood on the Teams That Swear podcast.

Glenn spent more than thirty years working in high performance kitchens across Australia, Canada and the UK. Hetrained in Michelin-star environments, worked with Jamie Oliver and Tobie Puttock at Fifteen Melbourne, contributed to the early seasons of MasterChef Australia, and is now the author of Secret Sauce.

In this episode we talk about what leadership actually looks like in environments where feedback is immediate, standards are visible and pressure never really disappears.

We cover:

• how leaders translate pressure instead of transferring it
• why real-time feedback matters more than annual reviews
• how friction improves decisions when it’s handled well
• and the moment Glenn realised his own reaction was the real leadership lesson

If you lead a team, there’s a lot in this conversation that will feel familiar.

If you’re a senior leader stuck in the tug of war between “include everyone” and “just make the call”, this Teams That Swear episode is for you.

Because here’s what I’m seeing alot of: pressure from above to move faster, pressure from below to involve more people, and you’re trying to keep the work moving without leaving people feeling blindsided.

In this episode you get insight into breaking down the difference most teams never name: people often want a voice, not a vote. When you confuse consultation with collaboration, and consensus with alignment, everything slows down and decisions start happening at the pace of the slowest voice in the room.

You’ll also hear a real-life example, a clean way to draw the decision line, and four practical moves that stop meetings turning into long, messy debates and get execution moving again.If you’re tired of feeling like you cannot win either way, give it a listen.