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Lead by Example, Accountability & Excellence

Hayley Wickenheiser  |   | 
 
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I think the great thing about the Olympics is that you’re part of your own hockey team or your sport, but you’re also a part of a greater Canadian team and the men’s and women’s teams have served to help and inspire one another through all the Olympics that I have been a part of, dating back to ’98 – the first one.

Some of the greatest challenges that we’ve had to overcome through the years are accountability, keeping everybody accountable, that if you’re not going to maintain your level of play, your level of commitment then you’re going to be replaced on the team. And it’s not something that needs to be said, it’s an underlying factor of being a part of Hockey Canada. There are certain standards that you have to meet and every year that we win an Olympic Gold Medal the bar gets raised because the rest of the world is trying to knock you off so the level of expectation goes up. It’s important for myself and every other player to be able to meet that and be able to demonstrate that day in and day out, because that’s ultimately what makes you successful – the consistency. With that I think it’s about being able to perform under pressure. The Olympic games is a place where there’s no room for a bad day on your most important day and you have to be able to perform under pressure and that comes down to resilience. If there’s a quality that makes one performance stand out above the other it’s the resiliency to overcome anything.

I would say that my strength is to lead by example. I believe that the best leadership is demonstrated in action. A lot of people really listen to what people say, but they ultimately follow what people do and you can’t ask somebody to do what you’re not willing to do yourself, I really believe that as a leader. To go out and be the best that I can be everyday and whether that’s on the ice, in the game or just in the small details and in the preparation that has to go into becoming an elite athlete and I think not only that, but it’s not a one person job to lead. We have a really great leadership group within our team, we always have, it’s never been just two or three players that have led, it’s always been a collective group. I think that the strength of our groups that at any given time everybody in the room should feel so comfortable that they can stand up and lead if they have to, or if they were the expert in that particular area or knew it had to be done. That’s a culture we have in our room and that’s what makes us successful.

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