Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Olympic Gold Medalist Amanda Kessel

I recently interviewed Olympic Gold Medalist Amanda Kessel on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is an Olympic gold medalist and is one of the greatest female hockey players of all time. Amanda Kessel was a star in college in the pros and in international competition and is currently an executive in the NHL with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Amanda, thank you for joining us.

Amanda: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to speak with you today.

Adam: Excited to have you on. You grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and you weren't the only athlete in your family. Your dad spent time in the NFL with the Washington Redskins. Your two older brothers played hockey professionally, including your brother Phil, who's a three-time Stanley Cup champion. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Amanda: Yeah, Madison, Wisconsin with two older brothers and my mom and dad. As long as I can remember, I was put on skates and I loved hockey. We played every sport you can imagine. You mentioned my dad. was a football player, very athletic, but he never played hockey. Somehow, I think one of my older cousins played hockey. And so then my brother started skating and I just followed along. I always wanted to be like them, but I also wanted to beat them. There wasn't anything that I loved more than being able to compete with my brothers and beat them at any sort of game. It was competition, always playing sports, but it was just competition no matter what. It was playing Scrabble as a family and somebody lost. Books and tiles were thrown and we had putters through the greens. We were crazy, but my mom, she was an unbelievable athlete, like never played professionally or anything, but she maybe is the most competitive one out there. So it was just that natural competitiveness and everything we did where it just drives you crazy to lose. And so every day just striving to win, like I don't know how many times we were banned from some certain game that we were playing or we had mini bats one time I remember and we were fighting so much my mom came out and started screaming took them and smashed them in the driveway. One time had to hide from my middle brother with my older brother, Phil, in the house because my middle brother so pissed off from losing some tennis game from us that he had brought his racket and tennis balls inside the house and was like ready to beat us up. So we were locking ourselves in the bathroom. I've had some pretty scary moments after beating them in competition.

Adam: competitiveness, a common thread from the time you were a little kid through your time as a competitive athlete to your time now as an executive. How are you able to channel that competitiveness to ultimately become great at your craft? And how can anyone become great at whatever it is that they're pursuing?

Amanda: Yeah, that competitiveness, like it just something in me where every day I never felt good enough. Still through the end of my career, I always wanted to be better and I was never good enough to the point where towards the end of my career, it kind of became a detriment because you lose confidence at some point when you never think that you're good at something, but the daily striving to get better, and especially when it's something that you love. That's what made it easy. I always had a goal in mind, whether it was an Olympics, a national championship. I had a goal whether it was in a month or four years or eight years. It was always something that I was striving for and to be better.

Adam: It's a really important point. The importance of working with a goal in mind. It's one thing to walk around really competitive, wanting to win, but unless you know what you're trying to win at, unless you have that goal in mind, unless you're laser focused on what you want, the competitiveness isn't necessarily going to be channeled in the right way.

Amanda: 100, 1000%. That's why I love my job right now. It's in hockey. It's what I was doing. I always find that I can do something and be better. But outside of that, with the working out, I need some sort of new goal, like that same, that spirit still inside of me. But if you don't have those high aspirations, it's hard to continually improve and get to where you want to be.

Adam: And that's another important point, which is that when you're someone who has that competitive fire, you can apply it in a lot of different ways. You were able to apply it in board games with your brothers. You were able to apply it in the hockey rink. You're now applying it in the front office. And Every one of us has different skills, different talents, different things that we're great at. And it doesn't necessarily mean that there's only one area professionally where we can apply what we're great at to excel. There's so many different things that we can do really, really well if we channel our gifts appropriately.

Amanda: Yeah, I think that's key. I mean, when I was younger, you grow up and people say, if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. And I don't know that you'll never work a day in your life, but it does make it. really, really enjoyable. And so if you love it, I just find that you're maybe better at it. So when I was playing, I wanted to get away. I like business and entrepreneurial stuff, but I don't really have that background. While I was playing, I was like, Oh, maybe I want to get out of hockey because I was so ingrained in it. But now that I'm working in it, I really can't imagine doing anything else. It's easy. I just love doing it. And I'm still in that same mindset that I'm not good enough and I'm here every day to improve.

Adam: Can you go back to the journey? How were you able to get from being a talented kid growing up in a very athletic, competitive family to being one of the greatest female hockey players of all time? What did you do to attain greatness? What did you do to reach peak performance?

Amanda: A lot of sacrifices. I had my goal that I wanted to win an Olympic gold medal, wanted to win national championships, play college, going back. Continually, I had something to work for. But yeah, it's a lot of sacrifice. Every day, that is the main purpose. When you're young, you're giving up Maybe having close friendships with kids at school that are off hanging out on the weekends or you're not going on that weekend trip up to the cabin because you need to work out or Christmas morning, Christmas Eve, you're finding a way to skate and work out and holidays aren't necessarily ever holidays because it's just another work day for you. That's the kind of stuff that for years that has to be on the back burner. I'm amazed by elite athletes that aren't somewhat selfish. It's a tough balance to be great and not be selfish and trying to do everything that you can possibly do to be great. I wish that that was something that I could have balanced more, but there's a part of what helped me be great was having to worry about yourself and how to be better all the time. I don't know what this means, but I was somebody that never wanted to show people all the work that I was doing. I did a lot of work behind the scenes. I don't know why or where that comes from, but I was constantly doing stuff to get better without wanting other people to see that.

Adam: It comes from humility, which is one of the most important characteristics among the most successful leaders, one of the most important characteristics among so many of the most successful people. And you shared so many important things for listeners to dial in on. The importance of sacrifice, the importance of focus. And something else you shared, which is interesting to me, so many elite athletes are really focused on themselves, which can make them selfish. And if you're playing an individual sport, that's one thing, but in your case, you're playing a team sport. So you have this, in your words, selfish focus, and you're then thrust into an environment where You're surrounded with a bunch of teammates who are also probably very focused on themselves. How does that all come together? And in your experience, what are the keys to the dynamics behind a highly successful and winning team?

Amanda: relationships knowing that everybody there wants to get better and maybe they want your spot or you want their spot but at the end of the day you're all striving for that same goal and so you have to have that trust in your teammates that whatever their job is whatever your job is they're going to get it done but it comes with building those relationships off the ice and I'm still best friends with players from every team that I've been on since high school through Olympic teams. That's something that I really value. That's just huge. It's the key, meeting and trusting every single player on your team.

Adam: How can anyone build a successful relationship?

Amanda: Asking questions, genuinely caring about somebody, how they're doing, Listening is huge, but just simply asking somebody how they're doing instead of avoiding the topic. Somebody, you know, is going through a hard time and you don't feel comfortable asking them something. I've kind of found it better that you just always hit it straight on and it goes a long way.

Adam: You've played on teams that have won a lot. You won an Olympic gold medal in 2018. You won a couple of silver medals in the Olympics. You won a lot of other gold medals in international competition, a number of championships in college. You also played on teams that didn't necessarily win. In your experience, what differentiates a winning team from a losing team, a winning culture from a losing culture, and how can leaders build winning teams and winning cultures?

Amanda: It's a hard thing to do. Culture is something I think that's worked on every day. It doesn't just happen overnight. You can't just put up a couple of signs and think that you have culture. continually acting on it. And it's hard to gain it back when you've lost it. I still think the key component is building those relationships, but it takes everybody from the general manager to the coaches, to the players on the team to know the goal and mission. And then every single day, it's a work in progress to get there together. It takes everybody behind the scenes, no matter how big or small their job is. Our equipment managers to our training staff, like we always say, they're the team behind the team, like how much they kept the team going. And they're people that you would never really hear about, but it's amazing how much impact a lot of people can have that are just more behind the scenes.

Adam: Amanda, a word that you didn't use but a word that's implicit in everything that you said is alignment. You need to have alignment between every person in your organization. In your words, you need to have alignment between the front office, the players, the coaches, the equipment manager. Everyone on your team everyone in your organization has to be focused on the same goals has to be focused on the same mission has to be focused on getting to that same place has to be committed to communicating openly building winning successful relationships When you're doing that you're going to be a lot more likely to win you're going to be a lot more likely to build a culture of that not only wins today, but wins in a sustainable way.

Amanda: Yeah, I got to write that down. I don't use that word very often, but you're right. That's what it is. It's having the same goal and everybody buying into that as well. And it's tough, but once you have that, you can keep it around longer, better. And once the same people are there, but the transition times are when it can get tough.

Adam: What were the toughest moments in your career and what did you learn from them?

Amanda: A lot. The first one when I was 17, I was invited to Olympic tryouts for the 2010 Olympics and I was cut from those and so I was devastated. That was the first time that I was ever really cut or failed. But I ended up going back to high school for my senior year and it was the best year of my life. So I think, you know, it was where I was supposed to be, but that definitely motivated me for the next four years that like, Hey, I'm going to be on that next team and make an impact. I made the 2014 Olympics, but after that I had post-concussion symptoms. And for two years, I was sidelined from hockey. I didn't play hockey for over two years at that point. I thought my career was maybe over, like would wake up just depressed and miserable every day, had continual headaches. And I just, all I wanted to do was play hockey, play in the Olympics, win a gold medal. And as each day slid by the farther it got away and it was really tough times, I took a full year off of school and because just a couch potato. I thought I was doing everything I could for the concussion because at that time it was like dark rooms, don't do too much activity, eye training. But then I saw a different doctor and they had me start working out again. And they were like, no, you need to tack this. And your brain now is in all these patterns of, I don't know the exact terminology, but you're essentially allowing your brain to keep having these headaches and by not working out and not breaking that. And so they had me start to work out and it was progressive. First it was just walking, then it was a stationary bike and then it's like head movements, but I would feel awful. Like I would have pounding headaches. I was going to throw up all the time and they would say, okay, then take a break and then get back out there. And so. I was working through that for months, but I slowly started to feel better getting myself back into working out and just even environments. I wasn't going out to restaurants for years. I didn't have a sip of alcohol for a couple of years. So they were like, go out to a bar, go out to a concert. And actually the first concert that I went out to, I had one drink and I was sick. immediately after the concert, just having all that stimulation. But it was something that I had to work through. And I was able to come back for the last 10 games of my senior year of college with the Gophers. And we ended up winning another national championship. So that was one of the most amazing thinking. I was never going to maybe play hockey again to working through just feeling sick and in pain every day and then coming back and being able to win a national championship. I'll never forget that journey.

Adam: As you're describing your journey of overcoming the failure, both of getting cut, not reaching your goal of making the team, and then the physical failure that you experienced, which was clearly grueling. What were the keys to pushing past both of those failures and what advice do you have for anyone listening to this conversation on how to overcome the failures, obstacles, challenges that they face in their careers and in their lives?

Amanda: A few things. I would say one is leaning on people and support. Find those people that make you feel good. Be around them, talk to them. At first, I was isolating myself during this, just feeling so sorry for myself and down all the time that I had lost some connections. And it was just the more people I talked to, the better I felt. Two, just a positive attitude. I said, at first I was very down on myself. Like, why is this happening to me? Really feeling sorry for myself. And then it was like a change of mindset. Like, I'm going to get better. I'm attacking this. That really helped me. And then three, just never quit. Just one step at a time. Day by day, just, you might have some days that go backwards. Eventually you'll get there.

Adam: I love it. Surround yourself with the right people, maintain a positive attitude and never quit. How can anyone develop a winning mindset?

Amanda: I guess it's person to person, like what is winning to them? Key component that I just come back to is relationships and being around people that make you feel good and making others feel good. There's nothing better than having people that you can make laugh or can make you laugh. For me, my relationships with people is winning.

Adam: I love that. And it's something that we oftentimes take for granted. It's something that we oftentimes don't focus on, but so much of our mindset, so much of who we are is shaped by who we surround ourselves with. And when you surround yourself with negative people, you're going to be more negative. It's inevitable. When you surround yourself with positive people, you're going to be more positive. When you surround yourself with people who are uplifting people, they're going to uplift you. And you have certain choices you can make in life. And one of those choices is who you decide to surround yourself with. That will impact you in many ways, including to your point, it will impact your mindset.

Amanda: For sure. 1000%. I was just thinking through all these championships and winning and I don't remember a lot of like the times like who scored or the score of the game in that championship game. But you remember the people, the moment with the people. It's not everything else, but it's all those memories that you had with your teammates. That's what you remember at the end of the day.

Adam: You played for a lot of different coaches over the years. What do you believe makes a great coach? What do you believe makes a great leader?

Amanda: somebody that can both understand and get to know people like on a deep level and know that not everybody operates the same. Like how do I deal with this person compared to that person being able to have those personal relationships. And then I think also somebody that will hold you accountable. At the same time, somewhat be a friend, but then so much respect that they can push you and hold you accountable for your mistakes.

Adam: Amanda, I'm with you 100%. It's really important for leaders to, on the one hand, lead with love, lead with a deep sense of caring. The most successful leaders, the most successful coaches love people, care about people, but at the same time, Leaders coaches need to keep their people accountable and those two things are not Contradictory, they're not conflicting the most successful leaders are able to do both Yeah, it's a hard thing.

Amanda: I have had coaches that have been able to do that, but I've also had coaches that haven't been able to it's a really tough balance and

Adam: Part of it is understanding that if you want your people to be great, if you want your players to be great, if you want your employees to be great, if you want the people who you're leading to be great, the way that they're going to get better is by you as a leader keeping them accountable. If you don't do that, you're not going to enable them to become as good as they can be.

Amanda: For sure.

Adam: There were many moments in your career when you were on the ice and it was on your shoulders. Game was on the line. One that stands out to me, Olympics 2018, final game, shootout. But that was just one of many high-pressure moments in your career. How did you feel when the chips were on the line, when everything was at stake? And in your experience, what are the keys to performing under pressure?

Amanda: I think it's the preparation. that allows you to perform under pressure. That moment, I'll never forget. It was so loud and it's so loud in there. All I remember seeing was like the puck, the goalie, the white ice. I didn't really hear anything. I was in that moment. Everything else was blacked out. It almost seemed dead silent to me. And I think it's all the preparation and time. leading up to that moment that prepared me for it. I mean, in college, I used to have our backup goalie do hundreds of shootouts with me. I felt bad for the girl. I'm sure she never, she never told me to stop, but I would just continually practice them. I didn't have a great game that game or tournament, but in that moment when I needed to show up, I did. So that is something that I'm definitely proud of.

Adam: what you do when the lights are off dictates who you are when the lights are on.

Amanda: Yep, exactly.

Adam: You're an executive with the Pittsburgh Penguins. You're one of only a few women who are working in a front office role in the NHL. What advice do you have for women working in and trying to excel in male-dominated industries, and what advice do you have for men in those industries on how to be effective allies?

Amanda: That's a great question. I think for women, being open to putting yourself out there, it's tough. The first tournament that I went to, Scout, I walked into a room. I was the only female scout in there, and there was probably 200 men in the room. And so it's kind of eye-opening. You're like, wow, this is really still how it is. I had to reassure myself, like, no, this is where I'm supposed to be. I should be here. and so it is there are definitely times where you question yourself because you don't see as many women around that just know that no you're there for a reason you deserve to be there and just have confidence so be willing to put yourself into those situations and then I'm lucky with the penguins they are unbelievable with me with everybody but with females they empower me they want me to exceed and not just because I'm female they want me to at the same time because I'm a female they want me to succeed but like in the right way not just giving me things to check a box let's say but they want me to get to a point where I'm continually moving up and they are really invested in my career I'm lucky with the men that I'm around I don't feel any different I feel like my opinion is valued I don't have a great answer of how other men can do that because I feel like I'm in a very great spot.

Adam: Well, it sounds like what male allies can and should do is model the behavior that the Penguin's front office is displaying toward you, which is empowering you, investing in you, enabling you to be your best self, to show up as your best self every day.

Amanda: Yeah, since day one, they've done that. And that's part of why I love it here so much. I'm so loyal to them because they've had great mentors and continually are pushing me to get better and supporting me at the same time.

Adam: Amanda, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Amanda: One, put in the time. 24-7, like if you want to be great, you have to work. You have to put in work and you have to put in extra work. Two, help others. Always be asking, how can I help you? What can I do? Three, relationships. Build relationships with the people around you.

Adam: Amanda, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of 30-Minute Mentors.

Amanda: Thank you for having me. I wish I could get some more advice from you, but I'll be listening to all the episodes, so I'm looking forward to it.

Adam: I'm flattered. Thank you. This was a pleasure. I really enjoyed it.

Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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