Many people look up to Olympians for their grit and determination. One of the athletes many look up to is female ice hockey player Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser. She led the Canadian Women's national team to 7 World Championships and 4 Olympic Gold medals. Dr. Wickenheiser was also hailed as the MVP of two of those Olympic campaigns. When she left her hockey career, she decided to pursue medicine. As of today, Dr. Wickenheiser is completing her residency training. In this episode, Dr. Wickenheiser shares her insights with Harbir Sian about what it takes to succeed in sport, business, and medicine.
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Over The Boards: Triumphs In Ice Hockey And Medicine With Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser
Welcome back to another episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me here to learn and grow. As always, I truly appreciate all the support and everything that everyone has done to share the show and help it grow. I asked this one favor right off the top, which is if you do find any value from this episode or any other episode, share it with someone else who you think could get value from it. Take a screenshot, throw it up on your Instagram story, hit like and subscribe, leave a comment and a review or any of those things. Whichever one is easiest for you, please go ahead and do that.
Talking about bringing value, I'm always trying to bring on guests who are going to help us be better in some capacity, form and way we can learn from their experience to grow in our own life and experience. Our guest takes the cake in all of those categories. I love all my guests and I have some pretty special people on the show. I've been very blessed. Our guest for this episode is the greatest at what she does. When somebody is good at their job, profession or whatever they do, it's hard to say that you are the single greatest person in the entire world at what you do. That is something special.
That person is Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser. If you haven't heard of her before, it's understandable, but I know that there are a lot of Canadians out there who have heard of her. She is a 7-time World Champion and a 4-time Olympic Gold Medalist with the Canadian Women's National Team. She was the captain on most of those teams. She was the MVP twice at the Olympics, at a whole different level when it comes to her sport. To go beyond that, after her hockey career, she completed her Medical degree and is in the process of completing her residency as a medical doctor. After many years of playing hockey, she's moved on to this new phase of her life and is no doubt succeeding and crushing it in this capacity as well.
All of this over the background of the pandemic, she's continued to grow and succeed. To that end, she wrote a book called Over The Boards: Lessons From The Ice. That was the impetus for me to reach out to her. I'm already very familiar with Dr. Wickenheiser from her years as a hockey player. When I saw this book, I had to read it. I'm glad I did because the lessons that come out of this book apply to any one and every one, no matter what industry and profession you’re in. She goes from talking about motherhood and challenges early on in her career as a child, 6, 7, 8 years old, playing on the rink in the backyard, being told that she can't play with boys, having a change in sleep in boiler rooms and closets when she goes on trips for tournaments, to becoming the greatest in the world.
You have to cut out things that aren't important or not serving your purpose.
It’s unbelievable to have her on the show and have her share these insights about the ups, downs and struggles. The gender bias, grit, and resilience it takes to get to where she is. I hope that everyone reading can take at least small pieces of insight from this and apply them to their lives right away. I have and will from reading the book and after speaking to her, I will for sure. Let me know what you think. I'm excited to know everyone's feedback on this one. Shoot me a DM on Instagram, send me an email or whatever you like. Finally, here's the episode with Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser. Talk to you soon.
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Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser, thank you so very much for joining me on the show. I am truly grateful.
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
It’s my pleasure. I can only imagine how busy you are with everything you've got going on. I'm grateful for that. I had a guest a while back and I said to her, “You must be so busy,” She said, “I don't like using the word busy because it's got a bit of a negative connotation to it. My life is full.” I said, “That sounds better.” If you wouldn't mind, what types of things is your life full of?
Over the Boards: Lessons from the Ice
I like that too. I am very busy, but it's always a choice. A little bit less when you're doing a residency in medicine. Your life is not fully your own. I'm in a family med residency program here in Toronto and the work that I do with the Toronto Maple Leafs. That is two full-time jobs on top of each other. I've been able to manage both. The pandemic has thrown lots of twists and turns into all of our lives. In some ways, it's been a blessing with a lot of virtual learning and less commuting. In other ways, it's been a nightmare for everyone in terms of not being able to travel. I have spent my whole life on the road traveling. This has been a bit of a weird couple of years here because of not traveling, but it's been good in some ways. Between those two jobs, it's been a full-time gig.
What I've heard about residency is it’s more than one full-time job. In there, somewhere, you managed to also write a book, Over The Boards: Lessons From The Ice, which was my impetus to reach out to you because this was such a great book. Can you tell me where you found the time to do that?
I was asked to do this book and I did one in 2010. It was called Gold Medal Diary. It was about what goes on inside the Olympic village at the games, so I was asked to do a second one. In this one, I thought I would divide up into these almost three periods of offensive, defensive and neutral zone in the game of hockey. I started it before the pandemic hit. About three months into the pandemic, I had it finished because we had a bit of downtime there. NHL was canceled and there were residents pulled out of the rotations. Life was a bit of a wall. I was able to do it.
The way I wrote it was by driving. I talk into my phone. We would put and type it out. I had Nancy McDonald in Vancouver put it into a bit of a structure. We worked through it and she did a fantastic job that way. I was able to get all my language down on paper and my thoughts. It turned up a little better than I expected, but it's a process. There's a lot of work.
Anybody I've spoken to who's written a book says it's one of the most challenging, time-consuming things they have ever done. Kudos to you. Going back to your work. I was telling my wife as I was going through your book, “Can you believe she did this as well?” One of the things is I have friends and family who are medical doctors.
I've heard how grueling that whole process can be. Whether it's the first few years while you're in school, clinical stuff or residency stuff and here you are with a full-time job working with the Toronto Maple Leafs, a professional national hockey team at the same time. It is mind-blowing to me. You mentioned in your book, “Efficiency is one of the keys to getting a lot of stuff done.” Can you share a little bit of some secrets around efficiency? What might you be doing to be efficient?
Efficiency comes when you're well-rested.
I've done this my whole life as an athlete where I had to be a good time manager. I had a young child at the age of 21. I’m managing to be a young mom, traveling the world and being an athlete. I'm very internally driven. A little bit of that A-type personality to want to prepare and be the best in everything that I'm doing. What I realized at a young age is the first thing is you’ve got to cut out things that aren't important or not serving your purpose. I don't spend a lot of extraneous wasting time. I'm not a time-waster. I believe that every minute matters. I like to prepare, not looking down the road but the day before, that’s I will usually prepare my day. What I was training and competing in was very militaristic in terms of every minute plotted out.
It is a bit the same with residency and the Leaf schedule because so much has to get done and we need to stay on top of it. I like to prep that way. Efficiency also comes when you're rested. I believe in getting sleep. I try to get eight hours a night if I can, minimum. That's not always possible in residency, but I have become a good napper through the years being an athlete, so I can power nap if I have to for twenty minutes and usually come alive.
The last thing is physical fitness. I train every day and try not to let that fall by the wayside because if you can't take care of yourself, you can't do anything else very well if you're not feeling good. Those things attribute to efficiency and then prioritizing things and not checking in where you're maybe wasting time, having days too where you can Netflix and do nothing, which I also do. I also try to carve out leisure time. People think that I worked 24/7. I do work extremely hard, but then I also rest hard too, chill out, shut off the phone, take breaks and do things like that at times as well. Probably not as often as I should, but that's important also.
Ice Hockey And Medicine: Athletes become very good because their whole life, they get told everything they’re doing wrong. And so, on a daily basis, they get used to absorbing criticism, dealing with it, and letting it propel them forward versus crushing them.
That's good to know. I mean this in the most positive way possible. You do come across as a machine. You are driven, do things efficiently and are incredibly successful, but it's nice to know there's that aspect to your life as well, where you are human. You need to rest, recover and have that alone time. There's a chapter in your book Rest Is A Weapon. That's key because we also live in a hustle culture. You’ve got to work hard, grind 24/7 and sleep is for the dead. I'm a little more like you, where I feel like I need that 7 or 8 hours every night to function well. If I meet someone who's like, “I only sleep four hours,” I'll say, “Hayley Wickenheiser sleeps eight, so I'm good.”
This culture of more and better is not necessarily efficient, wise, or productive. I don't think people do their best work. It hit me between the eyes in residency when I'm on hour 24 of 26 and I have had 20 minutes of sleep, went to the bathroom once and ate an apple at 10:00 in the morning. I'm like, “This is crazy. Nobody can be at their best doing this.” It forced me to have strategies to survive those shifts and this period in residency where I know I have to grind it out for another 18 to 28 months to get through it all. In the end, the payoff for the rest of my life is going to be the freedom and wings that I have gotten through this profession. It's a trade-off sometimes where it is a grind, but you have to always have that wall or pause to get to the downside of it or you'll hate it and burn out.
Burnout with the pandemic has been a big topic as well. Take care of yourself. Everybody out there who may be working really hard, make sure you do get that rest so you can continue to succeed. You are the highest level athlete I have spoken to, which is probably not a surprise, but in other sports, whether it's hockey or basketball, I find that if they're successful or high achievers in their sport or athletics in general, they're able to transfer something from sport or athletics to whether it's business, education, medicine or whatever it is.
If you can't take care of yourself, you really can't do anything else.
That's the case for you, having been so successful in your hockey career and then being able to almost seamlessly transition to becoming a medical doctor, a business owner, working with Leaps, all these things. Are there specific things that you can put your finger on that you transferred from athletics to a non-athletic world that could have helped you succeed?
There's a lot. I tell people every day that every single thing that I did in sport, I use every day in medicine like discipline, teamwork and preparation. One of the reasons that athletes become very good at other lives is that you get told everything you're doing wrong with your whole life. Daily, you get used to absorbing criticism, dealing with it and letting it propel you forward versus crush you. I have seen in residency for sure, maybe younger medical students who don't have the life experience I have. When you do get criticism, which you always do, and feedback on things you're doing wrong because you're constantly failing forward, people get demoralized.
One of the things athletes do well is they don't let it demoralize them and they keep going. They have this, “I will make it,” mentality because that's what you have to do in sports. It's such a dog-eat-dog world. There is an incredible level of commitment, preparation and discipline that goes into being the best in the world or at the top of your sport that many people have never experienced in life. They are pushing your body to the limits that it can go to playing and living day to day through fatigue, injuries and actual physical, mental and emotional pain. That hardens and makes people resilient. Athletes tend to be very good at those types of qualities and then bring them into the business world.
Ice Hockey And Medicine: There is an incredible level of commitment, preparation, and discipline that goes into being the best in the world or at the top of your sport.
One of the things that male sports, especially pro sports, can learn from female sports is a lot of these guys make a lot of money. When they retire, they don't have a life plan for life after, whereas most female athlete is thinking about life after because they're not set off financially. They are set off to hit the beach and call it a day. That's a healthy thing because a lot of these guys ended up struggling with no purpose and direction. All of a sudden, the day is done and there are no twenty other players or whatever to go and hang out with. These things are real. I was the last player on the national team to get my university degree. I was in my late 30s. Most of my other teammates already had one. They have MBAs and all sorts of things. They are very educated and have good discipline along the way.
There are so many points that you touched on throughout the book, such amazing themes and topics. One of them was you're pretty direct about certain things, which I like a lot. You're upfront about some of these struggles that players do face. You talk about in male sports some of the guys who struggle with mental illness or whether it's substance abuse that is not talked about very much. It's important to bring that to the forefront so people understand, “We look and put these athletes,” like yourself as well but athletes on a pedestal and assume that they're all good and everything's fine because you're a successful athlete, but there are so much more happening there.
Thank you for sharing those types of things in there as well. For yourself also, you were quite vulnerable throughout the book. I imagine it’s not something that you were necessarily good at based on the other things you talk about yourself as being the type of athlete you were, which is key. For somebody else, even like myself looking at an athlete, you assume that people got this shield around them. They're protected. They don't let things get to them or bother them, but that's not true.
One of the quotes that you have in there, pivot a little bit from that was from the 2010 Olympics, “The pressure is a privilege.” You were referencing that quote from Billie Jean King. I love that. It's easy for anybody to get caught up under pressure, even in day-to-day life, but we have to look at that pressure as a privilege. If you wouldn't mind elaborating on that quote and where you came across it?
To go back to the vulnerability piece too, which ties in as an athlete, captain and leader, early on, it was like, “You must have it all together. You can't let your guard down. You can never show anybody that you're struggling.” I learned through the years, maturity and being around long enough that sometimes the best effective form of leadership is to show that vulnerability and humanize yourself with the people that you work with because you're more relatable that way. That was something that, for me, didn't come naturally. It made me a better leader. When it comes to, “Pressure is a privilege,” in the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, the entire media of Canada kept saying to us, “Are you guys going to choke? It’s the Olympics in your home country. Can you get the job done?” These types of back and forth.
This whole culture of more is better is not necessarily efficient or productive.
We decided that it's not the weight of a nation pushing us down and wanting us to fail. It's the weight of the nation pushing us from behind 37 million people like the Seventh Man in the stance. We're going to flip the narrative on its head and the pressure would be a privilege. I use that mantra a lot in every aspect of my life. When I'm quietly whining to myself or complaining about how much I don't like residency a lot, I check myself. I would say, “People would die to have this position that you're in and have this opportunity. Get over yourself to the first-world problem here.”
I remind myself like, “We all do it. It's normal. We all have our struggles and perspective. It doesn't matter if you're rich, poor or what your status is. We all struggle.” Sometimes it's the way to reframe it. It's also a way when I do feel like the weight of the world or there is a lot of pressure to do something, “I'm not alone. I've got a team here.” Other people are capable and deflecting. In a team sport, you learn to deflect pressure a lot because you can. I don't know how those single tennis players who were there on the court went by themselves. They don't have too many places to deflect the pressure, but I certainly used it as a tactic to survive those moments.
Sports like golf or tennis could get tough. You're out there all by yourself. No one to lean on her or delegate to that could get challenging. You can see why certain tennis players explode on the court sometimes. We've touched on this briefly a bit, but you start the book with this and something that stays in my mind a lot, in general, is grit and resilience. You make a distinction between those two terms. I imagine that's a key skill or quality for an athlete to succeed but also in the business world, in medicine, all these things to get through school, your day-to-day business and downtimes. If you wouldn't mind, can you first distinguish the difference of what you see between grit and resilience? Can those things be built or is it innate and you're born with?
Ice Hockey And Medicine: Sometimes, the best effective form of leadership is to show that vulnerability, to humanize yourself with the people that you work with, because you're more relatable that way.
Grit is the ability to get up every day, do hard things and get through hard times to work and persevere through whatever's difficult, assignments you don't like in school, a project that works that you don't like, dealing with people that you don't get along with, finding ways to get the job done. Resiliency is built over time where you cumulate this grit by working through difficult things and then you gather this internal confidence like, “There's no task. It's too tough for me to get through. I can do this.” That resiliency is built over time. For athletes who are in the sports world, the best athletes that I've ever been around are the most resilient.
They are the ones that can get knocked down, whether it's injury, swamps, poor play, coaches' decisions, get back up, keep going and find a way. They are the most solution-based people that I know. They know the glass is generally half full. That develops a lot of resiliency and fortitude. When you get into a bind in a tough pressure situation, you can always go back to the well knowing, “I did this work. I'm prepared. There's no one more ready than I am.” I hung my hat for my career on work ethic and preparation. I always felt like someone could be more talented than me. There's not much I could control, but no one's going to outwork me. That's what I'm going to hold onto. That's where I'll have my control and where the resilience came in.
It's something that you can build. You can train yourself to be more gritty and build that resiliency. I feel like that's an important message. Sometimes it's easy for some to look around and say, “That person's got whatever quality it might be that's making them more successful than I.” You can work on it. As long as you're working hard, you should be able to build that as well. That’s the important thing.
The last big topic I wanted to touch on was gender bias. There's no doubt that you face your challenges as a young person and a young girl coming up in a sport that was male dominant, whether not getting playing time, having to change in closets, boiler rooms and sleep in those spaces because there's no space for girls in these facilities. How about when you were older? As you're becoming a more well-known or successful hockey player, please do if you're comfortable sharing certain scenarios. Is this something that you face throughout your career? Even in medicine, do you feel that you face these types of things as well?
It is something that I faced my whole career. It was probably harder until I was midway through my national team career because a few things changed. I felt when I was younger, I needed to constantly prove myself that every time I stepped on the ice, I wanted people to say, “That's a good hockey player,” not a female hockey player and leave impressed. As I got older, I dropped that because an exhausting way to live is trying to prove something to someone every single day.
At the end of my career, moving into medicine and my role with the Leafs, I have settled into this place where I feel very comfortable that I can hold my own with anyone at any given time and situation. I don't feel like I experienced that. I know it exists and it's out there. I feel that you're constantly having as a female, prove yourself, work harder or give it right back when it's dished out. There's this dynamic that does exist, especially in a male-dominated world like hockey, maybe not so much in medicine because it's a little bit more male and female dominant. Certainly, the hockey world was still stuck sometimes back in 1972 and it's a challenge. Internally, I feel different about it than I did when I was younger.
Would you be able to then share your thoughts with a young person or a young lady who may be coming up, whether in sports, medicine or business, lessons that you've learned there that maybe help them come through these potential challenges as well?
You’ve got to have thick skin. We can never control what other people are going to say, do or how they're going to react. When I was a little girl, my parents supported me. There's no easy way. If you want to do things that are unorthodox and maybe not female or male-dominated, you have to be willing to walk through some uncomfortable positions.
I always tell young women, “When it's dished out, don't be afraid to give it right back. Persevere and have that belief in yourself. If you don't believe in yourself and you're not going to be your own best friend at times, nobody else is going to do it. It's not comfortable. It's not easy. It's getting easier, but it's like anything, work ethic, your passion and preparation.” People are more open-minded to give young girls and women unorthodox male. Typically male positions give them opportunities to have a chance, but you’ve got to be prepared to walk through that door when it happens because you may only get one shot.
Unfortunately, there are limitations for females to have the pressure of having to take that shot when it gets there, having to stand up, push back or whatever in all those things. It's nice to have a role model like yourself to show that it can be done. Thanks to people like yourself, there are more opportunities for young girls who are coming up. Thank you for everything that you've done. From the father of two little girls, I appreciate that for creating these opportunities for them in the future.
It's getting easier. For a young girl or a little 5-year-old girl growing up, it is a lot different than when I was a little 5-year-old girl. There'll be professional women talking someday for her. She'll be able to have a full-paying job in hockey in any role that she probably chooses. It still has a long way to go, but there is progress. I choose to focus on the things that have been good and progress than what we don't have. I believe in solutions to problems.
You've briefly met one of my daughters via social media. It’s because there's a book that she has. It’s called 5-Minute Stories for Fearless Girls. You're in the book. There are a bunch of stories here of successful women throughout history who've done things to change history and you're in it. It's cool that I could tell her about you in that book and learn about you myself in your book, which is called Over The Boards: Lessons From The Ice. Before we wrap up, I usually have two final questions to ask every guest. Where can people find you, your book and learn more about you?
I have a website. It’s HayleyWickenheiser.com. You can find me on Twitter at @Wick_22 and Instagram @HChickWick. I have a website under my name as well. It's a public website. WickFest.com is my hockey festival for young girls between the ages of 6 and 18 that we host every year in Surrey, Calgary and possibly, Toronto if we can ever get through this pandemic. If people want to pick up the book, there are chapters on Amazon or wherever you buy your books. I appreciate the time. It’s great to chat with you. Thanks for having me on.
I'm not going to let you go yet because I have two final questions that I like to ask every guest. The first one is if we could hop in a time machine and go back to a point in time where you were struggling with something that was happening that was quite difficult, please feel free to share that moment if you're comfortable. More importantly, what is the advice that you would give to yourself at that moment?
I had a bad foot injury at the end of the Olympics that I played in Sochi. I had to get surgery and was non-weight bearing for four months. I didn't know if I'd play again, but I ended up playing a couple more years. The first thing I say is don't panic. You have a good plan and support around you. Start from the end and work backward, create from where you want to be, start working from there and take it every day, one day at a time.
I feel like I've heard something somewhat similar from Jeff Bezos. It seems like you're in good company with that. The last question, which honestly, I feel silly asking you this because it's fairly clear from learning about you. Everything you've achieved, world championships, Olympic gold medals, Hockey Hall of Fame, then a doctor, how much of this would you say is due to luck? How much is due to hard work?
90% hard work and 10% right place, right time. Being at the start when I was a little girl, I had the social support, the right environment to grow up, and fortunate social-economic, middle-class Canada. I had lots of opportunities that way. I took it and ran with it.
Thank you so much for the time, for everything you've done for hockey, for people in Canada and my little girls.
Thanks for having me. It's great to talk to you.
Thank you to everybody who's reading. Don't forget to hit like, subscribe and check out Dr. Hayley. Wickenheiser’s book. It's so good, Over The Boards: Lessons From The Ice. I'll be back with you in the next episode. Take care.
Important Links
Instagram – Dr. Harbir Sian
@Wick_22 – Twitter
@HChickWick – Instagram
About Dr. Helley Wickenheiser
Hayley Wickenheiser, OC is a Canadian former ice hockey player, resident physician[2] and executive for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
She represented Canada at the Winter Olympics five times, capturing four gold and one silver medal and twice being named tournament MVP, and one time at the Summer Olympics in softball, and is a seven-time winner of the world championships. Hayley is widely considered to be the greatest female ice hockey player of all time.