ReThinking: Breaking leadership barriers with hockey coach Jessica Campbell

What It Covers

Adam Grant interviews Jessica Campbell, the first full-time female assistant coach in NHL history with the Seattle Kraken, exploring her three-part coaching framework of listen, lift, and love, how being a trailblazer shapes leadership identity, and what research reveals about feedback, trust-building, and the psychological cost of going first.

Key Questions Answered

• •The "Listen, Lift, Love" Framework: Before delivering any feedback or film review, Campbell asks players "where are you at right now?" first. Knowing a player's emotional state determines how to deliver information effectively. Skipping this step means coaching into resistance. The sequence — build relationship, elevate potential, then set high standards — earns the license to challenge without triggering defensiveness.
• •Feedback Research on Praise vs. Criticism: A meta-analysis by Kluger and Denisi covering 100 years of feedback research found no overall difference in effectiveness between positive and negative feedback. The real variable is target: feedback aimed at the person triggers defensiveness, while feedback aimed at specific behavior or task drives change. Ask "what's the first thing you'd do differently?" to shift immediately into controllable actions.
• •Self-Assessment Before Feedback Delivery: Grant's method for reducing defensiveness is asking performers to self-assess before receiving any coaching input. This converts a one-way monologue into a dialogue, surfaces blind spots the coach can address as novel information, and gets the person talking about specific behaviors rather than defending their identity or ability.
• •Trailblazer Competence Threshold: Research on Olympic figure skating judging shows that going first benefits highly skilled performers — they set the standard — but penalizes average performers who face harsher initial judgment before realistic expectations form. The implication for leaders breaking barriers: the more demonstrable the competence, the lower the psychological cost of being first in a space.
• •Guilt as a Leadership Driver: Research led by Becky Schomburg shows leaders prone to guilt outperform those prone to shame. Guilt — focused on a specific action rather than personal identity — produces anticipatory accountability: the drive to not let the team down. This motivates servant leadership behaviors including planning, care, and follow-through, rather than withdrawal or defensiveness that shame typically produces.