Ryan Walter

Currently an Assistant Coach with the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks, Ryan Walter retired from Professional Hockey in 1993 after playing 15 seasons and over 1000 games in the National Hockey League. Drafted second overall by the Washington Capitals in 1978, Ryan was named the youngest NHL captain in his second of four seasons, going on to play nine seasons with the Montreal Canadiens, winning a Stanley Cup in 1986. He finally returned to his hometown to play his last two years for the Vancouver Canucks. Ryan was named Team Canada Captain in the World Junior Tournament, and was selected to play in the NHL All-Star game in 1983 and has played for Team Canada in four World Championships. He has also become a Vice-President of the National Hockey League Players Association and has been honoured as NHL Man of the Year in 1992.

Ryan is both an inspiring motivational speaker and interactive leadership coach, translating his personal experience into practical applications that will help build and develop Leaders and Teams. With an emphasis on performance, leadership, team enhancement and personal empowerment, Ryan offers practical applications that are easily understood and used. His style leads from humorous dressing room banter to direct action as he charts a winning course for high performance, leadership and team achievement.

Ryan has a Master of Arts Degree in Leadership/Business and is the author of four books, Off the Bench and Into the Game, which has sold over 20,000 copies worldwide, Simply the Best: Insights and Strategies from Great Hockey Coaches, Simply the Best: Players on Performance, and Hockey Plays and Strategies. He is the creator of the board game Trade Deadline Hockey and a regular contributor to Hockey Now magazine.

Ryan has been the co-founder and President of two start-up companies, a TV hockey analyst, and a hockey adviser and actor for both television and movies.  Ryan's enthusiasm from the page, the screen, the bench, and the podium is contagious as he fulfills his mission to Inspire the Hungry Spirit!

Ryan Walters' Blog Entry - The Great Leaders Secret

• 7 Essential Qualities for Inspiring your team's HUNGRY SPIRIT!

  Management gurus focus much training around engagement and empowerment of the work force, and don't get me wrong, I believe that these elements are important and essential, but to engage and empower people, the first, foundational step is to create an atmosphere where our people stay excited and COMMITTED. The leadership question then has to be "how do we develop and sustain our people's individual and cultural HUNGRY spirit?"
  
  The Gallup Organization in early 2001 suggested that around 30 % of the workers that they interviewed were fully engaged at work. 55% of the workers suggested that they were NOT engaged and another 19% of those people were actively disengaged (meaning that they are not only unhappy at work but that they actively share those feelings with their colleagues.)
  
  Leadership must often then be focused on identifying and removing obstacles in the path of sustaining our people's HUNGRY spirit. As part of my keynote speeches and one or two day leadership/team development sessions, we explore how to coach and inspire our people's HUNGRY spirit around the following 7 key qualities:

  • Visioning
  • Believing
  • Framing
  • Deflecting
  • Honoring
  • Connecting
  • Personally Staying Hungry

  
  
  Understanding how each of these factors plays its part in establishing your team's HUNGRY environment helps management explore specific adjustments or enhancements that they may decide to implement to increase their people's team experience, thereby enhancing the organization's productivity.
  
  We also develop an understanding around how the convergence of PASSION and PURPOSE are so critical to sustaining our personal or cultural HUNGRY spirit. William Sunday said, "More men fail through lack of PURPOSE than lack of talent." Understanding how our people's individual PURPOSE and PASSIONS align with those of the team or organization is key to triggering and sustaining their hungry spirit.

• Coaching HUNGRY Teams - Wisdom from 12 NHL Coaches

  Increasingly, the ability of Leadership to engage and empower your players determines the performance of your organization. But how do you ensure you're getting the most from your individual players and your team? Ryan shows managers and coach's techniques that NHL coaches utilize to create their HIGH PERFORMANCE CULTURE.
  
  We have constructed a fabulous coaching program as a result of interviewing 12 top National Hockey League coaches for Simply The Best :Insights and Strategies from Great Hockey Coaches. Their amazing strategies, along with Ryan's championship experience on and off the ice, have become the core elements of Coaching HUNGRY Teams. Whether you are a minor sport coach, a parent, manager, or CEO, coaching is an essential process in all that you do, both coaching for performance, and also coaching your next generation coaches and leaders so that they are prepared and properly trained to step up.
  
  Over a 1 hour Key Note through to a 2 Day interactive Session, Together we will discover some or most of these elements:

  • How to coach and use individual strengths to enhance the team's HUNGRY spirit.
  • How to develop the most efficient communication style for coaching your team.
  • How to understand the links between coaching, leadership and amazing team synergy.
  • How to use the technology of the FAN-PLAYER continuum to help our teammates continue to move towards individual and team high performance.
  • How to coach team synergy by building a Team Code of Honor.
  • How to create your team's Shared Vision.
  • How to recognize the 3 underpinnings of team momentum.
  • How to read your team using Tuckman's model.
  • How to identify and create the process for High Performance Culture.
  • How to develop an interactive environment where your team simultaneously plays and learns.
  • How to enable and encourage your team's carriers to powerfully deliver your message.
  • How to increase your team's efficiency through expectational performance.

• Leadership/Team Development Sessions!

  Ryan works with you to develop leadership at every level of your organization with his "Leaders in Action" and "Teams in Action" training sessions. From a 2 day retreat to 4 half-day sessions or 10 two-hour sessions your people will see accelerated growth in the areas of Leadership, Team, High Performance and preparing for Change.
  
  These sessions are interactive and fun. Together clients explore experientially Leadership issues such as:

  • Leading with your Personal-Strengths
  • Leading the new paradigm- Define it
  • Leading Conflict
  • Leading Team synergism
  • Leading & Coaching the Personalities on your Team
  • Leading Globally
  • Leading Individual High Performance
  • Leading & Communication
  • Leading "Carriers of the message"
  • Leading & Power
  • Leading Accountability- Developing the Code-of-Honor
  • Leading Expectation Performance
  • Leading Engagement
  • Leading Team Development- Tuckman's Model
  • Leading Facilitation
  • Leading High Performance Culture
  • Leading Visionary Process
  • Leading Framing
  • Leading "CHANGE"
  • Leading me First

  
  
  Whether you're dealing with difficult players, working with high achieving team-mates, or coping with the organizational stress of change, Ryan Walter will equip you with the interpersonal tools and team development strategies you need to LEAD sustained success.

• Leading Success: Everything Rises and Falls on Leadership

  Drawing on his experience on and off the ice Ryan believes that in this new, high-pace, high-change environment that there is no room for followers. "Leaders Leading Leaders" is the new paradigm that corporate and organizational wins are created around. The org-chart remains the same but leadership development and growth at every level is an essential process to engage and empower our people.
  
  The pace of change has increased exponentially over these past 5 to 10 years, and simply put Leadership-is-about-CHANGE. Growing our people in this area of leadership is no longer an option. Ryan Walter will lead your people through a powerful, synergistic process on how to grow your self as a Leader and how to enhance Leadership through out your organization.

  • Challenging some common myths about having one leadership style by implementing "Polytrophic Leadership"
  • How to combine team enhancement through an innovative leadership styles understanding
  • Exploring how we best communicate to the players on our team
  • The latest understandings on building player confidence
  • Managing performance through creating proper expectations
  • Leading cultural change

• Playing in the ZONE - Maximizing Personal Performance

  We have all been there... how do we consistently stay there?
  
  Ryan reaches back into his 15 season NHL career to extrapolate the principles he used as a professional athlete for consistently driving high performance, and transfers these into practical steps that work in your environment. Your people will gain insight into personal strengths and their impact on team performance, and how the team's level of synergy sucks or supplies energy to individuals. Ryan will contour his presentation to "hit home" specifically to your needs, focusing on the following:

  • Expectational Performance: E-10
  • Mental Toughness: Thoughts = Actions
  • Fan/Player Personal Engagement
  • Team Development: Tuckman's Model
  • High Performance Culture
  • Aligning Personal/Corporate Vision
  • Framing: Creating Priority
  • Readying for "CHANGE"

  
  
  Give your people the inspirational gift of "playing in the ZONE!"

• The Power Triangle: Creating High Performance Culture

  As Ryan demonstrates, great Leaders understand their players' strengths and work hard to create environments where Team and Personal High Performance percolate. Whether you are trying to sell products or services or win the Stanley Cup, it is essential that your leaders understand and develop an inspiring atmosphere. Walter pulls actual ideas and techniques from his hundreds of pages of interviews with High Performance Coaches to explore concepts like "communicating vision."
  
  The innovative and valuable perspective provided by Ryan Walter will revolutionize your team approach. You will learn to focus on the connective sinew that creates the strong connection between Personal High Performance, Team and Shared Leadership. These connectors tend to get strained, especially under the constant stress of change. Ryan will show for example, how a quick personality read (Thomas Concept-TM) gives leadership a better sense of how to lead the personalities on their teams, and reduce these stressors.
  
  Organizations, companies and teams appreciate or depreciate on their ability to attract, inspire and hang onto their human capital. Ryan Walter's exploration with audiences around his Power Triangle concept is critical for Organizations in the 21rst Century.

• “Our people have left Ryan's keynotes and workshops inspired and with new insights on how they can perform personally and as a team ... We have enjoyed specific, tangible financial and people performance results as a direct link to people attending Ryan's workshops.”
  London Drugs
• “Your quality of communication is outstanding. The passion and emotion in your presentation commands the attention of the room.”
  Braefoot Community Association
• “Your facilitative workshop was refreshingly different, not solely because of the content, but because of the delivery. Your stories, metaphors, and personal notes re your family, careers, etc., were real and easy to relate to.”
  Clarica

• 
  %6$s

  %4$s

  %5$s
%7$s