#39 - From Olympic Gold Medals to Great Traits: Mark Tewksbury & Debbie Muir on High-Performance Leadership
Today’s guests Are Mark Tewksbury & Debbie Muir
Mark and Debbie are solving the problem of leaders and high performers chasing results without a clear, teachable framework for how to think, train, and lead like champions. Too many organizations default to hustle, pressure, and vague “motivation” instead of building fundamentals, mind–body awareness, and the habits that actually create sustainable achievement, strong teams, and meaningful legacy. Through The Great Traits framework, they’re turning Olympic-level performance principles into practical tools that anyone can apply at work and in life.
In today’s conversation Mark Tewksbury and Debbie Muir explore how an Olympic crisis turned into a blueprint for high-performance leadership. Mark shares the story of being “second best in the world” in the 100m backstroke, watching American rival Jeff Rouse blow the world record apart, and realizing he needed to find over a second of improvement in just ten months — the same improvement it had taken him seven years to earn. Debbie describes how she came out of retirement, brought her synchronized-swimming coaching genius across sports, and helped Mark rebuild his race from fundamentals: starts, turns, underwater dolphin kick, mental scripts, and the mind-body connection.
Together with Dr. Wells, they connect that Olympic journey to The Great Traits of Champions framework, their 24 Achiever–Leader–Legacy traits, and the 12-week Corporate Champions Program that now helps leaders around the world train like elite athletes while leading with values and impact.
You will learn how Mark and Debbie broke down a seemingly impossible performance gap — 1.2 seconds in a 100m race — by going back to basics instead of chasing gimmicks, focusing on the 30% of the race that happens in the start, turn and underwater phase, where Mark was leaving huge potential untapped.
You will learn how Debbie’s “Utilize the Power of Thoughts” trait, metacognition (“think about what you think about”), and tools like the WAIT cue — What Am I Thinking? — help athletes and executives notice and rewire unhelpful mental loops in real time. You will learn how they translated their Olympic playbook into the Great Traits system of 24 Achiever, Leader, and Legacy traits, and why they structure their Corporate Champions Program as an “applied” 12-week training block rather than a one-off workshop. You will also learn how self-reflection, values, and legacy traits like Embody Your Values, Influence Others Wisely, and Continually Evolve can anchor performance so it’s not just about winning medals or hitting targets, but about the ripple effect of who you become in the process.
You will discover that the same tools that win Olympic gold — fundamentals, deliberate practice, and mind-body awareness — are exactly the tools leaders need to navigate uncertainty, pressure, and reinvention in their careers. You will discover how bringing unconscious thoughts to the surface, challenging limiting beliefs, and aligning your inner dialogue with your values can unlock a completely different level of performance, confidence, and impact.
Their expertise helps solve the challenge of how to systematically grow from talented, driven individuals into purpose-driven leaders who can sustain high performance without burning themselves — or their teams — out. Using The Great Traits framework, they show listeners how to transform vague ideas like “mindset,” “confidence,” and “legacy” into trainable skills that can be practiced week after week, just like an athlete practices starts, turns, and finishes.
Key take aways:
Fundamentals create breakthroughs, not fancy hacks.
Your thoughts drive results; train them like a muscle.
Self-reflection is the core skill of effective leadership.
Achievement, leadership, legacy are all trainable traits.
High performance is applied daily, not learned in a classroom.
“If any leader had to learn one skill, it would be to self-reflect effectively.”
Today’s Expert Guests - Mark Tewksbury & Debbie Muir
Olympic Champion Mark Tewksbury is a three-time Olympic medalist in swimming, including gold in the 100m backstroke at the 1992 Barcelona Games, a former world record holder, and one of Canada’s most respected human-rights and sport leaders. Debbie Muir is a legendary synchronized-swimming coach, widely recognized as one of Canada’s top ten all-time coaches, who led her athletes to seven of nine world championship titles, two Olympic gold medals and two Olympic silver medals. Together, they co-founded Great Traits, a high-performance leadership company, and co-authored The Great Traits of Champions: Fundamentals for Achievers, Leaders and Legacy Leavers, distilling what it really takes to win at the highest level into practical tools for business and life.
What makes Mark and Debbie’s work stand out is the dual lens of Olympic athlete and Olympic coach: they don’t just talk about high performance, they’ve lived the full cycle of training, choking, recalibrating, and ultimately winning — then translated that into a structured system of 24 Achiever, Leader, and Legacy traits. Their Corporate Champions Program is intentionally applied rather than theoretical: a 12-week leadership “season” where participants learn a trait, apply it at work, then reflect on the outcomes, echoing exactly how Mark implemented Debbie’s micro-skills between their weekly sessions in the lead-up to Barcelona. Instead of chasing buzzwords, they focus on fundamentals like making a plan, utilizing the power of thoughts, generating enthusiasm, and continually evolving — all anchored in values, inclusion, and the long-term ripple effect of one’s leadership.
Adopt one Great Trait and train it for 12 weeks the way an athlete would train a specific skill. For example, pick “Utilize the Power of Thoughts”: once a day, use Debbie’s WAIT tool — What Am I Thinking? — in a real moment of stress, notice whether your inner dialogue is empowering or limiting, and then deliberately reframe it to align with your goal and values. That single habit of catching and redirecting your thinking, practiced repeatedly, can change how you show up in key meetings, difficult conversations, and high-pressure moments — just as it did for Mark on the road from “second best in the world” to Olympic champion.
Follow Mark Tewksbury on Instagram & Linked In. Follow Debbie Muir on Linked In.
Check out their website.
This podcast contains advice and information relating to health and wellness. It should be used to supplement rather than replace the advice of your doctor or another trained health professional. If you know or suspect that you have a health problem, seek your physician’s advice before embarking on any medical program or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this podcast / interview / article as of the date of publication. The author and publisher disclaim liability for any medical or other outcomes that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this material.
