Building Trust Like a Championship Team: Lessons From Hockey and Engineering

Think about a time when your team faced a high-pressure situation. How did trust and teamwork play a role in your success? High-performing teams, whether in sports or engineering, thrive on these principles. Drawing from my experience as a two-time Division 1 national ice hockey champion and a chemical engineer in high-stakes environments, this session explores how trust fuels success. By leveraging our unique experiences, we can enhance collaboration, communication, and resilience in engineering teams. Key lessons include earning trust under pressure, fostering accountability, clear communication in chaos, and adapting to dynamic environments. Tying into SWE 2025's theme, “Embracing Your Story,” this session highlights how personal experiences shape leadership and teamwork, empowering engineers to build trust-based teams that excel under pressure, just like championship athletes and world-class engineers.