116: Jacques Landry - Doing What You Said You Would Do

Jacques Landry is the CEO of Cycling New Zealand. A High-Performance National Sporting Organization. His background has many international achievements and appointments.

He started racing road bikes competitively at the age of 17 in Quebec City (Canada). He made the national cycling team (Canada) at age 20. He competed in his first Olympic Games for Canada in road cycling in 1992 at the age of 23 and then again at the age of 27 in Atlanta in 1996. He retired from competitive cycling in 1998.

He was hired as a road cycling development coach for Cycling Canada in 1998 while completing his coaching degree, which he completed in 2001.

He was hired as Road coach at BikeNZ (Now Cycling New Zealand) in 2003, where he went on to set up a European base for kiwi cyclists in the South of France. He accompanied the Kiwi road riders at both the Athens and Beijing Games as a road coach.

At the end of 2008 he was hired as High-Performance Director at the Canadian Cycling Association (Now Cycling Canada). He led programs that yielded 12 Paralympic medals and 3 Olympic medals over two Olympic and Paralympic cycles.

Jacques was hired as a High-Performance consultant at Cycling New Zealand in 2018 to assist the current High-Performance Director.

In early 2019 he was appointed as interim CEO at Cycling New Zealand and then successfully appointed to the role mid-2020 as CEO of Cycling New Zealand.

He has assisted other National Sports Organization in High-Performance structuring (Like Taekwondo Canada)

He has spoken at coaching conferences in Canada and in Russia and is called upon to sit on numerous committees pertaining to High Performance, whether it be in Cycling or in the multisport area.

On this episode:

Hear Jacques talk about how he got started with cycling
Jacques discusses that he didn’t purposely get into leadership. Rather, it came upon him naturally.
Jacques stresses that leadership is not about “titles,” but it’s about your “actions.”
Jacques says that it’s imperative that as leadership is evolving, our leaders must also evolve.
The importance of the proper use of human resources
Denis and Jacques discuss that it’s important for leaders, high-performance teams, and organizations to be open to adapting and learning.

Key Takeaways:

We are all leaders in our own right, regardless of what we do.
Embrace your responsibility as a leader
Leadership isn’t about the title. It’s about your actions.
Leaders must constantly adapt to the fast-ever-changing nature of leadership.
Do what you say you will do.

Tweetable Quotes:

“I carried a lot of what I’ve learned in cycling, as an athlete, to my professional career.” – Jacques Landry

“We’re all leaders in our own right to start with. Regardless of what we do, it’s whether or not we wanna embrace leadership and take it on or not.” – Jacques Landry

“I didn’t look out for leadership. Leadership found me, and I’m embracing it as much as anyone would.” – Jacques Landry

Learn more about Jacques: