Culture and leadership revisited June 19, 2025

 Cathay Kelly, writing in the Globe and Mail, recently, opined that the culture of the Florida Panthers is all about winning while the culture of the Edmonton Oilers is not as cohesively committed to the same proposition. And that he went on to delineate the usual cliché attempts to change culture by inserting a new piece here and removing another piece there, and hopefully by ‘adjusting’ and ‘band-aiding’ whatever seemed to be the vulnerabilities is not either about winning or about changing culture.

And, of course, as is practically mandatory in a corporate culture that pervades most sports entertainment and even academic and political endeavours, the important cliché that culture change has to start at the top…follows.

And while the importance of the ‘guy-at-the-top’ is an archetype that waxes and wanes cannot be either missed or exaggerated, especially in a culture that has so veered off in the direction of ‘personalizing’ everything and every relationship and every organization, by concentrating on the character (or lack thereof) of the ‘head’, the archetype is also highly reductionistic.

Strong men, and/or imaginatively cloned, imitating the strong man image, strong women, however, have virtually taken over the public consciousness as the human ideal to be worshipped, adored, nurtured and sustained as the pivotal level in any envisioned ‘successful’ enterprise. And for illustrative purposes, Cathay Kelly also has the recent example of the release of the President of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, perennial losers in the first or second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs for most of the last decade. Adding to the evolving argument is the insight, the creative genius of the Florida Panthers, winners of the last two Stanley Cups, and finalists for the last three years, their General Manager, Bill Zito.

It is alleged, affirmed and very difficult to dispute that Mr. Zito has amalgamated a choir of young men who are all, judging by their success, singing from the same song sheet. And the unity of their alleged ‘harmony’ is demonstrated in their total commitment to an over-powering offensive onslaught that literally hems their opponent into their own defensive end zone for as long as is feasible. Wearing their opponent down is the cliché that depicts this model of waging hockey war.

 And if ever there were an appropriate and congruent metaphor for hockey, it has to be military warfare. While not exclusive to hockey, (I once attended a  basketball coaches clinic, conducted by the renowned Bobby Knight, then of Indiana Hoosier fame, whose ‘biblical reference, metaphorically, was Lao Tsu’s The Art of War) the war strategies, language, tactics, training methods and even mind-set are the template followed to a greater or lesser degree by many successful athletic coaches, corporate executives, movie moguls, and even, although perhaps a little less ‘testosterone-infused’ philanthropic leaders. Competition, one of the core sine qua nons, allegedly of masculinity, as in warfare, has been embedded in the psyche of both individuals and the North American anima mundi (ethos, culture) for decades, rivalling religion as a moral, ethical, political and even intellectual and epistemological truth to be venerated by generations of those seeking success on a personal level. If no one has as yet completed a doctoral thesis on the military-training, at such institutions as West Point, of many professional and college athletic coaches, doubtless such a thesis will emerge fairly soon.

We teach, inculcate, foster, reward and sacralize both winning and the strategies, tactics, mind-set and ethos that ‘promote’ winning, and then, of course, we have to pay the price for what amounts to a cultural ‘blindness’ (until after the imagined victory) to the costs of such a social, political, corporate, athletic, scientific and even ethical juggernaut. Short-term thinking, short-term solutions to immediately perceived and acknowledged crises, the headlines and the resume-inflation, budget injections, genuflections to the ‘powers-that-be’ for all of those seeking to ‘succeed’ in their respective bailiwicks….these are all endemic to the competitive, nano-second-instant-gratification-culture, indeed a shared perception of whatever the organizational moment might be ‘calling for attention.’

Only this week, while retrieving our Portie from daycare, the owner-operator, upon leashing her and leading her into the lobby of the centre, to find her champing at the bit to welcome her adoptive ‘dad,’ offered a treat with the repeated instruction, ‘Sit, Tasha!’ four or five times until the dog complied, sat, received the reward and then was turned over to me. Of course, for some such an anecdote seems incongruent with corporate competitive instant-gratification ‘war’ in the universe…and yet…is it?

The model of the dog’s impatience, however, is really not alien to the degree of both impatience and the perceptions and decisions that many adults, in even highly charged, high profile and highly responsible positions even of extreme political and social significance, have and make, in order to satisfy what seems to be an obvious and perhaps inordinate ‘need’ or a ‘crisis’ that needs attention. And while this model has validity if there is evidence of an immediate impending medical exigency, for example, or a missing three-year-old for three-plus days, it has deep holes, often holes to which many executives may be blind to, or unconscious about. Of course, it is not only time and money that executives have to manage; those two have perceivable numerical boundaries in things like budgets and schedules, especially in professional sports, when a season has distinct calendar dates and final dates.

It is the subjective, ephemeral, intangible, intuitive and imaginative qualities of an organization for which highly sensitive, self-confident, imaginative, collaborative and visionary ‘traits’ (not all of these are skills to be taught and learned, sorry to all those clinical and behavioural psychologists who continue the project) are essential.

And the degree of perceptions, development and embrace of these ‘intangibles’ among those charged with hiring decisions will have a significant impact on the courage of the organization to embrace the ethereal, subjective, and elusive, yet open-to-be-embraced, manuscript of the song this organization seeks to both write and then perform. And much of that ‘embrace’ for too many, will come in the form of classical conditioning techniques.

A sad example of such classical conditioning blurted out in a conversation with a mother of a five-year-old daughter who, laughingly, retold a story of her husband, the little girl’s father, telling his hockey-playing daughter, he would give her a dollar for every time she touched the puck, as a way to correct her refusal, avoidance of fully integrating into the game. Of course, the tactic worked; she picked up a few unexpected loonies after that game. Whether or not such a tactic has long-term impact, for adults, seems to be relative to the perceived and agreed urgency of the organization.

Non-profits, for example, likely take a more collaborative, collegial and consensus approach to decision-making and operational objectives and their achievement. Military, and quasi-military, or pseudo-military, or even faux-military organizations align with immediacy, compliance, and whatever conditioning ‘reward’ applies to the specific target group. The literal, empirical, measurable and thereby provable success, goals scored at the end of a game, accounts closed, properties sold, degrees awarded, job placements for graduates….these are the measures of success, and their attainment is often, if not almost always, regimented by similar thinking, strategies, tactics and hope-for successes.

How is that model working? For those whose aspirations, dreams and imaginations fit comfortably into the strategic plan, including the nature and expectations of rewards, probably the ‘fit’ is ‘like a glove’….However, for others who envision, imagine and need to ‘question’ the smooth-functioning machine-like efficiency and effectiveness, (both mantras, guiding lights and organizational ‘goal posts) the ‘system’ might be one to question….And this fine line between the compliance and harmony of the choir with the manuscript and the conducting of the performance, with the sand-paper and questioning within, (some of it conscious, some of it secretive and unconscious, both deliberately and unknowingly) will determine the nature of the outcomes.

Getting men and women to ‘sing from the same song-sheet,’ is a matter of envisioning and striving for some kind of order, while allowing for ‘objections, options, alternatives and incorporating those into the evolving ‘flow’ of the organization. However, for many organizations, the ‘template’ of ‘how-we-do-things-here’…whether a bureaucracy, or a tribe, or a professional sports team, or even a church congregation may have a kind of precedence-attained authority and respect that defies both harmony and even melody. Courtrooms, operating rooms, emergency rooms, fire and rescue departments, church sanctuaries, and even some classrooms, have an established ethos, or culture in which professionals are trained, as part of the legacy of those professions.

It is a man or woman who can see a picture of a vision that extends past the immediate, the instant-gratification, and the discernment of the latest ‘tempest’ through a lens of both broad experience and sensitive and sensible imaginative confidence in his or her judgements/discernments/reading and interpretations of the whole situation who can be and will be most adaptable. Accommodating, without appeasement, and without deceit, and without bias or prejudice for or against either an individual or an idea that might be tension-generating yet worthy….These are guides fit for no single living or deceased human; we have conceived, both here and in most organizations, beacons of light in the darkness of the fog of reality, which itself continues to ebb and flow, changing by the moment, expectations, both literal and empirical as well as ethereal and ephemeral, abstract and intuitive, like both gossamer and granite, that only when taken together, offer a kind of both leadership and musicianship for the performance of the choir that can and will exceed many other ‘choirs’…in both performance as well as in the joy and ecstasy of the participants in the reviews.

And while direct comparisons of Zito and Shanahan are being made, it might be more instructive, for all organizations, to consider not only who is the ‘man-at-the-top’ (think Oval Office for a moment!) and the many surrounding such a person attempting to fill that role and title, including the needs, aspirations and complex and nuanced ‘ideas’ that might come from the custodial staff, the ticket-booth attendees, the electrical and plumbing crews, and the health and wellness experts….It is simply no longer feasible, (probably never was) to consider an organization exclusively from the perspective of the CEO, or the General Manager, and fall into the glib believe that all organizations and teams and schools ‘take on’ the personality and character traits of that ‘man-at-the-top’….And it is not nor will it be irresponsible to really listen to each and every member of the organization, both formally and informally, and on an equal and valued basis, in order to inform the most strategic and tactic, short-and-long-term plans and goals and objectives.

Unitary leadership has been proven to be, essentially both faulty and dangerous….for the organization as well as for the occupant and proponent of such a form of leadership….and that proposition could even apply to the Vatican.