Leading Means Doing: Interview with Sheelagh Whittaker, Former CEO of Canadian Satellite Communications
I recently went one-on-one with former Canadian Satellite Communications CEO Sheelagh Whittaker, the first female CEO of a TSX listed company. Sheelagh is the author of the new book Through the Glass Ceiling: Reflections on Feminism from the C-Suite.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Sheelagh: First, I should tell you that I am a lucky person. While I grew up in an ordinary middle-class way, no elite schools, no wonderful camp experiences, no special recognition for my vigorous efforts in the church choir, opportunity and good fortune came my way. I was a Boomer growing up in Western Canada where major oil deposits had just been discovered, and a melange of World War 2 refugees were fusing into a great community with super hockey players. (I was a fan, of course, and once dated a player who managed to play 2 games in the NHL.)
On the negative side, my mother was smitten with progressive multiple sclerosis and my father worked hard and long to keep his engineering firm and our family going, but my siblings and I, two prewar and two postwar, learned lessons in hard work and integrity that stood us all in good stead in life.
I hit the workplace, after what the economist Burton Malkiel would have called a Random Walk, through several universities and specializations, and having earned a BSc, BA, and MBA (all with honors) and 1-month-old child (she was a bonus), eager to find a ‘real job.’ I had the tremendous, good luck to get hired as an antitrust investigator for the Canadian government.
I encountered setbacks in that early job because I didn’t properly understand the notion of ‘chain of command’, but I learned quickly. I also learned, through investigating, that top managers often have a bottle of scotch in their lower, right-hand desk drawer. I participated in some big, successful cases and had another baby. I used my vacation as maternity leave.
My next job was in corporate consulting for a firm that since merged with Boston Consulting. Consulting is like a boot camp for fast learners. Everyone is smart and everyone needs your documented recommendations yesterday.
Consulting insisted that I draw insightful conclusions from the mountains of data I piled up, and soon I could.
When the Canadian Broadcasting Association, a consulting customer, asked me to serve as Corporate VP of Planning on a kind of lend/lease deal for a couple of years, I agreed and learned corporate politics from the inside out. My joyful initiative was sufficient to attract an ugly brown envelope leak to the press by a jealous colleague. Only the Globe and Mail took up the story, which suggested kickbacks to my consulting firm in my role (absolutely not true) and I had some good friends in the business that quickly killed the story. Luckily, I was on holiday driving down California’s old Highway One while it happened and only arrived home to read the clippings when all the fuss was over.
After the two-year stint, the CEO of another former customer asked me to join Canadian Satellite Communications as a senior executive and after a year or so the same gracious CEO recommended me to his Board as CEO. And a few years later, EDS offered me the role of CEO of EDS, Canada.
I had been totally honest. I told the EDS interviewer (soon to be my boss) that I knew nothing about computers, not even how to turn one on. (This was 1993.)
His response was that EDS had plenty of people who knew computers. What they needed, he said, was someone who was good at strategy. I guess I filled the bill.
In retrospect, I am so glad I didn’t fudge the computer thing. My whole employment at EDS would have started off on a false note from which it would have been very difficult to recover. As it was, I was able to work for EDS in Canada, Australia, and the UK. And by 1999 I knew how to send emails.
Along the way I had the good luck to serve on Corporate Boards in Canada, the US, Australia and Britain. And I committed my share of faux pas. Meetings at Donahue Inc. a paper company incorporated in Quebec, left me paging through Larousse French/English dictionary before meetings, which were conducted in French, checking out the translations for words such as saw chain, woodsman and bush.
Understanding the ‘wee Scottish voices’ of the board members and executives of Standard Life plc, based in Edinburgh, required almost an equal level of concentration. Although we were seated by seniority, with me well below the salt, I had to get a special dispensation to sit closer to the Chair so I could keep track of what was being said.
One board chair told me he hoped that when I returned from Australia, I would quit wearing such unusual clothing, but I didn’t. Quit wearing them, I mean.
Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book?
Sheelagh: I hope my readers will think I have been a happy, hard-working woman who was lucky enough to have several wonderful children and a mostly wonderful home and work life. I have been a hard-core feminist throughout, and I have fought the same battles that many women of my era fought. My weapons were humour and interpeptide and I was lucky because the working world, especially in North America, was open to taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude toward promoting women and generally it worked out rather well.
Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?
Sheelagh: Key steps to growing and scaling your business are:
Define your product
Understand your market
Identify reliable suppliers of product components
Have a friend who is a lawyer
Identify and research and scale your target market
Ensure that you are offering a timely and desirable product
Identify possible competitors
Determine channels of distribution
Work out cost of components, distribution, likely margins and revenues
Investigate the major influencers in your target market and estimate cost of promotion and speed of uptake of product
Figure out the financing, ideally as you are going along.
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
Sheelagh: When I was working for EDS a senior manager in Dallas Global Head Office sent out a request to country managers to provide him with a statement of our convictions of management and then come to see him to defend them.
Nervously, I sat down and wrote what came to mind. A day or so later I reread what I had written, revised some, added a couple, and put a title on the document. Then I politely asked my assistant to send them off and make me a airline reservation for Dallas.
Convictions on Leadership, by S Whittaker
A leader with vision and passion can transform a division, a corporation or a nation.
No one person is so brilliant that his or her ideas cannot be improved by trading thoughts with another smart person.
Decisiveness is not the same as being certain. I am often decisive; I am seldom certain.
Reading fiction and biography in quantity can help you think about how to live your own life.
It is important to remember that people’s behaviour toward you is not necessarily about you.
Bitterness is a destructive emotion, jealousy is demeaning, cynicism is a form of laziness, and equity a complex goal.
Those who violate your trust are the losers. An appropriate response is not to cease to trust, but to place your trust elsewhere.
Readers’ Digest had it right: Laughter is the best medicine.
Unless you are sometimes prepared to change everything, you may end up with nothing.
Making criticisms constructive is worth the extra effort.
You should stare fear of loss in the face so that fear of loss loses its power to compromise your integrity.
Pay a lot of attention to issues or people when their time has come.
It is important to choose which battles to fight.
Integrity is a source of both relief and freedom.
Business and the public management of the economy are elaborate monopoly games developed for adults to play. Neither business nor the economy is based on absolute truths.
You can get a lot more done with a few good people than you can get done with those same people hindered by some additional unmotivated, misdirected or plain lazy colleagues.
Good judgment is the most vital determinant of success. Judgment can be improved by determinedly learning more about an issue.
If you have to force a decision, the decision probably should not yet be made.
With children and with employees, never say “maybe” when you mean “no.”
Some ideas, ideals, and people deserve loyalty, even sacrifice, especially in the face of challenge or threat.
When I got to Dallas the corporate honcho kept me waiting outside his office for a while, then breezed in and said he was sorry but he had something else he had to attend to. When I asked him, haltingly, “What about my Convictions about Leadership document?” he replied with a smile. “Oh, it’s clear you know exactly what you are doing. Go back to Canada and practice your leadership.”
Looking at my convictions now, I find the statement that business and the public management of the economy are elaborate monopoly games developed for adults to play. Neither business nor the economy is based on absolute truths – to be profoundly true in 2025.
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Sheelagh: I think leaders improve by leading. You make mistakes, you get knocked down, you lose the promotion, and then you get up and try again. Or try somewhere else. Great leaders are learners, they learn from those around them, they learn from their mistakes, they learn from those who are not like them, and they can’t help keeping on trying.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Sheelagh:
Have principles and integrity.
Listen hard to your critics as well as your supporters. Ask the quiet ones what they are thinking.
Ask a lot of questions.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
Sheelagh: Remember, girls weren’t necessarily brought up to play on sports teams in the way boys are, although the gap is closing. Developing inclusive team spirit may take some extra coaching for both genders.
Leading means doing. Don’t just supervise the team, do any job that needs doing and be accessible to all members of the team.
Keep the drones or nay-sayers away from the energy. Send them out to get coffee and donuts for everyone.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding?
Sheelagh: Would you buy this? Why?
Would you admire those who did?
What are your competitors doing right?
Hook your brand to a spoke’s animal. They rarely get caught in embarrassing situations.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Sheelagh: Don’t talk with your mouth full (although sometimes I forget).
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Sheelagh: As the first female CEO of a company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange Sheelagh Whittaker, jokes that her defining achievement was becoming a professional breath of fresh air. She started her career as a federal antitrust investigator, became a management consultant, helped the CBC launch its 24-hour news channel, and then led Cancom and the Canadian operations of EDS. Whittaker is irrepressibly curious; meet her, and next thing you know, she’ll be asking about your childhood home or which authors you like to read. The rough and tumble of an international business career has made Whittaker more, rather than less, humble about her insight and experience. She has written several books since retiring from the world of commerce.
Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one-on-one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.
Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and on LinkedIn and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.