The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C., C.C., CStJ, served as Chief Justice of Canada from 2000 to mid-December 2017. In June 2018, she was made a Companion of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest accolade. She works in ADR as a bilingual arbitrator and mediator in Canada and internationally.
During her 28 years on the Supreme Court of Canada, she helped decide a wide variety of common law and civil law disputes in both French and English. Her tenure as Chief Justice was the longest in Canadian history.
The 2,094 Supreme Court of Canada judgments in which she participated—of which she wrote 442—and her legal writings and speaking include a wide range of subjects in corporate, construction, financial services, taxation, contract, tort, IT, patent, copyright, other areas of business law, as well as arbitration and mediation.
She has received over 35 honorary degrees from universities in Canada and abroad, and numerous other honours and awards.
Ms. McLachlin is also a Justice of Singapore’s International Commercial Court and the Hong Kong Final Court of Appeal.
Quote From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
About The Boler College of Business at John Carroll University
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C., C.C., CStJ, served as Chief Justice of Canada from 2000 to mid-December 2017. In June 2018, she was made a Companion of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest accolade. She works in ADR as a bilingual arbitrator and mediator in Canada and internationally.
During her 28 years on the Supreme Court of Canada, she helped decide a wide variety of common law and civil law disputes in both French and English. Her tenure as Chief Justice was the longest in Canadian history.
The 2,094 Supreme Court of Canada judgments in which she participated—of which she wrote 442—and her legal writings and speaking include a wide range of subjects in corporate, construction, financial services, taxation, contract, tort, IT, patent, copyright, other areas of business law, as well as arbitration and mediation.
She has received over 35 honorary degrees from universities in Canada and abroad, and numerous other honours and awards.
Ms. McLachlin is also a Justice of Singapore’s International Commercial Court and the Hong Kong Final Court of Appeal.
Quote From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
About The Boler College of Business at John Carroll University
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.
Scott Allen 0:00
Okay everybody, welcome to the Phronesis podcast wherever you are in the world. Today, I have a very, very special guest to the right, honorable Beverley McLachlin. She served as Chief Justice of Canada from 2000 to mid-December 2017. In June 2018, she was made a Companion of the Order of Canada, the country's highest accolade. She works in ADR as a bilingual arbitrator and mediator in Canada and internationally. During her 28 years on the Supreme Court of Canada, she helped to cite a wide variety of common law and civil law disputes in both French and English. Her tenure as Chief Justice was the longest in Canadian history. The 2,094 Supreme Court of Canada judgments in which she participated, of which she wrote 442, and her legal writings and speaking include a wide range of subjects in corporate construction, financial services, taxation, contract, tort, IT patent, copyright, other areas of business law, as well as arbitration and mediation. She has received over 35 honorary degrees from universities in Canada and abroad, and numerous other honors and awards. She's a Distinguished Leadership Award winner in the ILA. And Ms. McLaughlin also sits as Justice of Singapore's International Commercial Court and the Hong Kong Final Court of Appeal. She is an author, she's a lover of dogs, and she is with us today. Thank you so much for being with us, Beverley. We very, very much appreciate your time.
Beverley McLachlin 1:33
It's a great pleasure to be with you, Scott.
Scott Allen 1:36
What else do listeners need to know about you before we jump into the conversation? Maybe something that wasn't in your bio?
Beverley McLachlin 1:42
I think you've covered it pretty well. I also love nature, and I love cooking and food. But, apart from that, I read voraciously, and I'm just curious about life and curious about the world. And I managed to maintain that into my eighties years. So, that's good news for me, anyway, because it's kept life very interesting.
Scott Allen 2:05
Curiosity is a superpower. It really is. Oh, my. Well, that's wonderful. I, too, love the outdoors, and I cannot wait to get to Lake Louise. We have not made it to that part of the world just yet, but it looks absolutely incredible. Of course, you're in a beautiful part of the world as well, out there on the West Coast.
Beverley McLachlin 2:25
I grew up in southwestern Alberta, not far from just South of where Lake Louise is, and [Inaudible 2:31] in the foothills; it's one of the most beautiful parts of the world. I may just think that because that's where I grew up, but I sincerely I've been all over, and I really do believe. You must get there, Scott.
Scott Allen 2:42
It is on our list. It is on our list. Well, I wanted to jump into the conversation today. And, as I mentioned before, we started just really exploring a couple of different areas. As I was doing some research on you, I came across this notion of conscious objectivity. I know that you're speaking of it in the concept of the law, but I thought to myself, there are some really nice parallels to leadership, potentially, as a person who's in a position of authority. So, maybe help listeners understand that terminology and how you think about it, and then maybe we can explore how it aligns with the role of serving as a leader.
Beverley McLachlin 3:23
Yeah. Well, one of the things that came to me as I started judging, got a little bit more experience and started trying to figure out what the job was that one of the big impediments to getting to the right solution, if you wish, is seeing things through your own lens or one particular lens, and not appreciating other points of view. So, in the context of judging, we’ll simplify it, we’ll say we have two parties before a judge, and each one has her own story, and they are different stories. Or each of them has a view about how to apply the law, or what the law says, and they are different ideas about how to apply the law or what the law requires. So, they strive mightily to present their own individual view of the facts and the law, and how the case should be worked out. And, one approach a judge can take is to say, “Well, I'd prefer this party's approach to the facts, law, etc, to the other party’s.” And if the judge does that early in the proceeding, it creates something that in police work they call tunnel vision, which is you are seeing everything through the lens of a particular narrative. And, after you, unconsciously, perhaps, start seeing everything through the lens of that particular narrative, it becomes very hard to see it or appreciate the other narratives because there are self-confirming biases that go on in our perceptual. I'm not a psychiatrist, or a psychologist that [Inaudible 5:13] to say, but once you bought into a story, and you think it's pretty good, your brain tells you it's good. And you have your own side in that issue, if you wish, because, mentally, you're kind of aligned with that. So, when other facts or other perspectives come along, you resist them unconsciously, usually. And this is why, for example, in the world of the internet, people tend to gravitate to the same kind of message, the same posts, and so on all the time. It confirms their biases and unconscious biases. So, as a judge, getting back to judging, my job is to be fair to both parties. And I have to really guard against either imposing my own personal view, or buying into one view, and thereby, unconsciously, perhaps, setting up resistance to the other view. So, I developed this idea of conscious objectivity. And I would actually, consciously, try to put myself into the shoes of each of the parties and imagine, through an exercise, conscious exercise, what it would be like to have suffered what they suffered or encountered what they encountered, and how I would feel if I had encountered or suffered that. And I used to think it was a little like -- not that I am an actor -- but being an actor, and saying, “You've got to play a bad guy.” Well, how do I play the bad guy, or the good guy, or any woman? How do I do that? I do that by imagining what it would be like to be that person, and only after I can do that with my imagination can I be convincing in that role. So, by this act of imagination, I would try to put myself in the position of each of the parties. And I would sort of keep up that questioning attitudes throughout the whole process of fact-finding, and law-finding, and so on. And I believe that it really helped me to be a fairer judge, to see both sides of a question. So, how does that apply to leadership? Well, I hadn't thought about this before, but now that you raised it, I think that it really raises some interesting ideas and questions. Often, leaders are in the position where they are because of what they believe and what they have loudly and clearly said they believe. And this is what I stand for. And that is perceived as being a strong leader. But we can see what that can do. It can blind that leader to other perspectives. And so, the person who's leading, and maybe leading like-minded people who would think that she is doing just a great job, but when she gets into the actual business of dealing with conflicts, dealing with problems, dealing with different points of view, that leader can be paralyzed because her vision may have little to do with or little traction with the new reality that is being presented to the leader. So, they're saying, “Yes, I vowed that I would never raise interest rates,” [Inaudible 8:40]. But now, they've got a situation where everybody's telling them you have to raise interest rates, and what do they do? Now, that's a silly example. But I do believe, now that you've made me think about it, this ability to put yourself in other people's shoes and imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes is an essential quality of leadership and one that's often overlooked. And it may not help people get elected, but it certainly impedes. This lack of conscious objectivity would impede the performance in the office and, ultimately, lead to the defeat of the leader or the inability of the leader to achieve his or her objectives.
Scott Allen 9:20
Well, yes. What's so interesting is that you talked about confirmation bias, and I think there's a visual; it's an image on the internet; I don't know the validity or the source; I'll put it in the show notes, but it's interesting because it displays 180 known cognitive biases that we suffer from. Whether that's inattentional blindness or not, another one is that we tend to see the faults in others more easily and readily than we do see the faults in ourselves. So there are conceptual blocks, rules we have that are in our head that aren't there. So it's so fascinating because, yes, I think we're kind of… Almost we walk around the Earth thinking that we have a clear picture of what's happening in front of us. And then, there's the Dunning Kruger effect, which, as you know, people tend to overestimate their abilities, which, if you suffer from that, is too bad we're going to struggle. So, I love the conscious portion of that because I think we do have to remain conscious of how we can be, almost, this is the wrong word, potentially, but seduced into… Again, to your point, if I like this narrative from the beginning, now, from a confirmation bias perspective, I'm just hearing all the things that kind of confirm that bias. And if I don't have a way to kind of get out of that, to bring myself out of that mindset, I can struggle. And another thing that I thought of was Harper Lee's ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ and this is going to go back to law. But Atticus explains to Scout, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” And I just love the phrasing of you working to place yourself in the position of these other individuals and how they might see the world.
Beverley McLachlin 11:05
Yeah, I agree with you. And I think that's our big challenge in all areas of life; to see the other person's point of view, it’s personal relations, or work relations, or whatever. But certainly, in leadership, what's leadership about? It's about trying to do what is right for large numbers of people, and they're going to have divergent views and perspectives. And so, you have to understand what it's like to be in their skin, to quote Atticus, to really know how to be wise and solve the problems that you face.
Scott Allen 11:41
I hadn't thought about this before asking the question, but from a leadership standpoint, if, to your point, I have a path that I think we should go down, and I'm surrounded by ‘yes’ people or people who are afraid to dissent, do I consciously say to the team, “What's the downside of us moving in this direction? What are the limitations of this path forward?” Because we've all sat in meetings where an authority figure made a decision, no one really spoke up, but also, no one is really all that bought in. And then we walk out of the room, and we have trouble. And people in positions of authority have to chip away, not everyone's going to always get their way or have their idea be chosen. But we do need to create an environment where we can look at some of these things objectively from all angles so that we can make the best decision in these really, really complex situations.
Beverley McLachlin 12:34
Yeah, I agree with that. And the ‘yes’ man, or ‘yes’ boss, or ‘yes’ woman attitude, I think, can be a very dangerous thing. I worked for many, many years, the biggest part of my career as an appellate judge. And, there are built-in organizational features of doing that job that really help guard against what you have been describing because, for example, in the Supreme Court of Canada, there are nine judges, and no one's the boss. You may be the chief justice, but you don't get your way. You're not the boss. Your vote doesn't count any more than anybody else's. And, everyone is encouraged to speak freely, and stand up, and say what they think. And they have a right to dissent, which reinforces that they don't have to come to a collective single decision. So, all of those institutional features help guard against the problem of the strong leader who doesn't get the other side of the story. And I do agree with you that I think it's one problem one sees often in the political sphere, although you can have institutional features there that help bring -- we can all think of them -- opposing voices to bear. But sometimes at the executive level, particularly, where you have kind of that situation. I'm not talking about a particular situation, but let's take Great Britain, a prime minister, or something like that. A people person who has… Maybe a President of the United States, I don't know, but I'm just using that not to single out a particular person. You get someone at the executive level who can have very strong views, and they will have ways of insulating themselves from opposing views, and that may get in the way of full and free debate. And another thing is, it's often thought that political leaders should have checklists and that they should be able to give their ministers or the people that they delegate to look after a particular problem checklist. And that presidential or prime ministerial appointment, that person has to do what the central person wants. And that can become a problem too because the person who's been delegated the responsibility for looking after finance or foreign affairs suddenly sees a lot of complexities that maybe don't fit with the checklist. So, we have all these tendencies built into our executive branches of institutions, be they corporations, or governments, or just the institutions of educational, or other kinds of institutions, that, unless they're consciously checked, may lead to this tunnel vision syndrome. This idea is that we've got the right narrative, and we have to play that out, and we don't want to hear anything to the contrary, which means we just see half the picture or maybe less.
Scott Allen 15:27
Yes. And speaking of the full picture, another line of questioning I'd love to go down and explore with you is the role you are in; you are often placed in a situation where you had to, quote-unquote, let large factions of people who felt a certain way about something, let them down, make decisions that they wouldn't agree with. And that's a very challenging place to be in. And so, just on a personal level, how did you navigate that pressure and that stress? And then, for people who are listening to the podcast, and people who themselves are in positions of authority, and they at times have to let people down, are there any tips that you have that, as you do that work, here are some things to consider or think about. Because leadership, oftentimes, at least, if you read the airport books, is all chocolate bars and warm fuzzies, and that's not true.
Beverley McLachlin 16:22
Well, I think of it in two stages, both of which are important in this business of coping with letting people down. The first is the pre-decision stage, where you have to make a difficult decision. And, at this point, you can be influenced by the fear that you'll be letting certain people down or the desire to play to a certain sector that supports you. That can get in the way of you making the right decision. So, as a judge, I always set my mind, as best I could, to make the right decision in the case on the facts and on the law. It's not always clear, but I would work very, very hard to come to a conclusion on a balance of probabilities. Or if it's a criminal case, beyond a reasonable doubt, what happened, look at it and methodically analytically, apply the law analytically. And then, I would know that I'm making the right decision. And I would try to banish, or not consider, or allow myself to be influenced by the fact that I knew that this particular decision that I had arrived at after a lot of work, doing my best would not sit well with certain people. Sometimes, those people who are very close to you and share the same values or look to you as someone who's going to help them, and you have to disappoint them. So, the first stage is, I think, just being prepared that you have to make the decision on the right basis, using the tools at your hand in your profession or your job, and making that decision with integrity, and not allowing yourself to be influenced by personal considerations of fear or favor. And that's why judges have independence; they're very fortunate in that. You can’t kick a judge out, except in the United States, of course, you can vote them out in certain states, but in our system, in Canada, and throughout much of a common law world, judges have absolute independence. And that is so they will make those tough decisions without fear or favor. So, that's the first stage. And, the second stage is you got to be prepared for the hit, and you know that you will be severely criticized. I remember once I had to write a difficult decision that women's groups hated. And I could see their point of view, but I thought that it was the right decision. I thought, in the long run, it was the way the law should go. And I remember a friend saying “Why did you have to write that, let one of the men write that.” And I said, “Well, because it's my job, and I don't shrink from doing what I need to do, regardless of gender.” But, in the aftermath, you suffer. And, of course, we all hate to let those we love, or those we admire, or those whose goals we share, think badly of us or think we've done the wrong thing, but we simply have to say, “Wo as judges, that's part of the job,” and it will come right in time. Or if I've made a mistake, there will be other courts and decisions to correct it, which was always a great solace to me. In the case I mentioned, that case where I was so vilified by so many women's groups, we had offered a blueprint to fix the law to Parliament, which they did, and the whole problem was solved in a way that did not involve the constitutional violation that we found was there. And it was my duty to uphold the Constitution, even if it had this adverse effect. And, in the end, it worked out very, very well because we have to remember that no decision ever stands by itself, they're always in context and they're always in flux and flow. So, I make this decision and somebody's really angry with me about it, but there'll be a whole lot of other things happening, and other people taking up other positions, and it's all going to move on. And, in the end, if you've made the right decision, it will probably become part of a process that will lead to a better situation. And I saw that happen many times in the courtroom situation. You make a decision that was roundly criticized, but with the passage of time, it turned out to have been the right decision. So, always keep that long perspective, and don't let yourself be too influenced, depressed, or sad that people aren't liking what you're doing. Of course, if you're in the political realm, or even certain businesses, social, and so on, you can anger people so badly that you lose your leadership position. And that's a dynamic I never had to face as a judge. I really think that it’s salutary, whatever institution we're in, to take the long view and develop mechanisms that, perhaps, prevent us throwing out thoughtful people simply because we don't agree with what they decided in a particular situation.
Scott Allen 21:22
And maybe that's also why you have a dog.
Beverley McLachlin 21:27
(Laughs) I have to see things through the canine perspective.
Scott Allen 21:31
No, just unconditional love when you get home.
Beverley McLachlin 21:34
Unconditional love when you get home, that's right. Yeah, those are the things that really matter, as well as a supportive family if you have the good fortune, which I have had to have supportive partners and so on and family. They may say, “Gosh, did you have to do that?” Or, “Did you have to take that one on?” But they're there for you and you know that when you get home at night, when you face yourself in the mirror in the morning. That really, really helps.
Scott Allen 22:00
As you think about this topic of leadership, just one more question: what are you thinking about in recent times when it comes to this topic? What's kind of ruminating for you as you think about the topic of leadership?
Beverley McLachlin 22:14
Well, I've been thinking lately about how one can be effective and what makes you effective as a leader. And, of course, there are a million answers to that and hundreds of books. But I think it's not something innate you grab out of the sky; it's quite a methodical process. First of all, I think you need to develop the tools, whatever field you're in, to get that degree. I talked to young people, I just did last week, who'd been going to school for six or seven years, and they say, “I just want to stop, I just want to get out there and do stuff.” And I had to tell this young woman last week, I said, “Don't stop now; you're just on the threshold of being called to the bar, of getting this incredibly important tool that will help you to do whatever you want. So, hang in there, get your degree, get your tools, get your experience so that you are equipped”. And I think, just as we wouldn't take a trek up a mountain without the proper equipment, we shouldn't embark on a leadership challenge without equipping ourselves. That may be getting help, that we can operate as a community, we can operate as a group. I don't have to have all the tools if I can enter a community where we can bring all of our tools together. But think about tools. Think about how you put yourself in a leadership position. The next things I like to think about are opportunity and vision. I think there are two sides of the same coin. So many people, they say, “What can I do?” The young people come to me and say, “What can I do to make a difference?” And I can never answer that question, but it's a personal question they have to answer, and the answer has to come from their values, their beliefs, and from looking around and seeing where the needs are. And so, that question, “What can I do? What should I do?” It is very, very important. And don't expect somebody else to tell you exactly what it is; you have to figure it out for yourself. And then the final thing I've been thinking about recently is the importance of collective action and working with others. I think no leader can do it on their own; that's why they are a leader, I suppose. But so many leaders, so many people have ideas of leadership that, if you get the right person in place, that person will be the one who delivers all the answers, who will take your organization where it should go, da, da, da. And there's some truth in that, but the fact is that I've observed through life that effective leaders are our community builders. They work with others. They have to have others with them, supporting them, advising them, criticizing them, which we talked about earlier, in order to be effective, and they are then able to, often with highly developed communication skills and other skills, convey that collective vision. But I always say to people, “Really develop your groups and your relationships; they are absolutely essential to you being effective as a leader.”
Scott Allen 25:28
Well, the first part of your answer even reminded me of our conversation a little bit, like, equipping yourself with some tools. And there's a gentleman named Ray Dalio, I don't know if you know that name, he founded a company in the United States called Bridgewater. And he wrote a book called ‘Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order.’ It's a fascinating read if you get an opportunity. So, he loves principles, and he has these principles that kind of guide how he does the work. And so, if we go back to even the beginning of our conversation, conscious objectivity is a principle. And that's helping as a tool, we could also call it, but it's helping guide the work. And I think you named a couple of other things in there that, as you think about the work, you have these guideposts that help you do that work. And I think having those, just even making conscious objectivity explicit, helps you do better work. So, for me, at least what I heard in there is, of course, it's… There was a gentleman on the podcast, and his name is Ron Riggio, he said, “Leaders don't do leadership, it's co-created by leaders and followers working together.” It's collective. And number two, you're right, I can't tell you how you make a difference; you need to figure that out. And what are you passionate about? What do you have in your heart that you want to make a difference in the world? And then, have you equipped yourself to do the work? And I love it. I think it's wonderful. Well, as we begin to wind down our time together today, what has caught your attention in recent times? What have you been reading, streaming, or listening to? It could have to do with the law or leadership, or it might have nothing to do with the law or leadership, but does anything stand out for you?
Beverley McLachlin 27:15
Well, it's hard for me to articulate this, but I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the increasing complexity of every issue and every problem we face. I know issues have always been complex, but we live in a time when change is happening very rapidly. And when there are so many important issues or vectors interacting to create what some people have called wicked problems, the kind of problem where if you pull on one string, the whole entity shifts, and you've got another kind of problem. But you think about the concurrency problems we're facing, very, very serious challenges with climate change, and the survival of our planet, as we know it, migration en masse that's going along with that throughout the world, the challenges of diversity, which are the result of that and create conflicts, too many people with too many different faiths and perspectives living on the same patch of land. All of these things. And I could go on and talk about nuclear weapons, but you get my picture. We're living in a time when there are so many threats and existential problems, and everybody's trying to deal with them all at once because we have no choice but to deal with them all at once. And when you pull on one string, you're doing something with the other, and it's making leadership, it's making living extremely difficult in these times. And that's what I think about. Not sure I have any answers as to how we can simplify this or come up with a code for dealing with all these complex and interlocking challenges at the same time, but it is what I'm preoccupied with. And then, also an offshoot of that is people faced with fear and complexity are more and more driven to what they call the strong leader, populist style government, where you do away with the complexity by imposing a vision that seems clear and straightforward, which is extremely, in my respectful opinion, dangerous because it's a form of willful blindness and leads you down the wrong path completely. Maybe that's what preoccupies me.
Scott Allen 29:41
I understand. I understand. A lot of shifts occurring that… I couldn't agree with you more, whether it's digitization, climate change…
Beverley McLachlin 29:51
I left that one out, as well as the whole social media thing and how our lives have changed in our ways of communicating. I'd forgotten that one when I talked about [Inaudible 30:00], but it's huge.
Scott Allen 30:01
Well, I think, for each one of us, trying to make sense of some of that complexity is an important endeavor. Just to even begin to wrap our heads around some of what's occurring because it's important. It's very, very, very important. Well, Judge, thank you. I appreciate you being with me today; this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for the service that you have, obviously, given to your country and to the world. Thank you for being just an incredible role model and a leader in so many different ways. And so, this conversation has been just absolutely wonderful, and I wish you all the best. Thank you so much.
Beverley McLachlin 30:40
Well, I've enjoyed it a great deal, Scott, and thank you for inviting me into your world.
Scott Allen 30:47
Thank you so much. Be well.
Beverley McLachlin 30:49
You too. Bye.
[End Of Audio]