“Life is a ladder we all don’t climb at the same speed. Some of us begin in valleys, some on hillsides. Each of our views are different, that is all.” – Joan Silber
I am now an older Canadian who has experienced six decades of mistakes, successes, failures, mentors, and life lessons. I am not writing this as someone who is an expert. I am writing this as someone who is still learning, and still hopeful that I can make a difference.
Ten Years Behind – Starting Hockey at 13
The story: One day, I decided I wanted to play hockey.
That’s not unusual in Canada. What made me different was that I had never wanted to before, and I was thirteen. I could barely skate. I couldn’t even tie my own skates. My equipment was a mismatched collection of garage-sale castoffs; nothing except my helmet was new.
I still remember walking into the dressing room for the first time. The smell hit me first, old sweat, damp gear, and something sharp from the ice. Underneath it was excitement. Tryouts. Possibility. I found an empty spot. Nobody was unfriendly, but nobody paid much attention either. They all knew each other. I didn’t know anything.
When I stepped on the ice, the gap between starting at three or four and starting at thirteen felt like being run over by a truck.
I was slow. I could barely skate forward, let alone backward. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t understand positioning, flow, or timing. I was embarrassed. I’m sure at times I was embarrassing for my parents too, who rarely came to watch.
One practice, maybe the fourth or fifth, I fell again, this time seemingly tripping over one of the painted lines. I lay there on the ice, staring up, thinking: “There is no way I am ever going to get this. Everyone else is just so much better than me. I don’t belong here.”
I decided I was going to quit.
And just as I started to pull myself up, more to leave than to keep going, the team captain, one of the best players, skated over. He didn’t give a speech. He didn’t make a scene.
He just said, “Don’t give up, Paul. I’ve been watching you. You’re getting better every practice.”
That was it.
The lesson: Progress is often humiliating before it is visible.
That moment was the first time I understood how leadership actually works. Not loud. Not performative. Just paying attention, and saying the right thing at the right time.
I didn’t quit.
I didn’t quit that day, or the dozens of other days where it felt like I wasn’t improving at all. No one would ever mistake me for a great hockey player, but I did get better. I worked. I improved.
Two years later, my teammates voted me Team Captain.
The bridge: That feeling, of being behind, exposed, out of place, never left me.
It shows up in the people I work with now: beginners, newcomers, immigrants, neurodiverse individuals navigating systems that were never designed with them in mind. People who are judged not by their potential, but by how quickly they look like everyone else.
What looks like “behind” is often just a different starting point.
Sometimes the difference between quitting and continuing is one person who notices and says something.
The point: When someone is “behind,” they are often just starting from a different place.
Another Hockey Story – Taking the Next Step
The story: My parents were going through a messy divorce when I was a teenager. Hockey became an outlet, a place where I could be more than I felt I was at home.
When I aged out at eighteen, one of my uncles suggested I help coach. I don’t think he expected much to come of it. I certainly didn’t.
But through a series of events, I ended up as a head coach. I was as unprepared for coaching as I had been for playing hockey.
Somehow, we didn’t lose a game all season. For a while, I thought I was a natural, that I had some instinct others didn’t.
I didn’t.
What I had were two uncles who saw what I couldn’t.
They didn’t embarrass me. They didn’t correct me publicly. They guided me quietly. One of them, far more experienced than I was, became my assistant coach, not because he needed the role, but because I needed the help.
He showed me how to plan practices. How to speak to players. How to involve parents. How to pay attention to development, not just results.
More importantly, they showed me that winning wasn’t the job. Developing people was.
The lesson: Leadership isn’t about being the person in charge.
It’s about understanding what’s needed and being willing to step into whatever role serves that, even if it’s not the one you’ve been given.
The bridge: Most people think leadership is authority. I thought that too.
But the leaders who shaped me did the opposite of what ego would suggest. They stepped back when they could have stepped forward. They supported when they could have controlled.
That lesson carries into every environment, teams, workplaces, families, especially when working with people who don’t fit the standard mold. The job isn’t to force people into a system.
It’s to understand them well enough to help them grow within it, or around it.
The point: Real leaders don’t need the credit. They take responsibility for the outcome.
Learning About Life Through Fiction – Louis L’Amour
The story: Outside of hockey, I spent much of my teenage years alone.
I didn’t date. I didn’t socialize much. It wasn’t intentional, it just became my reality.
Books filled that space.
Louis L’Amour became one of my earliest mentors, even though we never met. The Walking Drum, Last of the Breed, The Sacketts, these stories introduced me to characters who were quiet, capable, resilient, and grounded.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was shaping myself around those qualities.
Books became more than entertainment. They were examples. Companions. Teachers.
The lesson: Influence doesn’t always come from proximity.
Sometimes it comes from what we choose to expose ourselves to, what we read, what we watch, what we listen to, and who we allow to shape our thinking.
The bridge: I meet people today who are exactly where I was, withdrawn, uncertain, disconnected. And when I can, I introduce them to ideas, authors, perspectives that expand their world the same way mine was expanded.
Not to change them, but to give them more room to become who they already are.
The point: What you take in quietly shapes who you become.
Two Important Women and One Narcissist – Life at Sears
The story: One of the first jobs that truly shaped me was at Sears.
During training, I was assigned to a catalogue store. The manager was more interested in his personal life than in developing his team. But two people changed everything.
Debbie, his assistant, saw that I wanted to learn.
She didn’t just show me tasks, she sat with me and explained why things were done the way they were. She moved me through different roles so I could understand how everything connected. She made sure I didn’t just perform work; I understood it.
She was the reason I learned how important it was to understand how what my people did.
Jean, my eventual district manager, was one of the first women in authority I had encountered in that environment. She was tough, demanding, and deeply committed to people who cared about their work.
Despite me being younger than her own children, she trusted me with her thinking. She encouraged me to speak up, to initiate conversations, to treat meetings as places where ideas mattered, not just instructions.
She pushed me to express my opinions, even when they differed from hers.
That mattered more than I understood at the time.
Then there was George. He taught me something too, though not the way the others did. I once submitted a report that wasn’t good enough. He pulled it back and told me to redo it.
He said it would have made him look bad. I’d like to believe he also knew it would have made me look worse.
The lesson: If you are given the opportunity to develop someone, you are shaping more than their performance, you are shaping how they see themselves.
The bridge: Debbie taught me how to understand work. Jean taught me how to think within it. Even George, in his own way, taught me standards matter.
Those lessons apply everywhere. In organizations, in leadership, in mentorship.
And when I work with people now, especially those who have been overlooked or underestimated, I remember how powerful it is when someone takes the time to actually teach, not just assign.
The point: If you’re responsible for someone’s development, make it count.
Reforming Darth Vader – The Danger of Ego
The story: After Sears, I joined a furniture store and quickly became a Store Manager.
Success came fast. Too fast.
Despite everything I had been taught, my leadership style drifted toward control, pressure, and intimidation. It worked on the surface. We performed. We hit numbers.
But the truth was harder.
We weren’t succeeding because of my leadership. We were succeeding in spite of it.
The owner saw what I didn’t. He sent me to a Dale Carnegie course.
That experience forced me to confront something I hadn’t been willing to see.
My leadership style wasn’t strong, it was damaging.
I had crossed into what my boss later called, very directly, “Darth Vader territory.” Not as a joke. As a warning.
And he was right.
The lesson: Ego disguises itself as effectiveness, until the damage becomes visible.
The bridge: This was one of the most uncomfortable realizations of my life. It meant that the very thing I thought made me effective was limiting everyone around me.
Changing that didn’t happen overnight. But it required something simple and difficult: accepting that I was the problem.
That shift, toward servant leadership, toward supporting rather than controlling, changed everything that came after.
The point: The moment you believe you are the most important person on your team is the moment you begin to fail them.
How a Former Professional Soccer Player Kept Me on Track
The story: Tom came from Scotland to Canada to play semi-professional soccer. In the off-season, he worked in sales. He was exceptional.
Innovative, disciplined, and unbound by conventional thinking, he built success after success, eventually becoming a national leader in his field.
Later in life, after setbacks that would have stopped most people, Tom had to start over.
From nothing and at an age when most people retire.
He came to work with us, not as a leader, but as a team member.
He was never late. Never negative. He learned everything, systems, processes, even cleaning routines. He built relationships with everyone: sales, warehouse, delivery.
He was the top performer. Every year.
He didn’t need recognition. He didn’t need status.
He just did the work and helped everyone else do theirs better.
The lesson: Character shows most clearly when status disappears.
The bridge: Tom could have done my job, and probably better. He never acted like it. Instead, he modeled something far more valuable: consistency, humility, and commitment to the team.
Even now, years later, his example continues to shape how I think about leadership and contribution.
The point: The strongest people don’t need to prove they are.
Looking back, none of these moments felt significant at the time.
They were small. Ordinary. Easy to miss.
A comment on the ice.
A conversation in a back office.
A book picked up for a quarter.
A correction that stung more than it should have.
A realization that came later than it should have.
But those were the moments that changed everything.
Not the loud ones. Not the obvious ones.
The quiet ones, where someone chose to notice, to teach, to challenge, or to step back.
I am, in large part, the result of those moments and those people. If there is anything I’ve learned after all of it, it’s this:
Most people don’t need more instruction.
They need someone who sees them clearly enough to meet them where they are and stays long enough to matter.
Paul