Leadership and Mentorship of a 25-Year Legacy

Over the last 25 years, Canada ICI has built a thriving corporate culture based on collaboration and mutual respect. As with many aspects of ICI’s success, this culture started with President and CEO Dale Klein, who empowers his employees to bring their own leadership styles to the table, while still channeling his vision throughout the company. As Brandon Kot ― Managing Partner ― explains it, everything starts with Dale, and “the rest of the culture around leadership reverberates from there.”

As ICI expanded across the country, establishing offices in Calgary, Winnipeg, and Toronto, and with plans to further expand into future markets, it became especially important to develop a consistent culture. “Dale is an individual who leads by example,” Brandon says. “He’s not one to ever ask anybody within the organization to do something that he wouldn’t do himself. That’s permeated its way throughout all of our offices. There’s nothing beneath any of our leaders that are within the organization.”

That willingness and ability to lead by example and tackle any necessary tasks, fosters a feeling of trust between leaders and their team members. “If we’re faced with deadlines and there’s competing priorities within the organization, we’re going to roll up our sleeves and actually do it ourselves,” Brandon explains. “Dale’s still writing commitment letters, because if we’re backlogged or processing payments on the asset management side, we need somebody to fill in for that role. There’s that aspect of your leaders being able to do everybody’s work.”

When it comes to the development of the next generation of leadership, Canada ICI’s mentorship program helps develop the skills they’ll need when the time comes for them to step up. “We’ve been very cognizant of putting a culture of mentorship into policy, and into our training and development programs,” Brandon says.

The reason it’s so important to provide mentorship to team members in other markets comes down to maintaining consistent skills and values across all branches of Canada ICI. “When we as a company get together on the origination side, it’s not lost upon us that we need to indoctrinate the culture even more every time we’re together, so that people take that back home with them,” Brandon says. “The last thing we want is for any one office to be a watered-down version of what we want the culture to be.”

As he looks further into the future, Brandon thinks the next step to ensuring a prosperous future for Canada ICI is to instill the company’s core values into every employee. “What’s important for us at this next stage is that we lock down our principles. They need to be consistent, whether you’re in good times or bad,” he explains.