Defence Team Conduct and Culture Consultation Summary Report

Background

The Chief of Professional Conduct and Culture (CPCC) was established in Spring 2021 to promote and support professional conduct and foster an inclusive culture across the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF). As set out in the Chief of the Defence Staff/Deputy Minister Initiating Directive for Professional Conduct and Culture, the work to promote culture change must be informed by meaningful and continuous engagement with the Defence Team, as well as with external stakeholders and partners, particularly those with lived experience and/or specific expertise in the domains of organizational culture change and professional conduct.

The consultation process

From October 2021 to March 2022, the CPCC senior leadership launched the Defence Team Conduct and Culture Consultation to listen and learn from the lived experiences and expertise of those within our institutional culture. The effort was supported by an external contract partner, including a team of experts in the fields of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as in organizational transformation initiatives. This external expertise helped us ensure that we modeled our approach on best practices, and that we collected information that could be used to conduct a meaningful and insightful analysis. The Consultation was designed to capture a broad diversity of perspectives, across all regions, force elements, occupations, ranks, and across key demographics and equity-seeking groups. We wanted to ensure we heard from as many of our Defence Team members as possible—and we worked hard to provide a safe and supported space for them to share their experiences and ideas.

Over the course of six months, CPCC's leadership team and experts from the contract partner offered hundreds of sessions in a variety of formats—from town halls to small discussion groups, and the response was tremendous.

Defence Team Conduct and Culture Consultation statistics

• Engaged with over 9,000 Defence Team members;
• Conducted over 280 engagements, including listening sessions, small group discussions, and town halls. This represents over 430 hours of engagement;
• Held 53 cultural dialogues, including with persons with lived experience, veterans, and equity seeking groups across the Defence Team; and
• Conducted 46 targeted interviews with senior leadership, survivors of sexual misconduct, and with representatives from equity-seeking groups.

What we heard

First and foremost, throughout the Consultation, we consistently heard that Defence Team members have an enormous sense of pride in DND/CAF as an institution. As we analyzed the various insights, experiences and perspectives shared, we found that they could be grouped into four themes:

• Service Before Self
• Warrior Identity
• Leadership
• Teamwork

Cultural pillars and mindsets

While many of the observations and comments indicated that these themes or "cultural pillars" are regarded as DND/CAF strengths, we also heard that these same cultural pillars are often being expressed in ways that deviate from our aspired values and culture and are causing harm and undermining our operational effectiveness.

For the purposes of our analysis, we refer to the cultural pillars as "limiting mindsets" or as "supportive mindsets". They are "limiting" when they constrain the potential for our core values to be a continued source of pride and a driver of personal, professional, and operational success across the institution. Mindsets are directly tied to behaviours, and it is only by evolving the mindsets that underpin our culture that we can ensure a sustainable and irreversible change in behaviour.

Defence Team members expressed a clear desire to maintain the institution's unique strengths and appeal, while we move towards a more inclusive and sustainable approach to how the cultural pillars are expressed, taught and applied.

Table 1 provides a short summary of the cultural pillars, how these can constitute strengths as well as weaknesses. It also identifies the evolution we must work towards to ensure the pillars are fortifying our desired culture. The information summarized in Table 1 is directly tied to what was heard in the consultations, and represents the views of those that came forward to share with CPCC.

Table 1: Cultural pillar analysis and evolution

Cultural Pillar	Strength	Limiting Mindsets	Required Evolution
Service Before Self	Higher purpose Sense of mission Willingness to sacrifice	Self-sacrifice to serve Focus on outputs not outcomes Mission first, people last	Evolve from all service requires self-sacrifice' to the best service requires the best self
Warrior Identity	Bravery Professional Excellence Tradition of heroism	Narrow view of the ideal warrior All others in service to the warrior Promotes toxic and aggressive behaviours	Recognize that warriors should be both physically fit and emotionally adaptable
Leadership	Decisive Knowledgeable Trusted	Leadership means direct and command No place to ask questions or propose ideas	Great leaders must combine decisiveness and emotional intelligence
Teamwork	Shared values Mutual respect and trust	Emphasis on conformity, loyalty Exclusion of those who don't "fit the mold"	High-performing teams can be built through trust and authenticity

Sharing and discussing findings

CPCC has been actively working to share these findings and encourage leadership across the organization to engage with the analysis and reflect on the findings and what these mean for their teams.

Since March 2022, CPCC has conducted in-depth workshops with participation from all Level 1 (L1) organizations in DND/CAF (internal organizations reporting directly to the Deputy Minister or the Chief of the Defence Staff). Frequently, L1 leadership chose to participate directly in these workshop activities. In addition, CPCC has presented these findings to the General Officer/Flag Officer and Senior Non-Commissioned members' corps, with the aim of ensuring awareness and understanding of the findings at all leadership levels of the organization. These findings have also been shared with Defence Advisory Groups, who were consistently included at a local level throughout the consultation. Furthermore, CPCC has shared and discussed these findings with civilian executive-level leadership, with a particular emphasis on issues facing the DND members of our organization as well as with bargaining agents.

For CAF members, basic training, their first posting, performance reviews, the recognition system and 'a moment for support' were identified as critical moments to intervene. This assessment resonated with leaders as well. Comments from the consultation indicated that recruitment and disciplinary actions are also important.

For DND Public servants, onboarding into the department, interactions with military members, performance planning and evaluation processes and responses to disciplinary issues were identified as critical moments in which their experience of the Defence Team culture is shaped. In the consultation, while both military and civilian participants indicated feeling a strong identity, public servants participants described feeling less important in the Defence Team due to a focus on military members.

Next steps

CPCC is committed to ensuring that the input of Defence Team members directly contributes to our policies and initiatives. Culture change is a whole-of-defence endeavour and their say matters. The outcomes of these consultations have provided us with valuable insights into how to articulate and frame the case for change. This will be instrumental in informing a DND/CAF culture evolution framework and strategy currently under development.

The culture change evolution process will enable CPCC to provide informed and coordinated guidance and tools directly to L1 organizations in DND/CAF and empower them in carrying out culture change in their respective areas. The process includes guiding principles, strategic direction, reporting tools, and sharing of research, knowledge and best practices. Tools will evolve over time based on need/areas of attention identified. Although there is still much work to be done, we are making progress, guided by principles of psychological safety, collaboration, inclusion, respect, evidence-based decision making and self-reflection. The framework, once completed, must be understood and championed by all members of the Defence Team. Planning, information gathering, and awareness raising are currently ongoing which will inform the culture evolution framework.

Conclusion

Defence Team members came out in large numbers to support our consultation efforts. It took courage for them to share their experiences and perspectives with us, and this courage must be met with meaningful analysis, reflection, and integration by CPCC and L1 organizations. While CPCC does not plan on repeating these same consultations on an annual basis, we continue to identify opportunities to engage with Defence Team members and learn from the experiences of our people.

For more information about ongoing internal and external engagement about conduct and culture in DND/CAF, please contact CPCCEngagements-CCPCEngagements@forces.gc.ca.

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