Whether stranded on a mountaintop near Cannes with members of her team calmly sipping wine on a park bench in the town square at 3 a.m., or making her staff ‘jump through flaming hoops to earn their stripes,’ Norm Bolen says Phyllis Yaffe is ‘the best boss I’ve ever had.’

Even Bolen’s 1997 move from cbc to History Television was motivated by his trust in Yaffe: ‘I took the leap of faith based really on my faith in her and her incredible passion.

‘She was very convincing – she had basically told me this was a great opportunity, that I would have a blank sheet to invent the channel, that it was an opportunity to get into the private sector where things move very quickly and where there is lots of dynamic change and growth. She really excited me about the whole thing. She was very enthusiastic.

‘She’s very focused, she knows what she wants to do and she goes after it in a very forward and unrelenting way. She’s not easily swayed from her goals.

‘She never loses her hope or faith, never loses her momentum, never lets anything get in the way. No matter how big the obstacles are, she just keeps going for it. She is a very determined person.

‘She’s very action-oriented. She says ‘This is what I want to do, this is what we are going to do. Even if it seems impossible right now, we are going to find a way to do it,’ and she starts working on it piece by piece and is absolutely dogged about it and never gives up.

‘She is also very change-oriented. She has no difficulty adapting to crises, forest fires, craziness of all kinds; she doesn’t waste time on it. Phyllis doesn’t waste time on a lot of extraneous talking and fooling around.

‘She also knows everyone in the industry. She has a tremendous mind for details and she remembers everything. She has a fantastic memory. So she knows everything that’s going on everywhere. And she pays attention to everything. She reads everything, all the clippings, all the files, all the articles, and she absorbs it like a sponge and can bring it out at the most amazing times. She is invariably right on the ball; I’ve never seen her get caught in a situation where she got caught not knowing what she needed to know.’

Bolen likes the way Yaffe stretches her staff. ‘Phyllis really challenges and pushes her people to achieve their best. She doesn’t put up with mediocrity in any way. You never go into a meeting with Phyllis without being prepared to answer some tough questions, and that is why she has done so well, because she knows how to survive in this jungle.

‘She’s the best boss I’ve had. And the reason is she’s challenged me to do more than I thought I would or could. I’ve achieved all kinds of things because of the challenges she’s given me. I really like being challenged by Phyllis because I’m determined to always meet the challenge or exceed it, which makes me achieve things because I never want to disappoint her, I always want to satisfy her challenge.’

Even the 3 a.m. incident in Cannes shows Yaffe’s willingness to delegate challenge to her trusted employees: ‘A production company took me, Barbara Williams and Phyllis up to a beautiful mountaintop restaurant for a gourmet dinner with wine and everything else. It got to be 2 a.m. and their prearranged cab didn’t show up and there were no pay phones working. We were stuck in this village in the middle of France with no way to get home.’

With their plane scheduled to leave in a matter of hours, the party resorted to using a cell phone to call Canada in hopes of transatlantic help. ‘Eventually we had to wake up somebody by throwing a rock at their window, going into their house, calling a cab and finally getting home at 5:30 in the morning. Although it was a bad situation, Phyllis was cool, she was just having a good time, she was drinking wine and she took a nap on the bench in the town square.’