Phil Scalo is easing into retirement. After a lifetime of work as first a lawyer and then the founder, owner, and operator of long-term care standout Bartley Healthcare – there is no mistaking the fact he leaves a legacy for others to emulate, one built on trust, hard work, and life lessons acquired throughout his younger years.

It’s not entirely easy to get Phil to talk about Phil without him trying to push the attention to others. This reporter, during the COVID pandemic, asked him for an interview on how Bartley survived the dark days, how they acquired the necessary equipment to serve residents and maintained staffing. Phil immediately directed the spotlight to a nurse in his operation who he said exemplified everything he wanted the organization to be.

I wrote the article on someone other than Phil – and he was happier for it.

This time is different. We wanted to get beyond what is already known about Phil’s professional life, which culminated in his tenure as chair of the American Health Care Association Board from 2023-2025, and find out more. Like how he got from being the Jersey boy growing up with sports and family to a consistently strong leader in a tough field.

What made Phil Scalo the person in charge, the man in the middle?

Middle Linebacker Leader

“I can think of times when I got that feeling people respect you or like what you're doing by throwing a touchdown pass on the playground or achieving in the classroom,” he said. “The interesting thing for me is that I was involved in sports at an early age, and I can say I was not gifted. I had to work at it. But even in elementary school, I just somehow wound up in the lead and that followed me throughout my life.”

For his role model, Phil “had everything wired with Vince Lombardi,” the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers and native of the New Jersey-New York City corridor, who starting his coaching career at a Catholic high school in Englewood, N.J. Oh, he was also Italian.

“From that perspective [Lombardi], it’s always been that leadership is something that you have to work at, but it's also something that you don't force on others becoming a leader, they choose you,” he said.

As a high school class president and captain of two sports teams, including the football team where he was the signal caller on defense, you may think there was a master plan on Phil’s part. There was none.

“It just happened. Probably the secret to success that I’ve had is based on the phrase: ‘Do what you should do, when you should do it. And do it with 100 percent effort,’” he said. “I played middle linebacker and that meant I called the defenses. And when I got to college at Rutgers, I was in a similar position. It was that kind of thing. It was just my responsibility. It came with the job.”

In the Family

Then there was family. Phil had a solid foundation to call home and was not under any extra pressure to do above and beyond in school or on the playing field. His mom was a bookkeeper and his father worked for Bendix Aviation, starting as a foundry guide and eventually moving up to a foreman’s role.

“I remember my dad taking great pride that he was in management. He had on his wall in the house a sign that he got through Bendix from their involvement in the Apollo space program and one that really struck me was called Zero Defects. It was basically similar to what we've had in our sector to be free of deficient practices, not making a lot of mistakes from that perspective,” Phil said.

“I've always remembered that, but there was only the expectation that we kids work hard, do your best, and that's all we can ask for, because they both worked hard.”

The accomplishment of being captain or even later success in business did not have as much sway with his dad as did the basic concept of doing your job well. Attention to detail. Period.

“I can give you an example of his leadership. We had the front lawn and we had the back. The front lawn was the showplace, and he had a push mower, and it cut the great grass in the front. Well, one day when I was about 13, I wanted to go do what I wanted to do and so I cut the front lawn with the power mower. I thought he's never going to notice. Right. First thing he said when he came home was ‘what'd you do?’ They always notice,” Phil said.

ATTIRE and PRIDE

As Phil made his way to the long-term business, he had ideas formed in his head from these life lessons that came out in a management style that demanded managers not only manage, but lead, which are two very different things.

Feedback initially was confused. Managers asked why they had to lead. “They didn't understand how important it was for them to be leaders. And, for me, leadership is also something that can be a positive or a negative,” he said.

Positive leadership is what Phil sought at Bartley’s, and the company’s core values is right on his wrist, a wristband with the word ATTIRE, which started as a personal mantra that has since gone “public” in the workplace.

“Attitude, teamwork, trust, integrity, respect, and excellence, and that's how I've looked at my role as a leader, and this is what I sort of made our company follow, too. And then the other part of it is a thing called PRIDE: personal responsibility in delivering excellence. Those are the two things that I've followed and then transferred over to our company.”

Phil knows what he knows and the experience of being in charge of an enterprise all rowing in the same direction is one that he will take well into his retirement.

“You know, I used to have a phrase, I used to have a lot of our meetings with a little picture of Tony the Tiger. Because of the importance of what we do, good isn't good enough. We need to be great,” he said. And so, it goes.

Comments or questions? Reach out to pconnole@parkplacelive.com.