The Australian Financial Review My first day I was so nervous and I was shaking
and thought what am I doing here I'm such a fraudster.
So Rio Tinto damaged Duke and Gorge and I thought initially this is fake news but when
my external networks were telling me what was happening I was like wow what have we
I'm Sally Patton, editor of BOSS from the Australian Financial Review and welcome to
15 minutes with the BOSS, a podcast about success and failure and everything in between
and along the way we're hoping to get some great advice from our leaders.
My guest today is Kelly Parker, the chief executive of Rio Tinto in Australia.
Hi Kelly, lovely to see you, thank you so much for coming into our Melbourne studio
and looking at me on a screen.
Lovely to be here.
Now Kelly, you're the CEO of Rio Tinto in Australia.
Rio Tinto in general is one of the world's biggest mining companies.
Your responsibilities include leading Rio Tinto's global health, safety, environment
and security operation and the communities and social performance and in Australia you
have responsibility for government affairs, indigenous affairs and industrial relations
and it should be said that in Australia Rio Tinto does employ close to or around 27,000
people so that's quite a busy job I'm guessing you've got.
Yes, yes that's right.
So thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the BOSS.
As promised we have just 15 minutes, let's start the clock right now.
So Kelly, my first question is around your morning routine.
What time do you get up, what happens next?
So the routine changes whether I'm at home or whether I'm travelling but usually starts
anywhere between 5, 5.30, get up, do some exercise.
Exercise is not only good physically but mentally and then if I'm at home I like to come home
and have a bit of brekkie and then my husband and I have got two teenagers and I take them
to school and I actually enjoy dropping them off at school.
The idea of having conversations when you're not looking at someone often means for a teenager
that they tell you things that they may not tell you straight when they're looking at
So I get to know my kids a little bit better so I actually really enjoy that then head
When I'm travelling it's more rushed in a you get back from exercise and then you're
powering into you know the day or the site.
Quite often the site starts at half past five, six o'clock so you're into a pre-start and
you know working out what's going on at the mine site or the processing plant you're at.
And when you talk about your exercise in the morning what sort of exercise do you do?
So I do a bit of running, a bit of mix it up sometimes with swimming, I get to travel
to some very remote places in Australia and particularly in the north of Australia so
swimming is better than running and when I'm at home I do a bit of an exercise class.
And are you a breakfast kind of person?
I can't go past a little bit of vegemite on toast you know mix it up put a bit of slice
of tomato on, love it.
And what about the caffeine thing do you have a bit of a caffeine hit to go with it?
In the morning I absolutely love a cup of tea in a mug but it has to be a china mug
I'm quite fussy about that but then I once I'm in the office or outside that's when
the sort of coffee starts.
Okay my next question is tell me about a pivotal moment in your career that really shaped you
as a leader or somehow changed the trajectory of your career.
Yeah absolutely so I started working for Rio Tinto in the mines in the Pilbara in health
and safety that's where I started and was on a pathway of leadership and got to a point
where I was working at a superintendent level and really didn't like the look of the promotions
that were coming I didn't like the type of work and the leaders that I was working with
said why don't you go and run one of our operations and I was like what are you talking about
I don't have any qualifications to run operations I've been doing health and safety I've got
different qualifications to help me be a technical expert I can't run an operation and through
a process of time and coaching and mentoring what I came to understand is that they believed
in me so much that they were prepared to give me a go I didn't think I could do it but I
was like you believe in me so much that I'm going to give this a go and on my first day
I started to run marine operations at Dampier which was all the tug boats the line boats
the marine pilots that went out to the big bulk carriers to come in to the wharf all
the helicopter pilots that would fly the marine pilots out to do that but on my first day
I was so nervous I had to drive the car around the workshop and I was shaking so much I thought
I was going to stall the car I thought oh god what a great impression that would be
but I got into the office and thought what am I doing here I'm such a fraudster but I
went and thought all right I'll go and get a cup of tea because that always helps me
and on my way someone said to me in the workshop hey Kelly can I show you what I'm doing and
I got into a conversation we talked about what they were doing why they were doing it
how could I help and it was really positive conversation and I was like I can do this
because I know safety and I learn and I made plenty of mistakes and I only made the mistakes
once because I kept on learning and it's taken me to where I am now I've fundamentally
learned that I can learn and I can give things a go and people around you want to help you
so it was very pivotal for me having someone believe in me so much that it gave me that
complete change in career and that's a really good piece of advice I think that you know
that you can learn anything and if you can learn anything then you can pretty much do
anything right that's exactly right I love that I'm going to take that with me at least
for the rest of the day okay so my next question is what is the best piece of career advice
you've ever been given the best piece of advice was given to me by a leader some time ago
and he said to me the only thing that you can change is yourself you can continue to
work on yourself and improve yourself and if you look around and you see you don't like
something the only thing you can change is yourself and I spent time from then to understand
what are my true values what makes me tick what's my triggers that send me off down
rabbit warrens or make me mad and it's been a self-discovery for many years so on a day-to-day
basis or perhaps a week-to-week basis what do you do to constantly change yourself are
you thinking about how you can change your temperament your self-physically where do
you focus so I focus on thinking about what my values are so whatever situation I've
confronted with or it's difficult to understand or it's complex I like what's my value decision
here what is my contribution and how does this impact me because some of the work in
leadership is very human oriented I then also think about what is the multiple hypothesis
that could be contributing to this situation how are people feeling thinking what does
it look like what other questions should I ask to understand the situation more and then
understanding my own triggers so you know what happens when I get tired what happens
when I get cranky you know what happens when I'm confronted with things that are a bit
daunting how can I understand myself better so that I can have a different response so
what does happen when you get tired or cranky the trigger that I really have noticed is
when I'm tired I actually take it out on my family first which is unfair what I notice
is I'm getting cranky with the kids you know I get pissed off that the school bags are
at the front door and on the bedrooms or you know the shoes are all over the place or socks
are still in the car and I start getting cranky and I was like I'm too tired I've got to do
something about this I can really pull myself up and my family are great at pulling me up and
then going okay I need to do something different because otherwise I will demonstrate leadership
that is poor in the workplace okay yeah interesting Kelly on that note stay right where you are we're
gonna take a short break and when we come back we're going to open our one and only chatterbox
welcome back to 15 minutes with the boss I am here with Kelly Parker the chief executive of Rio Tinto
in Australia now Kelly this is our section as promised called the chatterbox where we have the
one and only chatterbox which normally would be in front of you but since you're in our Melbourne
studio it's in front of me inside are about 20 questions all folded up on little bits of paper
I am going to pick out three or four questions on your part and you are going to have to trust
that we haven't rigged the whole thing and you will hopefully kindly answer the questions bring
it on bring it on okay you okay for me to start yeah shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle
how do you create a positive culture within your company oh super question so Rio Tinto
damaged Duke and Gorge it was a tragic event and there was almost 50,000 people that worked
for Rio Tinto that the one event impacted and impacted then their families their community
it just reverberated around the whole world and I'd been working for Rio Tinto just coming up to
20 years at that stage and way back then when I started it was about the culture and the people
and I was on the east coast of Australia and I thought initially well this is fake news
but when my external networks were telling me what was happening I was like wow what have we done
and what has happened to the culture of this company and what am I contributing to and what
am I doing so what did you do so when I think about what I was doing I first of all had to do
a lot of soul searching about what am I standing up for what am I condoning and what are we going
to change we had to ensure that people felt safe and that they could speak up so we released the
everyday respect report which we very transparently told the world that we have bullying sexual
harassment and racism in our business and we're not perfect and we've got lots of work to do
so whilst there's some training programs and there's things that we do around ensuring
facilities are safe for people making sure people have got a voice and that they're safe to raise
the issues and what I need to role model and what I did what my commitment was is that I need to
ensure that I'm approachable and I'm authentic and that the door is always open so one of the
things that really struck me was that I've lived in the Pilbara for a very long time and whilst I've
seen and heard domestic violence in some of the communities that I lived in I certainly hadn't
seen the sexual harassment that was really reported so low-level sexism definitely there
but not the sexual harassment and and rapes that were being reported and I was like why as a senior
woman I people weren't telling me that I must be doing something that makes me unapproachable so I
spent some time saying okay how do I be approachable how do I create an environment that people can
raise their voices and that they feel safe and that the fear is gone in the organization
so you know ensuring that your actions speak louder than your words so you know making sure
that people hear that they're not going to be punished for a mistake they're not going to feel
like they can't raise their voice that they you know when they do raise their voice they believed
and heard they're not dismissed so that was my commitment and then I work with our executive
committee right across the globe about how we can do this change in our culture and the cultural
change is five years we're halfway through but certainly seeing green shoots there's plenty
more work to do though okay interesting so my three takeaways from that would be
first of all you want in order to create that positive culture for staff to feel safe and
feel like they've got a voice secondly you need to make sure that you're you are approachable
yourself that you've got an open door policy so people feel like and come and talk to you
and thirdly you've got to walk the talk it's more than just words and I guess that's all about
you accept what you don't what you let pass you by yeah absolutely and and you admit your mistakes
and admit your mistakes fourth one I love that okay let's move on to our next question
what do you do when you switch off if indeed you do switch off I'm not someone that does switch off
and I think what I do is try and make sure that I'm using different parts of my brain so like
reading a book and like a hardcover book like the process of reading a book and turning pages
is very relaxing doing puzzles particularly word puzzles um and number puzzles is different
to the work that I do so that changes the things that happen in my brain and then the other thing
too is just staying with teenagers um they keep me grounded and I do like watching my kids play
sport and being on the sidelines cheering it's always a good good fun so do you have to consciously
think I need to find other things to do with my brain because I need to switch off because
actually it's really hard to do your job at your level all the time if you don't give your brain
some downtime yeah that's right that's why I'm actually puzzles and reading have to become part
of a habit you're not sort of at burnout stage and go oh you know I need to do something like
it's it's part of the routine of sleeping eating changing the way you're using your brain interesting
okay you ready for your next one for sure okay are there any sacrifices that you've had to make in
order for you to do your job so I got some really good advice before I had children from a senior
female leader and she said think of your world in three circles of family career and location
and it's rare to get the three circles to cross over so if you look at your career over 40 50 years
there will only be a certain amount of time that there will be crossover but there will
usually be crossover of the two circles you can usually get location or family family career
family location so choose what you want and map your career against that and it was really really
good advice for me starting to think about am I going to have kids what would that look like for
my husband and I and that might be a number of years but it feels temporary compromise so you
don't I don't ever feel like it's a sacrifice it's been a choice about saying okay well what's the
crossover and what should we go with interesting so what choice have you made at the moment out of
those three things if you've got two circles that are co-joined so I'm more disconnected
to my family like my my parents are actually in on the west coast of of Australia and covid was
really hard for us to not see each other my parents are aging so that feels tough but family and
career is going very well so yeah so the location part is perhaps not quite in the right spot at
the moment yeah but you know things change and you know there's always things changing in the
world and and changing our lives and we'll make the next decisions that was great advice the three
circles which ideally will come together at some point but it's probably pretty rare very yeah okay
therein lies the end of our chatterbox session I've now got one last question to ask which we
ask all of our guests who come on to the show and that is if you had 12 months off
unencumbered you could do anything you liked what would you do if I had 12 months off I'd drive my
family nuts why what would you do they would be freaked out so if I had time off with them I would
love to take my family to Africa all of us have got a sense of adventure and we often talk about
doing that as a family and how we can do that and creating the time and ensuring it's safe there
for us to all travel but if they didn't have time off I know that I would have to do something to
ensure that I was busy and productive I'd certainly like to and I know I'd like to take up painting
but I'd probably do some charity work as well because I would need to be out of the house
my husband would shoo me out of the house are they going to be portraits or landscapes I've
started doing some drawing and I'm not yet confident to show anyone what I'm doing
but I'm enjoying it and that is our 15 minutes up thank you so much for allowing us to spend
15 minutes with the boss it has been an absolute delight talking to you I've loved hearing about
what you do to run a successful team the fact that you need to ensure that staff feel safe to
speak up to have a voice that you are approachable and I love the fact that you see your life as
having three circles where you've got family career and location and hopefully you can get
at least two of those co-join so they're in sync so Kelly thank you so much again for allowing us
to spend 15 minutes with the boss it's been an absolute pleasure oh thanks very much Sally it's
been great fun and thank you to everyone for listening if you like the podcast and would
like to hear more consider sharing the podcast or writing a review as it helps us to reach more
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the daily habit of successful people at afr.com forward slash subscribe this podcast was hosted
by me sally patten produced and edited by lap fan our theme is by alex gaal and our executive
producer is fiona buffini the australian financial review