We almost took ourselves into a place of nervousness.
You convince yourself you're going to be nervous, then you are nervous, then you think
how nervous you are, and by the time you start speaking you, you're very nervous.
I highly recommend people look for a mentor.
Give you robust feedback.
Give you insight into who you are, what you're good at, what you're not good at.
It was life changing for me.
Hi, 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
And along the way, we're hoping to get some really great advice from our leaders.
Now my guest today is Debbie Blakey, the chief executive of HESTA.
Hi, Debbie, lovely to see you.
Thank you so much for coming into our Melbourne studio and staring at me on a screen.
Thank you, Sally.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Thank you for the invite.
Now, Debbie, you're the CEO of HESTA, as I said, which is one of the largest superannuation
funds dedicated to Australia's health and community service sector.
The fund has more than one million members, controls $81 billion worth of assets, and
has 600 employees.
That'll keep you fully entertained.
It keeps me very busy, Sally, it absolutely does.
But what a privilege to look after the retirement savings of our over one million members.
It's a privilege we never lose sight of.
And thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with you today.
Our time is short, so let's start the clock right now.
Now, Debbie, my first question is about your morning routine.
What time do you get up?
What time do you have your first cup of coffee?
Sally, I'm an early riser.
If I wake up naturally and it's anything after 4 a.m., I get up probably between 4 and 5.
It's not the alarm will go off at about 5.15.
Yes, coffee does feature one cup a day and then just carve out time, ready for reflection.
What's coming up?
Bigger picture, longer term issues sometimes, but sometimes really just that day or the
So if you get up at 4 or 4.30, you're reflecting on the day and mapping out the day and what
you want to get out of it.
Very often the day, but actually sometimes I do reading.
Sometimes they're longer term issues, they're new areas I want to learn about.
Are you a breakfast kind of person?
I've never been a breakfast person.
I used to force myself because my mother had that old fashioned view, I'm going to say
that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.
And then probably about 20 years ago, I thought I really don't enjoy breakfast, I'm not going
to eat breakfast, so I don't.
And actually, bizarrely, both of my children don't enjoy breakfast and have never been
big breakfast eaters.
So you're all inadvertent, intermittent fasters.
Yeah, probably we are.
Okay, Debbie, my next question is about a pivotal moment in your career.
Was there a particular time in your career that changed the trajectory of what you're
doing or just took you perhaps down a whole different path?
So I've had three roles at HESTA, I joined HESTA about 15 years ago.
And actually that was a really pivotal time for me in my career.
I'd had many roles before that, worked in other organisations, I'd actually run my own
business for about 12 years.
But what was so different coming to HESTA was the CEO.
And I think it's the first time in my career that I really had a mentor.
I had someone who gave me input and really helped me build my career.
So you said that you had a mentor in the former CEO.
Is that something that you recommend that people have?
Do you think you wouldn't have got to where you are today without a mentor?
Sally, I highly recommend people look for a mentor and actually proactively seek opportunities
to be mentored and have amazing people who can give you robust feedback, give you insight
into who you are, what you're good at, what you're not good at, and really help you develop
because it was life changing for me.
I should actually ask her name.
It's Anne-Maria Loughlin.
She is now the chair of Tales for Super.
What was the main thing that she taught you?
I think most importantly, to back myself.
And incredibly, we are very different and in fact, one of her most amazing pieces of
advice for me when she was exiting, by then I was deputy CEO and I'd obviously applied
for the CEO role.
And she gave me such amazing advice in those weeks about being myself and showing myself
to the board and through the interview process and not feeling that I was being disloyal.
If I really showed her, I would do things differently.
Because that's quite hard as the deputy to come in and say that you want to do things
differently to the person with whom you have been working and presumably shaped the strategy
The day of my interview, she called me and then she said to me, you have to give some
They're not looking for another me.
Every good board would be looking for a CEO who brings something different to the exiting
CEO and be prepared to say, I wouldn't have done what Anne Reid did.
And I just think how amazing is that advice that she had the confidence to release me
to be myself, but also to proactively show that I was different.
So you can understand why she was such an amazing mentor in my life.
So how do you get a mentor?
I think it's important to look at your own circle, you know, using people who know people.
I certainly have recommended people reach out to others.
I think you've got to be careful.
It's got to be very well defined.
You know, what does it mean and what's the value to both parties?
I'm a big believer there's got to be value to both.
It's not just expecting someone to give up their time without getting value out of it.
That's interesting.
So what do you think your mentor learned from you?
Look, I think for Anne Marie, what she got out of it ultimately was that there was a
successor for her.
And I know it was a dream of hers that there would be somebody internal who knew all that
history, but who was in a position that the board would see them as the successor.
So I think that's the first thing.
But look, also you learn, you do learn from each other.
And I love the reverse mentoring.
I have, I've had two younger people in our organization that I don't even know if they
knew they were mentors to me, but I would seek their input on things that I felt generationally
they had a different perspective.
Yeah, interesting.
So Debbie, what is the best piece of career advice you've ever been given?
For me, Saliette, it was very much around finding your passion and pursuing your passion.
And I find it so interesting that you read a lot of criticism about that today.
People say that's not practical.
I don't actually agree with that because I feel the importance of finding congruence
between who you are and what it is you do in your career is so critical because the
easiest way to love what you do every day is when you've got that alignment.
So what's your passion?
I think it's twofold.
I think as long as I can think back to my youth, I have the sense of really wanting
to make a difference.
So I think that's part of it.
The other part is that I have always had a very strong love of maths.
Long as I can remember, I studied maths and ultimately I've ended up in a career that
has a very strong analytical angle.
And so I think it takes both boxes for my passion.
So do you use a lot of maths today?
You know, not maths in a pure maths sense, but I think in terms of analysis, both numerical
analysis, but also just strategic analysis and the core skills I think are very grounded
in a mathematical thinking.
Oh, that's interesting because we talk a lot about actually wanting more women to
study maths and STEM subjects, but I guess what you're saying is that that is important
not just to do those typical STEM roles, but also it'll help you in critical thinking.
Sally, because I do, I feel strongly maths is that there's such a great grounding for
so many whole roles in terms of how you process data and how you analyze.
So were you top of the maths class when you were at school?
Okay, Debbie, stay right where you are.
We're going to take a short break, but don't go away.
When we come back, we're going to open the Chatterbox.
I'm here with Debbie Blakey, the chief executive of HESTA.
Now, Debbie, this is our section called the Chatterbox.
In front of me, rather than you because we're in different cities,
is a nice brand box inside which around 20 questions all folded up on bits of paper.
I'm going to choose them on your behalf.
Sorry about that.
And of course, ask you to answer them.
So are you ready for me to start fishing in the box?
What's your favorite podcast or streaming show and why?
The podcast, probably my favorite, is Patrick Lencioni, his At the Table podcast.
It's one of my go-tos when I have a bit of downtime.
And that's about leadership, isn't it?
Yes, and so many different aspects of leadership and sometimes a little bit different.
One of them that was amazing for me is around juggling.
Anonymous jugglers, I think it's called.
Very powerful about the choices we make and the sense of how many things every one of us juggles
every day, but how do you approach that?
And you'll need to make selections and possibly let some balls fall
and choose which ones are going to fall.
Because if you try and keep everything in the air, you're probably going to mess up.
So there's some things that you drop that you just think,
I have not got the headspace all the time to focus on that.
Like many leaders, I think you sometimes feel compelled to react to any situation.
And I think there are many, many different ways to not do that.
One of them that I love is something one of my team told me actually about the next best person.
If you're very busy or if you've got too much on or haven't got the headspace,
allowing the next best person to carry something is often far more effective
than thinking you have to do everything.
So the next best person might be someone in your
management team or someone further down the organization?
And this crazy thinking that it has to be me.
So I'm very often going back to my team and saying,
you know, I don't think I need to do this.
And in fact, I don't think I'm the best person to do it.
Sometimes that's related to capacity.
Sometimes it's related to particular skill.
I'm going to start foraging again for the next question.
I love this question.
How long should meetings go for?
I'm a fan of short meetings.
I just can't understand sometimes whenever you want to meet with someone,
why it has to be booked as either half an hour or an hour,
because very often I think all you need is 10 minutes.
But actually, Sally, I have a great story.
We have a monthly operational meeting as our leaders in our organization.
And it used to go for an hour.
And we changed it a few years ago to a 42 minute meeting.
And it's incredible the change it brought.
Where firstly, it starts on time because people are very aware you've got 42 minutes.
It feels like we better be purposeful and start on time.
So how did you arrive at 42 minutes?
I literally just plucked it out of there.
It felt like a good, not quite 45, a little bit more than half an hour.
It was a very arbitrary number.
And then it kind of stuck.
It's now called our 42 minute meeting.
And does it ever go over time?
That's what's so amazing is because it's a sort of sharp meeting
and has that strange time allocation, we're in and out and it's done.
I don't think we've ever gone over time.
So you haven't sort of followed that up somewhere with a 36 minute meeting
or a 17 minute meeting or a 19 minute meeting?
But I look, my team do joke a little bit because I do.
I like short meetings and I don't feel they all have to be half an hour.
You ready for me to have another fish?
What have we got here?
Do you like public speaking and have you always liked it?
You know, I really haven't always liked it.
In fact, I used to get extremely nervous.
If I think of my youth, public speaking was something I worked really hard at,
but got very, very nervous for.
But look, I do do a lot of public speaking in my life, obviously.
And bizarrely, I've got to the point where I accept it and try and do well at it.
But actually bizarrely sort of enjoy it, which is interesting for me.
And I think it's that little bit of nervous energy, obviously,
because you always have that when you're going to speak publicly,
but also then that gorgeous anticipation where you looking forward to it in a certain way.
So I do actually enjoy public speaking now.
Do you practice before you get up and speak publicly?
I do, Sally, I do.
And I always prefer to speak without notes.
It's just my strong preference.
I never like to stand behind a lectern.
I like to have a either lapel mic or a handheld mic.
Occasionally, I'll use notes on an iPad.
But my strong preference is to just look at the content
and have an idea of what things I'm going to touch on
and then find a way to just speak freely.
So if it was, say, a 20-minute speech, how long would you practice that for?
Well, it depends.
If it's something I'm going to deliver many times,
I would probably spend quite a bit of time on it.
I mean, a few weeks ago, I spoke at a lunch that was about 22 minutes.
I probably took an hour in the morning.
My team helped me with some great content
and then took an hour in the morning to just
be clear what I was going to deliver
and just identify the different themes
so that I could speak without notes.
And what would you say are the secrets to learning to like presenting?
For me, I think it was being prepared
and then probably not overthinking it.
I did do some presentation work and the coach was just so amazing
because she spoke about how we almost took ourselves into a place of nervousness.
You convince yourself you're going to be nervous,
then you are nervous, then you think how nervous you are.
By the time you start speaking, you're very nervous.
Whereas she just spoke about calmly preparing
and when that nervousness would appear to convince myself,
I know what I'm going to say.
So I think that really helped me.
Do you know, I once heard that Hillary Clinton,
when she was getting nervous before the speech,
she would smile because smiling relaxes you.
That is brilliant.
I've actually been given that advice.
Smiling and blinking.
Why does blinking help?
You know, when you're very nervous,
you sort of can almost get that shell-shocked look
and I think a smile and a blink kind of relaxes you.
I'm going to try the blinking next time.
On that note, Debbie, you have passed the chatterbox section
with flying colors.
Thank you very much.
And I now have one last question for you.
If we gave you 12 months off, you were unencumbered,
you could do anything you liked, what would it be?
I'm a believer that everybody has a book to write,
a story to tell, a book to write.
And I've got lots of ideas what mine might be.
There's so many things.
And actually, my dad wrote, he didn't write a book,
but he's written a lot of chapters.
When he was a bit younger, he's in his 90s now.
And they mean so much to me in terms of some of his experience
of life being captured.
So I guess that's what motivates me.
I'd love to capture something for my future generations.
Oh, so it might be something about yourself
and what you've learned and what you've done.
Little moments of experience, people I've met,
perspectives I've had, yes.
It would be fun to write it.
It might not be fun to read it,
but I don't think that really matters if it's fun to write.
And that is our 15 minutes up.
It's been an absolute delight chatting to you.
I love the advice you got about being yourself
and not to be afraid to present your true self to the board.
I thought your former CEO was particularly generous
when she said, don't be afraid to go in
and want to change things
and come up with a different plan that's not mine.
And I hope that lots of CEOs will have that generosity
to their number twos.
I also really like the idea you've got
that it's actually okay to let some balls drop.
You can't keep them all in the air.
Don't worry about it.
And I love the 42 minute meeting.
In fact, I was thinking maybe we should make
the 15 minutes with the boss,
14 and a half minutes with the boss.
Thank you, Sally.
And thank you for spending this time with me.
It's been wonderful.
Well, thank you for allowing us
to spend 15 minutes with the boss.
And thank you to everyone for listening.
If you like the podcast and would like to hear more,
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This podcast was hosted by me, Sally Patton,
produced and edited by Lapfan,
our theme is by Alex Gow,
and our executive producer is Fiona Buffini.
The Australian Financial Review.