a listener production. Welcome to episode five of a special series of Empowering Leaders,
highlighting what we see as the common dimensions of great leadership in the 21st century,
new generation of purpose-driven leaders. And the incredible responses that I've been getting from
some of these leaders has been a great pleasure right across this year. I've had such an enjoyable
experience sitting down with diverse people on the Empowering Leaders podcast, each with an
incredible story to tell and a unique insight into how they lead. It's these types of insights
that align with a great passion of mine, a leader, a business co-founded with one of my oldest
friends, Matt Wadowitz, who would have heard me talk about it across the year. It's a place where
leaders like the ones you'll hear from today come together to collaborate, to learn from each other
in bespoke, unique environments. If you're interested in learning more about it, we'd
love you to head to a leadercollective.com. We love collaborating with all sorts of leaders
across different industries.
We often talk about sporting backgrounds or from the arts or from education, whatever it is,
small business would encourage you to book a discovery call with us at Alita and check out
our signature Alita Connect program. Now this week, it's all about vision and how leaders that
I've spoken with this year go about creating and sharing that vision. Well, what does that mean?
It can be about their business and expressing the goals of the company and what they're trying to
achieve. Or maybe it's in parenting, having your kids believe in the way that you're guiding them.
Or we see great vision from sporting leaders building a plan of attack on the field and having
their players have the faith to believe and execute that plan. It's the world of music though
that we're jumping into first and foremost with Benjamin Northey, the principal conductor of the
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. I've got ideas around the ultimate performance of a piece,
you know, when I come out onto the podium. But it never works out that way, you know. So it doesn't,
like my vision can be,
very strong, but it's always got built-in flexibility. And that's what I'm talking
about in it's collaborative. It's not a power thing. It's not like this is what we're going to
do. I can say that at the beginning of a week, and that's great. That makes everyone feel like,
okay, good, this person's got a clear plan. Can I understand that for a second, Ben? Sorry
to jump in again, but I'm trying to, so you've got the vision for the piece and you're conducting
them in the way that you are, but a certain section suddenly, you know, gets, catches
For one of a better term, you think, hey, that sounds better and I can let that go more than I
initially planned. Is that the sort of living, breathing?
Exactly. Yes, you've worked it out. So that's the thing. You let, you know what it is? You've got
to know when to help, and that means lead in this point, and know when to get out of the way and let
them, let them do it. So that's the balancing act that's going on there. And so, you know,
you might hear something, you might hear a player play something,
that you really like, and it's different than how you thought about it, and it's great. And you
just, what are you going to do? You just get out of the way. Let that magic happen. And it's
different also depending on where you are, what orchestra you're working with, that particular
group dynamic, what their strengths and weaknesses are, the hall you're in, different acoustic
sounds, the occasion, you know, energy levels of the group, time of the day. I mean, there's so
many variables around this that you have to be ready to, you know, you have to be ready to, you
have to be ready to respond as well as lead. You know, that's what I've learned. It's, you've got to
be so alert to be able to respond. I'm fascinated by it. I find it so, so your, would you have a
good read if you go over to London or, you know, I mentioned in the intro, the, the international
space, have you, have you got a good idea who the French horn player is and the, is it to that level
of detail or on the night you're getting surprised by, hey, someone's doing something that you didn't
believe in? Oh, that, that happens, that spontaneity happens in performances, but it's
the rehearsal process. Cause that's when the conductor really does their work. It's, it's away
from the performance space. It's, it's the working the orchestra out, especially a new orchestra.
So one of the teachers in Finland, he said, know who the divas are in the orchestra. So if there's
somebody who you really need to be aware of, find out early, get there, just, yeah, principal Ovo.
Yeah. Okay. Be ready. I'm on you. Be ready. And so, you know, you, you were, and that's,
part of the working with the personalities as well, but also, um, celebrating what they can bring
as, as individual leaders in, within the orchestra itself. In preparation for this, I, you know,
read extensively your love of that collaborative nature of large scale music making. There was one
quote that was attributed to, I wanted to read back. It's one of the few, this is your words,
one of the few examples of a large number of human beings cooperating in real time to achieve a very,
very difficult end product. As a metaphor for what human beings can achieve, there's nothing
and orchestra. I can hear the passion in those words. Does that sort of sum up to you that the
reason why you love getting out and trying to create that sort of joy? It is, it is. And, and
see, you know, as human beings, we, we kind of want to collaborate, I think, um, by our nature,
we want to be part of something bigger. The things we can achieve as a collective are much greater
than the things we can achieve by ourselves. And that's the truth with music. So my daughter,
we were talking about, um, before we started, she's just started violin. She's 10 years old.
She, you know, is doing a practice. She did her first state music camp this year and got to play
in an orchestra for the first time. And so she hasn't really been that into the violin up to
this point. All of a sudden she gets in the orchestra. She says, dad, you should hear it.
It's unbelievable. I said, yeah, I know. That's what I do. She goes, no, you don't understand.
I really like, it's really amazing. And so, you know, it's that kind of feeling of, um,
of, of the power of, of,
um, cooperation, you know, and, and the orchestra for all of its crazy kind of old world, um,
stigma and stereotypes, it's actually still a very relevant institution.
We talk a lot about creating and sharing your vision, but nothing quite as tangible
as creating a vision. You can hear incredibly unique insight there from Benjamin Northey.
What a great Australian Ben is. Love the opportunity to spend some time with him.
An incredible leader in his field. Now in our library, this episode was released the week
after Ben Northey's similar mindsets in the way they approach creating and sharing a vision,
but from completely different avenues of work. And that's what I love about this platform.
It's the ability to have such diverse conversations. John Bertrand, Australian
sporting legend and skipper of Australia too. The beyond belief story of Australia's win in
the 1983 America's cup, breaking the longest ever winning streak in,
sporting history. His vision was to defeat the dominant American sailing team,
an almost impossible task at the time. So the way he shared that vision was absolutely crucial.
Well, first of all, let me tell you a little story. Um, John Longley reminded me of a couple
of years ago, he was a grinder and an assistant manager on the, on the dock with Warren Jones,
our America's cup hitter. I've, I'd forgotten what I said, but anyway, he reminded me, he said
that, that race where we're so far, we're so far, we're so far, we're so far, we're so far, we're so far,
we can hardly read their bloody numbers. That's how far back we were. I, uh, apparently I said to
the guys, I said, if we don't keep concentrating, we may lose this race. So you're talking about
positive, crazy positive at that stage. And it looked like the impossible challenge at that
stage. 99% of the world would say it's impossible. Forget it. Turn the television set off or what
have it, go home. Uh, so anyway, apparently that's what I said. Well, that was, that's the
mindset of a, of a skipper of a boat that eventually we were able to be successful.
And a supreme optimist.
A supreme optimist. Ask Raza, my wife, you know, drives her nuts.
To see you overlay your leadership into every other area of your life, I find equally fascinating.
The Australian, uh, swim team is probably from an Olympic point of view, the most prestigious
group that win medals, lost its way. Uh, only one,
won gold in London and had lots of cultural and behavioral issues. And John Bertrand steps up to
the plate and, and, and you bring your psychology and your leadership to swimming, uh, Australia
with great success. Tokyo's the most successful Olympics the Australian swim team's ever had.
Can you tell us about how you went about instilling that in the, in the swim team?
Well, uh, I was approached initially, uh, by one of the directors, Clem Doherty,
former partner of McKinsey's, uh, who I knew previously. He asked me whether I'd consider
taking on the championship. And I said, well, I'm not going to take on the championship.
I'm going to take on the championship role of Swimming Australia because it, it was, you know,
it, it had its issues. And I initially said no, but anyway, he came back a few times and
eventually I said, I said, there, let's give this a shot. I didn't have any swimming background at
all, which was, as it turns out, an advantage. So I went in as a clean skin, you might say.
Lots of politics, you know, these, these, uh, amount of organizations, great intent, but so
much, you know, so many people, so much passion or, you know, lots of blood on the water.
I can tell you. And, um, primarily, uh, it was dysfunctional when I first saw it, saw the whole
thing. It lacked trust, which is so important when it backs to the wall and it lacked, lacked a
vision. And, um, so as I came in as chair, I said, yeah, this is of national importance. Let's give
this a shot for better or worse. So I embarked on the journey just after the London Olympics in
2013 and, uh, major, major changes.
Internally, but primarily, I guess, if you talk about the major positions and change,
it was, uh, and again, coming from the school of hard knocks and losing as well as a bit of
winning with the world of America's cup. Um, part of my sort of added value is this vision of
what's this game going to look like in 10 years time. Let's get there faster than anyone else
in the world. Okay. So take the blinkers off. And it was based on my own experience with the
Olympics where you've every, and the Olympics is really the cutting edge of human endeavor.
There's no confusion. You're either, you're either win or you're a bum. There's no confusion out
there. You know, I, I, I won the leather medal at the German Olympics, fourth place. It's worse
than last. And other than mom and the kids, nobody cares. Okay. I got on the platform on the podium
and won the bronze and, you know, in, in Montreal, thank goodness, you know, my God, the difference
between fourth and third is unbelievable. So, you know, with no money, no coaching,
no anything. But at any rate, if you look at any four year period, you get improvement in
performance, a hundred meter sprint, throwing a jab on. Interesting enough, any 10 or 20,
particularly 20 year period of the Olympic movement, a quantum leap in performance.
So the question is not why is it so? It's just that history tells us that in 20 years time,
uh, the playing the game of this thing called the America's cup will be much further progressed
than what it is now. AFL football, the business, the industry of podcasting, what we're doing now,
in 10 years time, you know, it's hard to imagine the way this thing will evolve, but it's years,
it's fast, it's growing. Human endeavor, the human brain is amazing. You know, we,
the suggestions is, is that we, we use maybe nine or 10% of the potential of this incredible
computer hanging between our ears, the brain, the massive supercomputer. Okay. Yeah. If we can move
to 10 or 11, sorry, 11 or 12%, you have major, major breakthroughs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
True. So when we look at human endeavor, Olympics, you get improvement in performance. There's no
question. Same analogy for this crazy thing called the America's cup. So part of my, and, and same
with the swimming Australia, we do not know what freestyle will look like in 10 years time. That's
got to be the mentality. Freestyle was originally called the Australian crawl in the late twenties,
1920s. Other than the head going down, the human body getting stronger. Okay. Nutrition,
whole bunch of stuff. Nothing's changed. Our next highlight is from a special collaboration
with the AFL and an opportunity for the empowering leaders podcast to talk to some of the AFL's most
impactful leaders. We started with someone whose work is so crucial to the success of the sport of
AFL major general, Simone Wilkie, former head of the Australian defense force and AFL commissioner.
Her take on creating and sharing a vision relates to the success of AFLW and where she sees the
competition moving forward.
In the coming years, you can have a vision, but if you don't provide the resources for that vision
or you've actually produced as an illusion. So a vision is a great thing to have, but you have to
make sure that you've enabled people to get there. And it has to be an achievable vision.
That's why I like strategies. So, you know, you set that vision and then you put the key tenants
or the pillars that you need to have for it. Then you actually need to go away and produce a plan
for how you're going to do it.
And sometimes that's where people don't quite get it right. So making sure that you've got the right
structures, that you've got the right resources, that you've got the right people in those roles
and then being able to adapt them. I always think one of the hardest things you can do as a leader
is actually to turn around to someone and say, you're no longer part of our team.
And I'd call it, I call it swimmers and non-swimmers. So, you know, you get into the
pool and there's people who can naturally swim and there's people who haven't been taught to swim.
And then you can teach some of those people to swim. And then there's people who's still going
to be floundering around in the bottom of the pool. What would you do if those people look?
Well, there's not a role for you, is there? Eventually, if you're not up to it.
So get them out of the pool because it's not good for them and it's not good for everybody else.
But to actually sit down with somebody and say, we know you really want to be there. And this
is probably the hardest decision, one of the hardest decisions you can make.
One of the hardest decisions I ever made in the army was a young lady who was in recruit training.
She so wanted to be there. She'd always wanted to be a soldier. If everyone was as committed as she
was, would have been fantastic. But she just couldn't do it. And all the other girls were
helping her. And eventually I had to say, look, I'm sorry, but we're discharging you.
Yeah. You know, that was really difficult because that was a person who so wanted to be there.
You'll have some other people in your team who are just naturally gifted and
lazy. And how do you then motivate those people to give their best?
It's a brilliant answer. And it leads to a lot more thinking. And that's why I love the crossover.
And sometimes in football, we used to think it's almost a little bit naive to think about being in
a war zone. But I think in terms of knowing your people, it's been a much more sophisticated
environment in AFL. You're getting 40 or 50 people. You're getting 40 or 50 people. You're getting
40 or 50 people. You're getting 40 or 50 people. You're getting 40 or 50 people. You're getting
40 or 50 people from incredibly diverse backgrounds and remote Indigenous communities and private
schools and all sorts of different situations. I think that has come a long way now in coaching
the individual and the care for the individual as a whole person. And is that something that
you've seen evolve in the other leadership spaces you're in as well?
Absolutely. Because that's how you make that team. That's how you get all of those different
people merging together for the same purpose. And, you know, if I go back to the army, when
I was running recruit training and when I was running officer training, all those people
came from every different part of Australia, just like a football team does. So if you
know that they have all those different experiences and backgrounds, you have to provide an opportunity
for each and every one of them to shine. And you know that they're all different. I think
one of the areas, you know, Australia as a nation sort of moving to is accepting and
celebrating difference. You know, it sort of goes to the tenets of inclusion.
But we are much better at that, in my view, than we used to be, where we'd put people
in categories and we'd just leave them in those categories rather than helping them
to shine and become part of that team. A friend of mine, Scott Gaten, who did his PhD in high
performance teams. And when he, the essence of what he came down to, there were about
four or five values that high performance teams have. And that's things like courage,
integrity, persistence, good judgment, and being a team worker. Now, that was a review
that he did. Well, not a review, that was his PhD, I should say. It takes a long time
to do a doctorate. They were the values that he saw in special forces and officer training.
That was Major General Simone Wilkie there. Fascinating to hear her talk about the tough
decisions she's had to make throughout her career.
Really, really good.
Really admirable leader and inspiring in every sense of the word. Next up, an extraordinary
conversation with one of our most recent episodes, Terea Pitt, a leader who had her life changed
in an instant after being caught in a wildfire and suffering burns to much of her body. Her
incredible ability and positive attitude to see the positive in her situation, the remarkable
amount of strength that you could possibly imagine. Her take on creating and sharing
a vision is practical and insightful.
Well, I think at the start, I was a little bit of a bit of a, you know, I was a little
bit of a, I was a little bit of a golden boy. I have a little bit of a big, little bit
of a little bit of a kind of a big, little bit of a dream. But it's okay if you don't
know exactly what it is that you're trying to do. Because, you know, so many people might
get hung up on creating a 10-year bulleted out, detailed, extensive business plan with
multiple spreadsheets importing into it. That might be overkill because you might not actually
know if what it is that you're thinking about doing is what it is that you want to be doing
or maybe you don't enjoy doing it or maybe it might change. So I think a general direction
direction is helpful but don't get hung up on knowing like the exact degree where you're going
to end up i think that you know not getting too hung up on that and and also acknowledging and
understanding that as you go you'll work it out um you know we had those really bad fires in
it was in the summer of 2019 right so the fires are burning all up and down the east coast of
australia actually all around australia they're burning and in my hometown of aladala the fires
were really bad we had fires burning north of us south of us west of us so our town was pretty much
encircled by flames and a girlfriend and i we thought we wanted to do something to help our
help our community or help the communities around australia that were going through these bushfires
and we wanted to help small businesses because in our community
all of the beautiful little businesses that rely on that summer trade there was no no tourists in
the town everyone had gone home um so we were worried about all of those businesses because
they would have you know ordered extra stocks um organized extra supplies all of that type of stuff
and then they wouldn't be able to sell it um so we so we decided we wanted to do something we
wanted to do this spend with them campaign which we thought was going to be an instagram page and
we weren't really sure what we were going to do we're like we'll just profile some businesses
don't really know what's going to happen now we could have sat down put more thought into it
planned it out more got on board extra resources done all of this work mapped out everyone's what
everyone's job role was going to be mapped it all out and spent spent weeks doing all of that
or we could have just gone fuck it we don't know let's just put it out there let's let's see what
happens so we just did a did the logo and canva um put it out there and we're like oh my god we're
out there and we're like oh well this could just fall over we might not get anything and within a
couple of days we had over 200 000 followers the businesses that we profiled you know they were
making enough money from people buying stuff from their store to make their mortgage repayments um
people made more money from one post than six months worth of markets so we really helped
small businesses around australia and if we had have stopped and if we had have thought about it
and if we had have stopped and if we had have thought about it and if we had have stopped
and if we had have put on additional resources because we were both staying up until like
you know 3 a.m to write back to everyone and i was two weeks away from giving birth to my second
child so it was a crazy crazy time but if we had have stopped and thought about it
then we might have not have done it you know we might have been like oh it's heaps of work
and i don't know if it's gonna work and you know maybe by the time we were ready it would
have been three months down the track and then maybe the businesses might not have needed
so much support so i think if you've got an idea don't overthink it just put it out there see what
happens maybe people will froth on it and you'll say great awesome this is a good idea let's get
let's get some more let's build the team let's get more help in or maybe no one cares about it
in which case there's your answer as well what a remarkable courageous and brilliant australian
terria pitt if you didn't hear the full conversation she certainly put me back in
my place a couple of times i encourage you to go and check that out
marcus gordinio the former ceo and now executive director of fair share who cooked tens of
thousands of meals a year nutritious meals to support the lives of australians living in
hardship i sat down with him at his industry-leading kitchen space in collingwood in melbourne what a
chat his insight into creating and sharing a vision focuses on the work he's doing at fair
share but offers a perspective that isn't always considered it's interesting as this food relief
sector has has evolved and i think it's going to be a big thing in the future i think it's going to
evolve and matured over the last couple of decades um there are some great organizations
and some fantastic people doing good work but i think what um for for me we needed to find was
our niche in that um and for us it wasn't too difficult it was around the cooking bit
and so therefore if i look at food bank and oz harvest and second bite and fair share all of us
have surplus food all of us give food to frontline charities but only one of us cooks on a scale
and so more and more we're having conversations with those other organizations at a strategic
level at an operational level around fair share honing its operations to just that cooking bit
so it means that ingham's chicken can approach second bite and say we've got probably two to
three pallets of chicken breast
and maryland with a day or two left on it a week that we can donate to you but it can't be frozen
and it must be cooked before it's given to a charity and second bite obviously knowing the
value of that chicken it's tasty it's nutritious wants to do something with it but the only way
they can comply with that requirement of ingham's is by passing it through fair share so they said
yes they brought ingham's down here ingham's you had their checklist their notebook and they looked
at our procedures and our facilities and our staff and said right you can have this
chicken as long as it passes through fair share so this is where that mission is really narrowing
to the cooking bit so let's second bite work with ingham's steward that relationship
bring collect bring the chicken to us we'll cook it but before that van of theirs backs out
load it up with three pallets of fair share meals and take it out to the local charities when you're
taking out the fruit and veg you're giving them as well so they've got chicken casserole chicken curry
and a whole lot of chicken based dishes as well we're not cooking it in a couple of minutes but
what we cooked the day before and so that's where um we've got our biggest facility up in brisbane
and it's there because there's so much surplus food in queensland that food bank gets offered it
the only solution to them is for it to be cooked and to food bank's credit they looked at it and
said well cooking isn't our shtick that's not our expertise we're warehouses we're logistics
but you can't cook it in a couple of minutes so we're not cooking it in a couple of minutes
that group down at fair share could come and set up up here and we could bookend them we'll bring
the food to them they can cook it and we'll distribute the meals they cook and so we've got
australia's biggest charity kitchen up in brisbane and we've been working with food bank in that way
for five years and it just makes sense and it was funny going to a few philanthropists and they said
yeah we've supported food bank before we've given grants to second bite we've backed oz harvest and
we thought we'd done food relief but what's so unique about this is that you can't cook it in
you've teamed up here and you're working with respective strengths of charities not competing
because we see so much competition but actually collaborating around your respective strengths
really enjoyed that chat with the executive director of fair share marcus gordinio you hear
him mention collaboration if you get a chance go listen to the full episode and hear his take
on collaboration it is really worth a listen our final highlight comes from another remarkable
conversation it's with dr dinesh palapana
one of australia's first quadriplegic er doctors after a car crash dinesh was left without movement
in his legs and arms but that didn't stop him from fulfilling his dream of becoming a doctor
perhaps dinesh's insight goes against me even talking about that but it's his attitude that
i found so interesting and compelling i would actually love to see a day where we don't need
to have these conversations we're just like oh yeah he's just a guy you know you know with the
spinal cord injury being a doctor like you know
not a big deal i'd love to see a day where where people can just do what they want they're accepted
and we just we just have this beautiful inclusive peaceful society where everyone can have all these
opportunities and do what they want and we're all thriving together so i'd love to see that and
that's definitely a vision but i think um at the same time like if you if you want to be a leader
apart from things like
selflessness and wanting to give back to the community and the people around you know those
things but i think one of the most important things is also um being an example and living
a good set of values i think those values are really important like things like integrity and
honesty all those perseverance so um i think modeling those values and
living it and being an example is really important as well like uh like they say you know you're going
to be the change you want to see i think good leaders understand that they're not good at
everything um and i read a book about warren buffett a little while ago where he says that
what he does is to surround himself with people that are experts on various things
so he knows that he's not an expert on everything and he's he's like i just try to put together an
amazing baseball team so we can win the game yeah so i think um good leaders
pick people with different strengths and put the team together but i think the other thing is um
for us to grow and want for us to have um for us to perform better uh as individuals too it's about
understanding um that we don't know everything and that we have to defer to others and we have
to build our knowledge in certain areas and to have that humility um so i think it goes both ways
well what a fantastic conversation
that was with dr dinesh palapana a remarkable australian and what a fantastic insight from all
the guests we've had right across season 2022 that finishes up episode five in this special
empowering leaders series where we explored the idea of creating and sharing a vision
our final dimension which is really aligned with the work that we're doing at a leader
is leaders exploring curiosity it's a common theme that we hear a lot curious leaders really
wanting to find a way to improve and
constantly learn really looking forward to that one next week listener