Appod Shay Production.
Welcome to another episode of Brave Always the CEO series. This series we launch into the new world of brave leadership.
Happy people create happy businesses.
True emotionally intelligent leadership.
I picked up vomit once on our about our four flight and everybody thought, well, if it's good enough for him, I can do it now.
We will be joined by culture and leadership.
Experts and some superstar CEOs who will courageously tell us the truth behind their brave leadership journeys.
I am delighted to have with me in studio. News Corp Australia's.
Queensland editor and the editor of the Career Mail, mister Chris Jones. Chris has had an impressive twenty one year career with News Corps, spanning his early days as a reporter to head of news and now finding it the helm of one of the leading newspapers in the country. He also co hosts Towards the Game's podcast with Lutzi, where they explore the journey of Brisbane's transformation for the twenty thirty two Olympic Games.
Welcome Chris.
I'm so happy to be here. Emma.
I think what you're doing is really impressive. You're giving a permission to be vulnerable, particularly for male leaders I think find it quite difficult.
Thank you.
And you know, it's funny like over the last few years, particularly with running my business, you know, I have the pleasure of often working with a lot of executives and CEOs in their field, and people will say to me afterwards like we're they scary, Like it's like they're.
Just human beings.
Yeah, That's kind of what this is about, is that success doesn't mean that you don't have all of the human emotions, and people can see that in a different way, and it's sort of sometimes I think will put people off moving to the type or pushing themselves the top or whether they can even get there because they're not completely stoic and you know, they don't have these things. So it is kind of allowing people to see that it's both sides of the coins you.
I appreciate that. How's a year started for you?
Good? Busy. It's always busy, but always exciting as well.
You know, we're coming up to a federal election, you know, off the back of a state election with the change of government and a lot of what we do as politics yeah, it's courts and crime and and so on. But I think what makes newspapering in the digital sense these days as well as print, but newspapering different to other media is the time that we spent thinking about politics and so on, and the role that we play in terms of meaning. That's probably the central point of why journalism calls.
People, is the ability to use.
The platform to make a difference. You tend to do that through politicians and the decisions that they make, and leading them to that is really meaningful. So I always start the year feeling relaxed after a big break, but also excited about what's to come. You have a big break, always do four weeks. I always do not much more other than just sitting on my ass as much as possible, Try not to travel too far, yep, and just do a proper reset so you can come back fresh.
That's good, good ritual.
Now I'm guessing that journalists just have an amazing way of ensuring that there's little information about them out there. So congratulations, you've done a good job with that. The least amount of things I could recently human being with you, I couldn't even forget what we were born are you born in Brisbane?
Well, I think part of that is I don't think we're very good at telling our own story, you.
Know, So it's because you know what you're like.
On the other end of the picture, I think.
It's because you spend your career telling other people's stories and leaning into them. It's kind of yeah, you find it quite confronting. So I was born in Melbourne but grew up in Brisbone. One of the interesting things when I think about my career and leadership journey and someone is all I ever wanted to do was be the editor of the Korean Mail.
No you didn't, Are you serious?
Yeah?
Absolutely, So it's great to have achieved it. And I've been in this gig for five years. And it's kind of interesting as well, where you reach a point at which you've hit your goal and you can do it for a period of time. But I've got twenty or thirty years still in the workplace, and I guarantee you I won't be able to the corean male for twenty or thirty years from now, So you know, it's a bit of a crossroads moment as well.
I bet were you delivering newspapers as a young boy? What was it about.
I just love journalism, and I do love newspapers as much as you know. We're a digital subscription business now that happens to do a newspaper, and the newspaper's still really important and we still print a lot of them every night light, but you know, the future is the digital subscription business. But I just love There's something beautiful about a newspaper and I've always been in love with it,
the romance of it. Like I said, I did put out that little one in the street for a few years in the end of primary school and loved that and just always had a real affection for them. And what it's growing into is a love of journalism and as I say, the meaning behind great journalism and the impact that you can have in telling, you know, the stories of everyday heroes or sporting heroes, or indeed driving significant change.
I mean, obviously this there's a lot about the passion you have for this. The purpose of being in this field is to make change for good. It sounds like wherever you possibly.
Can, I think journalism absolutely is a calling. Yeah, there was a period there where every English teacher told their kids who were good at English to choose journalism. Some of the best journalists in the world world can't string a sentence together.
Yeah, but they know what.
A great story is, that you have the right motivation, and they know how to put those things together tocue great outcomes. And the way you motivate a team of journalists is not to give them rewards or clap their paid cynics. So the traditional workplace Friday afternoon stuff makes them feel awkward.
The way that you motivate.
A team of journalists is really just back their stories, back in what they want to tell and the change that they want to make. I'd be very surprised if there's many successful journalists who wouldn't just consider it a total calling rather than a job that you turn up to and do.
For eight hours a day.
So then on the flip side, given this is to purpose driven thing for yourself and for most journalists, probably when you're in the reporting space, and let's say in particular talking in politics right where sometimes sometimes a lot of what said is to be popular, is it conflicting for you? Then when you see people not using that platform for good.
I think one of the the challenges that the industry has had over the past fifteen twenty years is the rise of a celebrity journalist. I think journalists are best when they're not the story, but absolutely in the middle of it, so that they can provide the behind the scenes, genuinely informed analysis and commentary. Analysis is better than commentary if you're a journalist to then allow the readers into those I suppose sacred spaces that readers would never actually
get access to it. The great thing about covering politics is that you do get access to those things. The greatest other than obviously being the end of the Curry Mail, the greatest time in my life was when I was in the Press Gallery in Canberra in two thousand and three, in two thousand and four, and just the way you just witness history in those halls, you're part of significant moments.
Bringing the readers into that is actually part of the job of a great journalist, but never actually turning the camera onto yourself.
Does it worry that if you ever changed career pass that you'd ever find the same adorenaline that you get from this.
I'm not sure I could ever not be a journalist.
Yeah, fair enough, fair enough.
Going back to when you first started your career, I did really comment that you said, I think you were a reporter for the Weekly Outdoors.
I think that's what your first role was.
Look, I won the lottery early in life.
I was at UNI. I was second year UNI.
I met the great Dennis Watt, now the chair of the Goldcast Titans, one of the greatest journalists ever. He was chief of staff I think at the time. And I met him in a journalism student Association function and he said, with all this stuff you've done, I've done a bit of boating and fishing sort of magazine worked just as a part time gig to get me through UNI. He said, you really should be putting your name up to Chris Mitchell, who was the edder at the time.
So I sent off package Popoli. I sent it off and I didn't hear anything for a couple of months. Now it's a phone call from Chris Mitchell's the AA saying come in on this date next Monday or whatever. So I went and bought a tie and did all that sort of stuff that you do when you're young and going for your first job interview. I sat down and Chris basically said I love what you've done.
Here.
We're starting a weekly week end well outdoors. It was called outdoors supplement. Yeah, on a Friday, I'd love you to come in and be the reporter for that. So the first maybe twelve months of my career was literally jumping out of planes and riding around in boats and calling it journalism. It was the weecked and I did
my best to hide myself over in the corner. But it only lasted a year or so before you know, the rest of the room figured out all the chief of staff who wasn't Don figured out that I was there, and obviously I had a bit of talent, and they brought me into the news world and off we went. That was a great year.
Yeah.
So I mean, I'm getting this sense that you're the kind of person when you sit your mind to something, you just go for it. Is that true? Or does a lot of fear and doubt come into play? Is that sort of a front or in the background, and you thinking can I do this? Like I'm not even finished my degree here, I'm just going to leap in and do this.
I think self awareness is so important in leadership. So I've spent a lot of time doing it.
My natural work persona, which is not inauthentic to home, you know, is a classic Myers Briggsy and TJ.
You know, it's the full.
Napoleon Steve Jobs commander type. Okay, if you're more of a fan of the HBDI, I'm everything in equal measure other than the red quadrant, the WHO stuff. So I'm all about the what, how, why rather than the Who. Naturally, so I do struggle with the empathy stuff, and I'd love to come back to talk about that because I think I've got some stuff.
To share there.
But beyond all of that sort of personality stuff which is authentic, is also this sense in my whole life a natural shyness or something maybe a worry about what people are thinking about me. And obviously part of that drive is also look at me, look at me. So I think there's been times where that's come across as cockiness when it's not me being cocky. It's just me,
as you say, being driven and pushing. And I think as you grow, being deliberate and learning how to when to employ the confidence thing, when to actually lean into that and when to come back and be more authentic and vulnerable is a constant challenge. But something that's really critical because cockiness can absolutely get in the way of all sorts of things, including being promoted in a modern workplace.
Yeah right, interesting.
So in those early days, then, what was your first moment where you felt really exposed, Because you mean, you probably would have had a bit of confidence in you, you know, this young reporter jumping at the planes and everything. When did something goes sort of a bit pear shape and you suddenly went, oh, god.
That you never ever ever forget your first big mistake in journalism. Okay, and look, it wasn't a massively big mistake in the scheme of things, but I felt like
it was the end of the world. Somebody had given me a tip of the location of the new office for the you know what was then the CJC, the Crime and Justice or whatever I was commissioned now the Triple C. And I basically took the story tips fact and wrote it ran that big which is, you know, three or four paragraphs on page you know, one hundred, and it was wrong. And the next day, obviously, you know, it turned out that it was just wrong and I
just hadn't done the work, just hadn't checked. But I just felt like the world was crumbling around me, because you know you've made a mistake and you don't know at that time whether it's a consequence or not. You know, now as the editor, there's probably ten or eleven of them on any given week. You know, you just sort of work through not the exact thing, but you work through issues all the time. I just felt like, again,
everyone was looking at me. Your world's collapsing. The chief of staff at that time was Paul Whittaker, who's now the chief executive of Sky News, and he's a classic will always be a great journalist no matter what he's doing. And he came over and he sat on my desk and he said, I can tell that you're hurting. And you know, you've got two ways to go from this. One you can let this consume you, or two, you can just learn from the mistake and just don't make
that mistake again. What can you learn and just push forward with confidence.
Newsrooms, particularly twenty five.
Years ago, were not great places for leadership culture. But I think that was the first example or modeling of just really strong leadership. Yeah, take the time out, show the empathy, but be factual. Yeah, like call it out, give the feedback, but also give permission to get out of it. I'll never forget that, and I owe that sort of moment to Paul.
There's a show, doesn't it like they could have been a very different interaction you had. How would you say that in general you are with self compassion, because it sounds like you probably beat yourself up a lot at that point.
Fair enough, you're a young guy.
You wanted to get ahead now when things happen, and now you've got tons more responsibility on your shoulders when things don't go to plan.
Well has it in a critic?
Yeah, pretty vocal. I don't like to stuff up.
I certainly have many perfectionist traits, and I think you learn, don't you learn how to moderate over the years you get older, which I'm suddenly feeling. I actually try to lean into it a little bit. I do, genuinely try to lean into self awareness and particularly self reflection. And that's not exactly what you're asking, But I always always
set aside time to reflect on most things. So a conversation in leadership, I'll always reflect on, you know, a mistake or yesterday's paper or yesterday's story, or that story we just published, or that slide deck I've just presented, or the presentation of that slide deck, or the presentation of that strategy, or the conversation I've had with my
peers and all those moments. I always just try to take that thirty seconds or ninety seconds to sit and actually work through it, probably sending myself mad in the process, but try to be very deliberate about you know what am I learning from that?
Yeah? I hate to make a mistake still.
Well, I mean I think the industry you're in and the role you're in, like in comparison to lots of other roles, mistakes can be quite big and e quite amplified.
Right, how do you relax if.
You're not leaving work till nine o'clock and you're waking it too? With?
Has this gone out? If we think about resilience in my you resilience as the obstacles are the path. You can't avoid the obstacles. They're coming, it's just what are you doing to prepare for them? So how do you set yourself up to live what could be quite a high adrenaline stressful life in terms of things could fire off at any stage?
How do you keep yourself calm and how do you keeps it together. What are you doing?
You just drink a lot, Emma, I'm just cut of that numbers.
No, No, not the case. No, that actually makes it worse. So first point is I think you just have to assume it's going to consume your life. How do you relax? Well, I think it's just getting those coping mechanisms of just learning about having a head full of stuff and being able to just you know, compartmentalize at the end of the day and just know it's all going to be there tomorrow, which just sort of I think comes over
time in terms of relaxing. I love anything around the water, boating, fishing, being at the beach, all that sort of stuff.
Water is my.
Yeah, okay, And if I can have a water experience in the diary knowing it's coming, the thought of that is quite comforting when things do get pretty full on The other advice I've had from my boss now, Michael Miller, who's the executive chairman, is every couple of weeks set aside some time to actually just id eight and think, yeah, so whether that's you know, alternate fridays, just work from home for the morning and don't actually put anything in your diary and just maybe make a list of things
you want to think about and just actually spend the time thinking. And every morning I do try, I endeavor to just do a ten minute guided meditation. Do find that really does help ground and is ten minutes? I'm sure most people listening to this, No, it's often hard to find the ten minutes, isn't it?
It's just thing, isn't it's eighten minutes? But yet it can be quite hard to find.
Yeah. Interesting.
So I'm super obsessed with mel Robins at the moment, a big fan of her current work that she's put out around to let them theory, and as somebody who probably hasn't done that very well in her life, like I can let people's opinions and thoughts affect me and gathering being in journalism, like you have to develop a thick skin, right because people have opinions on what you're right and so forth. Do you feel that it's been a case with you, Like, is your skin go really thick over the years?
You know?
Does it still bother you when people have opinions on you? Or does it not even affect you anymore?
Okay, So as a journalist, never really felt it as a reporter, so I never really felt it, and that's because I was in the old school world of you know, we weren't the story. Yeah, you have to learn as an editor. I think in Hobart I learned it. I was there for two and a half years as the editor.
And the.
Love affair or that, the ownership and love that a community like Hobart two hundred thousand people have for their masterthead is extraordinary. They all feel like they have permission to criticize and so on, and often that becomes quite personal. So that was probably the steepest learning curve was just learning to deal with that. I think the way I get through it is to just go, well, am I confident in the position that we talk or you know
the way we approach that? And if so, then the rest of it is just input and feedback can noise so it doesn't hurt people, doesn't mean it stopped hurting. Maybe that's the bark you know I've had. There was a period there when during the pandemic, when bored Kevin Rudd.
We all know that.
We all know that Kevin Rudd. There are many you know. It was tweeting to his However, many followers. I think he bought most of them, but the you know, that little little mob that he gathered in that era, you know, just personally calling me out. And you know, I think
it was one one tweet. I do remember them. But one tweet was like, you know, there's rumors that, you know, Chris Jones's job is in jeopardy because of you know, some perceived political slight you know, Kevin and Malcolm of the Classic they forget it was all good when, you know, when they were being supported by our company and the editorials, and they forget that and they focus on the other
stuff since when we're calling out their madness. But anyway, and and you know, you feel, you know, I wasn't worried about my job, but you fear it because you're being sort of exposed. You know, you didn't choose public life like the politicians.
I think you're a fair game. But I think that's probably part of it as well.
I think you just have to accept that as the editor, you have chosen a bit of a public role, even though it's not that customer facing always. And also, you know, if you're kind of giving it, you might as well you should probably be up for getting a little bit back, and.
Again that's fine.
I just I remember when Virgin, when I was back at Virgin and we went through administration.
There's the cartoon slating of our leader at the time.
Paul and great great got two. Pool's a good guy, isn't.
He's a great guy.
Very privileged to work for him for that period, and and I just I remember feeling so much for him, like because I knew him as a person as out you know, I worked for him.
It was a great human being.
And he was slated a lot of the time, and I just thought, God, that's got to do something to people. And and I know, and he's pretty transparent. Actually, he's quite a vulnerable leader to be able to say, yeah, it really hurt. And I think it's important to know that even though people have got thick skin like it's it's still a lot. It's a it's a tough thing to go through. If you then look at the the other side sort of with authenticity, is it easy.
To be completely Christians all the time?
Like are the things that you actually want to say and do at times that you just can't because of the role you play.
I haven't actually found that Emma. I think the great thing, one of the great things about our company is for all of the criticism, I tell you, you know, it's probably not the right place to get into it, but for all the criticism is there's a whole lot of great things about our company, as there is, you know, and the criticism tends to come from our you know, yes, our critics, but also our competitors.
The free reign that.
You get as editor to pursue what it is that you think is important for your community is pretty extraordinary, so you can be authentic. There's the view from the inside of the company is as the editor in a place you are, your job is not just put out
the product. Your job is to be absolutely an aggressive I suppose, or an out there member and aggressive in a you know, in a good sense, aggressively pursuing you know, what makes that community tick, Listening to your readers what's important to them, and connecting that up with the things that you hear in the unique access that you get around town. And we're let and you know, if I meet with Robert Thompson, who's our global CEO, all he does is ask me questions about Queensland. Because my job
is to understand Queensland better than anyone else. If you're given the freedom to do that, then you can be authentic in terms of what you're pursuing, what you're saying, all that sort of stuff. I think the authenticity in the workplace hopefully my team see it. I think it's often a challenge, isn't it.
In leadership. You've got a really.
Busy job where you get so busy and so consumed with that to do list that you struggle to find the time to show people the authentic you. And when you do, you get that connection that you feel like, oh wow, that's really driving an outcome here, and then you get caught back in your list. Our CTO in Australia does a thing where before he even gets to his desk, he walks through the room and talks to as many people as he can.
He must iroze.
It just sets aside half an hour to just do that at the start of every working day, and his team you don't even have to say his name, you just say has work.
They oh, I love it.
Every day my boss comes in and has a authentic conversation with me, and it can be about the work, but it can also be because we're having this all the time and just talk about life whatever. So I try to do that. You go for a wander through the newsroom, but you're just a slave to the priorities, right, and your prior should be a people. I just think that juggle is a real constant challenge in my view.
I say culture's behavior repeated, right, So it's what people see all the time. So like in some roles and companies, you've got the ability to put things in place and practices and rituals, but you know you are living by the what's going on around you and what happens. You're at the mercy of that. So I think it's role modeling, isn't it. Like if I Win and chatted to five r people that work for you, how do you think they'd describe you as a leader.
I hope fundamentally they would say he's a great editor, yeah.
Because that's what we do.
And I would worry that they would say a bit too much of I don't really know him, as I say, that's my constant struggle is just how to get that balance right to invest in You talk about cultures and it was never modeled to me.
The newsroom that I spent the first.
Ten years in at least started in ninety eight, So they weren't smoke filled rooms, but they certainly were filled with a bunch of cranky old people who thought the way to an outcome and ironically it got you there was to yell at you and rand and rave and carry on. So it was never modeled. And I've never actually been in I've never done anything else. I've never been in an environment which I can model that behavior of that would be my concern if I'm being vulnerable.
Yes, no, it is.
It's a true thing, right because it comes at risk. But when you say, is it more a fear of being judged if you are or open? We talk about being open? Talk about the most obvious thing COVID Right when it happened. Was it like I'm at the helm, We've got this, It's just go, go, go go.
Or is it I'm exhausted?
How are you guys feeling like I'm not sleeping too well with anybody else in this boat? Was there much of that happening at that time? Was that difficult to do because you kind.
Of had to just well, I think one of the great benefits of that lockdown time was that we all as leaders hopefully invested in the human side. Yeah, because you knew everyone was strong, and you would find the time or lean into that a lot more, maybe because you weren't seeing face to face. I think the impact of COVID, obviously it has been huge. I've seen it
certainly in our newsroom and in our industry. For so many people it was a really it was a moment where they thought about their life and how they want to spend it. And I think we're still seeing the ripples of that. What we used to do in COVID is one example is we had a bunch of cadets as usual who we would normally be training up just authentically in the newsroom. So we sat up a weekly
hour where we batch them up with mentors. I'd get on there and we just talk to them and you know, what's been hard this week?
What have you loved doing?
All that sort of stuff, and we just have that chat and just give them that time. Literally, I always feel like I'm a prisoner to that, you know, the challenge of the to do list versus the people stuff. And I think that's also where my comfort.
Zone is, is that more time though, like, is it a time thing.
It's a comfort thing.
Yeah, so naturally focused or my safe space is how are we going to do this?
Why are we doing it? How are we going to do it? You know? What are we going to do? Rather than whose stuff? I mean?
I think one of the early lessons in leadership for me was this shock that people came every day but also just came generally from a different context. I couldn't work out why don't you just want to work twelve hours a day?
Yeah, you know, why don't you?
I know you're different, your personality is different. It took me a while to learn that everyone turns up in a to diverent context. And I suppose the extension of that being the TJ character is really recognizing you know it instinctively, but really recognizing that your success relies on having a great team around you who are focused and supported and guided and valued and feel all those things to deliver on the outcome. That has absolutely been a journey for me.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's actually a very nice touch on empathy in a way, right, because understanding other people's perspectives and points of views is a big part of empathy.
I feel empathy's the biggest struggle for leaders out there.
Personally.
It's a challenging one right because it's holding space for other people's emotions and what's going on. But as we're seeing with workforces more and more people for the start I was looking at the other day, but you know, something like ninety two percent I think of employees expect their company to be able to provide them with personal support and development.
Now, ten years ago, I remember.
Speaking to somebody who would laugh at that and be like, it's not out responsibility.
Like you know, sort yourself out, but that's what they want.
And then we're going to have this, you know, gen z workforce come twenty third, that thirty percent of our workforce to expect that.
Do you see that?
Do you feel now there is that big chef with I'm just grateful to have a bloody job versus actually I need to give.
These people more.
Well, you certainly see in the younger group, and that's just I think that you're right, that's his generational thing. I started there and I thought, oh, I want to be chief of staff by the time I'm thirty and I was twenty. You know, like there's my ten year goal. These guys come in and go, I'd like to be edited next week, you know, like just slow down a bit. I think what's been interesting post COVID, whether it's a post pandemic thing or what it is, there is more
of that sense. And I think it's probably also related to these conversations, giving us in leadership permission to have the more vulnerable conversations over lunch or whatever with our peers. Maybe it's also a cultural thing, as people have just started to realize, hey, you don't have to just kind of turn up and do the grind, like there's something else going on here too. We spend the third or more of our life, you know, in these workplaces, I
suppose we expect more. And that's a real challenge for busy leaders and particularly INNTJ leaders to dial into the thing that you just naturally find the most challenging.
Yeah. Would you say you're a curious leader or curiosity something you need to I wanted to say curious, not as a journalist, as a people leader.
Not enough.
Yeah, I think that's the kind of underlying bit, right, is they just wanting to know more about people and getting to know it. Yeah, journalism can be an industry resistant to change, but you've been an ambassador from bracing change, especially digital media and new technology. So like, where does that inspiration come from? Like why are you so driven inevitability?
One fair and that's like it's a bit flippant, but actually it's also true, right, Like dragging a newsroom that is a print newsroom. Yeah, my entire career, well certainly the last all but the first few years has been dragging that newsroom into what will be the future. Obviously, there will be a time where we don't print. I don't know when that is. It's further away than we think,
but there will be a time. So the core of what we do is still the same storytelling, telling great stories, making difference.
All that sort of stuff.
In a busy environment with a seven day roster where you got a five am starter and a midnight finisher and you got six weeks and three days leave a year for journalists because they work public holidays, it is very very hard to have your Tuesday morning scrum.
It just basically doesn't happen.
And so driving change, leading change is actually a real challenge but is so important for our business, like any business. But also it's just fun. There's this sense of the golden ear of newspapers. It was a golden nearer because we were just printing money, because we had the monopoly
on printing presses and classified ads. It wasn't gold in a lot of other You go back and look at some of those products that are pretty crap, and part of that was it's so one dimensional if you add photos maybe one and a half dimensional, the canvas of print versus the canvas of digital. Why wouldn't you'd try to lean into the canvas of digital and think about
how does that help us tell the stories? Not how do we do tricks to add trickery, How does video, audio, graphics, whatever, How does that help tell that story and really engage the audience in Again, that story that you're telling I think is just bloody.
Exciting, absolutely very conscious of time. Crest a more minutes, you sure loving.
It's the best counseling session I've ever been to.
I haven't even and I'm only scoping service. You're lucky.
I've I appreciate.
It, thinking I could, but I'm not going to push them too hard.
All right, A couple more I want to ask you here, So when we talk about asking the hard questions.
I mean, you're not afraid to ask hard questions right in journalism.
But what about having the difficult, hard conversations with your staff, like you have to let someone know they're not performing so well or whatever else do you have to deal with?
How do you feel about those?
It's the most important thing. It's also the hardest thing.
Yeah. Is it a skill of yours that you feel like.
Oh, I feel like I'm good at it in the moment, I feel like I'm also incredibly good at putting it off, Okay, And that is a big learning that I've had, particularly over the last eight years when I've been in the editor type roles or the editor roles. Is just the critical importance of leaning into them and it's getting them done, ripping the band aid off. It's not only important for you as the leader. It's not important for the subject
of that tough conversation. It's actually equally as important for the team. Yeah, because the team know that person needs that conversation.
Yeah, one hundred percent.
The longer you leave it to fester, the more it impacts on how the team views your leadership.
Couldn't agree more and look to be honest when I ask that question, and I often do. I mean, if someone said to me they don't have a problem with that, I think, then there's a problem with the leader because it should affect you. Right, You're still dealing with someone's feelings and emotions. The point is you can't avoid it. It's that my favorite Brene Brown line clear is kind unclear as unkind.
So I think it's important to do that. This is a tough one.
But why not awesome?
I means, if you wouldn't give it, I want to know, Chris Jane, why should anyone be led by you?
I would hope it's because I'm a leader who's genuinely always trying to do better. I'm well aware, as you've awkwardly exposed in the last half hour, how many gaps I've got. But I spend lots of time on self reflection. I sard lots of time thinking about how can I be a better leader?
What do I need to do to be better?
And I'm always striving to be there, to be better, to be like a Not to deflect, but it's a bit like our journalism. It's not always right, but do we try hard to get it right and make the right cause, so there's that, and hopefully also what comes through is you know, my passion for what we do.
I love it.
Yeah, I can tell.
The definite constant theme I've seen with a lot of people is this, when you have this deep passion, it doesn't feel like hard work of time. It's tough, but it feels different, and I think, I mean, what a gift. Not everybody in their life will get to do a job where they feel that way, and so I think for as long as you feel that way and you
turn up, I'm sure other people will feel it. I could talk to you for a very long time, but I want to thank you for coming on and for being so honest and vulnerable, because it's not always.
Easy to do, and it is a gift for other people because.
A lot of people look up to you and admire you, and to be able to see that you're not this infallible human and that there's things about you too that you want to work on and grow on, it is going to be great for people.
Well, look, I've really enjoyed That's what I've tried to bring today.
Am, because I think you, as I said at the start, you're doing such a great job with these things. I think they're a real gift to others. And when you asked me to do it, I thought, yeah, I reckon, I can do that.
And I think.
Hopefully, hopefully that vulnerability is not just help showing that I'm human like everyone, but also just hopefully people have picked up other leaders who struggle with the same things are hearing going, wow, I'm not alone.
Absolutely Bill's connection.
When does the real counseling session I was going to say to you, does that mean that you're going to come on for a round two where I'll be way tough and you I took it easy.
I took it easy time.
I reckon you find We'll see how you go for around too.
But thank you for coming on.
It's been great.
Thanks Chris Thos