Hayden: [00:00:00]
I really enjoyed that interview with Dr. Liz Walker, CEO of the RSPCA Victoria, in particular, I just love how she's able to demonstrate that she's been a great CEO, although that's my words, not hers, and also being able to be a great or Certainly, focused on being a good or great mum, and juggling four children as well as, other challenges in life that she's particularly had whilst also being a wonderful CEO of the RSPCA in Victoria.
For me, those challenges come up. In her focus on [00:01:00] wellbeing and focus on leadership. So I'm looking forward to diving more deeply into those areas and sharing some of my perspective or perspectives on what she was talking about in terms of the research and the evidence behind that. And also sharing some practical tips to help you to take away some key lessons from listening to Liz Walker.
So with that in mind, I'd like to jump into probably one of the first things that Liv spoke about that was really important. And it's actually based around some research by, and a book called Drop the Ball by Tiffany Dufu. And it's all about achieving more by doing less. And particularly written for female leaders in business.
Liz spoke about how she's had to juggle being the CEO of Lort Smith Animal Hospital for the last four years, and prior to that she was the CEO of Lort Smith Animal Hospital. And she has also been raising four children two of which are almost in that early adult uh, [00:02:00] years. and also...
going through a very challenging separation from her husband. So, imagine trying to raise four children as a mother. trying to go through a challenging separation whilst trying to be a great leader. So I'm really interested in that. And one of the lessons from Tiffany Dufu in her book, Drop the Ball, and I've used that book with many women leaders that I've coached, and I would certainly recommend it to any female leader, is about, The concept of trying to ensure, or what you're trying to do sometimes, unconsciously as a female leader, is be a leader in a business, but also be a mother, but not just be a mother, but be the mother that your mother was.
Except the challenge is that your mother probably didn't work. And so if your mother didn't work, and you're trying to be the mother that she was to you as well as. Holding down a full on leadership role, you can't do both. [00:03:00] And Tiffany Dufu's advice to people is to drop the ball.
That is, don't try to actually be the perfect mother and the perfect uh, CEO. Do things a little differently. I remember one example that she gave in her book that really sits with me and resonates with me a lot is that. On one occasion, Tiffany had to go into state in the US uh, somewhere, I can't remember where or not, for a few days.
Her husband was... Taking over the duties of looking after the children and he had to do some washing and some ironing, et cetera. But instead of doing that himself, he sent it away to be washed and ironed and then came back. So he sent it away for dry cleaning. And Tiffany came home and saw everything was under control, but she actually got upset with her husband for not doing it himself.
And she realized. What am I doing? What, why does he need to do things the way I want him to do them? And so she started recognizing some patterns in her own behavior, even [00:04:00] things like I've got a birthday party for my child and my child. My mum used to make cakes for my birthday. Why don't I make a cake?
Which might take four hours or so to make rather than going down to the local cake store and buying a cake Because it feels like the right thing to do. So there are many examples where Tiffany in her book Drop the Ball talks about letting go of being the mother that your mother was and juggling things a little differently and certainly Liz has benefited from thinking differently about her role as a mother whilst also being an important CEO.
Something else Liz spoke about that I thought I'd reflect on a little more is she's someone who's developing the habit of deep reflective practice and that is all about enhancing your self awareness. And I think great leaders uh, regularly reflect on themselves and learn about themselves to continually improve and become the best leader they can be.
So, from a self awareness perspective, I mean, this started [00:05:00] a long time ago with people like Socrates. Who uh, said, know thyself. More recently, the Jahari Window is an example of a framework to think about yourself. Uh, For those who haven't heard of the Jahari Window, there's four different quadrants, which start with what you know about yourself and what others know about you.
Another quadrant is what you know but others don't know. Another one is what others know about you and you don't know. And the final one is what you don't know and what others don't know about you. The key, uh, focus area that I like to focus on is the blind spots, which is what others know about you, but you don't know about yourself.
And that's where the power of a 360 degree assessment tool comes in. is really powerful if you can unpack it in a very psychologically safe environment, reflect on yourself, and particularly looking at the gap between what you have said about yourself when you filled out a 360 assessment and what others, whether it's your peers or [00:06:00] direct reports or your, your boss have said about you.
Um, So Liz has developed a very good habit over 360 assessments and reflecting deeply and learning from those things. And she said... Something fascinating from that, she's developed a little mantra of five things, listen, pause, understand, provide clarity and be courageous. And I think the idea behind not only doing a 360 is important, but actually reflecting on that deeply and then using it in some way to build some new positive habits.
And that's certainly what Liz has been able to do. Another thing she spoke about was having a great support team around her. And I think that's so important for anyone. She said she's got this great support team around her, but she invites people in. She invites people in to help her. With her to-do list, she said, I like a good list, but she focuses on what matters and she gets the team around her, whether it be her EA, her [00:07:00] chairman, her executive team, she builds a good support network around her.
So I think that is something else that leaders need to recognise, that sometimes can feel very lonely, but you need to build the support team around you to be successful. Another strategy she spoke about uh, which was part of her reflective practice, she said, If something is worrying me, I ask myself, is this something I can actually do something with?
If it is, then I'll do it. If it's not, then I'll let it go. Now where this comes from is Stephen Covey's model of circle of control and influence. And it's a very simple model, but I've been given a lot of feedback that it's one of the most powerful frameworks that leaders that I've worked with have really useful from a practical perspective.
Let me just explain it a little bit to the listeners. The first thing is what's in your control. And the only thing really that's in your control is your own behaviors and thoughts and so forth. So focusing on what's in your [00:08:00] control, what can you do is really important. The key there is if something is your, in your control, then do something about it.
Focus on the problem and use your what's called problem focused coping mechanisms to respond. On the outside of the Circle of Control and Influence model is what's called the Circle of Concerns. There's a whole lot of things that you might be concerned about but you have no control or influence over.
And so, if those things are in place, finding a way to let go is really important. Now, that's easier said than done. But it really is important to find strategies, whether it's cognitive psychology strategies, behavioural strategies, various techniques that you can learn to let go of the things that might be worrying you if they are outside of your control, then that's something you need to learn to do.
On the middle of the circle of control and influence is what's in your influence. So [00:09:00] these are things that are not in your control, but you can influence them. they're things you're concerned about, but you do have some influence, but no control over. So this might be how you influence stakeholders, how you influence your direct reports, how you influence upwards.
If you're a CEO, how you influence the board and the chairman. So you can influence those things, but also recognising things that are not in your control. One of the. mistakes that leaders often make is, leaders are often very good at getting a lot done and focusing on fixing things.
Unfortunately, one of the things that gets them in trouble is that they also try to control things that are not in their control. And so that causes distress to people. So it's a matter of firstly accurately diagnosing, is this something that's in my control? is it something I can influence? And which bits of this do I need to really let go of?
And so that's a, a key strategy for leaders to manage their own wellbeing, is to understand and then apply that kind of framework. Something [00:10:00] else Liz spoke about, which I think is really a crucial part of well being, when you think of well being, there's four things that I often think about. There's the mental well being, the physical well being, the emotional well being, but also social well being.
So Liz spoke about social well being. She spoke about making time for herself, but usually time for herself. was about catching up with friends, a personal trainer. So it might be physical activity, but with someone else it could be socialising with friends. She spoke about being deliberate about her friendship groups.
She actually even mentioned that sometimes her physical wellbeing might be reduced because she's focusing first on her own social wellbeing. And sometimes those two things can be... in conflict with each other, social and physical wellbeing uh, or social and mental wellbeing, for example. So it's, it is about being deliberate about where you get your energy from and what is going to help you thrive and flourish.
And for [00:11:00] Liz, she really deliberately focused on ensuring she stayed connected to a really good support network and a friendship group. It was fascinating when I moved from that to asking Liz about the barriers to taking care of herself. What gets in the way. And she turned that around to focusing on purpose to overcome some of the barriers.
So she spoke about the barriers for her being tiredness. And juggling so many things, she gets tired as you can imagine. And many people do. And so to overcome that tiredness. She would focus on purpose. What gives her energy and what gives her purpose and meaning and It was fascinating to notice that Liz has two kind of main purposes, one that focus on work and the other one personally.
So from a work perspective, she said she wants to make the world a better place. through animals and the work that she does with animals. She also wants to be a great mom and focus on that on a personal side. And so there's a lot of research around [00:12:00] purpose and meaning, being something that enhances your wellbeing.
And if you're not very clear on that, it's really important to do some deep reflective practice to build and develop real clarity about what your purpose is at work and at home. Once you've got that you can look at your life and ensure that you make decisions that are in line with that and that gives you energy to cope with challenges like tiredness, exhaustion and other things that might be a barrier to your well being.
The final thing Liz spoke about was the concept of gratitude and You know, small moments of joy, she gave the example of her teenage son mowing the lawn and how grateful she was that he'd actually mowed the lawn. Now, gratefulness comes from the whole area of positive psychology.
And there's a huge amount of research that shows simply being grateful enhances your well being and your happiness. It's pausing to focus on the good things in your life rather than Focusing on the, you know, the one or [00:13:00] two things that went wrong during the day. There's certainly a practice that I've been doing for the last three, four, five years now, where when I go to bed at night time, between the moment when I turn the light out and actually fall asleep, I have a list of things that I run through chronologically from the start of the day.
To the end of the day where I just reflect on the good things that happened during the day and they're usually little things from recognizing that your son mowed the lawn through to I had a really nice coffee in the morning or I had a lovely apple or Someone was grateful to me and said thank you to something I'd done for them various little things that may have happened throughout the day and I just pause and kind of almost smile to myself as I feel grateful for the things that have happened during that day.
So gratefulness is something that can certainly enhance your, wellbeing if you start to build it into your daily practice. Now Liz spoke about leadership after lot of those [00:14:00] conversations that were more focused on wellbeing. She spoke about how does she, you build a great team of people.
After looking after herself. And she spoke about a number of things. Probably three things in particular. The power of recruiting great people. So ensuring that you bring in people that are going to enhance your performance and your team's performance. So really focused on the getting the right people.
Once you've got the right people, make sure you work with them to set the direction and provide clarity around our strategic direction. And she spoke about expectations and I think that's a crucial part of direction and strategy is to ensure that everyone is clear and aligned and expectations of their role and their role in that is really, really important.
Something that sometimes gets in the way is, you may have done that. You've recruited great people, you've got a strategic direction, but some people [00:15:00] are not performing in alignment with that. Liz has had to work very hard on learning how to have those courageous conversations. And this is something I work on with a lot of leaders, is how do you have the courageous conversations, but also what gets in the way of them.
One of the things that Liz said that gets in the way, which is really fascinating, is the concept of empathy and caring. Liz is a very empathetic person so that empathy for others sometimes used to get in the way of Liz having the conversations that she needed to have and in fact she ended up becoming like The mother that's in between, she gave the example, in between two children fighting.
And instead of teaching them to solve their problems, she was trying to solve problems by being in the middle there with her staff, similar to the way a mother might with two children. Now this is fascinating to me because it also links into and Lorry.[00:16:00] And that's adaptive leadership and a key concept within adaptive leadership is instead of actually solving problems for your team members, the key is to create problem solvers.
Uh, That is create problem solvers rather than solving problems for them. So Liz noticed that she was saving others and trying to solve and fix their problems rather than teaching them how to fix their problems. And having courageous conversations is part of learning to be an adaptive leader, and Liz certainly had learned to do that.
And the final thing I asked Liz was all around taking care of your team members, not just leading them, but also how do you take care of their well being. After you've taken care of your own well being. And so she spoke about a number of things that she has done to help to prevent burnout and build sustainable performance.
She's created flexible work environments. People have RDOs. Something that she said that [00:17:00] was really struck me was that if you are struggling, it's really important that you can take some leave. And not to fake a sick leave uh, for example, a physical sick leave, but actually to be able to honestly say, I am struggling mentally and I'd like to take a day or two off to cope.
Um, So she's She's enabled that, allowed that, and actually even role modeled that, where she's done that a few times and deliberately told her team that she needs to have a mental health day off to ensure she looks after herself. I think that's something particularly powerful around taking care of yourself, but also role modeling others taking care of themselves as well.
So, they're some of the key things that came through for me in terms of the key messages from Dr. Liz Walker. I particularly loved the conversation with her uh, because uh, she provides a slightly different insight to some of the male leaders that I've had on the podcast uh, looking at some of the [00:18:00] particular challenges that a female leader may have, and particularly a female leader who also happens to be a mother of four children.
So some of the key lessons for me are around Liz's ability to reflect on herself and find a way to drop the ball to achieve more by doing less was something that certainly was a strong message from Liz and deeply focused on self awareness, reflective practice, getting the support network around you and purposefully Uh, finding a way to ensure that your social wellbeing is taken care of.
And once you can do that being really deliberate about building a great team and taking care of their needs. So I just want to pause there and reflect and say a big thank you to Dr. Liz Walker uh, for being a wonderful guest on my podcast. I want to encourage listeners. If you enjoyed this to subscribe, leave some reviews and share this podcast with others that you think might also enjoy it.
Thank you. [00:19:00]
