Workplace culture - Leaving the party while it's still fun.
This week’s podcast features an interview with Tim Davenport, the Director of Fundraising & Sponsorship at OzFish Unlimited.
Tim spent a significant part of his career as a senior executive in the media. After a period of stability, the organisation changed constantly and rapidly. That involved a succession of mergers, acquisitions and takeovers – each coming with change and a clash of workplace culture. His insights for leaders dealing with change (so all leaders!) are invaluable.
Workplace Culture – The Good, The Bad or The What-The?
Really Elon? When Space -X had to blow up their own rocket shortly after take-off last week (another Elon inspired act of self destruction), the company described it as a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. Leaders everywhere – please just say what you mean, don’t hide behind cliches and slippery talk. No-one trusts language like that – and they don’t trust the people who use them.
Words of Authenticity
Worth The Time
The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life – Boyd Varty (a favourite of our guests and a gift he sent to Simon)
The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life
Interview Summary
Our interviews aim to be conversational, so they aren’t always linear. These are the main points, roughly in order.
- The experience of sitting in a boardroom making decisions that affected other people’s lives
- Helping people get comfortable being uncomfortable
- Communicating to team members about change
- Conveying clinical decisions in humanistic ways
- Being the guy who has to deliver decisions that were imposed on you
- Stay mentally healthy as the leader delivering challenging messages
- Taking time out in a busy leadership routine to reflect and learn
- A strategy to have your partner be a sounding board without making home a place where the stresses of work derail the rest of your life
- A story of delivering bad news with incredible humanity
- When people thank you for taking away their jobs
- The first Uber Eats? And how visionary leadership transformed the outcomes of a basket case
- Taking a year off (paid work) and growing as a leader and as a human
- Leaving the party when it’s still fun
- The greatest success as a leader – growing others
- The importance of an excellent mentor
The debrief–what we learned from Tim and his experience with workplace culture
For Kirralea, Tim’s willingness to sit in the uncomfortable while he worked out his next moves was the standout.
Simon enjoyed the humanity Tim brings to uncomfortable situations – he doesn’t avoid the difficult things but he approaches them with compassion, empathy and a concern for people’s dignity.
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Got a question for the Podcast? You can drop us a voice message via instagram or email us at: authenticity@reallearning.com.au
Thanks to our Podcasting producer, Josh at Deadset Podcasting for all his work behind the scenes.