Life, death and leadership

How my own life story has guided my views on leadership

By Tyrone Pitsis
Director, Centre for Management & Organisation Studies
University of Technology Sydney

Presentation to ATA NSW Chapter at ARIA restaurant, May 2010
Proudly sponsored by academy

I wish to present to you what I think great leadership is, particularly in relation to ideas, possibilities and hope. While I will not bombard you with technical details, what I am saying today is informed by over 70 years of research, including the research I have been doing in organisations over the last 10 years and my own anecdotal observations and experience. My aim, as I always say to my EMBA students is that I leave you asking more questions than you will have answered, but that somehow you are inspired to pursue some of the ideas in this talk – be it by engaging with universities such as UTS to do research, organisations such as Academy to develop your people, or in pursuing your own gaining of knowledge and self-development as you travel on your leadership journey.

But first, let me give you my own leadership journey. It's quite strange talking to you all in ARIA. In my former life I was a chef, but more on that later.

Lost and found: A young life

Ok, so I should say that in many ways I should not be standing here today. Firstly, one day when I was about six, my mother would not let me go to the park, so I made a slippery dip out of a long piece of wood and stood it up against a wrought iron fence. As I ran up the piece of wood it slipped away and I fell onto an iron pole, which went through my neck and came out of my mouth. I actually lost my life that day, while in surgery. A chain of events was unleashed on that day: as I fell a 4th year medical student was walking past, and my neighbour had his first weekday off work in several months. The student knew how to deal with the trauma, and my neighbour sped me to hospital. At the hospital it was the last week of a rising star in surgery, who was about to leave Australia for greener pastures. He was my surgeon. He and his team brought me back to life.

But there is another reason I should not be here today. My life started off as a Newtown boy, this was before its gentrification and any of you here from Newtown in the 70s know what that means, and how 'that' Newtown never leaves you and your identity. My father, like many good Greek-Australians had properties in Newtown. But from around age 40, just as I was born, he started losing his sight and this began a downwards spiral. He started to drink, and then also started to gamble. Now, I might not know much but the combination of drinking, gambling and blindness are probably not good predictors of success.

We lost everything and we ended up in housing commission in St Marys in the 70s when Wogs (Greeks and Italians) were seen as the biggest threat to Australian values and its way of life. It is in the hard streets of St Marys where I learned what hatred meant, it's also where I realised I was different because I was not a 'white Australian'.

But the strongest thing etched onto my brain while living in St Marys was on Anzac Day, my mother took us all into St Marys shops to get dinner, and as she was scrounging through her purse to pay for the food (it was Chinese food), the lady said to us, "no, he pay he pay' pointing to an old WWII veteran. I remember looking at him sitting on the bench, decorations on his chest "You're Greeks?" "Yes", "beautiful people...".

This created a connection to the Anzac spirit for me, and for my mother as well. It also gave me faith in Australia as a nation of good people. I wish I knew who he was, as his gesture was I believe integral to my life journey. I wonder what his experiences were to cause him to think about Greeks in this way? I remember seeing a documentary about Greeks in Lemnos who gave their own lives protecting Australians from the Germans – was he there?

My first, and most powerful, example of leadership

Poverty is an amazing thing, and when you're poor and seen as a 'foreigner' you have a double whammy. My mother was poor, an immigrant and a woman – a triple whammy. As my father got worse my mother became the hero. She was an amazing woman and in my eyes continues to be so. She brought up five children, all of whom contribute to society in their own way. She was an orphan who fled Greece for a better life in Australia, and had all the hopes as she married what seemed like a dashing, successful man. In the end she became a beggar to shopkeepers, yet a lioness protecting her children, she also became the Newton halfway house, our house was always full of people who were as poor if not poorer than us – the reality is there was so much joy in my life, joy that occurred in-spite of money, not because of it. The joy, as you can probably tell from my size, always centred on food – when my mum was a cleaner in Australia Square, even the executives asked for her food.

In terms of leadership, she also instilled in us the most important quality you can instil in a person – resiliency. Resiliency is more than determination, more than fight, it is the ability to take blows and get back up when those blows threaten the very essence of your values – values being those things most important to you.

By the time I was 18 my father died of cancer, and mum got sick too. Now, as I hinted earlier, don't get me wrong, this is not a sob story. This is a story about leadership, true leadership because to ensure the success of her family my mother did what she had to do, yet did it with the highest ethical and moral standards possible. She was loved, feared, and most of all she was always respected – be it by people who met her once or people who knew her for years. She often said to us "be loved sometimes, be feared sometimes, but always be respected". Mum died in a hospital accident in 2006.

The smell of success

Now let's move to the world of work. School, study and academic life was out of the question for me, and so in year 9, at the age of 14 and with the buzz of the Hawke election victory I dropped out of school. I tried a couple of jobs in construction but it was black money, unsafe and temporary. So eventually, in the midst of recession, I found a job in a small pizza restaurant in Newtown called Cordobez as a kitchen hand. There was always a buzz in the place, and there were the characters with rich, amazing stories: for example Tony Mundine Snr and some of his Souths mates and a little boy who would go on to become a league great, a boxer and a role model for his community. Stories that went all night, sad, angry, funny, and sometimes even violent. But the smells, fresh crushed garlic and giant Queensland prawns, in Spanish virgin olive oil, old style pizza with full fat everything on it baking away and mixing with the smell of garlic prawns were overpowering. Mixed with the buzz of people talking, laughing and enjoying their food. It took me back to my childhood and I knew this was going to be my life – a pizza cook.

Eventually I worked my way into the kitchen, but my passion for cooking would not leave me. I moved into a 'proper' restaurant and moved into cheffing. Things were going well, I started moving into sous chef positions, I enrolled in a Cert III in commercial cookery at East Sydney TAFE, and had a wonderful teacher in Patrick, and I was working with a fantastic team of chefs in the Eastern Suburbs (Andrew Fisher, Luke Rose and others that made working fun). Various team members and our brassiere even won awards, and even now if you asked me, I would still recommend cheffing as an ultimate career for young and/or passionate people. Eventually I became an executive chef running a restaurant in the Eastern Suburbs that ironically became too busy, but was owned and run more as a show pony than a business; there were too many mates' rates, so – with my mother's temperament – the relationship became untenable.

When the passion dies

While cheffing, and almost from nowhere, and it's strange because I can't remember exactly when or why- the passion died, but it did. The buzz transformed into noise, the smells became sickly. Sometimes I could not even get out of bed and the thought that I would end up a middle aged guy, becoming stale and grumpy overwhelmed me. So, while still working as a chef I decided to invest some time in a career transition. I must have been mad really. I was always interested in people, their interactions, and how we relate to each other. I was also always interested in what makes us tick. So, after doing a little research I decided I wanted to become a psychologist.

From the School Certificate to a PhD in ten years

Off I went to UNSW student info, only to be asked how I did in my HSC. "Oh, um, I dropped out of school and so did not do it". So I was advised to do my HSC at TAFE, so off to TAFE, but I had no school certificate, so here I was, working as a chef, and enrolling back into my school certificate. I did ok. Then I did my TAFE HSC two years in one. And while I struggled I never gave up, and did well enough to get into Social Science at UNSW majoring in psychology.

I really struggled early on. I knew how to write a menu, but scientific reports? Essays? Essays on philosophy of science, and the mind? On neuroanatomy and so on. Fortunately in the School of Psychology there was Dr. Stephanie Moylan who inspired me and did not allow me to quit, she also passed away, too young and will never know how important she was in my life journey. I worked bloody hard, and got into the honours program. While in honours I went back to work as a chef. After graduation I applied for research job after research job after job but nothing, so it seemed I was doomed to be stuck in this work forever.

By my late 20s, I had hit a mid-life crisis and was suffering a form of functional depression – where I could operate but it was almost in a trance like, robotic state. I was offered a job by two wonderful ladies in Clovelly, making boutique condiments and roasted and pickled vegetables for David Jones' new food hall. If I even had an ounce of passion left I could not think of anyone else I would have rather worked for. I apologised, found those lovely ladies a new chef and started my transition in life. As good fortune would have it, I was offered a part time research assistant role at the AGSM, and the rest, as they say, is history. I did a PhD, and am now a director of a major research centre, I write books and papers, and most importantly I teach. I did all this, from School Certificate to PhD in ten years.

I love research, and I am good at it. I win awards and it seems my books sell, I even get given lots of money from industry and government to study them. I have wonderful relationships with my colleagues (well most of them), and most of all with my students. But teaching is my passion. I use my knowledge, background, research and experience in the classroom everyday to inspire even just one person to pursue life to its fullest. And I always get as much out of interactions with good students as I hope they get out of me. (But you know what, every so often the hospitality bug pops up, it seems to be back, even this very moment I could easily walk into that kitchen and go back to my old life as if everything in between was a quick nap. If only my new life was not so wonderful!)

Are you a leader you would want to work with?

Now, let's finish with leadership. My story is just one example of a leadership journey. The great thing about life is you do not need to experience the things I have to appreciate life, what you have, and that aside from a small number of terrible things, nothing can really stop you pursuing your dreams. What I do know as an educator is that each of you have some of the most wonderfully creative and talented people working for you, and some of you are those people. Some of them, however, feel unsupported, undervalued, and exploited, and some of them I would hazard to say, feel this about you. How do you know? Are you the type of boss you would want to work for? The best leaders always focus on people and on culture, and always are reflexive of their own practice.

Yet, leadership is a strange word. It is bandied around as a catch phrase and exists in a highly contested space: is it born? is it made? is it situational? is it a myth? For me, such questions are pointless. If we define leadership as inspiring others, motivating others to achieve results and so on, well, essentially leadership is everywhere: in prisons, terrorist cells, hospitals, schools, defence forces, banks, and any other institution of human life.

Now, if we add another layer upon the definition of leadership, such as care for others and modelling and exemplifying ethical behaviour, well I still think we have a problem. For even much of ethics is open to interpretation, contested and highly culturally bias. Leadership in my book is something that is always evolving, it is a practice made up of psychological and sociological properties such as complex systems, structures and practices.

More importantly, and after listening to some of the greatest leaders in industry, community and government, talking to staff of so many organisations, and conversations in the classroom with what is easily thousands of students over my time as an educator, mixed with over 70 years of social science research, I think I have a fairly strong narrative of the elements of leadership as a practice and a process. These are my key elements to leadership.

6 elements of leadership

1. Lead how you would like to be led
   1. Respect others
   2. Be compassionate
   3. Be passionate, in key roles always surround yourself with passionate people and avoid the 'yes men and women'


2. Keep your reputation (that is the only thing in your control)
   1. We live in unparalleled conditions of uncertainty, risk and ambiguity. It's easy to compromise your values, don't do it, it's not worth it. Never compromise your values


3. Be liked, be feared but most of all be respected
   1. Create a positive environment to work
   2. Ask powerful questions
      1. Germany has a job title, 'Director Powerful Questions'; Australia does not
         1. A question: "What service do we provide?"
         2. A powerful question: "What service do our customers want?"
         3. A really powerful question: "What services can we create with our customers both for now and the future?"
   3. Challenge common sense and the structures that lead to it
      1. Just because the world may look flat from where we are standing, it doesn't mean it is


4. Celebrate ideas, and most of all, people with ideas


5. Invest in knowledge, development and education
   1. Break this Australian propensity to view academic ideas as 'purely' academic. The greatest organisations (especially those in Northern Europe), collaborate and involve universities and educational institutions heavily (be it Google with Stanford, Imperial College London, and so on)
   2. What's worse in your eyes "spending money on people's development with the risk they might leave", or "not spending money on people's development, and have them stay?"
   3. People are not your most important asset, talented people are
      1. The leader develops talent


6. Network (beyond just business networks), and collaborate

I'll leave you with two great Ancient proverbs, one a Greek proverb (it's not to do with finance), the other a Chinese one...

"Leaders plant trees they know they will never rest in the shade of"

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall"

Thank you.