Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Sir John Kirwan

Intro: This episode of the Change Happens podcast covers a conversation that discusses the effects of poor mental health and suicide. If you or someone you know needs support with mental health please talk to your doctor, a mental health professional or if in Australia contact Lifeline 24 hours a day on 13 11 14. That’s 13 11 14, or at lifeline.org.au.

Jenelle: Hi I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcomes to Change Happens. Conversations with influential leaders on leading change and the lessons learned along the way. So this discussion is a little bit of a departure from our usual interview format. Let’s call it a ‘bonus episode’. It’s more of a chat really and it’s a chat between me, and the great Sir John Kirwan or JK as he is widely and affectionally known. For those who follow JK or know of JK, and I know there are many, many of you who do, you’ll agree with me he’s a dead set legend! Not just because he is one of the greatest former All Black players with a record 63 rugby union test matches to his credit. Not just because he’s been a phenomenal contributor to the wellbeing space. Not just because he has ‘Sir’ in his title having been knighted for his contribution in both those areas but also because he is an outstanding human being.

JK is the co-founder of a business called ‘Groov’. A workplace wellbeing platform and he has his own podcast called ‘Open Minded’ where he has intimate conversations about mental health with leaders from all walks of life. So when I asked him to be on my podcast, he without hesitation, said “Yes”. But also he without hesitation asked me to be on his. Obviously it would have been awkward for me to say “No” given he so generously said “Yes”, but we did think that rather than two separate interviews we could try and combine the discussion given the strong relationship between mental health and dealing with change.

So in a total stroke of marketing mastery we decided to bundle both our podcast names and call this bonus episode ‘Open Minded to Change’.

I hope you enjoy my chat with Sir John Kirwan.

John: Well hi I’ll just start this is really different today so my name is John Kirwan. I have a podcast called ‘Open Minded’ and I normally interview people around mental health and go on a journey of discovery. So today I’m sharing it with:

Jenelle: Jenelle McMaster. So hello this is different for me too. I am the Deputy CEO of EY Oceania and I also have a podcast and it’s called ‘Change Happens’ and it really is a podcast that’s all about talking to change leaders and I know you say John it’s from all walks of life. Same for me. I talk to leaders from all walks of life on how they’ve dealt with change. How they’ve led change and all the lessons that they’ve learned along the way.

John: Why do you think change is so scary?

Jenelle: I think a massive part of change scariness is the uncertainty. When you feel like things are out of your control, or you are unclear about what’s going to be happening, that causes angst. So much about people being resistant to change or dealing with change, is about how do I reduce that uncertainty? How do I close that gap?

John: How do you do that?

Jenelle: God we’re already off and away! I was going to start with the questions for you! I knew you were going to do that! I’ll answer this.. but I’m going to ask you!

John: No it’s only cause it’s really hard to do podcasts with me!

Jenelle: Now you tell me! And I agreed!

John: I just get really intrigued.

Jenelle: Ok.

John: When I’m in my groove and we’ll talk about that later.

Jenelle: Yes.

John: I’m just really curious. I’m intrigued about your life. I’m intrigued about your leadership role. I’m intrigued about mental health cause often one of the things that happened with me when I started talking about my mental health was this stereotypical response to just because I was an ‘All Black’ I should have had my shit together. Right and I often find that with leadership like yours. People think that you often are the super human person that can deal with a whole lot of different stuff when often the reality is we are just like everyone else and we are just dealing with it in different ways or we have tools in place that help us deal with that stuff. But it doesn’t mean I deal with it right?

Jenelle: No that’s right and I think that people.. either they think that we’re super human or we think that they think we are super human and that puts pressure on ourselves too and I guess if there is any that covid has taught us is when we showed our vulnerability, and you do this all day, every day JK. When we show our vulnerability actually there is a higher level of relatability. People go “Oh thank God because I’m struggling here as well.” I think a lot of it is pressure we put on ourselves to hold up a standard that actually probably people don’t expect but we think that they do.

John: I think the biggest change for me – talking about change, and the thing I’m excited about the most is – and I don’t know where it came from, right. I’ll tell you a little story. Cause I love telling little stories. So just tell me “I’m sick of your stories JK”.

Jenelle: No, I’m into it.

John: I spoke to a guy not so long ago who said “We had a company barbeque and my boss was there, and wow he seemed like a really cool guy!” “He had a couple of kids and a couple of Labradors and he was playing with his kids and running around with the dogs and being a bit of an idiot” and I went “Yep”. Because somewhere along the way people said “Don’t take your real self to work”.

Jenelle: I know. I know.

John: I don’t know when it was.

Jenelle: It was a sad day when that happened.

John: It was a sad day. Yeh because I think that.. I talk about two things. Don’t mix your humanity up with your ability. You can still be an amazing boss and an arsehole! You can still be an amazing boss and a really good person!

Jenelle: Make you go the other way!

John: You know what I mean? You can still be a boss that is struggling with anxiety and relationships, or whatever that is.

Jenelle: That’s right.

John: It’s just a human thing that we’ve got. That’s what I’m excited about cause I don’t think that is the future for leadership. The future for leadership is actually being way more authentic and bringing your real self to work.

Jenelle: I also think the future for leadership is not just this.. like the individual hero leader anymore. I don’t think that there is one person that wears a cape and saves the day. I think there is the power of the collective leaderships. The people who work together and harness that ability of the broad masses. I think that people who can tap into the diverse abilities of others. People who show their vulnerability. I think that the architype of leadership has totally changed.

John: How do you lead and deal with egos at the high level?

Jenelle: Yeh.. there is a little bit of eye ball rolling that still happens. I think it’s really instructive as well. So when there are really big egos, there is usually a reason behind it. It’s usually masking some amount of insecurity about something. It’s usually masking some lack of information about something. It’s usually a worry. I think if you can get to the driver behind that do hypotheticals. One might ask oneself and then tap on the very thing that they would never be humble enough to put out there but you can diffuse that. I think when you come up with shared language – what we both want here is this, or co-opt them into answer questions where they would normally be sitting back with their arms crossed expecting you to have the answers. How might we solve this? Why not appeal to the ego? Actually what they’re worried about is they will be cut out. So I think the psychology of it is to try to understand what’s driving that behaviour, then tap into it rather than go “You’re an arsehole!”

John: That’s great advice when I was at my worst. When I was an arrogant arsehole rugby player I was just hiding. Hiding from me. Hiding from my anxiety. Hiding from what was really out there and it was the best defence that I had cause often it is what people expected. They expected me to be..

Jenelle: They could reconcile that persona much more readily than someone who is talking about mental health issues or I’m not doing ok.

John: Yeh exactly and I think luckily it didn’t last too long but it was a pretty sad time.

Jenelle: Ok I can see you’re warming up here to asking me a whole lot of questions! Your background is so insane. I’ve got to jump in. You’ve had such a diverse career. Incredible professional athlete. Writer. Mental health advocate. You’ve started a foundation. You do many, many things. Loads and loads of interests. You’re exceptional on surfing, languages, cooking, all sorts of things. What was it that made you, that drove you so clearly towards mental health as your focus for a career once you left the sporting world?

John: Can I just hold you there. I’m blessedly average at a whole lot of stuff which is ok.

Jenelle: Ok that’s true

John: We’ll come back to that.

Jenelle: and you’re also exceptional at a number of things as well.

John: Yeh but I think it’s also important. It’s ok to be blessedly average.

Jenelle: Yep ok I occupy that space readily.

John: I’m a blessedly average surfer. I’m a blessedly average cook. I’m a blessedly, blessedly average guitar player but that is not why I do them, but I think that’s really interesting. I wanted to jump out of a window one night.

Jenelle: Tell me about that.

John: I was hiding my anxiety and my depression.

Jenelle: What was happening in your life at that time? Where were you at with your sporting career?

John: I was incredibly successful externally. I was an All Black playing for my country. Had a free car!

Jenelle: Nice! Well done you.

John: How good’s that! Back when free cars weren’t given to a lot of people.

Jenelle: By Oprah!

John: Yeh! But I was suffering from anxiety and depression. So anxiety and depression are two different illnesses. You can have anxiety and it doesn’t fall into depression but there is a lot of people that do have anxiety and then it forms into depression. I was one of those. I didn’t know what it was. My reference to mental health was ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’.

Jenelle: Oh gosh.

John: For anyone that is old enough to remember that movie. I didn’t talk to anyone because I thought I would be locked up with Jack Nicholson and the Chief, the Big American Indian Actor and that was a real fear. So I spoke to no one. I was having suicidal ruminations which was as scary as hell. I never planned my own suicide so I felt incredibly fortunate about that but one night I was in a hotel room in Buenos Aires. I still sometimes can’t go too close to a window especially buildings like this. The window was open on the 10th floor and I decided I was going to run and jump out.

Jenelle: Wow.

John: And the guy lying next to me said “JK you’ve got a good heart” and it saved my life.

Jenelle: Why did that line resonate for you? What was it about what he said? “You’ve got a good heart” that cut through for you.

John: Or the alternative was to jump out the window.

Jenelle: But it obviously mattered to you that he saw in you ‘a good heart’.

John: Yeh I mean I’ve spoken to him often. He’s also an incredible human. His name is
Michael Jones or Sir Michael Jones now. He got knighted for his services to Pasifika in New Zealand and the work that he does with youth. He is very, very religious and he said “I think God must have told me JK”, “Oh shit if God knows who I am I’m all good!” But he just must have sensed something I think and I said those words to myself from that minute for the next probably month. “JK you’ve got a good heart”. “JK you’ve got a good heart”. What I didn’t realise back then was it actually the start of cognitive behaviour therapy or rewiring your brain.

Jenelle: That’s right.

John: But what it did it got me to a stage where I needed to get help. The next day I played a test match for my country, scored two tries, it was like living in a dream. I went home and started the process by talking to my family. Going to the doctor and that’s a whole another story.

Jenelle: What did it feel like when you started to open up that narrative? You started to let people into your whatever your internal narrative at the time was. Right. About why you weren’t feeling good. What did it feel like when you started to talk about this out loud?

John: The biggest thing for me was my doctor said “JK it’s an illness, not a weakness”. Right and that changed my life. It changed my life because part of this illness is it eats away at your self-esteem. So you think you’re worthless. It eats away at your self-confidence. So even the stuff that you like rugby player at the top of my game, no confidence to do that and it takes away your enjoyment in life. Life is pretty shitty without those three things, right?

Jenelle: It really is. But I’m really interested in the relationship between success and self- confidence, and mental health. So you’re playing in sports where arguably it’s quite a clear set of success measures. You score the try. You win the game. You win the premiership. You were doing those things by objective measures. You now occupy a world where it’s not those kinds of measures. What’s your relationship with success? Have you had to evolve the way you think about success and failure? What’s the relationship between that and wellbeing?

John: I think success is one of the most dangerous words you can use. Because I think often we judge success on what other people have done. Or what our perception of it is. To tell you another story – my Dad had three triple by-passes. Nearly died a few times. But anyway my sisters rang me and I was overseas and they said “Dad is dying”. Dad had a bit of a dark sense of humour like mine. So if I laugh about shit like this, don’t worry it’s just my Dad!

Jenelle: I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do as a result of your laughing!

John: I saw the look on your face and gone should I laugh or not! No that was my Dad. He had a really dark sense of humour which I’ve inherited and so it’s really cool. Anyway I came down and I walked into the hospital room and he said “What the bloody hell are you doing here?” He said “Your sister said I’m going to die, hey!” and I said “yeh”, and he went “I’m not”, and he didn’t for another year which was really cool but I had a beautiful three days of which I had the time to talk to him properly as a Dad thinking that I might never see him again. But I asked him one question, which was really relevant at the time. The question that you asked me, that I’ll be asking you back about success. I was judging my success on other people or what I thought society thought success was, but if you take a real good look at success, it’s a real dangerous animal. Cause if you’re comparing yourself to someone else you’re already in the shit.

So I said to Dad “What’s success Dad?” He said “how many bastards want to carry you out when you die?” Wow!

Jenelle: Wow!

John: and when Dad did eventually pass I would have had 50 phone calls saying “Can I help carry Dad out”, “Is there anything I can do?” He said “It’s no use having the flashiest car in the car park of the cemetery”. Right. I was living a life based on success of what my perception was and what I thought other people would judge me on.

Jenelle: Yep.

John: Very, very dangerous. Once you give that up and once you decide.. and another really interesting thing for me is when you feel uncomfortable your values aren’t aligned with your actions. So some of the things I was doing to get success weren’t aligning.

Jenelle: Like what?

John: I’d cut your throat to win a football game.

Jenelle: God this room just got a little constrictive.

John: Yeh right. I would do anything to win on the football field and that took me to a place that I was uncomfortable with. I find at your level of management, I find so many of the same thing around success. Around what it looks like about what it is. Partners trying to compete around possibly a financial success goal or perception. So I think it’s a really interesting thing. I believe that if you want to be happy and content in your life, you need to address that first. I think covid has given us, a lot of us that moment. People are going ‘What am I doing?’ So what is success for you?

Jenelle: You know at the risk of sounding also a little bit dark humour, morbid on this whole thing, there is a lot of what you’ve said that resonates to me. As you have pointed out, lots of people in my kind of world, at my level, you’re almost conditioned to believe that success is where you are on the organisational chart. How much delegation of authority you have, all of that. That’s kind of what you’ve grown up with. That’s been the markers.

John: Business as a badge.

Jenelle: It’s a state of mind. It’s a state of importance. Yeh all of that and I think that’s probably why I have for so long struggled with imposter syndrome cause there is always going to be things I don’t know and I keep waiting for someone to go “you’re not that good”. “You’re actually not that good” and I would agree with them. I don’t know all of the things but I sound technically the best person in the room, never. Literally never spoiler alert. I keep thinking well I’m pretty good with people but how far is that going to get me? and at some point I’m going to get caught out for not knowing the technical stuff or not. That’s a pretty hard way to live cause you just keep thinking this is very precarious and I’ve done well to now.

Jenelle: Interestingly I listen to a discussion/podcast quite some time ago with a guy by the name of Peter Attia but he talked about the need to focus on the eulogy rather than the resume. So there is something very similar with what you’re talking about. Take the focus off what you do and more about who you are. What would I want people to say about me at my eulogy? Could I feel good about the kind of person that I am? And that is a much better place for me to be in because I know I’ve been raised by amazing set of parents. My family and I are really tight. I know I’ve got good values. I know I can hold myself to account on those and everything else is stuff that you do and it’s important and I care deeply about the work that I do and the people that I work with and the clients that I serve, but actually at the end of the day it’s the kind of person that I am and the integrity of that, that I’ve got to keep focusing on.

So I think the eulogy rather than resume it’s a work in progress for me JK to be honest.

John: Do you know what wealth is?

Jenelle: I don’t know. I feel like whatever I say you are going to have a better one. So you say.

John: I think it’s a really interesting question because I think society – I think capitalism has accelerated out of control. But a wise man once told me that wealth is the ability to stop. Right. I have financial goals. I want to be successful financially.

Jenelle: Yep.

John: So sometimes when people talk to me about mental health, it’s not as if you go around – like a mate of mine says “JK how many trees have you hugged today?” Mental health is not this thing that everyone’s got, lifestyle is choice. If you want to be a hippie and live in the bush good on you but part of my wellbeing is also being successful around how I want to live my life and you need money for that. But how much do you need? And when are you going to stop chasing that?

Jenelle: I think that’s a really good question. How much do you need?

John: Yep. How much do you need?

Jenelle: Yeh.

John: But also and if money is a goal of yours and you want to be the richest man in the world that’s cool but don’t moan if you’ve sacrificed. So the interesting thing about me. I was dead.

Jenelle: Sorry what?

John: I was dead.

Jenelle: Ok. When was that?

John: When I wanted to jump out of a window I was dead. Right. I had to start again. Cause whatever I was doing wasn’t right. I was so scared. I wanted myself back. I went and saw my Mum and my Mum said “You need to smell the roses”. You need to stop and smell the roses. So I had to start again.

Jenelle: How did you do that?

John: Well it was really easy actually in the end because can you control yesterday?

Jenelle: No.

John: Can you tell me what’s happening tomorrow?

Jenelle: I could have a guess but it’s going to be wrong.

John: Well you probably could but it will be associated with all the material things in our world.

Jenelle: In my diary.

John: Yeh you’re diary but actually you don’t and covid has also taught us this. So she said to me “If you can’t control yesterday, can’t change today, got no control over tomorrow, what’s the most important thing?” I said “Today”. So I just got my life back into daily pieces but then what I had to do was – I had to build these bridges (and I call them bridges) because what does success look like as a father? What does success look like as a husband? What does success look like in business? What does success look like spiritually? And I had some issues with God and we can get into that if you want but.. Then I had to build bridges across those because.. and I’ll tell you one.

My business box – I’m a professional rugby coach. I’ve got young kids. We’re living in Italy and my wife says “I’m not coming to live in Japan with you cause I want the kids to be educated here, you go.” “Oh ok”. How am I going to make sure that when my kids don’t get to 18 they think I’m an arsehole that wasn’t there. Right. So all of a sudden my business bridge extends out into my father bridge, or my father box. So now I’ve got an imbalance. So how can I work on that imbalance to make sure that my kids don’t think I’m an arsehole when they’re 18. That was a process that my wife and I had to go through and that is something that we had to explain to the kids so that I managed that imbalance.

It’s been easier for me because a couple of weeks ago I wasn’t that well. I wasn’t unwell but I was just getting some signs that I needed to slow up and it was because of one of my boxes which is my work box had overtaken my husband box, my father box, and my spirituality relax box.

Jenelle: How did you know it was getting a bit out of kilter? What was happening for you? Sometimes we just hurdle through. It happens to us. It creeps up on us. How did you know? What does it feel like to know? ‘Oh I’ve got to look at my bridges’.

John: I think boxes and bridges. My boxes and the bridges to them get out of balance. I don’t know if I told you about my sharks.

Jenelle: I’ve heard about sharks and monkeys. So talk to me about both of those.

John: Ok. When I was very unwell I went to a psychiatrist. I feel like I’m not asking you enough questions. Anyway I’ll get back to that!

Jenelle: No I’m totally cool with that! This is exactly my happy place.

John: I went to my psychiatrist and she said “JK how would you like to learn how to do
self- hypnosis?” This is the 80s. There was no lululemon back then! There was no yoga and shit back then! You did that you were a dope smoking hippie! You know what I’m saying, this was the 80s.

Jenelle: Yep.

John: But because I’d accepted my illness and I wanted to have all the tools I could to get better I agreed to it. She talked me these breathing exercises. She did this thing with my arm and in my mind she said “What would you like to do?” I said “Well during my illness I didn’t like surfing”. In my mind I put on my board shorts, run down feel the water, beautiful, paddle out, 2 to 3ft perfection, surf and she brings me out of it. Right. So I’ve done the self-hypnosis and I felt really good.

Jenelle: Yeh.

John: Cause anxiety and depression for me was often I’d wake up and get clearness in my head and they’d be like a cloud over me. That was gone. So I go home and said to my girlfriend who is now my wife “Gee I’m going to try that” “I’m going to do that at home”. So I went upstairs a bit earlier and I did exactly the same thing. Did the breathing. Did the thing with my arm and in my head. Put the board shorts on. Run down the beach. Feel the water. Paddle out. 2 to 3ft perfection. Four sharks in the water.

Jenelle: Oh.

John: Right. Shit myself and get straight out.

Jenelle: As anyone would with sharks in the water.

John: Yeh have you ever swum with sharks in the water? Not pleasant. So I didn’t actually see the sharks but I had all this fear circling me. So I go back to her and go “What the hell was that?” She said “JK they’re your sharks”. You’ve got some fears in there that you need to deal with. So my first one was a dumb shark. I left school at 15. I’ve never passed an exam in my life. Got told I was dumb by my teachers. Got told I was dumb by class mates. So I felt dumb. So every time I walked into a room I felt dumb. Do you think I’m dumb?

Jenelle: No. Hell no. It would be very awkward if I said “oh a little bit”.

John: I know that’s why I asked you cause you can’t say no! You can’t say not! But it didn’t matter and it was my shark. So whatever you saw in me (and this is really interesting when people are trying to help others) because they see all the beauty in you but you can’t see it in yourself.

Jenelle: Yep.

John: The second one I had (which you mentioned before – which I’ll come back to) was an imposter shark. I played some of (what people would think) would be the best rugby games they’d ever seen and I’d come off thinking when are they going to find out I’m just lucky. When are they going to find out I’m not good enough. When is my luck going to run out? When am I going to be dropped?

John: Then I had a guilt shark. I used to do stuff and feel guilty about it. Then I had a ‘want to be liked’ shark.

Jenelle: I’ve got hard relates on all your sharks. All the sharks are my sharks.

John: Yeh exactly. I had to deal with them one by one and make sure that they weren’t influencing the way I was and making sure that I dealt with those sharks. Got them smaller. Got the teeth out of them and got them out of the water because they were making me act in a certain way that I didn’t like. So that’s when the values weren’t aligned with my actions.

Jenelle: So tell me, if I just take one of those sharks.

John: Which one would you like?

Jenelle: Um.

John: The one that most relates to you cause then I can ask you some questions.

Jenelle: They all relate. Ok so how about imposter syndrome. That shark. What you do about that?

John: I learnt a thing called the ‘worry map’.

Jenelle: Ok.

John: So the worry map saved my life. It helped also with my want to be liked shark, and my guilt shark.

Jenelle: Ok so I picked a good shark then.

John: You picked a good shark. So the funny thing about the mind is it lies to you.

Jenelle: Yes.

John: So you need to bring it back to reality and that’s really, really hard at times. So with your imposter shark I started going back to the worry map which is ‘What can I control?’ ‘What can’t I control?’ ‘What can I do?’ and ‘What I can’t do’. So I’ll give you a scenario. I play a game of rugby. I score two tries. I get player of the day.

Jenelle: Yep.

John: Right and in my mind I’m going “Shit when is this luck going to run out”. “When is this coach going to drop me”. “What do I need to do?” The trouble is with a shark, and this is the hardest thing to detach you from, and I’m pretty sure at your level of business there is a lot of this. If you want to get an Olympic gold medal – swimming, get chased by a shark. It doesn’t matter who you are you will win.

Jenelle: Yep.

John: But the shark will catch you. So a lot of the detachment for me was that imposter syndrome drove me to be successful.

Jenelle: Drove you, yep absolutely.

John: That’s the hardest thing to let go of.

Jenelle: That’s right it’s not really in your interest.

John: Not really in my interest. So what I did is I did a worry map. What can I control? What can’t I control? So for example, can I train hard? Yes. The coach is going to drop me. Can I control that? He might not like me. No I can’t control that. What can I control? So then I’d put what I can control, what I can’t control, what I can do, what I can’t do, and then you’ve got a plan around it that your mind can settle on. So all of a sudden I’ve got a plan for my thoughts.

Jenelle: So then that uncertainty (remember I talked right at the beginning about some of this issue is around uncertainty – and what is in my control, and what is outside of my control) you’ve created the conditions to anticipate that, lower the uncertainty and bring more into your control.

John: Yeh exactly but where’s the Achilles heel in that? The Achilles heel in that is for me, now I’ve got a plan but actually what is success?

Jenelle: Yeh.

John: Ok and then we come back to that question I asked you and you had an interesting answer because it was quite related to other people. Then I need to go ‘Ok what does success look like in this environment for me?’ Some of those answers were ‘I want to be an All Black that’s there for 10 years’ but then it comes back to your worry map. How can I control that?

Jenelle: Yeh.

John: So then you start managing your thoughts and here’s another good one.. you’ve got to write this down. True or false? So when you’re talking to your imposter shark, true or false? Ask it?

Jenelle: Ok you ask yourself answering the worry map?

John: True or false?

Jenelle: It’s usually false.

John: Exactly.

Jenelle: It’s always false.

John: Any why is it false? And sometimes it’s attached to another shark.

Jenelle: Yes.

John: Ok. So they’re interrelated. I mean it sounds relatively complicated but I found it really simple. Cause I just put the sharks in separate boxes and then which ones were connected. Put it this way – might want to be liked by everyone shark.

Jenelle: Yep.

John: If I ran out on a football field and half the crowd boo me I used to worry about that.

Jenelle: Yep.

John: But why?

Jenelle: But how do you just stop worrying? You can’t just tell yourself – well don’t worry about that.

John: I actually only need five people in my life to be incredibly satisfied.

Jenelle: Ok prioritise.

John: Got to prioritise what it is. So what happens is my sharks come back. So a few weeks ago I’m going ‘JK what are you doing you dick? You’ve got a foundation. You left school when you were 15. What do you think you’re doing? You’ve got a mental health start up company with 50 people working with you. Are you kidding yourself? Is that true or false?

Jenelle: False.

John: Totally false but that’s also a warning to say “Shark’s back”.

Jenelle: Shark’s back yeh.

John: Ok so what am I doing? So then I go back and have a look at my boxes and go “Well actually JK you’ve been going too hard” and the reasons are you’ve got a job every week. You’re actually doing rugby as well on Sky Television. So you haven’t had a day off in four weeks.

Jenelle: Do you get others to point out your sharks to you? Like you’re doing that thing JK that thing it’s starting to do. Do you recruit anyone else like your wife or whatever to say?

John: No I mean my wife will know but I am so in tune with this now that I don’t let it get to that or I’ll say to her.. she might say to me “You’re too busy”. “Are you ok?” And invariably two weeks before you really get to where you should be, you go “No I’m all good”. I’m dealing with it.

Jenelle: Yeh that’s so interesting.

John: So tell me about your sharks?

Jenelle: So I share the imposter syndrome shark. I share the want to be liked.

John: Still?

Jenelle: I’m going to talk to you about what I’ve done about it. It’s getting way better.

John: Cool.

Jenelle: I also have shark that is (I don’t know how to put my shark elegantly).

John: They’re not elegant. Well they are elegant creatures this is the thing about them they are so elegant but then they bite you. When they bit you it’s not that elegant.

Jenelle: This inelegant shark is something along the lines of ‘I’ve reached my potential’.

John: Oooh.

Jenelle: Like I’m the only one that has in my family been educated. We’re migrants. I’m a daughter of Fijian Indians to came to Australia. I didn’t go to the best school. I mixed with worlds that have all had a lot of privilege. But for me I keep thinking this is it. I’ve tapped out. I’ve done brilliantly for someone in my position, this is it and I should call time.

John: Is that an inferiority shark?

Jenelle: Oh it’s probably a disbelief shark. I don’t know. That’s one that I keep thinking.

John: Do you know what your potential is?

Jenelle: Well I keep thinking it was it whatever the last thing was! That was it. I’m out. Tapping out now. There is this incredulousness about that. I don’t know maybe it’s attached with worth or my own projections of success is wrapped up with access privilege. I don’t know. There is that for me as well. If I compare I guess the imposter shark and what I’ve done on that space and I really have spent a whole lot of time on it!

John: And so you should these are really, really important things you should spend time on. So well done.

Jenelle: Well I go through a duality of feeling that it’s really important than feeling it’s incredibly indulgent. Like again go “Oh my God can you just get over yourself already and move on”. But anyway let’s say I don’t put that shark into the equation! I’ve drawn a picture up on my whiteboard at home and it’s a picture of an elephant with a rope around it’s neck and it’s the words of Carol Dweck it says ‘Don’t believe everything you think’. Now that elephant can at anytime just move forward and dislodge itself from the tree it’s tied to. The elephant is far bigger than that tiny piece of rope around it’s neck but it believes that it’s chained or it’s tied to that tree and very often I have this narrative in my head (which is all the things I’ve just said to you) so if I keep looking up ‘Don’t believe everything you think’ you have the power to change that narrative. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is in changing that narrative, and you talked about cognitive behavioural work and cognitive therapy, the mind is incredibly powerful as a positive and a negative. Right?

John: Totally.

Jenelle: And I can see how it’s a positive for me. I can also see how it’s a negative. I’ve done work where I’ve gone ‘I have to re-train my brain’ and I had a coach here helping me with this. I have to re-train my brain, re-wire it to make better connections with what actually happens with reality. For instance, if I get asked to speak at certain events or go into a room with of all these very important directors, usually they are middle aged white men who come from all that privilege that I get scared of and I walk in, I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to be there. I’ve got nothing to contribute to that meeting. How can I say something that’s really whatever. I know people can tell me you’ll be great. Blah, blah, blah. So what I did was for a week for instance, look at my diary and look at all the things in there that were freaking me out (which nobody knows by the way). I know it though and my natural inclination is to say “I’m not going to go there.” I don’t want to go to that event. I don’t want to do this thing and I force myself to say “Yes” to all of those things. But I wrote down what was I scared of about that? Then I went back after I did the event and go what happened? Actually spoiler alert – every single one of them was really great. What was great was that I went into this meeting and I said one thing – but I heard 20 things that I didn’t know before and actually when I said one thing this one person said “I just want to go back to the point that Jenelle made”. And I felt like a legend. And then the next meeting I went to I brought 10 of those points that I heard from the day before (because I was relevant) so then I looked back on that and went “You know what it was good to say ‘yes’ because I learnt these things”. So that was cognitive rewiring.

Then the third thing I think that I’ve done, is kind of make ok to feel those feelings as well because the reality is the first time you do anything new you are an imposter. You’ve written a book right? So the first time..

John: I can’t even spell.

Jenelle: You can’t even spell? Ok. Alright. Unnecessary detail. So you wrote a book right.

John: No I didn’t.

Jenelle: You didn’t?

John: Well I can’t write. I’m on the dyslexic scale so someone wrote it for me.

Jenelle: Someone wrote it for you. Ok but you found a way. Let’s say I’m going to write a book. If I choose to write a book and I go ‘I feel like an imposter I’m not an author’ well damn straight Jenelle you’re not an author, you’ve never written before.

John: Yeh, yeh.

Jenelle: But that’s you trying something for the first time. That’s how you are going to grow. That’s actually showing me that I’m trying something new and I’m pushing myself there. There is an element of going ‘well good for you – you’re doing something new’. So those are some of the ways I’ve tried to deal with that shark.

John: That’s awesome. I keep coming back to one of our biggest problems and understanding success.

Jenelle: So speaking of success pillars and I really like this conversation about the evolution of success. The danger points about thinking about success. You’ve got your Groov business that you’re the co-founder of. Tell me about the mission and what success looks like for you with Groov?

John: We would like to reach 100 million people and save 100,000 lives.

Jenelle: Ok no biggie.

John: So with Groov I firmly believe that it is the biggest tool for the future success of business. You must be moving forward a mental health wellbeing lead. If you’re not you are not going to have a business. Right.

Jenelle: 100%.

John: I firmly believe that. I think the mental health of the world is in terrible shape. 800,000 people committed suicide last year and the government does not have the people or the mortar, or the things to help cure this. Groov is about prevention. Groov is about you being a well, mental wellbeing lead in your business cause you can influence so many people. It’s about prevention. It’s about empowering the individual. I have a daily mental health plan. I have and based on the 6 pillars which is clinically sound that keeps me well every single day. I think if we can empower your individuals but also lift you as a leader. We don’t want you to be the psychiatrist or the psychologist, we just want you to show some vulnerability. We want you to lead by example around mental wellbeing. Then I think the biggest challenge for all of us is optimising the environment. I mean do you ever go home without your inbox? Your inbox empty?

Jenelle: No. never. No it hasn’t happened once.

John: No hasn’t happened probably for 10 years right?

Jenelle: No.

John: So our worlds have changed. It’s about actually managing that imbalance which is now work/life. It’s just life. Both encroach on each. I think if we can be wellbeing leads in the workplace and take the responsibility of business to look after the mental health of our people we are going to help the nation and the world because we’ll be in the preventative space. So 1 in 5 five right now in this building are unwell.

Jenelle: Yeh.

John: That’s the stats. They say with covid it’s going to get worse. There is 4% of the population that are born with some sort of mental health issue and all the resource should be going to them. The world shouldn’t be pushing people off the cliff and I was pushed off the cliff. That’s the Groov goal and we’re growing all the time and it’s being really well received. So that’s fun. On the other side we’ve created a curriculum for primary schools that teaches this.

Jenelle: Fantastic.

John: How do you make yourself unemployed?

Jenelle: Don’t know.

John: You teach your kids so when they get to 18 in the workplace they don’t need that anymore. But we’re not teaching our kids this and so we’re not preparing them for what the world is throwing at them. We’ve created a curriculum based primary school program that is going into the schools.

Jenelle: Very good.

John: Did I answer the question?

Jenelle: Yeh you did. We’ve talked about change happening to you in your life. You’re trying to drive change here in societal attitudes about this. You’re trying to drive change in people’s behaviours and what they do to look after their mental health. I’m obviously talking in a podcast about ‘lessons on leading change’. What have you learnt about driving this kind of change? Things that are working that aren’t working.

John: I think if I could ask you a question back. If you put profitability aside. If you put where the business is at the moment aside. Could you tell me that your people are well?

Jenelle: I know or we do a lot of work on this. I’d have to say that we’re really clear that our people are our asset. We’re a professional services business who work for clients. Their cognitive capacity is our asset. The best lever we’ve got for productivity. The best lever we’ve got for profitability, all those measures is wellbeing and so we do a lot of work in that space and I’d say one of the things that is pretty fundamental to the way that we think about business is – nobody gets out of bed.. I don’t get out of bed because I’ve got $x billion sales target for the Firm or that I personally have a revenue target of this. I get out of bed because our Firm has a purpose which is really clear to build a better working world and the things that we do want to create opportunities to do that for our clients or growth opportunities for our people. So I think everything has to scaffold from that back down - that purpose and the Firm is pretty clear on that. We do a lot of work to identify. Do we have a really good handle on how everybody is at all points in time? Cause people respond to different things differently and even the same people respond to the same things differently at the end of the day, right. Do I think we’ve nailed this? Absolutely not but this is so critical for us and ironically I guess a lot of people when you talk to them, you talk to clients and they’ll say “Well we can’t get anything more out of people”, “they’re tapped out, they’re exhausted”. But actually looking after wellbeing is the thing that’s going to get more out of them. It is ‘the think about the job redesign’. Think about technology that you can use differently. Think about single tasking. That sort of work is what we want to do because this is the critical lever.

John: I think the most important thing you said for me was the ‘cognitive bandwidth of your people’.

Jenelle: Yeh.

John: The thing I’m passionate about is that we’ve never been taught actually to control that. When our parents grew up they worked 9 to 5 or 8 to 5 and when they drove home nothing followed them. They went home on the weekends and nothing followed them. How many time you do emails on a Sunday morning to catch up? Or after dinner? Or.. and that’s ok. I’m saying to people that’s cool but what this world has thrown at us is we now don’t have the techniques to switch off.

Jenelle: That’s it.

John: We don’t know what our bandwidth is because we don’t look after it. So I think the future is actually ok. Everyone is different. Some people can meditate. Others can’t. It’s about finding your pillars every single day that refresh you. You do not (and I talk about this often) remember when you were 23. You’ve just finished university. You come into your first job and it’s Christmas holidays. By the time you get to the carpark – you’re on a holiday. You don’t give a shit. By the time you drive to the beach or wherever you go, it feels like you’ve been away a week. Three weeks feels like six months right. Think about your last holiday. It took you 10 days to unwind.

Jenelle: It’s so true.

John: It took you 10 days to actually disconnect from your email and not feel guilty about it and then your holiday was over! It’s accumulative. Stress/pressure wherever it comes from. Whatever it comes from it’s accumulative. You’ve got to get rid of every single day. Those are the things that we need to teach everybody and you’re different. I don’t know if you had an Aunty Betty but I had an Aunty Betty who did knitting.

Jenelle: I had a Fijian Indian version of Aunty Betty.

John: There you go. I bet you did. But my Aunty Betty had purple rinse hair and she’d knit.

Jenelle: Oh I thought you said she had nits!

John: No, no, she’d knit.

Jenelle: She would knit ok.

John: She’d do knitting. It used to drive us nuts. I just learnt the other day that knitting is one of the most amazing things you can do for your mental health.

Jenelle: Yeh it’s making a resurgence by the way.

John: Puzzles totally. Of course it should. Puzzles right. Listening to whatever those things are in your day (and I’ve got a real solid one) we need to start to teaching our people. We need to empower the individual to have a daily mental health plan to cope with the life that they live. Right. If that’s mediating. If that’s knitting. If that’s doing a puzzle. If that’s painting. If that’s yoga whatever that is. The trouble is a lot of the Eastern (and being of Indian decent) and some of the things that are from India, from Asia are amazing.

Jenelle: Yeh.

John: But they’re not a 6 week course that you get a diploma for. So often when we look at these things it becomes (and don’t get me wrong I love people that teach this) but it’s a lifelong.

Jenelle: That’s why they call it ‘yoga practice’.

John: Yeh.

Jenelle: It’s a practice.

John: It’s a practice and getting back to what you said before and what I said – ignorance for me is when you stop growing. For me this life is never finished. When you said before that you’ve got a shark around ‘have I finished?’ No. You can write a book. You can be a singer. You can be a painter. You can be whatever. There are no rules around that but when people stop is when I start seeing ignorance and then arrogance in people often and I go ‘my biggest fear is to stop growing’. How do I keep that open minded to go ‘I need to keep growing’. Same with my wellbeing I try stuff all the time. During covid I took up the guitar.

Jenelle: Yeh.

John: For Bob the monkey and I’m shit at it but it doesn’t matter it’s about me spending half an hour playing the guitar and when I’ve finished it feels like I’ve put my brain in a washing machine. Sorry I’m raving.

Jenelle: No you’re not and look it gives me great hope that I might realise my ambition of being a back up dancer! It used to be for Janet Jackson in the 80s but maybe it’s Beyonce now I’m not sure but there is still hope for me.

John: Well Janet’s aged as well so you can ring her up and say

Jenelle: Actually I probably have a better chance now!

John: “Look how you going with back up dancers I’m available!” Some of those things that we used to think about as kids – I’ve always wanted to play the guitar but I’m not playing to get up on stage I’m playing because I think I’ve got music in me that’s never been able to get out.

Jenelle: Now I’ve got the music in me.

John: Yeh.

Jenelle: JK I reckon I could sit and talk to you for hours and actually with a glass of red wine in hand I’m up for it. We did talk about that before and hopefully we’ll get another chance to do that but I really wanted to thank you for this. I’ve come away with… firstly I have a visual in my head of this great hooking former All Black player knitting! Courtesy of
Aunty Betty! But you know like reminders about success and taking the time to redefine success for yourself. I’m thinking about boxes. I’m thinking about bridges. I’m thinking about sharks and I’m thinking about the ever present continuous opportunity for growth that we all have upon us and it really reminds me that we have agency here and we should be intentional about that growth.

John: Yeh look and I think same for me it’s been a real pleasure. I think I’m going to have to interview again because there is so much more that I want to talk to you about. I think when business models get in and you talk about change and you talk about agile and all that sort of stuff. It’s been explained wrong. So the first thing people think about is ‘Am I going to be good enough?’ ‘Are they downsizing?’ The negatives of that have taken but growth is really scary but one of the most rewarding things you can ever do and it’s like all mental health things if you don’t communicate it properly people will go to the negative because change is scary. I think there is a whole raft of things that we can do in the business world that’s going to make people a whole lot calmer and a whole lot better.

Jenelle: I agree.

John: Thank you. I’ll just leave you with what my Mum said.

Jenelle: Please.

John: My Mum passed 4 years ago. She was a beautiful lady. Really, really wise. We used to have these arguments about coffins which was really weird.

Jenelle: Gosh you really do have this thing going on in your family don’t you!

John: I know! I think it’s a Catholic thing but she was worrying about burying herself and I’m going “Mum it doesn’t matter I’ll cover you”. “No I’ve got to have this amount of money” and we used to talk about coffins, but anyway, she would have been really happy with the coffin we chose and I’m looking down on this coffin and I was thinking about how beautiful my Mum was. We had an after match function and everyone came up to me and said “Gee I loved your Mum”.

Jenelle: Oh I thought you were going to say “Gee I loved your coffin!”

John: Well they were complimentary about the coffin which Mum would have been happy about but they said “Gee we loved your Mum” and I said “I loved my Mum too”. What did you love my Mum? They said “Because she gave us time.”

Jenelle: Oh.

John: She used to stop and talk to us and it was like we’re the only people in the world. So I promised myself that I’d give more people time for my Mum.

Jenelle: Wow.

John: I just want to thank you for your time.

Jenelle: She would be enormously proud cause you do.. this is our second time catching up face-to-face but at least even in the hour or hours that we’ve spent together I feel like there is no one else in the room and actually there is a producer sitting next to us and it just feels like you give your time. I know that you do that for so many. So thank you.

John: No thank you for your time. Just for anyone who is listening to this I want to challenge you all to give someone time in the next 24 hours. Either yourself if you need it but someone else and then my Mum will be really happy. I think the world takes time away from us.

Jenelle: So true.

John: You need to get it back. I mean someone said to me the other day “Shit JK it’s July nearly”. I’m going “Yeh it’s June nearly”. “Well it was Christmas yesterday”. So if we don’t stop it ourselves it will be taken away from us and its precious. Thank you.

This episode of the Change Happens Podcast covered a conversation that discussed the effects of poor mental health and suicide. If you or someone you know needs support with mental health please talk to your doctor, a mental health professional or if in Australia contact Lifeline 24 hours a day on
13 11 14. That’s 13 11 14 or at lifeline.org.au.

END OF TAPE RECORDING