The Evolved Leadership Podcast

#30 Being A Leader Of Leaders Of Leaders, with John Foong, Chief Revenue Officer at Domain

• David McDermott

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My guest in this episode is John Foong. 


John has experience working for some of the largest companies in the world, including Google and Uber, where he oversaw record revenue growth (e.g., boosting Google Cloud's channel revenue into the billions as global lead). 


Growing up in Australia, he graduated with an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford and then spent 17 years working in the UK, US, and Africa. In 2014, he became one of the youngest Directors globally at Google. Now back in Australia, he serves as the Chief Revenue Officer at Domain, one of Australasia's leading real estate marketplaces.


Some of the highlights of our conversation include learning great leadership from great leaders around the world being a leader of leaders of leaders, a healthy response to tough feedback from your team, the importance of loving your executive leadership team peer group, and the fact that people don’t leave organisations, they leave leaders.

At the end of our conversation, John made a generous offer to listeners to buy anyone who reaches out a copy of Marshall Goldsmith’s book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. To take up this offer simply email info@evolvedstrategy.com.au with the subject line “YES TO JOHN’S BOOK GIFT OFFER” and you’ll be sent a copy of the book. 

Enjoy the conversation


To find out more about the Domain research app that John mentioned, go to: https://www.domain.com.au/research 


You can contact John on LinkedIn at: https://www.domain.com.au/research 


To learn more about what it takes to be an evolved leader, and to check out our other podcast episodes, go to:  https://www.evolvedstrategy.com.au

00:49.90
davidmcdermott
It really is um.

01:03.65
davidmcdermott
Hi guys. My guest today is John Fung John has experienced working for some of the largest companies in the world including Google and uber where he oversaw record revenue growth for example, boosting Google cloud's channel revenue into the billions as global lead growing up in Australia. John graduated with an Mba and masters in education from Stanford and then spent 17 years working in the yeah uk the us and Africa in 2014. He became one of the youngest directors globally at Google and now he's back in Australia serving as the chief revenue officer at domain one of Australasia's leading real estate marketplaces John welcome to the show. It's a real pleasure so tell us about your leadership journey so far wherever you want to start.

01:47.15
John F
It's great to be here David thank you for having me.

01:56.28
John F
Thanks David I appreciate the open question you know ever since I was I was pretty young I guess I aspire to be a leader I grew up in the church I went to a church called Wesley Mission here in Sydney and Wesley Mission has a real um I guess emphasiss on service. It does a lot of work.

02:14.58
John F
Ah, with Sydney's poor It it did a lot of work with people who unemployed things like that and that very much was a part of the church that it ran and so from early age that was the model to me I guess at church we called it servant leadership you know? So we'd volunteer a lot for stuff. Volunteer at camps or I used to volunteer at these things called beach missions you know which is where we'd look after kids for a few weeks and sing songs and play games. You know in caravan parks you know on the coast around Christmas or we'd play music at church or would go do volunteering or or things that nature. It was very much a model for me. This notion of leadership and I and I loved leading I love volunteering for staff I loved being a representative I loved I went to a school called Knox Grammar school here in Sydney which was a school that gave so many leadership opportunities opportunitiess to be I wasn't very good in sports. But I loved being a captain I loved trying. Um, they had um you know lots of music opportunities. They had opportunities to duke of einburgh and and cadets and all these were kind of schools for leadership training and I ate it all up I loved that I I really wanted to be a leader I loved being a leader and that continued even after high school. When I was a university I'd be volunteering to lead groups lead high school groups. You know do work with nonprofit. This is always something that surrounded me intried me I was fascinated by and so much so that in my teenage years. Um, my aspiration leadership was to be a non-profit leader when I was about.

03:40.36
John F
15 or or 16 I came to realization like I love business I love economics. But really what I want to be is somebody who works in a nonprofit or works the church and saves the world that way and I was pretty convinced to that at the time and I began to make a series of choices about leadership training. Because even having been a volunteer in the church for only a few years by then I saw that the church was full of really amazing people whose heart and whose intention was not necessarily matched by their leadership acumen and what would typically happen is they would burn out. Because they'd be trying to help people and they'd be running an organization and they wouldn't know how to do it and then flame out or they would burn other people out. They would really care a lot so deeply that they didn't know how to treat people how to lead people how to set career paths had to set expectations. How to think about computational reward and I set this expectation and this this intention when I was a teenager of like hey. I want to work a nonprofit I want to be a leader there but the way I'm going to be an effective leader is by going and learning great leadership from great leadership schools around the world and so I was lucky enough to get in a company called Mckinsey out of university and they pride themselves as a Ceo factory. You go. Ah you know work for these big organizations, big banks and telcos and you learn how to advise them on things by learning about their problems speaking to other experts about it and creating solutions. It's a classic leadership training school and after that I did some volunteering in Africa where I was doing the same consulting work with a bunch of.

05:10.19
John F
Nonprofit farmers and entrepreneurs are all around mozambique and then I was lucky enough as David said his intro to get to Stanford and business schools and mbas nowadays really pride themselves to be leadership scores you go there. You learn about business accounting. But really you learn about organization behavior how to influence people how to listen. Ah, you know how to have eq and all of these were experiences of me where my conviction was if I can learn from the best leadership schools in the whole world I can take that back to the nonprofits who I really want to help and who need leadership but don't often have it and after. I graduated business school I joined Google this is back in 10007 and Google was a a much smaller company than and I ended spending 13 years at Google as a leader and I started off leading small technical teams I suffer as a marketing intern and working the search engine and then I came to lead sales teams and as David said your intro. Ah, David you know it was these giant you know multi hundred people sales teams work at Google cloud by the end of it. It was an amazing experience and all of this was leading leading people leading things and it was great and by that time I guess my conviction of what leadership was had changed. It had gone from being oh you know I want to be a leader in a nonprofit to leadership is a set of gifts a set of talents that I have and who knows well I've been using it. Maybe it's in a nonprofit. Maybe it's at work. Maybe it's a technology. Maybe it's a board member. Maybe it's at home. You know as a father you know and I didn't have family back then than I and I do now. So.

06:44.59
John F
It was kind of interesting how my conception of how to use leadership had evolved and that was very much what had happened with me and you know today. Fast forward 13 years at Google 2 years at uber all after my Mba um I've now been at domain for 2 years This is a wonderful australian company. You know building. Ah, trying to help people find and sell property you know leadership for me is leading my team of 500 customer sales and customer support people. It's about helping them achieve their career goals finding alignment with what our customers need what our company needs and what they need and it's ultimately about helping. Tens of millions of australians find the next home and achieve their property goals and for me that's what leadership looks like at work and it's really great to be able to lead at that level to be dealing with the Ceo with board with tens of thousands of customers across Australia and at home. Um, a leader in a different way I married ah a girl from America she's back with me in Australia we have three young girls all in the 5 it's all pretty crazy and leadership for me is about trying to create a container for them be a role model help them develop and be the people who they were created to be and that's what I'm really excited about and that's probably the most important part of my leadership.

07:44.18
davidmcdermott
Philip.

07:57.85
John F
You know, being a leader at home. But yeah I guess that's my leadership story David in answer to your question.

08:02.12
davidmcdermott
Well thank you and that is indeed rich and there are about at least a thousand questions I could ask right now but in terms of focusing in I'm I'm only going to ask a few and of course one one to move us into the next phase. So I I will definitely explore a bit with you. Your.

08:11.54
John F
Um.

08:21.21
davidmcdermott
Role domain at the moment a little later but before I do that I mean you you had significant leadership roles at Google and at uber were they also in the ah the sales space. Yeah, the what is now termed the ah cro space. Can you can you tell us a little bit more about you know what.

08:27.44
John F
Yes.

08:38.87
davidmcdermott
Maybe what was ah, a high and a low at Google and what was a high and a low at your time at uber.

08:42.39
John F
Sure so I'll talk at the roles and then talk at the highs and lows so Google my my last civ role there was leading our global channel for Google cloud and what that looks like is Google cloud is things such as Gmail. It's called Google workspace or g suite now. Um, you know there's maps. There's Android. There's Google cloud platform and these are all tools that businesses use for productivity and this is now a business worth thirty or forty billion dollars it's it's a very very large business at the time when I left it was worth that 10000000000 and we tried to sell as much of that through agencies as possible. So Google had ah. Ah, sales team. But really it sold a lot a lot of those tools through Accenture Deloitte there were 20000 partners around the world and my responsibility was to be to keep those partners happy to give them goals and tools and certification so that they could go and sell Google products to their customers. It was a great role. And on a similar role at uber which is another kind of agency business. It involves drivers and and uber obviously deals a lot with normal people who want to get a ride somewhere a lot of its ah revenue is now from businesses who are using it for business travel to and from the airport or whatever it is. And it's a product called uber for business and many of you probably use it today and I was a sponsor for all of our accounts I was the leader of account management. There were hundreds of thousands of accounts at the time and that's grown and I was also responsibleive for our customer engineering team so they were my responsibilities there. Ah.

10:11.95
John F
Um, sorry for the cough um, and so a high low at Google I think my biggest high at Google was I was there for almost thirteen years and I had probably 10 different jobs and the great there Google is it really celebrated what I would call the general corporate athlete which is you come in.

10:14.16
davidmcdermott
It's totally fine.

10:22.50
davidmcdermott
But.

10:31.40
John F
You don't know much you got a leadership potential and it did an amazing job. So I with my show off.

10:42.66
davidmcdermott
It's it's fine John with those bits will just get edited very easily so just do whatever you cough cough away it's fine. It's totally fine.

10:49.71
John F
I'll couffff away and I'll try and pause so we've got gaps in between um, um so what I'll saying was um at Google they really celebrated the notion of the general corporate athlete which was hey you're a smart cookie.

11:08.29
davidmcdermott
No.

11:09.22
John F
You've got your Mba. You've got some cool experiences including work in Africa right? You've got a lot of leadership potential. You love leadership. But you don't know much about search engines. You don't know much about cloud computing come in and do different jobs and I came in as a marketing intern I then jumped to be leading this technical search engine team in Europe. And then I jumped to being a a sales leader for Gmail and then I was a leader of leaders and then I was a leader of leader of leaders and you just over time just every year or 2 making these jobs and for me it was an incredible experience. A real celebration of leadership. And a chance to get you know 30 years of experience copress into 13 and I feel extremely grateful for the many jobs I had there and I really feel that has set me up to be hopefully a really strong so servant leader someone who can um, you know think about what my people need. Think up my customers need and find ways to get that to all align so that was my my big highlight you know at Google you know I think when I think about things that um could have been better at Google for me a lot of it comes down to leadership leadership is an artful. Um it's something where you've got to work on it. Maybe there are born leaders but even born leaders need to get better and for me I took for granted I conflated good good intention with good leadership. Good intention with good leadership and what I mean by that is I always sell myself as a really well-intentioned guy trying to do the right thing and and that's important.

12:41.99
John F
But I don't know anyone's got bad intentions and there are a lot of people who are bad or ineffective managers and I think for a lot of my early leadership at at at Google I took grant and like wow I'm a smart guy I care about people I'm going to be a great manager and Google is something called project aristotle where they look at what is the. Um, attributes of high-per performing teams and highperforming leaders and they baked that into a survey they conduct every six months which is a three six degree anonymous feedback survey about your manager and so my team would have filled it out my direct reports and one of the lowlight to me was actually really going scoring quite badly and this is about.

13:19.18
davidmcdermott
M.

13:19.51
John F
You know, well over ten years ago and there was a real distance with like wow I thought I was a good leader I'm really well intentioned, but it was that aha moment of like well if well intentioned that's not the same thing as making sure you have a 1 to 1 with each your people every week making sure you're talking taking time to talk about career parts making sure that you are. Taking interest them listen to them questioning and for me that was a low light that always became a highlight because it made me realize I need to work on my craft as a leader as a people manager you know in order to earn their followership. It's not gonna be something that I just get because I'm a smart guy who's well-in intentiontioned so that was a bit about. You know my highs and lows in and Google if you will.

14:01.86
davidmcdermott
Well thank you and um, and so you had you know those experiences at both Google and uber and I'm I'm really glad that you've called out experiences where you you got feedback that was hard. You know from your team feedback that was hard to hear. Ah. Because this is you know this is where really the most critical pivot points for leaders are is when you you're not at optimum you know everything's not running smoothly It's not all rosy and you ah you get feedback. However or something happens. That's not easy and.

14:23.62
John F
And and.

14:33.68
davidmcdermott
Um, how do you respond to that and if you particularly with feedback I mean psychologically we're wired to get defensive with anything that could be perceived as criticism and there are various spectrums of that Some people get extremely defensive at the slightest bit of feedback Some can kind of take a battering to the head.

14:48.10
John F
Um, rough.

14:50.72
davidmcdermott
Ah, from all sides and come out pretty ah pretty okay, but how did you respond in that in that time. What what was your initial reaction and how did you move from reaction to response and what was your response in terms of what your team saw if I can ask that.

15:07.54
John F
Yeah, the one of the good things at me is that I'm not particularly defensive when it comes to feedback. Um I'm sure there are elements that I'm blind to where I am defensive or come across as as defensive but generally I love feedback. You know there is that phrase feedback as a gift. And also I know the more senior I get the less authentic feedback I get so I crave it and when someone has the guts to give me that feedback and I don't expect of everyone or I can get it through sixty degree anonymous feedback I relish it because I've come to accept that I've so many blind spots. So many things I don't know.

15:26.10
davidmcdermott
You move.

15:41.76
John F
Both in terms of decision making and what I'm doing and and the more senior I get the more impact that has on other people. So even when I was a much more junior manager going back to Google or Mckinsey or even you know I don't think I've ever been particularly fed with feedback I've always really welcomed it and always my reaction is like oh my goodness. How could I have found that out earlier. Because even if you find out early. It's it's you know I wouldn say it's too late. It's never too late but certainly more damage has been done while you've been ignorant I think on the flip side is I probably tend to underestimate how feedback lands for other people. Um I'm someone who likes to give feedback because I think it's so important. I consistently underestimate how that might impact someone whether they're defensive or it hurts them or disappoints them whether they feel ashamed. These are all varied and valid responses and valid and varied responses to feedback and I often one of the things I'm working on is I often lack sensitivity I want to give that feedback early and often. And I underestimate how that might make someone feel so that's feedback that I've been given which I'm trying to learn on and work on right now, but it's so um, my blindness to that is a reason why I love and I walk with feedback all the time.

16:40.28
davidmcdermott
Yeah.

16:48.30
davidmcdermott
Fantastic. And yes, this is the power of a 3 60 anonymous feedback process is a leader can look at a whole range of perspectives from their team and their peers and ideally people who they report to and and really get a good look at how am I perceived and. How does that match up to how I perceive myself and where where are the obvious gaps and in terms of your time at uber John because I want to get tomain and I I just want to explore the uber experience a bit a little bit more. We actually 1 of our guests on the show was will davies who was the founder.

17:14.30
John F
Yeah, yeah to.

17:24.46
John F
Um, ah yeah, yeah, ah fantastic. Yeah.

17:25.23
davidmcdermott
Of car next door so you'll probably know know of will as a former uber and leader you know will built car next door Sold it to uber last year and it's now uber car sharere and doing really well I I used the app regularly I used car next door regularly and now morphed to uber car share when when I need to you know.

17:36.26
John F
Um, yeah, ah great.

17:44.67
davidmcdermott
Grab a quick vehicle ah a use or a van etc. It's it's a fantastic business and you know by doing so that sale wills model which was australian based at the time suddenly has become a global business so you know his peer-to-peer car sharing business jumping on to the uber ah bandwagon know now suddenly has a global reach which. I guess probably was somewhere in his vision is a very entrepreneurial guy but I don't think he he expected to have that scale so quickly and he's still there as the Ceo having sold the business and very much enjoying it. So what? what was your stint with uber because the uber story has been very interesting and you know taking ah it really.

18:12.87
John F
Um, yeah.

18:24.42
davidmcdermott
Coming in and disrupting the taxi Industryt etc where where were where was your leadership in um, enroll with uber during that that whole journey right.

18:31.99
John F
Yeah I would say I came on to uber relatively late I was there 2019 to 2021 so by this time it was really the dominant rideshare you know app in the world. It was a few years removed from the crazy early days or the crazy first ten years I guess of uber.

18:41.58
davidmcdermott
And of.

18:49.16
John F
It was a bit more of a stable family friendly company which was appealing to me. You know? So ah, my tenure is very much defined by the pandemic. So I started in 2019 it was going really well obviously early 2020 the pandemic hit uber revenues from rideshare went down by 99% in a week

18:56.44
davidmcdermott
Right.

19:08.26
John F
Like who was going to ride apart from essential workers you know during that time but interesting at the same time uber eats had just been launched sometime before and it became the entire business overnight and we launched uber eats for business which was a lot of business businesses sending food or allowing their team to buy food. As a business expense because they're working from home. So it was a very very chaotic and scary timely and professionally andversely. You know uber went through some significant layoffs because so much the business evaporated them midnight and then recovered but we were able to launch some really meaningful eats businesses during that time. Which I'm grateful for.

19:46.39
davidmcdermott
So we're going to move on I'd I'd love to explore Google and uber a bit more with you. But I do want to focus on your main role now and tell us about domain chief revenue officer. How's it going.

19:52.90
John F
Yeah.

20:00.52
John F
Yeah I mean great. This has been the best shop I've ever had I've been here for 2 years I absolutely love it. I love for many different reasons I love real estate my dad used to be real estate agent I've been investing property since my teenage years. It's been ah I guess a family tradition of ours say with my wife's family. And her mum was a real estate agent as well. So we love real estate. We love technology and demand is one of those great australian businesses for those you who grew up in Sydney or Melbourne you would have grown up with the domain liftout and the Saturday paper and it's still there. It's still doing really well so you know it's a wonderful business.

20:29.86
davidmcdermott
M.

20:34.63
John F
Ah, kind of a mixture of a classic australian brand but a technology company as well. That's trying to really grow and do things technologically advanced and so it was a wonderful bring together of my family's interest in real estate and my experience running technology marketplaces like at uber and Google cloud. And I'm the the chief of every officer there I'm responsible for you know about 500 people out of our thousand are responsible for delivering the revenue and that revenue comes from people paying money to list their property on domain when they're looking to sell a house and there's some other products as well. For real estate agents. But that's the main one. And my job is to really work with people selling their house and the agents represented them to make sure we're bringing value and helping those sellers find more buyers who are using the app. So that's my work.

21:18.68
davidmcdermott
And people buying and selling property will be very familiar in domains a household name or anyone like renting renters and buyers and landlords looking to rent and and people people looking to sell and and of course you know the big. Competitor is realate.com.a you and there's domain and there's real estate and they're the 2 big players. Not the only ones but they're definitely the 2 that are the household names and tell tell us about this ah cro title chief revenue officer I mean as you know.

21:52.74
John F
Um, yeah, yeah.

21:54.30
davidmcdermott
As time goes on you know, traditionally know whether whether it was coming from the us or or other you know the csuitee was traditionally of course Ceo Cfo you know, but perhaps a chief marketing officer or head of sales. Um and and sometimes achieve. Chief operations officer. Although that's ah, a little newer where there is this c o o that sits between the the Ceo and the c-suite and a couple of others but there are there are new titles like chief learning officer chief revenue officer is is more of a new term. It's a bit of an evolved term with it.

22:13.48
John F
In.

22:28.74
John F
Um, yeah.

22:31.39
davidmcdermott
Yeah, the the chief revenue officer isn't quite the same as a head of sales they but really work across traditionally all customer facing departments. Can you just talk a bit about what a Chief revenue officer does and then what how does that look at domain.

22:41.66
John F
Yeah, yeah, it. Ah it is a less common term in Australia. It's much more common in America you know where I used to work and I think you gave a pretty good summary David um, it encompasses roles of the head of sales or would have been. You know you know various sales leaders and so the people who are in my case dealing with real estate agents and helping them sell domains products to their customers people selling houses. You know we have hundreds of people who are doing that they own a territory and their job is to make sure that those. Real estate in that territory are aware of domains products find it useful giving feedback and we have a range of different products to sell to them and to their customers. That's one part of the theerra responsibility. There's another part which is customer support so we have hundreds of people based throughout Australasia who you know help people when they have problems without products. And that's really really important and there's also a pretty significant operations team. These are people who do pricing enablement training. You know things such as that who help our sales team and help our customer support team be successful. Um, and I guess the reason for the cro tidling is. There are those classic functions underneath my job involves a lot of sales I'm often with customers I'm often on the road throughout different states and helping customers understand our products and hearing their feedback but a lot of my job is to architect things. You know it's to think through okay like great. We're selling these things should we be selling them a different way.

24:13.80
John F
Should we sell them through self-serve online should we sell them through channel partners like I did at Google should actually we sell them by phone or by face-to-face and how often should we see these customers so my job is to design all those interactions that that have the architecture of the customer facing team is really really important. My job is also to represent the needs of customers to the Cmo to the cpo chief product officer you know and to say hey our customers will need these features or our customers aren't hearing about our products. What can we do about it so I am not the most salesy person at domain. There are people in sales leadership who report into me and their job is to be on the road with customers on the time hitting quotas for that kind of stuff my job is to be layer on top of that and make sure you know to climb to the top of the tree and go are we in the right, right? Jungle or the wrong jungle that's very much the Cro's job

25:06.52
davidmcdermott
So tell us about your experience as a leader at domain in terms of the peak experiences what you most love about it I mean no no role is perfect. But what? what are your moments where or periods where you're in flow as defined by. Mahau Chiit Mahay but there's the the term flow which is really total absorption in the activity. You're just loving what you're doing. You're not thinking about family. You're not thinking about problems because you're so absorbed in the activity. You're you're so enjoying what you're doing. What? Ah what are those moments and and experiences ah in the role for you that that you can share with us.

25:47.69
John F
And the cool thing of this job is. There's many things like that for me, you know and I'll just give a few and I'll go into detail and 1 or 2 like you know I love my peer group. You know, even though I run the commercial sales team. My team is the executive leadership team that's run by the Ceo and the Cmo and the. Cfo are all there and I love spending time in that group we get on really? Well we're solving problems together many of us have different international experiences. We're all asking this question. How do we look after our customers and our team better. What does that look like what an interchange and that's a lot of fun. You know to really deal with my peers. Um I love being with customers. I love hearing them even when the feedback is tough and what some of the things we've tried to do with customers create different ways of interaction. So it's not like oh I'm going to meet you and I'll talk about our products or we'll do a quarterly review on how things are going what we try to do more is actually learn together with our customers. So we've tried to put these events where we get a group of customers together. And we get like a leadership speaker or someone to speak at Ai and they share and then we have discussion about it and we may not even mention domain at all. It's about helping them as leaders and and with their problems and for them creating community and I think a lot through my my church days. A lot of my role when I was involved in nonprofits and church was. How do I create community. How do I help people who might be new or looking for a home find other likeminded people who they can develop relationships with and because of domain we have relationships with you know 50000 agents agents of the whole country. You know there's 10000 agencies run by 10000 principles. How do we connect them.

27:22.22
John F
How do we help them find each other because we have relationships with all them and some of them don't have relationships with each other even though they're all going through exactly the same problems and so for me, that's very very satisfying when we create those moments and we're in those moments and maybe I'm doing the sharing or maybe we're all learning from some together and we discuss and it doesn't become about. <unk>re a supplier that sells you and your customers marketing services said hey we leaders all trying to run businesses. Let's do stuff together and similarly with the team. You know a lot of my pride in the role is I five hundred people my organization. How am I helping them up level. What are their goals.

27:56.21
davidmcdermott
A.

27:59.66
John F
What's their career path. What are they trying to do for themselves for their families and that doesn't mean that we're going to work together forever. We're not and that doesn't mean that we don't have a culture of performance we do. But that means I need to create a container where people can be well supported have great management and training know what their goals are receive rewards if they achieve them. Coaching where they're on track or off track and then can jump just like I did at Google into different jobs maybe into sales leadership or something technical or from sales to marketing or something totally different or rotated from geography and for me a lot of how I judge my legacy is what happens to the people who are under my watch where did they go when they eventually leave domain. What kind of jobs they take up. Do they look back at domain and go wow this was a stepping stone for someone where I'm in a much more interesting and bigger job with bigger responsibility and with more pay that I can drive my family that is the moments of flow for me all the elements of creating problem solving creating those structures executing it. And troubleshooting on the way.

28:57.88
davidmcdermott
So again, there's a thousand questions I could ask but I want to just really um, honor the point you made about ah loving being with your peer group which is the Executive Leadership Team. Ah, which. <unk>s That's an awesome indicator of a healthy organization if the leaders love being together. It's so common and it's quite common when I go in to work with a client in the early stages that um, departments are siloed and of course the executive leadership team still meets but it's not their favorite group to be with honestly and.

29:29.98
John F
Um, yeah, hit.

29:30.56
davidmcdermott
And people kind of you know they're very protective. They fight for their team and they see the head of the head of department or Elt meetings as a place to go out and defend their team and fight for them rather than um, being their core team which is really for that for a healthy organization. What what should be going on is that. And the execs. It's their favourite meeting is the executive leadership team meeting and they they then go and support each other and share whatever insights and what needs to be shared to their teams but they they love their peers and they they have a lot of fun. So. It's awesome to hear that you you have that experience and really healthy indicator for domain.

29:53.38
John F
Um, yeah, yeah.

30:04.40
John F
Ah, thanks.

30:08.15
davidmcdermott
You you also talked about um you know the 500 people that um, you know that? ah your you're leading and how how you help them develop. Can you say a bit more about how that happens at domain and obviously particularly for your team. Um I mean.

30:15.85
John F
Um, yeah.

30:24.97
davidmcdermott
The work that I do some of what I do is help train leaders to be coaches. You know leaders as coaches and learn basic models for helping run effective growth and development conversations and cascade that down the organization. But how does it work at domain and and how do you do it in terms of helping people develop.

30:30.13
John F
Um, yeah.

30:42.80
John F
I think there's many steps that are required so that whatever role you're in There's a development path I think a lot of it starts with job clarity which is what is the job description and does the way that is measured reflect that job description and so for me that involves having you know, really good and hr department. Really good manager which I'll talk about really clear jobs that make sense and really clear interfaces between different jobs. So it's clear how we're not to stepping each of this toes. It's clear who owns it or is it co-owned and that to me is a really important like I guess we call it organizational design that to me is really important if you don't have that you're not seeing people up success. That's probably number 1 number 2 the quality of the manager is really important. We all know from the data people stay for their manager and the main reason people leave is they're actually leaving their manager not their job and so for me my responsibility as the cro in this case is to make sure that every manager in my team is excellent and one of the things I've been working on recently is. What's our manager training you know, a lot of these managers have come through the system they've homegrown in domain. That's fantastic That's what we want. That's a great cultural fit but where are they getting their management training most of them aren't going off and doing and nbas some of them are and so what I'm doing what I'm piloting actually is having consistent manager training. Having manager offsites where they can find their peer group. We can get some great external input. You know we can define their leadership criteria you know what that looks like and we can attach that to how they're assessed as managers and so we have those 3 six degree feedbacks. You know every six months and I'll create that virtuous cycle of performance management. So you know.

32:16.89
John F
Organizational design design is really important the most important to me is managers and then number 3 is is training you know when someone comes to the business. Whatever world is how they onboarded how they're refreshed and for me, we spen on the time recently getting the onboarding for every role really crisp, really clear creating cohorts around that and then understanding okay like.

32:21.20
davidmcdermott
Um, yeah.

32:25.45
davidmcdermott
Live.

32:35.50
John F
How are people going to keep learning what does that look like and not just learning new product information but new leadership information new sales skills we brought in a consulting company to develop a whole sales Curriculum. You know for us last year and so I want the people in my team to be always learning. Where they just want to go deeper in the job they're doing or they're using that as a stepping stone to something else. That's really really Important. So That's the theory and we try and live we live up to that without practice.

33:00.00
davidmcdermott
Really cool and I'd love to you know, go deeper with you on that one but we're getting close to time John and I want to ask you, you've shared a lot now. Is there 1 or you know are are there any other leadership insights from any of your experiences whether personal or or professional that you have to share with. The audience today.

33:19.74
John F
Yeah I could summarize 1 thing that I've been newly a lot on and it's both for I guess work and for outside of work. There's a lovely book by a guy called Marshall Goldsmith who's a leisure coach in the us and it's called what got you here won't get you there and. That probably is the defining statement of my leadership life which is the strengths that got me to 1 point in time are the actual things that will limit me from reg progresssing to the next. For example, if you're a really good salesperson. That's great. But if you want to be a really good sales leader. You actually need a different set of skills and what made your great salesperson. Which might be going hard to the customer working hard. You know potentially being a lone wolf hopefully not but potentially that might make you a very very bad sales manager where your job is to help people sell and to sell through them. Not ah, not against them and so the notion of what got you here won't get you. There is that we need to be evolving. We need to be reinventing ourselves because our strengths in one stage often become our limitations in the next and so we always need to be reventing ourselves at every stage and so that's I guess what I'd leave with your listeners. What are the things that got you to where you are but are going to stop you from getting where you want to be. And this is true, not just in work and in management as you go up the ladder this is true like in life. You know like what may be someone who is a great or not particularly good to date or whatever it was is very different to what makes me a good partner. A good husband and the things that made me and my wife a good husband a wife we need a different set of skills if we're going to you know.

34:54.92
John F
Father and mother young children and the skills that you might use with young children are very different to how you manage teenagers and then people who have left the house. You's given your kids leave the house life is like that the seasons change as I say in Alice in Wonderland we have to run very hard to stay in the same place and that's ah, a wonderful thing I think about what life throws at it and. That's what I'm always trying to do.

35:29.42
John F
David I can't hear you at all? oh.

35:34.85
davidmcdermott
I whoops that's because I was on mute. So I'll say that again and we'll just edit that. Um, so John just mentioned there Marshall Goldsmith and I highly recommend for listeners who are interested checking out Marshall Goldsmith and his work is is an absolute cracker. Um, you know if you want to go and dive down that rabbit hole to ah to stay with the Alice in wonderland analogy I highly recommend it. A lot of great material. So John. Thank you very much for your time today and for for those who would like to learn more about your work. You know? what's the best way for them to follow you get in touch with you etc.

36:10.27
John F
Ah, thanks e well if you are interested in what we do at domain. There's obviously domain.com today you and there's an app we publish a lot of research and that's domain.com.a/research again. That's very much property you know property centric. And we obviously published a lot in the sydney morning Herald the australian financial view and the age a lot of articles online. So that's one way to follow me professionally me and my my my company. Um you know from a professional development point of view. Um, Linkedin is basically how I end up publishing a lot of things I post there a few times a week. A lot of that posting is. Actually really want to elevate what my team is doing and give some shout-outs to them so that's something which I use a lot of I share a lot about leadership insights and things I'm learning as well. So would love to connect with you on Linkedin and I know David you know does a lot of giving away of his knowledge. Like to offer your listeners this I'm not sure how many there are so we'll see you this backfires if I can buy you that book. What could do you here. Want get you there just write to me on Linkedin and connect with me I'd love to buy it for you. It's something which changed my life and hopefully change yours.

37:12.42
davidmcdermott
Well there you go if you're if you're looking to deplete John's bank balance depending on how many listeners reach out for that. Take him up on that. That's a really generous offer John and thank you very much and we'll we'll put that in the show notes as well as the the other details you mentioned.

37:19.56
John F
Ah.

37:29.92
davidmcdermott
And so that people can follow up on any of those things and thank you very much. That's that's extremely generous. Um, we look forward to perhaps even you know at some point having a round two conversation. You know in a year or two. It's always interesting to check in with guests. So and.

37:42.37
John F
Um, so.

37:46.83
davidmcdermott
Depending on what's happening in your leadership journey at that point but that was extremely extremely powerful and and thank you again for your time.

37:52.65
John F
Thanks David thanks for your your work both with this podcast and your and board of business people like yourself play crucial roles and people like yourself made a huge difference in my unleaion journey. So thank you what you're doing.

38:04.60
davidmcdermott
Cool. Thanks John.