A People First Leadership Style Can Lift Performance with Victor Trieu (Australia)

Seven mental health spirals. Six burnouts. A successful corporate career on paper, and a private fight to keep going underneath it. We sit down with Victor Trieu, a former banking executive with 18 years in Australia’s corporate world, to talk honestly about what high pressure environments can do to your confidence, your body, and your sense of self when you believe you are never quite “enough”. If you have ever felt trapped in comparison, afraid to speak up, or worried that one wobble will end your career, this conversation will feel uncomfortably familiar, and genuinely useful.

We dig into the reality behind workplace mental health awareness: leaders may care, but many still do not know what to do when someone is struggling. Victor explains how culture, performance expectations, and unspoken rules push people to wear a mask, and how burnout often shows up first as small pattern changes, lateness, silence on messages, agitation, a different energy. We also talk about why support is not “soft”: psychological safety, trust, and autonomy can increase motivation and outcomes, not reduce them.

Victor shares his people first leadership approach, starting with a day one question: what does “version 2.0” of you look like? From there, he builds a foundation of trust through regular one to ones that focus on the person, not just the task list. We finish with the simplest tool that can change a trajectory: asking “Are you okay?” and meaning it. If this helps, please subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave us a review.

Music, lyrics, guitar and singing by Dr Ariel Rosita King

Teach me to live one day at a time
with courage love and a sense of pride.
Giving me the ability to love and accept myself
so I can go and give it to someone else.
Teach me to live one day at a time.....

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

Dr Ariel R King 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Business of Life with Dr. King. Today we have a very special guest, Mr. Victor Tulu. Welcome.

Victor Trieu 0:09

Hi, Dr. King. It's so fantastic to be here with you.

Dr Ariel R King 0:13

It's wonderful that you're here. Would you please tell our audience a bit about yourself? And our topic for today.

Victor Trieu 0:21

So our topic for today is living the corporate life and also mental health. And I'd like to share a little bit about where I've come from, the journey, and some of the life lessons that I've really taken out of that because it's helped me along the way. And I'd love for other people to learn the life lessons without having the pain and the suffering that I went through because I don't wish it on to anyone.

Dr Ariel R King 0:51

My goodness. Thank you so much. Well, let's get started. Could you please tell us our audience a little bit about you and your background first?

Victor Trieu 0:59

Yeah, sure. So my name's Victor True. I've spent the last 18 years inside a corporate in Australia. And most of that is in the banking industry. So Australia, we have four big banks. They turn over somewhere between $8 to $10 billion a year. And that's where I've spent most of my corporate life. And my origin story through that corporate life was I spent 18 years there, the first, the last five years, sorry, as a banking exec. And along the way, I've had many jobs at many top companies, Fortune 50 type companies, Essential NTT, and then through to the big banks in Australia. And as part of that journey, if you look at my LinkedIn, it's quite spotty and it's not great for the recruiters. And the reason behind that is I had seven mental health spirals. Six of those resulted in burnouts.

Seven Spirals And The Not Enough Loop

Victor Trieu 1:55

And each time I kept returning back to corporate because I felt safe and I felt secure. And I've tried escaping a couple of times into business. And this is my second escape into business now. And so it feels like I've I've finally escaped the mental health spirals on the semi-casion. And I've learned and grown a lot through that. And I shared some of those stories and what I've been able to take out of that with people as much as I can, because I'm really big on mental health. And, you know, if I can help one other person shortcut that process, one less spiral, or to recover, you know, one day quicker, one month quicker, whatever it might be, that's that's a life worth living.

Dr Ariel R King 2:40

Amazing. Thank you so much. And may I ask, was it a result of exhaustion, or was it a result of exhaustion and the corporate culture at the time and how you interacted with that culture?

Victor Trieu 2:54

Yeah, all of the above and probably a lot more. So each of those spirals had different causes and different impacts. And if I stitch it all together, a lot of it was a lot of comparison, a lot of not believing in myself, and a lot of what I just simply call not enough. You know, we go through life, and if I give to example of my very first job, it was with an IT consulting company, Essentia. I was fresh out of university or college, and it was my very first job inside corporate. So it was a prestigious consulting company. If you come out of an IT degree like me, that's probably one of the top companies you can go for outside of investment banking and management consulting. And I just was not ready for that kind of environment. I had gone from part-time jobs working in a call center, working in Galaxy World, which was an arcade, you know, customer service type jobs. And then all of a sudden I come out of university and I'm in this, you know, prestigious, high pressure kind of environment which I wasn't quite prepared for. And then I started comparing myself to everyone else. I'm like, oh, this person has a PhD, this person has a master's, this person has traveled the world. And I'm like, I'm like this little kid who doesn't have any of that. And so it very quickly became a comparison trap for me. And so the environment was very much a work hard, play hard kind of environment as well, which I wasn't quite used to. I was never a big drinker. If you look at me after a drink, I will be like tomato red after one drink. So there were all of these things that I was just not quite ready for. And so, you know, I repeated that a few times in different types of scenarios, but at the very core of it was just I didn't quite believe in myself. I didn't have that confidence, and I thought I wasn't enough when I was comparing myself to other people. But that took me a decade to be able to learn that thread and learn what to do with it.

Dr Ariel R King 5:05

Can I ask, do you think that the people who supervised you, your mentors, the people that were there, do you think that they could have done something different to made it better for you? And did they see any of this? Were they helpful in any way?

Victor Trieu 5:21

Yeah, yeah. So the short answer is I think there's a bit of an awareness gap. I think in the last, you know, since it last happened, which was 2007. It's now, you know, nearly 20 years since then, 18 odd years. I think

Why Leaders Miss The Signs

Victor Trieu 5:42

the awareness about mental health has increased significantly. I think the gap is when a people leader or a leader has that awareness, they don't actually know what to do with it. And I've led teams myself, you know, up to 10 direct reports. And if I hadn't had that lived experience, I probably wouldn't have known what to do either. So as a leader, you're kind of not taught what to do. You're taught to learn about it and you're taught awareness. But when something happens, it's actually really hard to know what to do because it's a challenging situation and you're not taught about it, you're not trained about it. And so the leaders that I had, I believe, did the best that they could with the tools that they had available to them at that time. And so I don't put it on them at all. I think it's more of a how to help other people gap more than anything else.

Dr Ariel R King 6:38

No, that and that makes sense. And those who are leading, if you say the leaders within the corporate sector or any sector, they're just a part of what is expected. So I mean, they they could never be held personally liable for that. But I'm wondering whether or not some of what you're talking about didn't necessarily just come from you as a person, but in the system itself of corporate life, which is, as you said, work hard, uh, play hard, work comes first. And also I'm I'm sure that there are politics that you have to deal with that people don't tell you about and you don't really learn about until you're in it, um, trying to deal with office politics and so on and so forth. So I think that perhaps the all the companies you were you in, were the cultures similar or were there differences within the corporate culture itself?

Victor Trieu 7:32

They were all quite different. They were all quite different. And if I think about it, if I think broadly, the cultures themselves are different. But what had the biggest impact was the people that I was reporting to. So my one-up and my two-ups. How they all responded once they worked out that, hey, I was actually having a tough time, which actually came pretty late. And that's on that's on me because I didn't share what was going on, because there was all of this perception that if I'm not strong and I'm not confident and I share what's happening, then I failed. And, you know, that's the end of my career kind of thing. So in my younger years, I didn't feel really comfortable having that type of conversation. And that brings me back to your point, Dr. King, about the system. You know, the system doesn't really make it easy for those conversations to happen. The system is all about high performance and, you know, kind of almost like sucking it up and doing your best. And, you know, the emotion and the vulnerability, like put a lid on that because if you do that, it's it's a sign of weakness, and people don't like a sign of weakness because that doesn't match the typical corporate kind of culture.

Dr Ariel R King 8:52

That that makes a difference. May I ask within these environments, were there other people also that were spiraling, as you say, or were having burnout? Did you see people burning out?

Victor Trieu 9:05

Yeah, yeah. It I probably didn't notice it until the second half of my career. I think the first half I was kind of in my own little world, and I didn't see other people, and I didn't recognize the signals, and I didn't sort of have that level of emotional maturity, which

Spotting Burnout Through Pattern Changes

Victor Trieu 9:28

really came over time. And like many other people that start off in corporate, I've really developed that skill set over time by talking to people, building those relationships. And it was probably in the second half of my career where, you know, I would see the signals that I had that other people would have. And that would be my trigger to just go up and have a conversation with them and say, you know, Dr. King, hey, I noticed that you've been coming in late a few, a few days this week. Are you okay? So it's it's very simple patterns that are just different to what you normally see in a person that triggered me to say, hey, there might be something going on here outside of the work life, or maybe it's in the work life, but there's just something that's different to the usual pattern. And that became a reason or to to take it on someone. And, you know, that that that came a little bit later once I sort of built up that that muscle.

Dr Ariel R King 10:28

I love that. And it is a muscle that you build, isn't it? It makes a big difference. And I know you said we were going to talk about. So are there are there things that we should look for? Are there lessons that we should learn from this so that people that who are now working in corporate, and even though we're Leo's leader and there is still some awareness, but at the same time, there's also still vulnerability of we've hired you to do a job and nothing should get in the way.

Victor Trieu 10:56

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I might be a bit of an outlier in the terms of the way I like to lead my teams. And I think the best way to answer that question is to share a little bit about my philosophy on leadership and how I like to run my teams because it's how I like to do it, and it's been very effective for me. But at the same time, I'm not gonna say it's the you know, the silver bullet that everyone should follow because it's it's definitely not for everyone. So in my last my last gig, I had somewhere between eight to 12 direct reports at

Leading With Version 2.0 Conversations

Victor Trieu 11:33

any point in time. And I was there for about a year, a bit over a year. And I was seconded into that role, which means I had a home role and I went into there on loan, effectively. And so the people that I was that were reporting to me were only going to be with me for a finite period of time. So some six weeks, some six months, some 12 months. And on day one, every time I had a new person coming to my team, if it was Dr. King, for example, I'd say, hey, Dr. King, what I want to do for you in the time that we have together is I want to help you become a better version of yourself. So the version of yourself that you are today, in whatever time we have together, whether six weeks or six months, I want to help you become version 2.0 of Dr. King. And then I would have a conversation with them and say, what does that look like? What's important to you? And then I would work with them on that because I had a really firm belief that how you show up in one part of your life is how you show up in other parts of your life. And if I can help them become a better person as a whole, then it's also going to help them become a better employee. And my survey results were pretty strong. So the company had a score of 78 out of 100 in terms of engagement, which the CEO was actually quite happy with. And my score was about 88, above that, 88, so 10 points above.

Dr Ariel R King 13:05

So big difference. Yeah, big difference.

Victor Trieu 13:08

And I put that down to the leadership style of, hey, Dr. King, you're in my team for X period of time. My job as your people leader is to help you become a better version of yourself. And if I give, you know, one very simple example, which also related to the mental health, I had one member come into my team. He was on the verge of burnout. He described everything as being very tactical. And on day one, I said to him, you know, what does version 2.0 of you look like? And at first, he gave me the performance metrics. So our very first meeting was at nine o'clock. He gave me, hey, I want to do this and this and this in the role. We had the chat. I shared a little bit about my origin story and the mental health and the struggles and the lessons out of it. And by lunchtime, he came to me and said, Hey, thank you so much for sharing that I had my own version of that. And it was a really tough time, and it took me 10 years to overcome that. And now that I've thought about our conversation, the best thing that would help me become a version 2.0 of myself is just to be kind to myself. And that was his ticket out of the burnout. And six weeks later, he had overcome all of that and he was ready to start his business, which was a $100 million hedge fund simply by working on being kind to himself. So those are the types of conversations that I like to have in the leadership style that I like to have, because I fundamentally believe that if you can treat your employees as people above employees, then those are the types of people that are going to be high-performers in your team because they really value being seen and heard and knowing that they matter and that you've got their back. And you help them with what's important to them, which may not always be working.

Dr Ariel R King 14:59

I really love that. And it looks like you're asking about the human being, not the work. You didn't ask what exactly is your work, but you you talked about the human being.

Victor Trieu 15:08

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Because we're all humans, right? You know, Dr. King, you have a life that expands past your business. And I actually really love the title, The Business of Life, because I see life and business as you know a very intertwined thing. You don't show up to your business as someone else. You don't show up in life as someone else. You do all of those things and other things outside of business and life as just Dr. King. You're you're you're a single person. And I like to see you as a single person.

Dr Ariel R King 15:41

That makes all the difference. What I love is that the first metric was this is what I can do, this is what I want to do in my job. And then the second metric came back was, This is who I am. Thank you for seeing me. Now I can I can also not just see myself, but give myself the permission to be fully human.

Victor Trieu 15:58

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that makes a lot of difference in in a corporate life where sometimes you see it as a number or a cogging wheel where someone actually sees you as a human being.

Dr Ariel R King 16:11

Isn't it amazing that you know, just by doing that, which is a lot, that your score was 10, I mean, uh 10 points higher. So almost a satisfaction rate of 90% of the team that you lead, just by having that conversation and letting people understand that they are people first before just a person there to do a job.

Victor Trieu 16:34

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's crazy when you think about it. It's it's you know, one simple mindset shift that I don't pretend that it's easy to do because it's brought in power to culture to a lot of how other leaders think about leadership. I've seen other people talk about this same kind of concept as well, and it's one that I've embraced. But it is, you know, different uh to what's what's popular.

Dr Ariel R King 16:59

I think what also makes a difference is you stepped out and said, This is who I am, this is a journey that I've had. It might not be your journey, but I and I think you give them permission to be more than a worker, not to be rude, but to actually be a human being. So a human being, a person that does work rather than a worker who does work who has to hide at times being a human being.

Victor Trieu 17:26

Yeah, yeah. I I love the way you put that, Dr. King, in terms of hiding that they're a human being. Because, you know, sometimes I talk about in some LinkedIn articles about, you know, wearing a mask, for example, or wearing a suit of armor. And that's exactly what it is. You know, when someone feels comfortable to talk to you and open up to you, it's like they get to drop that mask or drop that suit of armor, and all of a sudden they get to be Dr. King, the human being. And as part of Dr. King, you're also a worker. And that makes a world of difference because, and also leaking back to your point about, you know, me sharing who I am gives them permission to open up about who they are. And that's all done on day one. So that sets the foundation for the rest of the engagement that we have to go the next six months or the next year or whatever it is. And it just compounds because every week I do one-on-ones and they and I give them half an hour. Hey, Dr. King, talk to me about what's important to you and I'll support you the best as I can. And again, it's just reinforcing the fact that, hey, you're a human being. We will we'll we'll deal with the work stuff during the work time, but this half an hour is only for you, Dr. King. And if you want to talk about horses and ponies and unicorns, that's what we talk about. If you want to talk about work, we will talk about work. It's your time, and I will do my best to give you whatever I have.

Dr Ariel R King 18:46

So your leadership style was to lead from being a person that connected to people first, and through that connection, or not even through that connection, that the connection to the people on your team, no matter how long we're with you, was more was more important than that. This is what I want you to do. When can you do it and how can it be done? And it did that make a difference with um what you saw in terms of the work, or did it just make a difference in the way they felt about themselves while they were doing the work?

Victor Trieu 19:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I love the question because sometimes the counter-argument to that is hey, Victor, if you treat them as a person first, which sounds really foreign for me to say, then the concern is the performance will drop. So I actually found the opposite. If I treated them all as people first, the performance was actually a side effect. And so my team was all outperforming. And I think that's built on a foundation of trust and communication and vulnerability and seeing them as people first. And, you know, I would have people come to me and say, hey, Vic, you

Trust First Then Performance Follows

Victor Trieu 19:54

know, I've got a three-year-old and a five-year-old, and what's important to me right now is to be a mom. And I really want to go to my child's, they're having book fair tomorrow. And is it okay if I go and attend their book fair? Because I'm a single mom and I feel like that's gonna make a really important difference to mama. Great, go for it. I trust you that you're gonna do your work and I will look at the outcomes and I will give you feedback just as I would any other time. And if that's important to you right now, go off and spend that those that hour, those two hours endured. And the performance actually increased rather than decreased. And the metrics that I was majoring normal actually got better over time because they felt like they had that autonomy. And with the autonomy comes a lot more self-motivation and intrinsic motivation. And then when things did get tough or we did run into roadblocks, then all of that culminated into them putting in the effort when things hit the fan and pulling through together. And I think if I hadn't had all of that foundation to begin with, and I just used a use a stick basically to say, hey, we're in a situation, red mission critical situation, and I need you guys to all pull together. That's actually a tougher conversation, and it's using a very, I think, draponian kind of way to lead a team through adversity. And we have a lot of adversities through the team. And so for me, I think building that connection, that trust is just feels the foundation for everything else, including the high performance.

Dr Ariel R King 21:37

I really love that. The foundation. As you've gone through this, did you see that supporting others helped to support you? And did your burnout get better as a result of leading in this way? Um, did it make a difference for you also?

Victor Trieu 21:53

Uh yes. Yes, yes. I I love the question because it really touches on something that. Is really close and dear to my heart, which is being a big advocate for mental health. I found the more I talk about it, the more I actually heal myself inside. So it's as I went through those mental health spirals and those burnouts, I sort of matured and learned to talk more openly about it. And the seventh time where I had that mental health spire, I just pulled the trigger and talked about it really openly to my people lead

Healing Through Openness And Support

Victor Trieu 22:30

at the time. His name was Chris. And I just said to Chris, hey, I'm just really, really struggling right now. He wasn't aware at all because my work was still at a high quality. And he's like, if you didn't tell me, I never would have known. Like, how can I support you? And that was actually that seventh time. And him saying, How can I support you? was literally life-changing for me because it was the first time I actually finally broke that spiral. All of those other six times, I had quit my job, I had resigned, I had been out of work for three months to 12 months because I just found it too hard and I needed to take a step back. And that seventh time was literally a life-changing moment where I was able to overcome that and become the person that I wanted to be. We wanted to start a family at the time. And I said, hey, I'm lying in the sand, like, like, you know, no more. Like this is this is the one where we're gonna break the cycle. And since then, my little one, Luna, she's two and a half now. And it makes me so happy to be able to say to Luna, hey, this is what I've been able to do by just drawing a line in the sand and making a commitment to be a better version of myself. The same thing that I say to my team members to be a help them be a better version of themselves. So over time, that that maturity has definitely helped me become a better person and has definitely helped me heal myself by just being more open and talking to about it more.

Dr Ariel R King 23:57

Love that. No, so you made a transition from corporate. What are you doing now? And how have you found that, you know, your experiences, which I'm sure you wouldn't trade as difficult as they were, because it really helped to develop you. How has that helped you in the new focus that you now have?

Victor Trieu 24:14

Yeah, yeah. So my biggest focus right now, Dr. King, is helping senior leader, senior senior leaders become sports leaders as a way to escape the nine-to-five, escape the rat race, as I like to call it. And a big part of that is sharing their life experiences, what are called the life IP. And part of what I shared is, you know, part of my life IP, the seven mental health spirals, the burnout, the overcoming of that, all of the tools and techniques that I've come out of that with the leadership sort of philosophies. And so I believe, like, Dr. you will have

Escaping The Rat Race With Life IP

Victor Trieu 24:52

a very vast of experiences and things that you've learned along the way. So what I hope seeing your leaders do is package all of that up so that they can help other people become better versions of themselves to make an impact to the world of business or the world of life, whatever that might be, whatever it is that they want to contribute and make an impact to. And do that through LinkedIn and other platforms, but primarily LinkedIn because that's where I am and that's how we became acquainted. So that's what I'm helping people with now. So package up your life experiences, your life IT to help the next generation or the people that you actually want to help develop, become better versions of themselves as well.

Dr Ariel R King 25:37

That's absolutely exciting. And we just have several minutes left. Would you please tell our audience how they can get in touch with you? And and any last thoughts for our audience?

Victor Trieu 25:48

Yeah, yeah. Best way to get in touch with me is on my LinkedIn. So it's the normal LinkedIn and it's Victor True, T-R-I-E-U. It's pronounced the same as true and false. It's a little, it's a Vietnamese name, so it's a little bit trickier to spell. And my last parting word, my encouragement, is Chris as my people leader, literally changed my life. I wrote a card to him with a gift, one Christmas, and I said those words to Chris, you've literally changed the trajectory of my life. And I am so grateful. And so my encouragement is if you see someone, whether it's a colleague or friend, where the patterns have changed, maybe they start coming to something late. Maybe they stop replying to your messages, maybe they just seem more agitated than normal. Something just seems out of character. It is so easy to judge and say, oh, they're just angry or something like that. My greatest encouragement is just to give them an are you okay? Because that can really open up conversation. And just that are you okay makes them feel seen and heard,

The Power Of A Simple Are You Okay

Victor Trieu 27:06

and that they know that you matter, and they know that they matter to you. And so many of my most meaningful conversations have started that way. I've noticed something and I've said, Hey, Dr. King, are you doing okay at the moment? How can I help you? How can I support you? What's going on for you?

Dr Ariel R King 27:23

Um this huge smile on my face because I love what that, you know, how are you? Are you okay? And you let people know that they matter. I want to thank you for joining us. As I said, even before we started recording this, I'm sure if you have the time, we are going to do another session. It's amazing what you talk about, and it's so needed in life, not just in corporate, not in just business. And I want to thank you for joining us. And to our audience, if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, then when? And that's by Hillel, the great philosopher. And I've added if not me, then who? Thank you so much for joining us.

Victor Trieu 28:05

You're most welcome. Thanks so much for having me, Dr. King.