Claire Rogers Episode Description

On this episode of ‘The Inspiration Project’, Brendan Corr talks to Claire Rogers the CEO of Oho about the nature of leadership and how her faith plays an important role in leading larger organisations. Claire’s understanding of purpose and faith and why failure is a beautiful gift. Plus so much more!

Among other things Claire shares:

• What was school like for Claire
• Why leadership skills and principles are so important to Claire and where she learned those skills
• Why failure is a beautiful gift
• How did Claire come to faith and what has being a Christian meant to her?
• Claire’s understanding of purpose and faith
• How faith has shaped what Claire prioritises and what she has pursued in terms of her work.
• How Claire’s faith has helped her lead.
• The connections between doing what you love and finding what you are good at.

Claire Rogers Episode Transcript

Sponsor Announcement
This podcast is sponsored by Australian Christian College, a network of schools committed to student wellbeing, character development, and academic improvement.

Introduction
Welcome to The Inspiration Project, where well-known Christians share their stories to inspire young people in their faith and life. Here’s your host, Brendan Corr.

Brendan Corr
Well, hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Inspiration Project, the podcast, where we’re bringing you stories of successful Christians who’ve explored lives of significance and brought their faith along for the ride. In fact, let their faith be part of that journey and part of that influence. Today, we’re delighted to be talking with Claire Rogers. Claire is an experienced strategic leader. She has a driving ambition to support growth and innovation and transformation. And she’s demonstrated that across a range of financial services in the past. Perhaps her, well, the most recognised role was chief executive of World Vision Australia, which was, I think, remains the country’s largest not for profit organisation. At the moment, she identifies herself as a social innovator with well-developed entrepreneurial skills, a highly network influencer that is bringing different environments, or two different environments of finely honed communications and negotiation skills. Claire that sounds like a really 21st century job description at the end. Maybe a little different from being CEO of a big company. Tell me a bit, what is a typical day for Claire Rogers held as a highly networked influencer and a social innovator?

Claire Rogers
Yeah. Thanks, Brendan. And I think one of the things that’s changing in the world of work is the organic nature of work itself. And so what you’ve just read out is really something that will be very relevant to your listeners, particularly the group coming through school at the moment, being able to really clearly articulate your skills, so others can work out where will they be able to deploy you and how will that create great value? And so what you’ve just read out is that. But to answer your question, a typical day for me is I’m working to scale up in child safety at the moment, so that’s a tech solution for a very real business problem. In that organisations need to know that everyone who works with children is safe in their organisation and there’s other accreditation’s as well. And so a typical day for me is leading the team, I’m effectively the CEO in that role, as we build the organisation. And leading the team, talking with potential clients, working with the developers and thinking through what the next features that we want to add to the product and the experience? And just generally thinking about strategy and the future of the organisation. I do a bit of work for some other folks as well. And in that role, I do a bit of coaching of CEOs and other senior leaders in helping them solve really, what other… We often don’t talk about this, we talk about the technical skills of a role, but the hardest part of leadership is actually working with people and figuring out how to help them achieve their best work. And to negotiate the outcomes of the business at the same time. So, Brendan, that’s probably given you a whole host of springboards to bounce off I’m sure, but there’s a bit of a potted day for me.

Brendan Corr
It’s quite a lot. It sounds as though, it’s quite a fluid description that there’s not so many fixed parameters, there isn’t a clear boundary as to what it’s going to involve and here’s the scope of that. It’s just whatever needs to get done to move things forward and help people.

Claire Rogers
Yeah. I think when you’re starting your career that you have more structured roles, and delivering a particular outcome. So I started in banking and my job was to assess or support the bank manager to assess loans, the suitability of people to receive a loan for a mortgage or a business. And now of course, a whole lot of that’s automated, so that job itself probably doesn’t exist anymore. But that was a very structured role and it was based on processing a number of applications. As you get into senior leadership, it becomes much more about what does the organisation do, as I look at the horizon, as I look at what’s going on in the customer base, in the market more generally in the legislative or regulatory context, what does that mean for our organisation? And then how do we need to respond to that? And how do I deploy effectively the resources and tools and team to achieve what’s going to be the greatest outcome, the best outcome for that organisation. And that doesn’t mean, always being the largest, or always being the winner in a market. It means what are we really good at? And what do our customers value us being really good at? And then doing that really well. And then the success I think, comes from doing those things really well because the market tells you if you’re delivering something of value.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. Okay. Was it a role that you always imagined yourself stepping into, or is the concept-?

Claire Rogers
I always had a hankering to run an organisation that came from an early part of my life. And actually it’s interesting… Speaking to people of faith, I actually had to wait in my career to get the opportunity to lead things and lead teams, but I had heaps of experience in my church context, in youth groups, in a whole host of other Christian organisational contexts. And that was a great, I think, training ground and experience for me to then take into my career when the time was right to lead others. So yes, I always had a hankering to run organisations because I’m driven by helping them achieve their potential. And one of the great joys for the leader and also responsibilities is to be able to create the space for an organisation to achieve its potential. Because we’ve all worked in organisations where the leaders are sometimes not close enough to the potential of the organisation, and there are people in the team who can say, “we need to go over here.” And the leader’s creating a way, an immune system that stops that potential being achieved. So as I’ve got more senior, I’ve been able to see how that leadership allows the space. It’s not for me about hierarchy and having the title. It’s about how can I, as a leader, give the space to the team to deliver the best value, or the best results or value for customers, and that comes probably from my, well not probably, I think it comes from my faith in the sense that, God gave us this beautiful world, and there’s a restorative role that he asks us to play. Even though we’ll never get to make it like heaven, he asked us to play that role of obediently restoring his world to its potential.

Brendan Corr
I’d love to come back and talk with you more specifically about leadership, the skills of leadership. I’m intrigued by what I picked up as a suggestion that leadership can be empowering, but it can also be throttling, it can be very limiting. And talk about your faith there. But I want to roll you back to those school days. You mentioned that some of the audience of this podcast will be kids in school trying to make their decisions about their future, find out who they are, what they’re good at? What was school like for you?

Claire Rogers
Well as a female, I had lots of pressure on me to do science and it wasn’t technology then, but the science and maths stream because they… And it’s still an issue today, a lot of females don’t go into those streams. It’s getting better, but it’s still things like engineering, my son’s doing engineering at university and it’s 10 or 15% of girls in that discipline. So there was a lot of interest in me doing science and technology. What actually happened though, was I wasn’t actually… I could do it, but it wasn’t, I wasn’t fantastic, let’s put it that way. And so I kept on the maths, because I really enjoyed the maths and added, I had English literature and I joke about it as reading, writing, and arithmetic. And that’s what I then ended up doing in my degree. I took those interests into my degree and got hired into a bank because of my mathematics. But I laugh and say that actually it was my English literature and English, that is what built my career. Because it was, you described it in my bio, but this influencing and being able to construct arguments and explain and create clarity and context is what helps organisations to move forward. So yeah, so while the maths got me in the door, it was probably the English that helped me build my career.

Brendan Corr
I started by observing the nature of the work you were doing, and that’s another thing I want to come back to your question about the nature of work itself, that it’s quite fluid, quite loosely defined. Do you still see that the things you learned or acquired or perspectives that you formed at school continue to be relevant, continue to be useful?

Claire Rogers
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other thing that was prevalent in my early, sorry, later school years was leadership. Again, I led the Christian group, I led various other aspects in the school. And so that has always been a consistent theme through my career, even when there’s been times where I haven’t been able to play that leadership role in one context, I’ve been able to do it in my personal life and vice versa. But I would also say that as I went into a career, people came alongside me and guided me and said, Claire, “You should think about this role. Or I think you’d be good at this. Why don’t you consider this?” And in a large organisation that works, but it can also work across organisational boundaries if people know you well enough. And so from an early stage in my career, and I think this certainly applies to school as well, being willing to listen or explore or hear other people’s perspectives about your skills and strengths is definitely something that has helped me know myself. Because our big challenge is we turn up somewhere and do some stuff. We think it’s worked out, or it might be a very difficult situation where it didn’t work out. Unless we ask and explore, we don’t know how people are receiving us. And one of the things I learned in my career, and it was actually a failure point, and I was at one stage demoted from a leadership position to a more junior leadership position. I was on an executive team and was asked to step down to the layer below, and that was tremendously difficult for me to process. But it became this beautiful opportunity to actually learn how I was showing up as a leader and how people were receiving me. And I learned through that, that actually feedback is the most beautiful gift that people can give you. Both endorsements and positive feedback about your strengths helps you know that that’s what you’re bringing and what people are actually looking for from you. But also when you’re not showing up the way that’s needed, when people will have the courage, who you trust and have your interests at heart, if they’re willing to give you that feedback. It’s a beautiful gift, because sometimes we don’t intend those things and you can make very small adjustments and create a really great outcome where people are engaged and inspired to keep bringing their best work.

Brendan Corr
So I was going to come to this a little bit later, but this is a nice point of connection. You gave this hint at the start about the nature of work, and I would be interested to know your thoughts. There are some people who would say, “Find what you love, do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” That expression. There’s another perspective that would say, “Find what you’re good at and concentrate on what you’re good at.” There’d be another one that would suggest, find what needs doing and just get in and be that person that solves the problem and does what is needed. Where would you fall into that notion, that sense of… And is it locked in? Can you change? Do they ever align? How does that work in your perspective?

Claire Rogers
Yeah, I think they are actually highly connected. One story from my career that really shaped me, that I talk about quite a lot is I had the opportunity to go and work in London for the ANZ. And it’s a complicated area of banking, but essentially when the Euro currency came along, a whole new market of services had to form around it. And I had the privilege of being involved in some of the business side of that. And so when I say new market, no one had ever provided services for the Euro before, and a whole lot of companies then tried to work out how they were going to deliver their services. And I found that the ones I thought were going to win didn’t win. And that created a huge interest in me around what, how markets form and entrepreneurial change and so on. And so that passion has taken me through a whole lot of parts of the ANZ. Once that happened, the jobs I came back to Australia to do all had to do with where change was happening in the market, in the relationship between the customer and the organisation. And then that ultimately led me back to digital. So if you think about in a bank, it used to be that you’d go in and see the bank manager, you’d be in the branch and you’d know all the tellers, and you’d know everyone who really looked after your account when digital came along, that the centre of the relationship with the customer is via a phone, and that’s a very different environment. And to still create that relationship experience and provide the services, you’ve got to do it in a different way, so that’s an example. And that passion, I ended up actually talking my way in to go and help the bank with that part of their service, because I could see the change happening and wanted to help them respond to that. When you go for a job, there’s a couple of things that happen. One is, do we fit? Do we get on? Do we like each other? But then how passionate are you or how interested are you in what we as an organisation are doing? Those questions are going through the recruiter’s mind. And then the third area, which a lot of people don’t spend time on, is how can I add value to this organisation? We spent a lot of time showing what we’ve done and how good we are, which is important. The skills and capabilities need to be verified and explored and see if they’re a fit. But how can I add value to this organisation? And that comes from knowing a little bit about where that organisation is at and why my skills might be applied to that, to get an outcome or a result. So to answer your question, it’s a bit of passion for something that is going to drive, whether there’s a good fit? It’s a bit of what are you good at? So you need some of that base sorted out, because a job where you’ve got very low experience and maybe need to acquire a whole other set of skills, it’s going to be highly stressful. But you also don’t want to take a job that doesn’t stretch you. There’s got to be that growth and opportunity to learn. Yeah.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. That’s good. You’ve mentioned a few times the role that faith and your faith experience has had in providing opportunity and intimated that it was part of a guiding principle in life. Take me back to your faith journey. How did you come to faith? What has that meant to you? How is it growing? How does it impact the key points of life about decisions, going overseas, finding other work, coming home, where is God in that for you?

Claire Rogers
Yeah. Well, I grew up in a Christian family, but made my own decision at about, I think, 11 or 12, and I knew that that was important. I knew enough to know that it was important, and I had to make my own decision and I didn’t have to make the same decision as my parents. And then I think I have had just a sense of in many ways God’s presence. Because as I look back over my career, sometimes you can see these things in hindsight, more than you can looking forward. But as I look back over my career, I can see moments where I got the opportunity to be involved in something that built a core capability that then later became useful in another role. And so a practical example of that is I was the chairman of Ridley College in Melbourne, the Anglican college. One of the national languaging colleges that trains ministries and chaplains and people for Christian ministry. And the fact that I had that job and had been in the ANZ, and done all of that great commercial experience, the fact that I’d also run a not-for-profit, those two experiences led to the role at World Vision. And so in hindsight, you can see how God’s built those skills and experiences together. I talk about that, my superpower is actually marrying purpose and commerciality together with integrity and deploying that in different contexts, that’s what I bring. And I think it comes back to this point around, we’re not going to make heaven on earth that’s God’s job, but he does call us to be obedient and seek to restore things that are not okay. And in the case of Oho and child safety, it’s a protection mechanism for organisations to make sure that unsuitable people don’t have access to children. And the way things are working at the moment, it’s not okay, the way organisations are managing this. And so that means that people have had access that shouldn’t have had access. And so that’s what drives me is that we have this opportunity to not walk past things that should be managed better to protect our social fabric and to protect the opportunity for everyone to grow up and have opportunities that we have.

Brendan Corr
So in the context of how you’re living faith in this journey, I remember you’re talking a little earlier in our conversation about not always having opportunities immediately presented and needing to wait until circumstances changed or people recognised what you might be able to bring to a context. In that space of patiently waiting and having a sense of purpose, where has faith been for you in holding those roles?

Claire Rogers
Yeah. A great question, Brendan. Well, I just love the story of King David, who was told that he was going to be king 40 years before he actually became king. And at times that’s the sort of thing that has influenced me to have patience because it’s God’s timeline, not mine. And we’re called to be obedient, we’re not called to be successful. We need to leave the success up to God. And so those are the sorts of things that I found really encouraging and helpful at the times when I’ve felt impatient and wanted to get to those opportunities earlier, perhaps than God wanted me to. And we just, we need to trust. And COVID has been particularly challenging I know for lots of people, because we have this sense of time, of things not being in our control. And I think now more than ever is the time to say, well, we need to do what sits in front of us that feels right and feels appropriate for our circumstance, but also recognise we’re in unprecedented times. And as someone said to me yesterday, this 18 months, two years is 5% of a career. So it needs to be put in that context and-

Brendan Corr
If faith has carried you through those moments of waiting and kept you expectant and ready for the next door that opens, and maybe even given you the sense of stepping into new opportunities, has it also had an influence into making choices around what next opportunity, what you will derive? I’m thinking that you’re talking about making decisions around the sort of work that you focus on, that you give your energy to, and the sense of redemptive-ness about your work. Has faith shaped what you prioritise and what you pursue in terms of the product of work?

Claire Rogers
Yes. I think in lots of ways, for me it’s been about things of purpose. And there are lots of jobs you can do in life, and there’s nothing wrong with any of them, in fact God’s very clear work is a good thing, and work is a blessing from God. So the actual type of work probably in God’s scheme doesn’t matter. But for me, I think one of the things that I learned early was that I could do complex and maybe some things that involved people on a scale or a level of complexity that suited my skills. And so I leaned into some quite significant challenges at Ridley, and what we were able to do was build a whole online programme of education, way before COVID came along. And that built and sustained that organisation through COVID actually, because the online students has meant that they were able to cope when they couldn’t have students on campus. So I think what I would say is you probably wouldn’t find me working in Bunnings, who knows? Maybe God’s got a different plan. But you probably wouldn’t find me doing hardware, you’ll find me where people, where there’s a really strong sense of purpose and a strong need for transformation to respond to the context, and that’s about where you’re most likely to find me.

Brendan Corr
That’s good. And I think it does speak a little bit as to how you ended up at World Vision, something that’s making a big difference for good in the world. Your current work, looking after the vulnerable of our society, and it carries that sense of faith. If I can push you a little more Claire, the notion of how your Christianity might’ve changed the way you lead. Obviously, you have inherent capacities to do that, skills that allow you to articulate vision and bring a sense of purpose and inspiration. And that you’ve had some experience as you’ve learned how feedback can hone and shape and bring clarity, Brené Brown, Clear is Kind. That sort of thing. But what has your Christian faith done to shape, change, moderate the way you lead?

Claire Rogers
Yeah. Brendan, and I think you touched on, it’s actually in your question, but this, I’ve really had to sit with this clear is kind area of leadership. Because mainly, everyone wants to come to work and do a great job. And what gets in the way of that is lack of clarity, lack of honesty, lack of reflection time. And that’s for me as well as for my team, and so that’s the first thing. The second thing is making it safe to speak the truth. And I hear a lot of leaders who maybe don’t have a Christian background, talk about how important this is. But to actually live it and do it, requires the willingness to be personally vulnerable because the only way my team’s going to want to show up and be honest about what’s really going on is if it’s safe to do so. And the only way they’re going to be vulnerable is if I’m willing to be vulnerable. And so I’ve had to really intentionally lean into that conversation with teams and encourage them, because my view is, if you don’t lean into the truth, you’re going to waste a whole lot of time. You’re going to throw resources and solutions at problems that are going to fail. So the willingness of people to bring in the truth, and organisational structures are hard because we all have a responsibility and we want to do our jobs well, and so we come and say, “Yep, everything’s going great. Thanks very much.” But reality is there’ll be some area that’s just not working. And unless we have that conversation, it spreads, it can create cancer through the organisation. And so for me, that’s been Jesus is the ultimate place where we bring our truth. And he’s actually the ultimate solution to whatever that truth is. And so yeah, for me it’s been about creating that space for the real issues to be explored and for people to feel safe to do that. Then to have accountability, to go and sort it out. So it’s, you can’t just do one and not the other. And from that, I’ve seen great performance, great outcomes by being in that space of truth. But then the other side of it is when things don’t go well, again, what I said before, God asked us to be obedient, he didn’t ask us to be successful. And if we’re successful, the temptation is to think it’s us, we did such a great job. And when it’s terrible, the temptation is to look at God and say, “Well, come on God, what have you… You’re not honouring my contribution.” But actually it’s the same answer in both of those situations. I was obedient and God brought things. I was obedient and this time, God didn’t bring things, so that’s an important part I think of grounded, honest leadership.

Brendan Corr
It’s not a space that Christianity is probably flying its flag, all that well, do you think. I don’t think Christians are known for being able to create that safe space of sharing, honest feedback. That it’s a matter of Christ will cover a multitude of sins and that sort of an issue. Or if it’s got to get tough, we tend to rely on just being as blunt and brutal and checking our Christianity at the door. It’s a real challenge, and how have you found that? How have you found that the spirit of God has helped you in, in moments?

Claire Rogers
Yeah, I’ve learned through some mistakes and also some successes that if you help people confront the truth, by making it safe for them to confront the truth, they will often make their own decisions as to what should happen. So an example, someone that was working for me, it clearly wasn’t working out, a highly stressed individual, was causing issues across the organisation. We dealt with the stress and created the space for the stress to be processed. I created that space. Then the person had time to reflect and come back and say, “Actually, I think it’s time I moved on.” You’re quite right. I think the challenge in Christian organisations is we’re relational people. And we want to effectively meet in church and be relational. But I actually think, and I’m totally with Brené Brown, that’s not kind. If something needs to be said, it’s about how we create the environment for people to still retain dignity and hear that information, or that feedback, or that accountability, and calling people to account. I think Jesus was very clear on accountability. And I think it’s a part of, it’s sometimes a part of the way we build organisations. We’re kind of, “Oh we don’t like doing that.” And it is hard. I totally accept that it’s hard, but the rewards are profound when you do it without, from a place where people have dignity, because everyone respects what that’s been… That they can see that from the outside, across the organisation, but they can also say that you’re dealing with the accountability issue. Because if you don’t deal with the accountability issue, everyone goes, “Oh, well this organisation, they don’t have integrity. They’re not dealing with issue X.” But if you don’t, if you deal with it too brutally as you describe, then it’s like, “Oh goodness, I don’t want the knife to fall on me, or the axe to fall on me in that way, that’s awful.” But the respect for every person being created under God, so it’s how can I do this with dignity? How can we get to this place with dignity for both parties? I think that’s what God calls us to do.

Brendan Corr
Amen. That’s good. I put a note down as I was chatting earlier about the challenge of knowing yourself well, knowing others well, knowing that work well. And I think what you’re hinting at here is that it’s also about letting yourself be known by God and having that degree of a promise, that because you are known and loved and want to live faithfully in a Christ like way, that’s what you carry. Genuine love, not just niceness. Genuine purpose, not just business. The humanity that God always brings when he’s at work.

Claire Rogers
Yeah, Brendan. And there’s one other thing in here too. I think organisations, perhaps less Christian organisations, but certainly in the commercial world, like to focus on what you don’t do well, and spend time… And I’ve had plenty of bits of feedback, and I talked about feedback before. I have a litmus test on feedback, does this person have my best interests at heart in giving me that feedback? And if it’s a safe place for me to explore that feedback because of their intentions, then I’d listen to it a lot. You’ll still get as a leader, and as the CEO, everybody’s looking at you, to see how Claire is going to behave in this context, what is she doing? What is she saying? All of that stuff. That you get watched far more as the CEO than in any other role. And you don’t always get it right too, that’s the other part of it. What I’ve found is that organisations spend a lot of time working on your weaknesses. I’d much rather work on someone’s strengths and help them understand their weaknesses so they can draw on other people to bring that, because I think our strengths are what help and fuel our career. And so an example I have, I had a world vision, I had a couple of people, one who carried the responsibility of the external reputation of the organisation, and one who carried the responsibility of the internal reputation of the organisation. And I had them with me on a fortnightly basis to explore what was going on and what did we need to say in those contexts to help the organisation thrive and do its job really well? And so bringing… That is their technical strengths, sometimes it’s also leadership strengths that others have. I have someone who can tell me… Because I’m really good at focusing on where the organisation needs to go, I sometimes don’t notice… This might surprise you. I sometimes don’t notice how people are feeling about life and maybe there’s other stuff going on in their world. And so I always have someone in my team who’s really good at spotting that, and they’ll come up to me and go, “Oh, you know what Claire, I know it’s all good, but so-and-so’s having trouble at home with one of their kids, and that’s why they are distracted.” And so I’ll always have someone who’s giving me that, rather than me trying to be the person that will spot that because that will, then I’m not bringing my strengths, if that makes sense?

Brendan Corr
It’s like living out of the body of Christ, right?

Claire Rogers
Exactly.

Brendan Corr
People see different things, bring gifts and contribute to the shared leadership. I want to thank you. Thank you for sharing your insights. And it’s a great thing, as we started off our conversation, noting, talking with people who have been able to sort things out with God’s help and have travelled the journey that others can learn from and learn with. So thank you for sharing your story and the part that God has played in that. Anything finally that you might want to just leave with our listeners?

Claire Rogers
Well, I’d just love to honour that question you asked me about, is it, do I look for something I love? Do I look for something I’m good at? Or do I look for something I really want to change, I think was the third one. At different times, you will be on a journey where either one of those might come to the fore, but just be listening for where God is looking for you to go and be open to what God puts in front of you. And I think the other thing I’d say is, and be courageous because this world needs courageous leaders now more than ever to tackle some of the biggest challenges that we’re facing. And I’m really excited about the next generation of leaders as they’re coming through. I think you’ve got an opportunity. You’ve got some big challenges, be here and cheering for you on, but you’ve got some big opportunities to make a huge difference in the world, and so have courage and confidence.