Garry Carnachan on Leadership & Community

You're listening to the Vivek William Business Hour on the most dear film. Hello, good morning. I'm Monday morning here on the Business Hour with Naomi Harris. Thank you again for GQ sponsorship. So today we're joining the studio with another guest. Was we roll through another week? And please, I just want to turn over to Jordan, who's joining me in the studio as my co-host. Hello Jordan. Thank you. How is your week? We didn't remiss you last week. Yes. We had a busy few weeks. Last week, just a few work priorities needed to jump in. So I wasn't able to make the show. But it's been another really good week, isn't it? It's amazing to think halfway through the year as well and halfway through winter. Because I was thinking, I don't know whether you took a mid-winter dip. Some time last week as well, or obviously after June 21. No. Because actually the water, because I did, I took my family down for a bit of a swim. And the water, actually, at the temperature, is probably only a couple of degrees colder than what it would be in summer anyway. So it was actually nice. It was more getting out that was the most difficult bit. But yeah, look. And wild weather that we had last week, too, wasn't it? Oh my gosh. Massive disruptions around the entire region, which make things really challenging. Yeah, a lot of flights been cancelled. We had some events with the IOD last week. Unfortunately, we didn't have some clients move, kind of fly into the region. So it's been a bit crazy for a lot of people. Yeah. Extending this day. There's two disruptions. And I know a lot of businesses around the region had to close. And, you know, just hit kind of older than hours based on all the disruptions. And then the other one I was going to mention that I did last week, which is an incredible local asset. I went into the opening of the new hospital wing. Oh, that's awesome. So now that this is opening to the public today is their first day. So they're starting, I believe the first people coming through, they're starting to take in the, like the maternity ward. So that's all being transitioned today. And then over the course of this week, there's all the departments are slowly moving into this new ward. And so into the opening last Thursday, where they did the official opening. And yeah, incredible building. Obviously, I've put years and years of work into this. It is, yes, stunning. It doesn't feel like a hospital when you go through there as well. Like when you're walking into that first kind of opening space. Yeah, it feels real light in the area and nice. Yeah. So no, it's an incredible building. So next time you do kind of go have to visit or visiting someone there, it's definitely worth having a bit of a walker room. It's amazing. That's something to be proud of. Yeah, I think so. I like it. I like to hit that. Yeah. That's really nice. Yeah. So I was a good walker on the air as well. So now it's been an interesting week. Oh, well, for me, I want to shout about the, I went to the Len Light the weekend. Nice. With my daughter, who's also sat with us today in the studio again for the second time. She's been home over university break. But Len Light, they did the body and pathoe movement. And I was really astonished when I was able to go up to Norma to house all the way up to the top and peer over at Len Light and see the harps that are on top of the building that make such a lovely music that comes down into Len Light and the new exhibits as well. The forest. Yeah. I have. Oh, good news. It was so good. I was kind of chill out. You can. Yeah. It's great. And the birds singing. And look, I had no idea about the outside and the fact that it was, yeah, literally on the outside of the building. So yeah, if you do, if you are walking past, you can even see it from GQ, is where I was actually. Yeah. When it got pointed out to me. So, yes, obviously, sponsor of the show as well, which makes it nice. So yeah, walking past GQ, if you kind of look up at the Len Light, you'll see exactly the kind of, the piece kind of sticking out. And that's actually controlling the artwork inside, which is pretty cool. Oh, I know. Yeah. And I learned something interestingly about cows. And I've got it with me here. If cows didn't like mustard, do you know about this around the photo, photos, photos, sensitivity, aspect of films? So apparently over 20 years ago, if we, we found out that if cows didn't like mustard, there would be any movies at all today, because the software that is produced from cows that eat mustard is such a high degree, a set, photoscent for sensitivity for the film industry. So they, without the gelatin, gets somehow bound to the cinematography reels. How's that really? So yeah, so there is like, if you want to read, if you want to read a little bit more about it, I'm not giving it justice, but 20 years ago, we found out that if cows didn't like mustard, there would be no movies at all. Go figure. Who the thought there was any connection there? My brain went-- But that's fine. Like, literally, like, it's amazing. So like, they had our whole piece there, the gallery about that. Okay. So that's where we're looking at. It's actually outside the displays outside monocles, just the left of the front door. So it's all there. So you'll be able to gather the little leaflet and learn a little bit more. Amazing. And it's good to see obviously the development outside the gallery as well. It's a slow process, but I believe you've-- Yeah. It's supposed to be done, maybe the individual eye, supposedly. That would be nice. That would be nice, because it's starting to actually take a bit of a show about the at two. So there's a lot of roadworks around town, so we could kind of have that one finished up as well. Yes. So look, we're going to wrap up our little catch-up of the weekend. I was very glad to be joined by my hubby with me co-hosting this week. It was an impromptu. Yeah, that was really not planned at all. So I really appreciated that. But look, we're going to kick off. We've got Gary, kind of, in the studio today. Hello, Gary. Good morning. Good morning. So Gary here today has been recommended via GQ, because this is GQ's first of the month, albeit I appreciate it's not first of the month yet. So we're not running ahead. But yeah, so Gary, tell us a little bit more about yourself and give yourself a bit of an introduction. Oh, thank you. And yeah, Tarnaki, born and bred, started my relationship with Tarnaki and Carponga. We were dead at a butcher shop. And we moved to New Prometh when I started Intermediate School. And I have lived here since. I've worked way a lot. It's nice to be back in Tarnaki for the last five or six years, whatever tempted to retire. They're working from here, rather than working nationally. So it's been great. And when you say attempt into retire, retire from what to Gary? Yeah, I finished my sort of employment career as CEO of Schoolsport New Zealand, 2021. And had intended to larger retire. Sort of haven't stopped working. People who I've worked with in the past and have caught previous clients keep coming back. And asking if I could do this bit or that bit. And it keeps interesting me. So the work is great. So I have been doing a lot of consulting with National Sporting Organisation mainly. But also getting myself involved in the community and giving back to Tarnaki with a couple of two or three reasonably large community organisations and projects that I've been involved in over the last five or six years. It sounds like it must be very hard for you to say no. It's a boundary, right? How do you know when to set those boundaries and what to say no to? Yeah, it is difficult. I do actually have a rule, which is pretty good. And my rule is if I don't know, you know, haven't worked for you before. It's not a new project. I'm not starting a new relationship with a project. But if I've, you know, it's a work pre at the moment I've been doing with New Zealand Football, New Zealand, a little bit of work with Sport Tarnaki and some of their projects. All people of projects I've been involved with before. And some of those are extensions of previous work. And so being able to see things through and being able to take those little steps when the previous steps have been completed is quite exciting. So that's my use. Okay. I like that. How long did it take you to figure that one out, Gary? Yeah, it was a couple of years to be fair. Like a couple of years, it's been like a couple of years ago or a couple of years? No, it's a couple of years after sort of deciding or it's going to lead your entire life. Okay. People are coming to me with work and there's all interesting exciting and I was saying yes to most things. Okay. And found I was working full-time again, really, just with a different sort of framework around my business operation. Yeah. And if I was going to stop doing things I had to start saying no. So that was where my rule came in. I got approached for some work. It's quite exciting but I didn't know the organisation well, I didn't know the people well. I was going to be a fix you start learning curve and I thought no, not doing that. Now you've worked for some pretty big sport organisations across your entire career. If we go right back, where did the love of sport come from? Were you a player back in the day and then they moved in to more of a management leadership side? Or where's that transition and the love of sport kind of come from? Yeah, very average player. Most things. I could play most things but it was never excellent at any of them. But really loved sport. I think through school I think, growing up a little bit in like Kaupong and playing rugby with your bare feet down in a dokeah. And the frost in them I wanted to cook the ball to get out of the dead's car because it was so cold. They were all sort of real great. growing and learning experiences right from the start. And then going to school and playing, and team sport, made a lot of friends. Made a lot of people who have influenced my life as coaches. I think some of the biggest influences I've had and what makes us a person is come from really good coaches that I've been involved with who really understand people and you know, team dynamics and things like that. And then when I became a teacher, I was heavily involved in coaching teams myself and pretty much for most of 20 or so years of 25 years of teaching career, I coached a number of teams and got a lot from that, got a lot back from that. And then my involvement with School Sport New Zealand where that came around, I got into professional sport accidentally, Graham Murray dragged me away at some point, which is another story. But I think I really was excited about the interface between education and sport. The first step of education is, one of the most critical piece of education is engagement, actually getting students engaged with their learning wanting to be part of it. And the first step of engagement is actually making sure they could come through the gate. And for a lot of our young people, particularly our young boys, sport is something that actually gets them through the gate. And so that relationship between, how did you rugby go in the weekend or your volleyball go on Wednesday or those sorts of questions, relationships as a teacher, rather than, oh, you're away again at volleyball or something. They just build engagement, they build relationships and kids love that stuff. And so that interface between sport education and the different sport can make in young people's lives was something that really excited me. Yeah. And that's always been a real passion. And I've worked in a lot of schools, probably done around 30 or 40 sports plans for different schools across the country in the last four or five years. So wow. Yeah, so I was reading your LinkedIn profile and I could see strategy formed quite a large part of the work that you're subsequently getting involved in. So planning and strategy is like your, I don't know, your passion perhaps. Yeah, I guess some of that's come from the governance work. Okay. And understanding the importance of planning. You know, you have to plan to succeed. A lot of things happen by accident. I mean, I've had a career plan, for example, but it's always been open to the opportunities that have presented themselves. But I think with schools quite often, we take sport for granted. You know, the teachers will volunteer to do something, the parents will volunteer to do something. We don't actually plan for success and it becomes a lot. I mean, if you think back to your own schools and what sports were strong when you were there, maybe it was down to a teacher. You know, I think of experience from the new plumbers school, a sports with college, for example, where Phil Gaetan was volleyball and still is volleyball, Phil's down in a mess of matter work. And where you had a person, it was really strong, but it wasn't planning. And if that person left, the whole thing was like, it would fall over and so that planning for success and sport deciding what's important and what the principles are, that will drive what are the values that you have around sport. And then attaching some actions to achieve those things. It gives you a much greater chance of having a program that young people are going to want to engage in and are sustainable and resilient to change personnel and things like that. And so because I believe sports so important in young people's lives, not everybody, it's not for everybody. And people, there's dance and there's music and there's all sorts of things, but that sense of belonging that young people get from team sport, particularly, done well, done badly. It can be really damaging. And done well, which is the planning and strategy part I think is critical to this excessive young people. That's a really interesting point. What would be like a high level look about how it is done well versus some examples of where it's done badly? Because I also think like, I know the analogy you're using here is sports and the education sense. But it's the same thing even with businesses and organisations. It kind of, all those things, transition and follow similar kind of paths. So yeah, I'm keen to understand, what's some examples of when it's done badly versus when it can be done really well? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, if we're just the participant, you know, whether it's adults in a business or or young people in sport or whatever that might be, it's really, really important, you know, listening and understanding what drives people. All of the studies done on young people sport, for example, winning is in the top five or six, but it's never in the top three. Interesting. It's all about the social capital. It's about hanging out with their mates and having fun. I once, I was invited to speak on youth sport at sport youth conference for about the third year in a row. And I thought people would be sick of hearing my voice. And so I got a couple of students from Wellington to come and talk. And a young man who's now a first-class referee, called Marcus from Wellington College, he came along and he was asked by I remember Justin Vaughn, he was a CEO of New Zealand Cricket in a panel discussion that I was kind of leading. So there's kids who talk. He was asked what makes a good coach. And he said, "A good coach understands that there are students, there are young, there are kids in our team who want to pull on black jerseys and there are kids who just want to hang with their mates, but all of us want to have fun and all of us want to get better." And I think, you know, if you can have a sports program, for example, where the adults involved, understand that it's about social capital, it's not all about black jerseys. And it's about improvements. Every time they go to training, they don't want to have wasted their time, they want to be better than when they arrived, when they leave. And they want to have enjoyed that. So if you can make those a critical components, the other things like winning are really important. Just love to win. You can't have two cousins in the back yard playing cricket without them wanting to win. It's all at every level, but that's not the driver for young for most young people. It was interesting, yeah. And I think if you apply that to business, what are people's drivers? Yeah. What are their drivers? Do they want to be promoted? Do they want to be paid more? Do they want to actually have a work environment that reflects what they need? Which is that sporting environment? Which goes back to your point earlier around values, understanding and those values. Yeah. I think it's critical. So all the strategy work that I do these days is led by values. It's the first thing we talk about. What's really important to you? What's critical here? And then if you develop those values into actions, which are called principles, you might say a value is enjoyment for young people's sport that we just talked about. And then if you say, OK, well, what's the principle here? And the principle might be something around-- one of the principles might be something around the sport, New Zealand, Tubera and Balances better, you know, that it's not just all about winning, it's about the whole lot of other things. A few then kind of change of values in action, it's called principles. And then when you'd go through working to develop your strategy, if anything conflicts with those principles, you've got it wrong. So you have to back away from that. So yeah. So tell me, Gary, so what is the-- so you obviously had a little bit of a kick around and play around as a child. So what really brought you into sports? So I'm just kind of like, what's that story? I was principal at OpenEcke High School at the time. And was loving it. I was really enjoying the work. I left being deputy principal at Sportswood College. I love halfway down the coast on a surf beach. And OpenEcke was really tempting. I taught at OpenEcke, both our children were born there. In the '80s, through the '80s, then done some work. Because as an advisor for Miss University, and then did at Sportswood College, with Barry Funch, who was one of those coaches who was a massive influencer in my life, which is a leadership story, which we can talk about later. I was at OpenEcke High School really enjoying it. Had a career that I thought was my forever career, because I could drive between Ocado and OpenEcke every day and surf on the way there and surf on the way there. I like that. Good fun. And then Graham Murray was coaching the hurricanes at the time. He came along and asked me if I wanted to work with the hurricanes. And I said, no, it's not. I'm pretty happy. Then New Zealand Rugby came back after talking to Graham and kind of made an offer. I couldn't refuse really. So ended up working a professional sport for seven years with New Zealand Rugby and with the hurricanes and the junior all blacks as both a professional development manager and a team manager. That was the 4A Inter sport as a career. And then when I moved out from the hurricanes, school sport New Zealand CEO for 13 years, I think. Yeah. What did they see from being principal at OpenEcke High to then moving into sport? Did you have some connections there? Or did you say-- I remember you said before, it's kind of-- you kind of fell into it, but a luck in there as well. Yeah, a few connections. A few connections, yeah, definitely. But I was intent to come back to teaching. It was for me, it was an adventure to go away and work with a professional sport for a few years. And you get to travel to some pretty cool countries with some great people. It was just absolutely enjoyable part of my life. But I was intent to come back to the teaching. But then it's kind of, I think, you have like a day used by date where you're no longer current. And then when the school sport-- New Zealand job came along was when I was thinking about moving back into teaching. And that interfaces I said between sport and education, which is exactly what school New Zealand does. You know, they run 300 and something events a year, initial election championships and stuff and they lead the policy and the development of sport and schools. For me, that was like just, just where I wanted to be, you know. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of that perfect mix obviously, having a really solid background in education, then having that foray into sports and leadership and then combining the two, you know, with that, with that other role it seems. Yeah, you spot on that 100% that was exactly what it was. Yeah. Okay, so, one of who you speak, I'm curious, like at any one time, what were the kind of the teams that you were working with, was it a quite big team of people that you were working with? Yeah, so I guess there's a manager in rugby. It's not counting jerseys and those sorts of things any more at professional level, it's about, you know, the coaches that I worked with a lot, Conor Cooper and Grandmari Infos to those people. So when, you know, pretty much, you're, when they've got their boots on, you know, the years when they've got their boots off, it's yours. And so it's that whole aspect around people management team building, leadership planning, logistics, it's like, yeah, yeah, that's a, it's a really broad, yeah. Yeah, good, I hear that and I just think, oh, you must have observed quite a lot of good high performing teams and picked up a lot around people and what works and what doesn't. And I just want to pick your brain apart when it comes to that. Having only a small team myself, I do those, those are the, I think the hardest challenges I do have within my work with what I do is just getting the best from people and also understanding those parts of my development that I have to accept in what I need to do to change. I'm wondering like for you, what you've come to be aware of for yourself. I mean all the things that you do have a massive aspect of self development, self learning, you know, you get things wrong and you're done for that and move on and I think, you know, that's what the piece in itself is the moving on piece, you know, taking the lessons, only them being accountable, moving on and being resilient enough to do that. When I do, when I've done the leadership courses and work, I always start out by really simple approach to leadership and I ask people to think about leaders they've had, that they had no respect for and to talk about what made them have no respect for those people and whether they didn't think about leaders even though they had the name on the desk or over the door or whatever and let them talk about that. Then I ask them to think about a leader who they really liked and name that person and talk about that person. And I mentioned Barry Finch before, you know. And then when they've identified all the attributes of that person, I'm just going to say, well, you know, the course is over, don't be that guy, be that guy. And I think that that's a really important thing about being a click, tick about those good leaders you've seen and taking the pieces of leadership that you've seen that fit for you because there is no right or wrong style, there's no one style. It's about seeing what you've seen and enjoyed and influenced you positively and worked for you and does that fit with your leadership style, I think. I worked as a guidance council for all of us. It was the same process. It was, I don't believe in one strategy or method. You've got to be a click tick about what comes from all the different methods and strategies and fits your. You have to be authentic, you have to be you and you can't play up some great piece of leadership style if it's not you. People will see through that pretty quickly. I really like that. It feels like you can anchor the person into really understanding for themselves what they see in others and it can anchor them into, I suppose, grounding into what is right for them. I really like that. Well, hey, look, Gary, we're just going to break for a song and then we'll come back after the break. I would love to go a little bit more into delving more into the aspects of what you're learning more about yourself around those parts of the feedback that might you might have found quite incredibly challenging in your leadership journey and perhaps how that's impacted the way you show up. For now, we're going to break. Thank you so much for our business hours, sponsored by GQ. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] a 'pred' lonely place when you are in the rugby environment and in the school environment as a principal, there are a lot of people around you and you had quite well-defined structures, and high ruckus, or flat structures or whatever you are using. But sometimes when you get into that position with yourself it always comes down to that last bark and I think that decision where you're the last point and that's the loniest place to be. So I think that you really do need to have built before that day, really good teams and support around you. So I think that making sure that you have a really good team, delegating, so you kind of trust those people to do what they do, engaging them, you know, making sure that I think one of the big things I learnt is that everybody's got a feel valued and that they're having a positive input on if you create an environment where people don't feel valued, you're going to struggle, that's probably one of the biggest lessons and just not to do it all yourself. I like that because often I sometimes do myself feel like I'm doing everything myself and wearing all that out. It's easier to do it yourself sometimes. It is. It's a lot less work than doing it yourself than there is in actually building a system and building people and trusting people to do it. Because then that work kind of compounds to and then you just get overworked yourself, don't you? Yeah and that's the other thing to do it in Europe quite right. It's like taking care of yourself is just massively important and I was quite bad at that for a point. I think at one point I came back from Japan or the junior or blacks in 2005 and we'd been through super rugby season and then through this specific nation's cup it was called down in. And my wife, long suffering, wife Jan has been so supportive. She said to me, "Do you know how many nights you've slept at home?" It was during the 30s I can remember the day. How many nights you've slept at home because it was exactly six months since you left to go back on January the 1st to rugby and I didn't remember when I went 20 and the hour was four. Oh wow. And so I kind of, you know, it's like you're fine with that but you're not going to barbecues and surfing with your mates and stuff like that and I think that looking after yourself sometimes you get so immersed in what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. And that you take the eye off of the ball about yourself and being healthy. So yeah. Yeah because Gary you're the chair. So like we were going to have Alice in today and Alice and GQ. I know one of the conversations was going to be around the health and well being a specter around the trust. Yeah. So you point, you make some good points there around like looking and caring for yourself and making sure that you're forming, I'm hearing measurements there. So it's being clear around measuring that data and in some ways like building impreemptive strategies to avoid those scenarios, you know, so that you are thinking and considering your health and your well being. Yeah. Well you can't be a good, effective leader if you're not a good, spacious self, you know. So whether it's in governance or whether it's in management, you know, the people at right through the levels and you have to create that sometimes for people below you when you see that that's not what they're doing. But everybody has to be a good space themselves and I mean in the rugby, for example, when I first started working professional rugby, one of the main strategies that we were trying to adopt was to make sure that players were in a good space financially, relationship wise, insurances were sorted out. All those things off the field, they didn't have to worry about that. It was like they were a good place to make those things good so that when they came to work, the focus on the job, not worried about all the other things and the allies, you know. So I think it's really important that you make sure that you've got your ducks in a row. Yeah. So true and I immediately think when you say that as well, like with business owners and stuff like that, especially entrepreneurs that potentially don't have all the different skills, it's a very similar thing to that. You go in with a great idea kind of like going onto the field, but you don't have where you duck in a row for the other stuff like the insurance and the finance and the accounting and all that type of stuff. So it's about building the systems and the people to help support the things that you're not as skilled with or so so that you can kind of have that solid foundation. So you know that thing sorted and you can focus on what you're doing best. Is that kind of, it's using that eclectic thing to afford to have a really holistic approach? Yeah. Because it's not just about having a badge that says you're leading something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually about being authentic and that actually covering all the bases of something. Don't create a leader by, you know, I really believe strongly in the follow-ship model of leadership. Okay. There's a lot of stuff around about. I guess one of the short, impactful things is a video called Dancing and Dark Coming with the name of it. It's a YouTube video. But it's about a guy who's dancing wildly at a concert and then a couple of people join him and then it becomes a bit of a mess and then it becomes like something, everybody wants to be part of. And I think it's that, you know, if you're the leader, you can say, I want you to do this list and this is how I'm done. You've got a chance of having some impact, but maybe not much with some people. So if you can create other people doing those things that are talking that language for you, it's much more likely to happen. I mean, in a school, if you're the principal, you can stand up every day that we can say, I need more coaches. Yeah. And everybody who looks down at their phone or their coffee, if you create a great coaching environment for the people that you've got doing it, they speak and say how I'm really enjoying my coaching and then other people. It's a such a ripple effect, yeah. Yeah. So I think that's a really important model of leadership that I think people don't. You get into a position where you're so, like I said, it's easier to do it all yourself. And you start doing that and you don't create that. You know, there's other leaders in your organisation and who are doing the talking for you. It's a lonely world. Yeah. And it's interesting because actually what you're talking about is creating environments for success, right? And so how we cross pollinate and cross collaborate with people in business and life. So that a little bit to your point earlier around role models. You speak so highly of the people that have supported you in your life and your leadership journey and I feel like there's an important piece there for everyone to take away. Yes. And I take that away. Oh, the importance. You can think about somebody, you know, who you're really respected. Yes. And all of the things that they, why you're respected them, you know, then it becomes quite an easier model for you to develop for yourself to, you can read all of it. You can look literature on leadership that you like and you'll take a few bits from it. But if you think about, you know, that person and what they did and what that it means for you, you know. I think. Because I like that preemptive, it feels very strategic, like preemptive strategic thinking around, how do I thrive? How do I delegate? How do I create the environment for my success? So role model becomes one of those things. So like the people in your life. So like if I was to ask you the question, Gary, like the one of them, I mean, can you name one person? It was their multiple people. And you've mentioned, if you're already on this journey. But like one person that's kind of really impacted the way how you've progressed as a leader. Yeah. I, yeah, I'd just go back to Barry. You Barry. I had a lot of, I mean, he was my mess teacher and my basketball coach told me off for going surfing too much, employed me as a teacher. When I went away, he got me back into management. You know, I worked with him so closely and he, a lot of the way he was was a big impact on me right from back as a teacher and a coach to as my boss. And so, and they were journeys that stopped and started along the way. So I'd go, we'd come back in. Yeah, I guess, I guess someone like Barry was a real influence. So interesting. It really does make me think from my own business perspective, just keep on. One of my judgments is that, you know, if I don't want to bombard and be calling people too much, but then also what I'm hearing from you is actually the importance of like building in, I don't know, some form of agreement or some form of like, hey, you can be my critical thinking partner. Is that okay? Yeah, sometimes it could be a form relationship, but it's never been for me. I've never had, I have acted as a formal partner for people as a mentor for a leadership, but I've never had a formal relationship with somebody like, you know, there was no formal leadership contract between me and Barry, for example. It was just a relationship and me taking from that and learning and, and him obviously helping me through that, but we never had a like, okay, we'll meet for now and develop your leadership or anything like that. It's really, I'm in the IOD space, so the Institute of Directors and one of the things that I'm always fascinated with is this aspect of advisory boards and just because you're not part of one yourself or part of a governance board yourself, it doesn't mean you can't build one out yourself. And that really, that comment that Justin Gilligan mentioned at her talent like a women and leadership most recently was just, it was really profound for me. Made me realise actually, I feel like if we can be going out there and building relationships with people in our isolating practices of businesses which let's face it, it's pretty lonely at times. I feel like it's such a brilliant way to go. So Gary, I know you've got such a big governance career yourself. What particularly do you take most from your governance? So you, your chairperson for most trusts, yeah, so tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, I have had an extensive career governance, I've been on. a lot of sports boards, AFL, University tertiary sport New Zealand, New Zealand Football, and others. And the ones I've enjoyed the most, and the ones I've got the most from, I've got a lot from those, you're wrong, lots of stuff, particularly my areas of weakness around, I can add and subtract with the best of them, but you put it onto a financial report, and I'm just like Chinese, so, and I've learned a lot from those, I mean I was a chair of New Zealand Football's Finance, I can be ready for a few years, I hope no one's listening to that, but but the ones I've really learnt from, I've cheered a sport to the lucky board called Differen and Better for a number of years, which Leia has led to things like the Tupata Kino Development, and a lot of a milgommation of services around particularly hubbing. I cheered the Kaitaki community, and I'm still on Kaitaki Community Sports Hub, but not as chair anymore, as a board member, which was a development, you know, that no one could fix this one club where the rugby club owned a condemned building, football was growing, that building went, it would never be replaced, yes we managed to bring all the clubs together as a hub, we started with three clubs, the rugby of the football and the cricket clubs out at Arkwood, and we was never about sport, it was never about one club, it was always about the social wellbeing of the community, creating a space where the community could come together in so many different ways, which it does now, now we have seven clubs operating out of that hub, you know, the governance leadership in that has been great, which is, and now I'm still involved in that, but more in the management side of it. And Tadaki Community Rugby Trust, which is where GQ are a really critical partner, is a great, feel good thing, you know, that started from the original trustees, and so I suppose that with rugby becoming professional, a place like Tadaki being a limited pool of sponsors and funders, everybody wanted to be part of this new, sexy professional game and have tables for their clients at games, and the money that might previously have been going into the community game, due to season sausages for kids after a game, was now buying a seat at the table or at the professional level, and then the insider of them to say how, you know, the community rugby trust model is dairy farming, supporting community rugby, but it's really business supporting sport. So what do we know, we're farmers, how can we utilise that to provide for what we think is really important, and that health and wellbeing of the community we're talking about before, which is young people involved in sport, this case, the sports rugby, and the insight of those original trustees to develop that has been just an amazing governance lesson for me, because it's a boardware or group of trustees where we're actually running two large dairy farms, we own one, we lease one, and the crossover between management and governance is really tempting because we've got number of farmers on there who want to actually get their hands muddy and do, but we've also got a governance responsibility as a charity to make sure we have health and safety stuff to make sure that that's at the top level, to make sure that the farming business runs, to make sure that the finance and the legal side of things are all in place as a governance board, that oversight, and that we have a strategy that's really clear without making too much, you're letting the contractors and the advisors get on with running the farm, letting GQ get on with the legal stuff, letting Infinity get on with our financial stuff, so that governance management line has always been a big learning for me in governance, and at that level at that for the community rugby trust, for example, that's a real everyday challenge. I'm hearing so many that I'm assuming it was not always that way, it sounds like everyone's very clear on their roles and responsibilities, and there's always that danger of kind of like, we actually want to roll up our sleeves and mokin and get involved. We have working based still down on the farm, so I'm talking to we go down and clean up some pieces of the whole stuff. Generally, we are a governance board, and the community rugby trust is a really, it's the envy of not just rugby around the country, you know, you talk to people from Tarnakia rugby, Jimmy Festiers or Dan Reggae, so go to national meetings, and they just go, people can't believe what we've got here, and then I talk to other sports like football or basketball or netball or whatever I'm working at the time, and they just like, "Why can't we have something like this?" So fantastic model. I mean the community rugby trust has put $1.4 million back into community rugby since its inception. You know, around about $300,000 a year now over various programs. Women's rugby, I mean, we really diverse with the, you know, referees are a critical part of the community game. We're the main sponsor for referees, we've invested the last two years into some social media videos that have been produced that have led to, you know, record recruitment for the referees association here. We've invested in coaching largely with through Tarnakia rugby as our delivery agent through the rugby development of the program. So, and that last year those ADOs were in every school in Tarnakia and some of them up to four or five times, 35,000 touch points they had in terms of coaching last year. So, the level of impact you can have is on the health and well-being of the community, not on community rugby necessarily, is as massive and the governance reward from that has really significantly come. Gosh, as I hear you speak, Gary, I just feel like I'm hearing ecosystem. It feels like this is this beautiful web of interconnected people, organizations, things that are all so connected in building out this health and well-being for our community. And I don't hear much of these stories. Am I missing many of these stories? Like, how do they get, like, shared, celebrated, promoted? Yeah, it's quite tough, isn't it? Because if you go back, you're back to what we were talking about really early. You know, this is the vehicle here at Sport, but we have these vehicles in our communities that are actually about building. You know, sports have always been recognised, long been recognised for, you know, it's benefit to physical, well-being and, you know, and fitness and those kinds of things. It has seldom been recognised or realised particularly community sport for the social cohesion and the social health that it builds in communities. And if I think about our kura, for example, traditionally a rugby community, where the rugby team out there know football, if you like our immigrant community, hasn't come from rugby places in the last 10 years and football's grown and they really never related and now having the sports hub, you know, we'll have an after match, we've got the football and the rugby having their after match at the same time. And so that brings that community together, which has never before been together and Saturday mornings you've got, you know, 100 plus kids playing football and 100 plus kids playing rugby there and all the families mixing, which was never, you know, they're a bit of a sort of sport to bring communities together and the things that happen once they're together, which is what you can't control, which is the good thing. It's well underrated I think. I was hearing you speak earlier and you were saying about the netball and the volleyball and the rugby, there's so many different like sports here that's going on and I'm wondering like what you and I also hear you're around like you're speaking to various different people around those models I think you were speaking of. I'm curious, it sounds like you're very open to hear what others are doing and perhaps learning from those. I'm fascinated with that. Like I feel like that we should all get really good at learning from one another, right? The really thing was very, very lucky to be able to do. When I was involved in rugby, I didn't realise that at the time I was involved in professional rugby only as a sport. I was like having blankets on. All you knew about was rugby and in particular, professional game, it depended on the scoreboard at the end of each week. You know, whatever that scoreboard said, which might come down to referee's decision or a couple of critical injuries was how you were measured. When I became a school sport in New Zealand, I worked with every single code in New Zealand and it was like taking the blankets off and going like all these people are actually whatever shaped the ball or whatever the game takes are actually achieving the same thing. They are achieving all of those things you know, you're met with your children that sport does for people around you know, working with others and all those bits great. They're learning about yourself and resilience and being disciplined and part of a team and you can't let people down all that kind of stuff does well that they all do that. And that in fact is the most important part of what sport does. It's not about what sport you do. It's about being a part of those things. I think they build your physical, your mental, and your social health. I just love listening to Gary Hutes. It's really interesting. So I want to break for a song and then we'll be back into the last part of our show and then after the show, after the song. we're going to go and look a little bit more into the future and what that might look like. Okay. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh my goodness, that was a very short song. We are back for the last part of our business hour sponsored by GQ with Gary Kanahan. So, oh my god, I have thoroughly appreciated this conversation and my mind goes into hearing so much about what Tananaki is doing really well around sports. And I do have a lasting question around if this is what Tananaki is doing really well. What's happening within New Zealand that makes it that we're doing something even better at or is it something that you're observing that a lot of people are doing well at. So, I'm curious with that, what does the future look like? What is Tananaki stronger staff? I think it's talked about a little bit earlier with different embedder. How do we do things differently in bedern and Tananaki? You can be anywhere within Tananaki within an hour. So, we're really geographically blessed with being able to work together a lot more than spread for five hours from the top and north to the bottom of it or those kinds of those sort of situations. We don't have a big metro that takes two hours to get across town. So, in terms of practical things that enable our connection, we're quite lucky. And we're also lucky that the leadership of organisation's light sport, Tananaki, their strategic leadership encourages how do we work together. They're really encouraging hubbing and we've seen that happen a lot now. We've got some really good hubbing going on down Rahu-du with the Coastal Rugby Club and tennis joining in and others. In the Kaitaki situation we've talked about, we're started with three clubs coming together, three codes coming together as now seven. Coads involved out there. We've got some stuff looking at bell block, we've got some stuff looking at North Tananaki facility out at Whiterra. So, there's a bunch of things that sport Tananaki and toy through some seed funding have been leading around the future of sport is bringing people together. I think we're doing better than everybody else. There are really good things happening all around the country. But, you know, it's very difficult to break down the silos of individual sport to say we're actually trying to do the same thing which is bring communities together and have people interconnect through that medium. Yeah, I feel like I completely, there's some opportunities there. I feel like a lot of listeners are going to be listening in. I know that when we promoted that you were coming on, there's a few people that commented going, "Yes!" They were looking forward to this conversation. So, I feel like when we can keep on shouting about what we're doing well in Tananaki. One of the things that's happened is that one of the consultancy sites I did actually was developed with Paul Verich. We developed a thing called collaborative spaces and places strategy for Tananaki, which was led again by sport Tananaki. But the three council, South Tananaki District Council, Straitford District Council, Tehranaki Regional Council and Youth District Council have all now adopted, formally adopted, the one strategy for spaces and places, which means it's formed to think of the Tananaki Facilities Consortium, which leads and helps with the development of particularly sporting facilities. Which means that in Tananaki, when a sporting facility gets underway, it's been heavily scrutinised, well supported, and you're getting the best being for the buck, because as I've thought of all the ways you could work together with other organisations to make that the best it can be. I don't know that's happening anywhere else in New Zealand, I think Tananaki is doing that really, really well. So, I'm leading the way and some real strong best practices there that I'm hearing. Yeah, that's brilliant. We're heading into the last part of our show, Gary, and some of the things that we like to talk about. And I know we've not given you probably some prior warning around this, so I apologise. Nothing like a good off the cuff conversation to anything. Yes. So, Gary, we like to shout out about the wonderful places of an our community that we all like to. I suppose go to have those beautiful spaces, where we can connect with others like yourself. So, feet for me, I love to go for a coffee to escape, but it might be something different for you. So, Gary, where do you like to go for a coffee or a hot drink? I'm going to go very local for me, so I'm daughter R. Kutta. Oh, yes. Quite a bit lately. Yeah, and it's so lovely when it's sunny as well sitting outside. It's Seth Marshall's down a great show out there, and that's a great little cafe. The jalapeno scones are my favourite. Hello, Peno's going. How about restaurants around the region? Yeah, well, to be fair, I don't get out much to restaurants. In fact, we went to the Curryhouse locally the other night, and everybody was there had a great meal. I kind of like shiny peak, just the tapas style, which is a small plate. I love their beer, and they're a great supporter of so many communities. Yeah, and I'm so always like to go to shiny peak, and I know that part of my dollar is going to a community organisation somewhere, and the food's on point, you know what I'm saying? How about your favourite beach around Tala Naki? We've been in surfing a few times, and you're living a pretty good spot, too. Yeah, probably a world-rider, who I would be just, you know, it's always pretty a space, and they're a bit wild, and you can always, there's always some nice ways to look at it. And then the last guest? That's fun. It's a fun one. Yeah, if you could recommend a guest to come out of the show and just sit at the seat, you've just been sitting in here. It's a different trouble here, right? I know. Yeah, any suggestions of someone who's got. I reckon you could do well with Michael Carril, as for Tala Naki, they've talked about some of the things we've talked about. He's at the front end of that strategic leadership for Tala Naki around collaboration, particularly like your B-Mem. Yeah, that sounds brilliant. If you don't mind us doing an introduction, I mean, I don't know him, but we would love to have him on. Yeah, sure. Yeah, we would love that. Oh my gosh, Carrie, so like the hour has gone so fast, we really appreciate you being in the studio today. One thing that I'm particularly taking away is the importance of really preemptively strategically aligning yourself within your community and involving yourself and having those conversations and building in those ways to connect with people. Having a role model, purposely having those conversations. That really was my big takeaway. What about you, Jordan? Look, I think the entire conversation has been great, just to say, community coming together. Yeah, just everything. And a massive amount of leadership kind of listens in there as well that always love taking away from these type of conversations. So really appreciate you coming in and sharing your story and sharing all the good work that you're still doing now and looking forward to seeing what further impacts you and all the boards and trustees that you work alongside can do across the region. Yeah, well done. Thank you, Carrie. So that's it for us today, that we are the business hours once a by GQ and we will see you next Monday.