ROLE MODELS: THE GOOD AND THE LESS THAN OPTIMUM

When Management asked Reserve Bank Governor, Adrian Orr, about a leader he worked with that he admired, he was very quick to point to the recently deceased Sir John Anderson.

“He led by asking questions and always talked about outcomes. He never had to say ‘do this’, ‘don’t do that’, although often you’d know he was thinking ‘really?’”

Even if Sir John didn’t voice any skepticism “he would ask questions and you’d always walk away in full agreement”.

Orr worked with Sir John during different periods throughout his now 33-year-long career, firstly in the late 1980s when Orr joined the National Bank’s economics team when he was 27 or 28 years old “and knew everything. Sir John slowly taught me that was not possible”.

He again worked with Sir John some years later when he returned to the National Bank as chief economist.

“He always gave people an enormous about of rope and built his people up although there was real clarity around what was right and how we were to behave.”

When Orr was deputy governor at the Reserve Bank about 15 years ago he worked with Sir John at the time of the sale of the National Bank to ANZ by British banking group Lloyds TSB.

Sir John was not happy about the sale and while there were many tense meetings, “he provided a calm, guiding hand in a difficult situation”.

As to the worst leader he has encountered, Orr recalls a role at the OECD in Paris many years ago in a division which was bureaucratic and output-driven “with non-engaged leaders very much driven by their own reputations”.

While the vast majority of people in these global bodies are “fine folk”, this did provide a lesson about the things you can control and those you can’t. In that sort of situation you really have to remove yourself, he says.

And he did that although staying within the OCED. Life was great after the move and he discovered it was not just him who felt the situation was wrong.

But it had meant he had put himself under real stress.

“Being a frank, blunt Kiwi with red hair and asthma,” he had run towards the problem and was fighting it head-on.

He later realised he was wasting his time and could see that “really, you need to pace yourself and that there are wider things in life”.