The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:21:18 · Alan Joyce
[00:21:18] S1: So, so when I was one of the great things, Aer Lingus was an amazing company to work for, the Irish National Airline, when I started working there. And one of the things that... They did a couple of things that were spectacular for your career, but one of the things they did was start doing mindfulness training before it was a very trendy thing. This would have been in the early nineteen nineties when I was a young manager. And that mindfulness training just helped me to relax, to focus on what's in front of you. And the process is very simple. It says that when something else comes in, and it's not part of what you need to be focused of the time, you just dismiss it like you would for meditation or for any month month from this training, and then focus back on it. And when you do it enough times, you get there. It can cause frustrations, you know, because with my partner, sometimes he would read headlines during the grounding, during the engine failure, and I come back home. And all I'd want to do is just switch everything off and relax and discount all of that. And he would say, can we chat about what I just saw on TV? And I'd say, no, I'm here to relax. I'm here to switch off. And I could do that very well. I still could do that today. It's one of the number one things I say to your manager is if you can practice it and get it down, it will save your mental health in future life. Because, you know, with everything, the ups and downs of my career over those those thirty odd years in aviation, I think it's the thing that kept me sane. It's the thing that made sure my mental health was actually really good, and I've never suffered from mental health problems because I'm able to detach from it and focus on what I believe is important at the time. And in a crisis, you need to do that because we go through in the book, I have a whole chapter on the QF 32 when the engine blew up. And, you know, that was... We had a lot happening at the time. We had a lot of things that we needed to do. But when you're managing a crisis, you really need to be focused on what's happening in the room and discount everything else that's going on. The other thing for your mental health, I think, you know, we worked out at one stage was that 10,000 Qantas passengers are in the air when you go to bed at night.
00:23:33 · Alan Joyce, Vidit Agarwal
And when you wake up in the morning, you have to look at the phone. You can't detach from that, and some CEOs, I talked about some of my friends that were airline CEOs, that couldn't get over that, affected their sleep, worried them, it impacted on their mental health, and eventually they had to leave the role. If you can't get that out of your mind and the risks involved in that and manage it effectively, there's no way you could do the job because it would be overwhelming. And looking off, I was able to manage that, and I know a lot of CEOs that can manage it very effectively. [00:24:08] S0: It's so interesting because I like to think you and I are human and we have days where you just go, why would someone say that? Or you'd wake up and read a news article or you do an interview and someone like me would ask you a silly question and you'd go, why'd you ask me that? How do you deal with those moments? Again, is it meditation and mindfulness? Because I would like to think you have days where you are frustrated because someone said something you don't agree with.
00:24:08 · Vidit Agarwal, Alan Joyce
[00:24:08] S0: It's so interesting because I like to think you and I are human and we have days where you just go, why would someone say that? Or you'd wake up and read a news article or you do an interview and someone like me would ask you a silly question and you'd go, why'd you ask me that? How do you deal with those moments? Again, is it meditation and mindfulness? Because I would like to think you have days where you are frustrated because someone said something you don't agree with. [00:24:32] S1: You will always get those occasions when you do, but I think you have to also recognise that you need to keep focused on what you're doing. You need to make sure that you're aware of what your agenda is and what you're trying to achieve. And, you know, if you believed every headline that was written about me or you or anybody else, you would not be keep reading the truth, because there's lots of stuff that is incorrect. There's a lot of stuff that's correct. But you just have to discount that and have to say, yeah, that's just the nature of the world that we live in. I know a lot of people pay attention to what's said to them on social media. I think that's probably the worst thing you could do because that is an unfiltered, just view of people exposing anything that they want to. And I don't think that's healthy for people to look at that. So I've always been in that position. Yeah, you know, it's important to make sure you understand what's been said out there, but at the same time, you can't let it drive you and you can't make it live your life.
00:24:32 · Alan Joyce, Vidit Agarwal
[00:24:32] S1: You will always get those occasions when you do, but I think you have to also recognise that you need to keep focused on what you're doing. You need to make sure that you're aware of what your agenda is and what you're trying to achieve. And, you know, if you believed every headline that was written about me or you or anybody else, you would not be keep reading the truth, because there's lots of stuff that is incorrect. There's a lot of stuff that's correct. But you just have to discount that and have to say, yeah, that's just the nature of the world that we live in. I know a lot of people pay attention to what's said to them on social media. I think that's probably the worst thing you could do because that is an unfiltered, just view of people exposing anything that they want to. And I don't think that's healthy for people to look at that. So I've always been in that position. Yeah, you know, it's important to make sure you understand what's been said out there, but at the same time, you can't let it drive you and you can't make it live your life. [00:25:31] S0: It's incredible. Maybe that can be your next book because I can tell you like people always ask me what have I learned from doing the podcast for nearly seven years. I go the key thing I've learned irrespective of whether someone's a prime minister, CEO, athlete, investor, what have you, is we as humans want approval. We as humans want relevance and approval and connection. That is a basic human need. Do you agree with that?
00:25:55 · Alan Joyce
[00:25:55] S1: I'm not sure I do, because I think if you're always after approval, I think that gets you, and that maybe you're not then suited to do some jobs, because that means you never make a tough call. Because I think sometimes tough calls will automatically mean you don't get approval. All tough calls sometimes means that people feel there's a lot of negativity about that. But if you're doing it for the right intentions in mind, you have to be focused on it. And if you do everything for approval... You know, think one of the quotes that I've used at the time is the great Teddy Roosevelt quote. At the time of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The next best thing you can do is the wrong thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing. If you're after approval all the time, I think what people get into is not doing anything, because they're worried about the mistake. And and you never have the successes if you're worried about the mistake. You never have the great successes and the great things that you think you'll achieve in your life if you're worried about that failure, because if you're always after approval, you'll never take the risk of the failure, and therefore you get into doing nothing. And I think that's the worst thing you can do in some jobs.
00:27:08 · Vidit Agarwal, Alan Joyce
[00:27:08] S0: That is so interesting. I feel I see that all the time with public company CEOs in particular, right? I've never been one, you've been one for many years and you know many years. I always joke they live in this state of paranoia all the time. This constant state of paranoia, Because they're like, what's the headline around the corner that's going to come and ruin my career? And I find that deeply fascinating. [00:27:32] S1: And I think the, Vidit, the other problem you have is that the life of a CEO was typically, I don't know if it's expanded, but when I was writing the book, looked her up, it was four to five years at the time of a publicly listed CEO. And then therefore, you know, there's not a lot of incentive to make the decisions that last a long time. And I say in the aviation industry, unfortunately, a lot of the decisions go generational. You know, the CEO before me decided to buy the a380s. The CEO before me took the first of the aircraft. I took 11 of the aircraft, and they were going to be... Now they're still operating for the current CEO, and they were wrong decision at the time. But you live with them. And that's the problem, that if you're there for for approval, you're there for four or five years, and you're not making the right calls that you believe are necessary, you'll make bad long term decisions for the company that everybody suffers with. And that's the structure of some of the public realistic companies we have. And unfortunately, I think that leads to bad outcomes. And we've seen a lot of bad outcomes.