Gill South: Gattung's leadership lesson: It's all about the team you build

The livelier passages in Theresa Gattung's biography, Bird on a Wire, have attracted plenty of attention, but it also contains lessons for anyone interested in the best way to run an executive team.

In the book Gattung describes the effort she put into building a high-quality team, and the fact that her top executives have gone on to their own CEO jobs.

In hindsight, Gattung emerges pretty well as an adept CEO, says Guy Hallwright, telecommunications analyst at Forsyth Barr. He says her collegial style contrasts with current Telecom CEO Paul Reynolds' "command and lead" approach to leadership. Marko Bogoievski, Gattung's chief financial officer, was so involved in strategy that he was almost like a second CEO, says Hallwright.

Chief executives tend to fall into one or the other camp - the Gattung or the Reynolds approach - he says, and her team approach can also be seen in other New Zealand companies such as Pumpkin Patch and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare.

When Gattung was under almost constant attack, the team she had built supported her and took some of the flak. She had been advised by current Telecom director Kevin Roberts to use the All Black team approach - put all her team players forward as company spokespeople. Gattung believes that in a crisis the team should not only be supporting its CEO, but they should also be supporting each other.

The Telecom executive team have gone on to big jobs in their own right. Bogoievski is CEO at Infratil, Simon Moutter is CEO of Auckland International Airport, Mark Ratcliffe is CEO of Chorus, Kevin Kenrick became CEO of House of Travel and Trisha McEwan is general manager of HR at Orica.

Moutter, a loyal friend of Gattung's and her former chief operating officer, says the thing that set her apart was her authenticity. What you saw was what you got: "She was the girl from Rotorua." At the Top 100 leadership conferences, which Gattung initiated at Telecom, she was known for admitting her mistakes to her staff. "I have seen her cry at those things," says Moutter. "It had an importance that you can't believe. People saw a real person. It was extraordinary.

"With some senior people it's more about them. With her, she had a very strong focus on the team, she understood the value of a good team. She understood the value of the collective brand; solutions were always well canvassed by the team.

"Theresa ended up with a great team, but went through a few people to get there," adds Moutter. "But she gave them a lot of room to succeed and make mistakes."

Moutter has taken a leaf out of Gattung's book in managing his role as CEO at Auckland International Airport. Three times a year he runs leadership conferences attended by about 40 or 50 staff.

He has been ambitious about building a team that fills gaps in his own knowledge. "The team at Telecom in 2003, 2004, we were all firing, everything was fantastic, it was an outstanding place. I tried to bring those things with me."

At Telecom Moutter brought the engineering and risk-management skills to the team. "I am the downside manager. Theresa's such a positive person, I tended to have the downside; we were a good combination. She would have an idea, I would make sure it could work, and cover all the angles."

Talking about her career at Telecom, and what she would like managers to take from it, Gattung says she would like to see other companies running leadership conferences. She says she was frank about mistakes she had made. "The response was almost a collective sigh of: 'Oh, it's okay to tell the truth, that you're not perfect, it did not work out.' It was a collective 'aha' moment.

"It was good practice; it freed them up to be less uptight."

Gattung explains her attitude to team building: "I tried to get the brightest people around me - they are never the wrong people." Good leaders should not feel threatened by doing this, she says.

"And if the executive team works well, it's about doing stuff not just for the company but making a commitment to the team players. They should respect and want to support each other. They are all giving it their best doing it for each other - that was my philosophy."

Gattung has talked frankly about life after being a chief executive. "There's a grieving about leaving the team ... Also a feeling of exhaustion, a realisation that you were carrying a lot more stress than seems possible.

"I was coaching a CEO the other day, and they said they felt they were always carrying a low level of anxiety ... there is that level of unrelenting pressure even when things are going well."

As the chair of two boards, she has sympathy for the CEOs she is dealing with, and some advice: "The CEO does not have spare time. As CEOs you can't just manage the chair and expect that the chair will manage the board." It is important for CEOs to spend one-on-one time with board members if possible.

Gattung believes her way of managing will continue. "The culture of the CEO is changing ... from showing the stiff upper lip to a coaching, mentoring style."

Most large organisations like Telecom will use consultants to help fine-tune their management skills. The director of Breakthrough International Group - known simply as Elan - was one of Gattung's main consultants. He helped her executive team for three or four years in the early days of Gattung's leadership.

"I think it is important for a team to act as a team rather than be highly-functioning individuals," says Elan. No matter how many home runs the star hits, if the team does not win the game it's no good.

"I think that the team just had great historical reference," he says. "And they were very honest with each other."

Gill South is an Auckland freelance writer