Name: Roy Rego

Title: Director

Organisation: KPMG

I have spent the past decade supporting clients to prepare for the future by streamlining their corporate and support functions, taking advantage of enabling technology increasing both effectiveness and efficiency.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Roy's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

The biggest challenge I faced with leadership was knowing when I should be (as one of my great leaders, lets call him Ted, put it) be on the balcony as opposed to the dance floor. The challenge was ensuring I was a strategic thinker (being on the balcony), and utilising that thinking in making effective decisions. And then pivoting (or spinning to the dance floor) on how I inspire and motivate my teams to perform at their best, to exceed their best, to be satisfied with their jobs and to continue to work smarter.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I have been privileged (and lucky) to work with some exceptional leaders, to learn from them, to be coached by them and be challenged by them. And to be a part of the success that resulted.

By putting into practice what I learnt, the behaviours and practices I saw deliver tangible results, I became an effective coach, leading my teams to success, whether it was exceeding targets or individual success in exceeding expectations.

In tandem I achieved a level of expertise and specialisation in human resources and payroll, how these services should ideally be delivered to the business and what technology should enable this delivery. This expertise was recognised at an industry or sector level.

Leadership brought my success as a coach, as a people leader, together with my subject matter expertise in delivering people services, effectively combining people leadership with thought leadership, strategic thinking and subject matter expertise.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I wish I could answer this by saying that I am disciplined, with every single day beginning with Pilates and ending with yoga or listening to a podcast or reading the latest autobiography.

Instead, each day is dependent on the programs I am working on, whether I am travelling to work onsite with my clients, which could be anywhere in Australia, Asia or across the South Pacific.

Regardless of where in the world I might be, I aspire, I endeavour, I try to start my day (weekends excepted with a sleep-in on one if not both days) with some form of exercise, preferably cardio, to get the red corpuscles moving and kick start my brain. This has to be followed by breakfast, surely the most important meal, which helps to get the white corpuscles moving.

The day itself is structured, everything is diarised and colour coded to help me firstly identify what the time relates to: clients, projects, the industries/sectors I work in, coaching my team or being coached and secondly show where I am spending the majority of my time so that I can make any adjustments to either the balcony or dancefloor.

There is always a Task List, filled with 'Frogs' and my success each day can be measured by how many frogs I ate that day. Thank you Brian Tracy. There is always lunch, lunch at my desk, lunch with a client or my favourite lunch, which is lunch with my team.

The evenings (and you may be surprised by this) involves dinner and winding down, which may be the latest program I'm watching or book I'm engrossed in, but importantly it can be unstructured and relaxed. I 'try' to be in bed by 1030.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

I received feedback in a 360 feedback process from a peer and one of my team on adjusting my communication style for the audience. Something I had taken for granted, something that I thought I did effectively.

That feedback was a gift, it was an opportunity to honestly hear and understand what my strengths were, but more importantly where I could improve and how by improving I could be more impactful. I will be putting that into action shortly and will come back to you with tangible results.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Long before I knew anything about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, way back at the start of my working life. fresh faced and straight out of university, working in a service role in telecommunications, my first manager, my first leader, lets call her Lyn, would coach me on how to be proactive, how to take responsibility, how to develop win-win relationships and how to understand others, understand their drivers, their objectives to make myself understood.

These habits as they became laid the foundation and provided the example of what an effective leader should be. When I read the book for the first time I was firstly thankful for having Lyn as my leader and mentor for the first ten year of my career and secondly sure she should receive some of the royalties from the book!

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

Ask for feedback, understand it in a 360 view of your strengths but more importantly your areas for improvement. Using that feedback as a gift, from your leaders, from your peers and from your team will help you grow.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

There have been many, many times I have received feedback, but feedback on my areas to improve, no matter who its from has always been the moment for me to stop,. take stock, understand and adjust. And then see the results deliver a positive impact.