Episode 4: Why businesses must embrace team diversity – or face extinction

In the latest episode of Women Transforming Food, Amie and Angeline sit down with Victoria Landells, Director of Food Services Oceania and Ingredients Australia and Fonterra. 

They discuss diversity in the FMCG space, and how finding a balance between culture and lifestyle is a valuable tool in business development and fosters growth. 

Transcript

Amie:

Welcome to Women Transforming Food, a monthly podcast brought to you by G100 and Inside FMCG, exploring the stories of inspiring women shaping the food industry. Today, I'm joined by my co-host, G100 Mission Millions Angelina Charya, Asia Pacific Chair of the Food Systems Innovation and Resilience Wing, and Victoria Landles, Director, Food Service, Oceana and Ingredients Australia, Fonterra. Welcome ladies.

Vic:

Good morning.

Angeline:

Great to be here. Hello Victoria. Hey Amie.

Amie:

Victoria, in the last few episodes, we've highlighted incredible women that are revolutionising the industry through their customer focused approaches and operational excellence. Today, we're a different direction discussing your perspective on diversity within teams. You've dedicated your career to the food industry, starting as a food service technical professional and rising to leadership positions at Frontera. 

And what I admire about our pre podcast conversation is sort of your people-centric approach and I think it's grounded in the belief that empowering and supporting your team fosters innovation and sustainability. In this episode we'll explore your team building strategies and delve into your approach to diversity. So if we start at the beginning and to really set the scene for the people listening I wanted to kick start with why you believe a strategic approach to diversity contributes to the overall success of a food business.

Vic:

Gosh, thanks Amy, thanks Angelene for such a privilege to be here.

I've listened to your previous podcast and there's definitely some awesome inspiring women. Big question. I mean, diversity is hugely important for any business, not just food service. And how I look at diversity is it's not just in regards to gender, it's way more broadly. It's in regards to how we think, who we are, the experiences that we've had and how we bring those to life. So right now in a world that is, you know, it's a pretty out there kind of a world at the moment. You know, there's a lot going on and there's a lot of challenges.

If we don't embrace diversity and start to think and act and do things differently, then we're not going to have the joyous businesses and the joyous people working for us that we need to have and our businesses won't be profitable. We actually don't have a choice. We've got to think broadly, we've got to think differently and we've got to change because if we don't, yeah, we won't exist.

Angeline:

And, you know, I think such insightful thoughts there on diversity, but also holistic diversity, right? And, Vic, you know, great to have you here. So congrats also on your appointment as the leader of Fonterra Oceania's Food Service and Ingredients Australia team. I'm really curious to talk to you and ask this question. So as a professional who's made that move from, you know, let's call it a non-conventional move from a technical role to a full P&L responsibility,

I'm so interested in learning about your career trajectory, the strategic decisions that led to that appointment. Could you elaborate for us on the preparation involved, the steps that you took to really position yourself for this leadership opportunity?

Vic:

Well, I'm not young, so I've been around for a little while. So I've had sort of three decades working in food service, I guess. And I guess I quite like telling my story because it gives quite a lot of reassurance to young people out there that there's different ways and different journeys and different pathways to an end. So if I think about, not to bore you, but if I think about when I left school, I sold radio for a little while, so sales, I went overseas and then when I was 25 I came back to uni. I was that painful adult student that sat in the front of the room and put their hand up and asked all the questions that no one else wanted to ask. I studied dietetics and so I didn't actually graduate uni until I was about 30. But I had, by the time I graduated, I'd had quite a few life experiences. I had worked in hospo the whole way through.

I'd sold radio, I'd travelled. And so when I came out of uni at the age of 30, I was kind of able to get myself a pretty cool gig straight off. So I went in and was the food service manager at a hall of residence at Otago Uni. And so my role was to run this kitchen that fed about 230 students, three meals a day, five days a week, seven days a week for 40 weeks of the year.

And that was pretty cool. And that was like my first entree, I guess, into leadership. So the team that I had underneath of me, know, a couple of those women had been working in that same kitchen for 27 years, almost like my whole entire life. So how do you bring on and how do I add value to those people who clearly love their jobs? They don't think they were stuck there. They were really good at what they did. They had other options. And so that's where my leadership journey started. I stayed at that Hall of Residence for four years, then I went and worked for Food Standards Australia, New Zealand. I worked in the Wellington office. My boss was in Canberra and the person who reported through to me was in Canberra. So I had to learn really quickly on how to lead geographically dispersed teams. We then moved from Wellington to Melbourne. And that was hugely interesting for me because

I kind of found myself in a city and if you live in Melbourne people I don't know whether know it but if you don't have been to certain school or you don't have a network it's actually was really hard to crack in to that scene and you know I did a couple of government or I did a government job for a while but I knew that Fonterra was there and that they had an office there. Angeline you were there at the time I think. 

Angeline:

Yes, we worked at Fonterra together. I remember the days.
Vic:

We did. And anyway, so there was this role that I applied for. It was actually a New Zealand based role, but I just took a punt on it and just put myself out there and said, look, I'm here. I would love this role. It was for a regulatory strategist for health and nutrition. So was a dietician. I'd worked in the regulatory area. Kind of like knew my stuff. I'd worked geographically from a geographically dispersed, in a geographically dispersed team. I had worked in a geographically dispersed and led a geographically dispersed team and I said so if you want to give me a punt then let's go for it and the person that was the hiring manager at the time decided to do just that and that was 17 years ago so I've been with Fonterra 17 years in technical roles as you know. I had children, I had my family, I didn't really know what I wanted to do and was sort of loving the experience and I was having amazing experiences travelling around the world under WHO meetings and representing Fonterra at a number of global events, advocating with the regulators for different regulatory outcomes. 

And I sort of made my way up to lead the global regulatory team working out of Australia. So my team was based all over the world, essentially most of them in New Zealand. So again, sort of used the skill set that I had got along the way at Fizans, around leading teams outside of the geographical where I was. 

And yeah, just got to the position where I had a fabulous team underneath me, used the power of that geographical dispersity to really enable bringing the best person on for the role and not really having to look at where they were. They didn't have to be based where I was based. And we had an amazing team that we were able to get people that other companies wouldn't have at the time because they weren't prepared to bring them in or bring them and have them work not from within the home office. And then of course COVID came and that's pretty normal now not to be working in the same place.

Then I was watching, so I sat in the Fonterra Australia business and was kind of figuring out what my next steps were to be and I knew that I wanted to get into business, wanted to get more heavily into innovation, knew that sort of that creative side of me was something that I really wanted to play to. Really like leadership, I put myself on a couple of courses, I got myself coach as part of one of the courses that I did. Put myself on a financial course just to try and understand the P&L because that was pretty foreign to me and I knew that that was sort of my Achilles heel, still is to some degree probably, my team would say. 

And then this opportunity came up within the Fonterra Australia business to run a little part of the ingredients business and my boss at the time could have brought in a salesperson, there was some amazing people there with some amazing sales experience but he wanted to pull a team together that wasn't just sales but had the technical, had the regulatory and had that customer centricity to enable us to do something really different to what our competition was doing. And he took and he admitted this in front of a whole lot of senior leaders.

not so long ago, he took a calculated risk and put me into that role. Small P &L, had to work pretty hard to get myself up to speed and learn a lot. And then I guess last year in September I was given responsibility for the Australian Food Service team and the rest of the domestic ingredients business and then this year had the New Zealand Food Service business added to my to my area of, I wouldn't say control, because it's pretty out of control a lot of times, but area of responsibility. There we go.

Angeline:

Yes, that's what you can influence, right? That's the sphere of influences at the end of the day.

Vic:

That's it. So, yeah. And I guess, you know, if you're thinking about what led me to those steps and my advice to young people who are looking at what they're doing, nothing's wasted, right? That time that I spent working in food service taught me about people. It taught me about communication skills, but also about conflict. Because, you know, nothing always goes...perfectly in a restaurant setting. 

Radio taught me about how to sell. Different managers I've had, I've just always been super observant. I knew that the person that, you know, one day I was pretty rude to one of my managers and he didn't call me out on it. And then I realised that I'd lost respect for him because he didn't have the guts to lean in and have a hard conversation with me. And so I learned about respect and the importance of respect. So I think...

Although it's been a little bit planned, I think probably the best thing that I've done is to really reflect and look at learnings and have what I've learned along the way and then been able to manipulate them into the current situation or into future scenarios.

Amie:

I love looking at that sort of non-traditional pathway to leadership. think it's something that I've experienced myself as well. And keen to understand, because that's obviously your journey, but what you think, you know, what mind shifts, what mindset shifts are necessary for individuals and organisations, so on the employer side, to take calculated risks on these diverse career trajectories.

I think from a higher, when you're hiring a leader, that technical capability is not as important because you have a team that's amazing. So you're hiring a leader that can lead people, that can inspire. And so their background actually doesn't, at a higher level, doesn't matter that much as long as they know the right questions to ask, as long as they know how to empower their team, as long as they… know what their gift to the team is because in my case, so when I was put into the ingredients role because I didn't have that background, I had to very quickly figure out what I could do for the team that was going to make them believe in me and give them something as a leader and for them to continue to do the brilliant work. 

I think the default is for people to hire people that have had the same experience as what they've had, right? That's the default, because it's safe. But the benefit of hiring someone that is different brings all of the amazing attributes that diversity can bring, so that those different thought processes, that different experiences the different ways of doing things, the different perspective and a different level of passion. 

You know, as I said earlier, diversity, the brilliance or the nice thing about diversity is that it's a trigger for change and it brings in different ways of thinking. So if I'm hiring somebody and I'm looking, I really want to know what I want in the end. I really want to know what my end goal is, what that looks like and the type of person that I need to get there. Then I need to circle back and take a look at my team and what are the gaps in my team and how might we fill those and then start to look way more broadly than, don't want another person X in my team, I don't want the same as person Y in my team, I don't want the same necessarily as me and so really forcefully thinking about what is a technical skill that is you know like a must-have that someone must bring, something that can be learned on the job or those skill sets or that kind of sparkle that someone brings that can't be taught and being able to recognise and take a punt on that and understanding where the balance across those three things are to be able to make decisions.

I think though, well I know, that if you do have a diverse team and you're leaning into creating a diverse team, that it does come with conflict. And so you need to set the team up for that and the team needs to recognise that. So you need to be able to be having conversations around having conflict in a team, the power of conflict, the power of tension, the building of the psychological safety within the team to make that okay. 

And then that is when all of those diverse things and all of the amazing thoughts that all of the different people in your team have come together to create something really powerful. But it's not easy. So if you're going in to be, you know, diverse and be consciously diverse, know that it comes with some challenges and it needs some thought process and it needs some foundations.

Angeline:

I really like how you unpack that, I think as a leader, you emphasise the importance of embracing diversity beyond gender. For those who are listening, how did you go about integrating that diverse thinking? I don't like the term soft skills, but I think they're the hardest skills in a leadership style. 

How can other leaders do the same? What would be from what you unpacked just earlier, what would be the things that you would say if you're a leader wanting to build that diverse team, being aware of the conflict thing as well, what are the things that other leaders should do?

Vic:

So it's about, so if you think about what diversity is, and so diversity is everything from gender, religion, upbringing, culture, the way you think, a stutter, a disability, that's going to bring difference. And in order to really harness that difference within a team, what I try and do is, talked about before really focus on that psychological safety of the team, making sure that we have a team that understands each other. 

So that team culture, if you don't have the right diverse team or not diverse team, but that culture around listening, that culture around care, that culture around making sure that people are respected for their differences is really really important and so I spend a lot of time on my team and talking to others and actually talking to my kids and my family and just generally at people about that. About the need to lean in, to care, to listen and to really set up whoever you’re talking to for success whether it's your team or your family.

Angeline:

I think, the thing around that listening, that care and the empathy and respect, so important, right? Regardless of whether in a work situation or in a personal situation, you're almost doing the same.

Vic:

Well that's it right? That's truly it. And so I think just on that, we don't live work and we don't live home. We live a life. And so if we're not very nice at home, we're not likely to be very nice at work. And your kids are going to love you unconditionally. So they're really good to experiment on, you know, test different theories out on or test different strategies out on.

In my experience. But we do, we live diverse and you can use your outside experiences to bring them back into work as well. I mean that is sort of one of the joyful things about diversity and sort of a story around talking about taking calculated risks and one of my, you we're hiring for a sales executive or whoever or for a role and you know the natural instinct is to go back and hire the same someone with the same experiences that everybody else has had or that the hiring manager has had but you know if you're a stay at home mum as an example you learn a lot through being a stay at home mum and so if I'm looking at employing I'll always look at someone who's spent time at home time out of the workforce. 

What I'm interested in is what they've done with that time, what they've learnt from that time and how that can apply to a role and I think that's super important from a diversity perspective, particularly from a woman and from a gender diversity perspective. It's got to be acknowledged that it's okay to have had that time out of the workforce.

Amie:

Excellent. And so how do you balance supporting a diverse team while maintaining that strong customer centric focus?

Vic:

We're anchor food professionals and so customer centricity is what we're all about. I mean the customer is number one to us.

We, and our customers are diverse, right? So we need diversity within our team to be able to engage with diverse customers. To be fair, our customers probably aren't as diverse as the foods you've said. It's probably not as diverse as it could be in many ways, but there's still diversity there. And so making sure that, I guess the diversity of our team underpins the customer centricity that we have. We go out as anchor food professionals, so that's the brand of the product that we sell, but it's also the brand of who we are. 

And so as a food professional, that could be a mum who's just a really good cook at home. It could be a chef. It could be someone who has been in a technologist role. It could be someone who's been front of house for a number of years in a restaurant.

So, we really do embrace that diversity of experience with our teams in regards to the offering that we give our customers for sure. 

Angeline:

And sort of changing a little bit of the tact, Vic. So, you know, when you look across the industry, you talked about, you know, the diversity in the food service sector. You know, we see a lot of, you know, we see cultural issues like workplace abuse, misogyny, I think is still persistent out there in some sectors of our industry. What observations have you had, have you made regarding the se issues? What actions are needed to create a more equitable and respectful industry? 

Vic:

It's a pretty sad state of affairs at the moment actually when you read the media, particularly in the restaurant side of the food service. I work in manufacturing and in sales and there's always pockets of behaviour that are unsavoury. And in those pockets, I'd like to think if I've seen them that I would call them out.

So, but I always go back to the time that I had when I was waitressing. So I would have been 20, it was one of New Zealand's, it's an amazing restaurant, it's a great, great restaurant. And I was working full time and I went into the restaurant one day and the maitre d' wasn't there.

And we're like, where's so and so today? So, I think this would have been 30 years ago. And my boss said, we've put him on leave because we've had a complaint about sexual harassment. Which was pretty big back then, right? 

Angeline:

An action was taken.

Vic:

Because an action was taken. But it really rocked me because we worked in a very fast-paced environment and it was quite, was actually really, it was an amazing environment. It was a lot of fun, it was fabulous, but there was a lot of sexual banter.

A huge amount of sexual banter and I don't know whether it was just how we as females coped with it at the time but we would just give back as much as what we received and it wasn't until this situation and you know reflecting on it that I realised that I had enabled that person's behaviour. I also realised that what was sensitive to me didn't bother me, maybe it didn't bother me at the time, someone else's threshold of sensitivity was different to what mine was and so their complaint was completely valid. I don't know what the circumstances of the complaint were, you know, in great detail, but it was a bit of a wake-up call in that the role that I personally had to play in that circumstance. 

I think, well I believe that we all have a responsibility in this kind of behaviour that's going on at the moment or that we're reading about.

Angeline:

So fast forward 30 years and you're still hearing and seeing some of this.

Vic:

Yeah, I am, but the alcohol is still there, still having a drink after work, it's still...

It's still happening. So it's not going to go away quickly, right? Because it's been going for 30 years. There's not just a switch that we can flick to change this. But I think what we can do is start being way more purposeful around pointing it out, way braver around saying, hey, what you did there, that wasn't okay. Or for that person, it might have been okay. For that person, it wasn't okay. I mean, you whether it's whether it's a sexual innuendo or whether it's a jest about race or sexuality or anything else. It's upon us to call it out, 100%. If you see it, call it out. Because if you don't, then you're as implicit as the person that's making the statement or carrying out the action. So I think it's on all of us, definitely on all of us to make a difference and to stand up.

Angeline:

I think, really wise advice. But, you know, when we talk about what actions are needed, the action actually sits with each of us individually.

Vic:

It does 100%. 100%. And some empathy along the way as well. It still stuns me. It really does. It really does stun me. I mean, it really does.

Amie:

I think that’s great advice.  Victoria, thank you for these valuable insights and Angeline, it's been a pleasure as always. If you've enjoyed today's podcast, subscribe to Women Transforming Food for more inspiring stories wherever you listen to your podcasts.