Podcast
From Suits to Footy Jerseys: How a Corporate Desk Jockey Escaped the Rat Race to Score His Dream Career with Paul Malcolm
If freeing yourself from the limiting corporate world is something you’re always thinking of, perhaps you are still far from your dream career. Maybe you are up for something more, but you have to be courageous enough to get out of your comfort zone. Paul Malcolm sits down with Janet Hogan to share about leaving his former life working in a bank to become the CEO of one of Australia’s most popular and successful sporting clubs. He reflects on finding his purpose in guiding the Port Melbourne Football Club to defeat self-doubt and achieve self-improvement. Paul also talks about his most recent challenges, particularly his pivots due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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From Suits to Footy Jerseys: How a Corporate Desk Jockey Escaped the Rat Race to Score His Dream Career with Paul Malcolm
My next guest is the CEO of one of Australia’s most popular and successful sporting clubs, but sports wasn’t always his game. In fact, in a former life, he worked for a couple of banks. To tell us about his transition from pushing pens to pushing athletes, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Paul Malcolm, CEO of Port Melbourne Football Club. Paul, welcome to the show.
Janet, thanks for having me on.
I’ve been looking forward to this conversation to talk to you about your transition and also how you’ve been managing the situation with COVID and other issues that we’re collectively facing. I know that there are a lot of people out there who probably are thinking, “Am I in the right position? Am I doing the right job?” Sitting on the fence of their life and maybe waiting for someone to give them a prompt to make that move. I know that you were in that position once where you were working in the corporate sector. Tell me, what was it that prompted you at the end of the day to make that move? How were you feeling in that corporate position?
I got to a point where I felt stuck and I wasn’t able to do the things that I love and enjoy doing in a work sense. Being able to help people lead by example, help others reach their goals and deliver outcomes that were going to help the customers of the banking industry that I was in, I had to make a decision whether to stay or go.
We had a lot of restructures. It was impacting people all the time. They were never sure what was going to happen next. They weren’t able to deliver on their goals either. I took the plunge and moved into the sporting world out of corporate. I’m working as a volunteer in swimming and an opportunity came up with Swimming Australia. I dived straight in and took on the role there and never looked back.
You mentioned that in the atmosphere in the bank where you were working at that time, there was a lot of restructuring. It sounds like it was a fairly fearful time. People were worried about losing their job. You made a move anyway. How difficult was it to make a move? Did you wake up at 3:00 AM and go, “Have I made the right decision or not?” What was going on in your mind at that time?
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that and having self-doubt about whether it was the right thing to do. I thought about moving to do something different and getting out of banking. I’ve dabbled in a bit more project management with other areas to get into a sport where I felt I could make a difference. Being able to lead the way and help other people reach their goals was key for me.
The area that I was in at the banks was bad. People were worried about what was happening with them, whether they were going to have a job in another six months. Would there be another restructure? Who would their new boss be if it wasn’t me or someone else? It was a very uncomfortable place to be. They weren’t delivering for the customers they would have in the media. They were stopping people from delivering on things that were key to business.
It was the right time to get out. I double-checked and kept checking with myself about whether it was right or wrong. There was a bit of pain financially and also the risk of going to something new and, “What if it doesn’t work? What’s going to happen? How does that impact me and my friends and my family?” Those were all things that I had to keep considering. At the end of the day, and looking back four years later, I should have done it sooner.
I’ve heard this before, too, that there might have been a misalignment between what you felt you stood for and what you were able to deliver in that environment. Is that right?
I always set out to improve where I am and leave something in a better place, whether that’s the people I’m working with or that are working for me or just by making the changes and delivering on the activities to make it better. It was just a place where you couldn’t do that anymore.
You mentioned making a difference was important. Was that the thing you feel that pulled you across the line in the end? That it was something bigger than you that you wanted to make a positive impact on the lives of others? Do you think that’s where ultimately you got your courage from to make a move?
“Money is not everything. Comfort and happiness are far more important and outweigh the material aspect.”
I enjoyed working as a volunteer in the swimming space at Swimming Victoria. I knew the type of things Swimming Australia and the states were trying to achieve with things that I could be part of and the things that would help athletes, coaches or parents within the sport and within that industry. I took the plunge and I’ve never looked back. It gave me a good opportunity to re-adjust and get back into doing things that I was passionate about and helping other people.
What about the financial side of things? You said you took a pay cut. How did that play out? How big was the problem at the end of the day?
I’ll say not a problem, but obviously, I just had to adjust. All of a sudden, my family needed to adjust. With bonuses and everything, it’s pretty much a half-cut from what I was on in the corporate world to what sporting was. I made that decision at that point that money is not everything. Comfort and happiness and being able to do things that are important to you far outweigh the material aspect. Whilst you had a little bit of adjustment at the start, it was probably an easy decision anyway.
I talked to guys in particular who have been wedded to their job for most of their lives and that’s where their identity is tied up in. There’s almost sometimes fear of going back to the family if you like. In some cases, their partners can feel like strangers. How did all of that affect your relationships with your partner and kids?
I’ve been volunteering and doing 20 or 30 hours a week, and then I was working 40 to 50 hours a week with corporate in the bank. It gave me a whole more time to do things, both family-wise but also just for myself to be able to get out and spend a bit more time with the kids, get out with my wife and spend more time, or just go and play golf with my mates and re-engage with some other mates. My other passion is footy, so I was able to go and watch some more football and do some different things in that space as well.
It sounds like it has been a good move for you in all those external circumstances. What about you personally? How have you changed going from the corporate sector to something that you’re passionate about? What has been the impact on you?
For me, getting into swimming was a very strong space that I was involved in with the kids and volunteering. To be able to work in the space of passion that you enjoy puts a whole new outlook on your own life. Moving into the football space again is something that I grew up in and I’ve always enjoyed. I’ve always been passionate about the sport.
Those two things of being passionate about where you’re working, being passionate about the industry you’re in and being able to help people tick a lot of my boxes. It’s put me in a much better mindset and space. I’ve grown as a leader and as a person now. That helped me in my personal life as much as it has in my professional life.
It’s interesting you talked about the other aspect of being able to help others. It sounds like that might have been the ingredient missing in the corporate sector. Is that right?
All avenues of trying to help staff and colleagues to grow and deliver on their goals and achievements were taken away by all the rapid changes and the lack of understanding of where things will land. Being in this space, there are a lot of opportunities either with staff, athletes, coaches or volunteers to help them reach their goals.
I know sometimes if you use the words, “I want to be of service,” this even triggered me back when I was running my various businesses. I thought, “I don’t want to be Mother Teresa. I don’t want to be sacrificing myself in service to others.” What would you say to that? How was your experience with that?
A part of the corporate world is you are servicing someone else all the time. When there’s so much change going on, you’re trying to second-guess exactly what they’re going to want. Some of my management at that time were also suffering the same problems and feelings. It was an unstable place. You bring that back now. I service the board of the football club in my role and my team’s role, but I’m doing it in a fun way and enjoying it. We’ve got a good relationship. We have the hard decisions and hard conversations, but at the end of the day, we’re clear as an organization what our goals and achievements are that we want to hit. Being able to deliver on those, you come to work every day and enjoy it.
What I’m hearing from you, there’s a lot of passion in what you do and it comes through the energy in the way you speak. My experience running businesses was there were a lot of self-sacrifices. That applies for men just as much as women that we can give our best selves too much because we think we’re doing it for a good cause. In fact, all we’re doing is depleting ourselves and then we get bitter and resentful if we do that for too long.
What I get from your story is that you were essentially following your heart and what you felt you wanted to do. In that sense, it was serving yourself first so that you could serve others. Did that sound like a good interpretation of what you’ve said? Is that how you feel? Is that the journey has been about?
I totally agree with that. It was about resetting my own goals and direction, being a little bit more selfish and looking after myself first, which then helped my family and friends, and then back into doing the role and getting into it.
What would you say to someone who has a bank job you used to have and they feel the same way you do, but they don’t have an obvious passion? They’re not clear on what a better life could look like for them. What advice would you give them?
You’ve got to continually re-evaluate where you’re at and what you want to do. I looked at some other roles along the way and did some other bits and pieces where I did a bit of contracting. When I left ANZ, I then ended up back at contracting there full-time. It may even be within the same company or the same organization where you find a different avenue, different role or a slightly different area where you’re doing something a little bit different that may just be enough spark.
Work out what works well for you, positives and negatives. Do the old stress check on that and then make the chance and take the opportunity. In hindsight, it’s a very easy thing to say, “I should have done it earlier and I should have jumped in a lot earlier,” but you get scared and the fear is there, “What if it doesn’t work? What if I fail? What if I let people down?” Sometimes you got to back yourself and say, “It’s about me. I’ll do it.”
I like that noble selfishness. It works. I know the opposite. Martyr syndrome is not a formula for 60 days because I’ve been in that space for a long time. What about the importance of mindset? You mentioned fear. What kind of personal demons did you have to face and ultimately step through to get to where you got to?
The bulk of it is around self-doubt and backing yourself and feeling comfortable to make that change. Human beings are creatures of comfort and they don’t like change. I was working on projects in delivering change and there were a lot of good times and stories that came out of that. When it becomes about yourself and what you’re going to do, the fear is there that you’ll fail, let people down and won’t deliver, “What if I’m no good at that job and then I have to try and go back to my old roots in where I was comfortable?”
It’s just making sure you challenge yourself. If you can challenge yourself in everyday activities, you’ll at least then be prepared to do the next step. It’s like, you go home and decide to change the color of the paint of your house. You check through all those different scenarios and find yourself picking the right color. It’s the same in work and life. You need to look at what’s best for you next and then to take that challenge on.
One of the funny things about fear is that some of the people you run into seem like the least fearful people like yourself and yet they talk quite openly about it. What for you has been the hardest moment that the place where that self-doubt spoke to you to a point where it was seriously challenging? Did you have a moment like that?
When I was in banking and all those changes were happening and continually feeling as though you’re letting your team down and other people around you down because you’re not the things I said I wanted to do to be able to lead by example or to provide them with their support to be able to reach their goals and achievements, and making sure that you make a difference.
When you can’t do that, you start to doubt yourself, “Is it something you’re doing? Is it your ability? Is it the things around you that are stopping you from doing that?” That’s where I started to get into that place of, “I’m doubting myself. I’m not able to do what I want to do. I started to spiral a little bit on being a bit more negative and starting to worry about the impact on everything else.” That helped me make that decision to move as well.
“Human beings are creatures of comfort. Most of them don’t like change.”
You could see yourself getting into that negative loop and then you realize it wasn’t helping you or others. Speaking of negative loops, there are a lot of challenges going on. Victoria is in lockdown for another six weeks. There was a little earthquake as well, so it feels like someone up there is testing humanity. What are some of the challenges that you’ve had to face?
COVID impacted everybody worldwide. In Victoria, it’s no different. We’ve had plenty of impact by that. One of the key things for me was I started this role as CEO in December 2019 and COVID hit in March 2020. My whole first year working at the football club, we had no football. That was unique having to set things up for the club, but there was no footy and so our core business was out the window. That had a massive impact on me as well and so having to adapt and become adaptable.
That’s pretty extreme. It’s one thing having to close a restaurant, but it’s another way you’ve got the team, spectators, management and all these different things that you’re responsible for. What are some of the strategies that you adopted to navigate through these weird times that we live in?
We have to make some changes staffing-wise and make sure that we reduce hours and we had the JobKeeper from the government to help us survive on that. We had to refocus. One of the things that happened is, as soon as vaccination became available, we worked with our local Port Melbourne Medical Clinic and got them into our event center.
They’ve set up a COVID vaccination clinic here. That meant that we’re getting a different type of revenue streaming, which is helping us survive and make a profit for the year. It was about doing those different things and working with the board, players, coaches and members to be more dynamic and adaptable to change on very short notice.
We were trying to get to training and then not training and playing and not playing, but we have to keep making changes on the fly. The way we did that was a lot more communication. Through COVID, I started to do weekly updates out to the members, which were written material going out on the website, emails and social media. One day, I decided to do a video.
I don’t like to video myself. I don’t like being out doing public speaking. It’s not something that has ever come very naturally to me. To sit there and video, I found that I started to get good feedback. I started to get a lot more people to email me or contact me to say, “Thanks for the update. It’s great.” I’ve had to adapt myself and start to do videos more often.
I was doing them quite regularly. I dropped back a little bit now, mixing up between written and video to have a bit of difference and plus, people get sick of seeing the same person. It worked for me. People were keen to see those. That was one of the biggest things. The way we communicated with our members, players, sponsors and supporters was key to us getting through this difficult time and still is.
Maintaining that consistency, I get that feeling that we need something solid that we can depend on within the face of so much uncertainty. It was interesting how you did that. You saw the opportunity in the vaccination center there. Even though the corporate world seems so unrelated to what you’re doing now, how has it served you? Your experience with the banks, how do you feel that you draw on that now in your current role?
I spent a lot of time doing project management and rolling out programs of all different sizes, both locally and internationally. It’s being able to structure yourself, set your clear goals and set up your targets for things you want to achieve. It’s being able to work with our board and say, “We need to look at a new revenue stream.” Our revenue stream has been membership match-day takings, government brands and sponsorship, but all of that is suffering. We need to find another way to get revenue in. You look at things differently purely because of that project management background that I’ve grown up in.
Even though a part of you is saying, “I wish I had made a move early,” or maybe you made it at the perfect time, you needed to accumulate that experience. I often look back on my checkered background, running an advertising agency and a restaurant, doing real estate development and wedding business. I go, “What was I even thinking?” If I look at each position, I did get something of great value that is serving me now. Even I wouldn’t have done a university course in my particular career path, but it has served me. Who is to say that maybe the path that we’re on is perfect, even though it doesn’t feel so sometimes?
On that subject, l invited you to do the Magic Triangle quiz, which does speak to people’s paths. When I was in the wedding business, we hired a coach and he was very keen on getting us to set goals. I remember, back in the day, the goal would be, “I would like a pool table, new car, to renovate the house or go on a holiday.” It was in the material space that we were encouraged to focus. What I found is either A) We wouldn’t get the goal or B) We would and then we go, “I still feel shitty. What’s that about?”
The idea with this exercise is, if you like a different part of ourselves, I like to call it the innermost self or the intuitive self. It’s that part of us that knows us better than we do. In that process, choose three core needs that you feel are vital to your future, happiness and fulfillment. Let’s go through that. Sharing now what you came up with, experience, respect and making a difference. What I would like to do is run through each of those, asking you, what does that particular core need mean for you? Why do you think it made it to that top three? Let’s start with experience. Tell us about that. What does experience mean to you?
It’s a couple of things. It’s doing different things to get new learnings and then sharing those with other people and building your pathway around those. You’re going to have some great rich experiences and some very bad and poor experiences. If you can grow yourself and learn from the poor ones and then help yourself move forward with the better ones, that’s what that means to me. Especially that, have the experience, live the experience and then share that experience.
I like that you’ve included the bad experiences in that, too, because they are such great learning opportunities. I know that the opposite of that, if I speak personally here, is probably what we can do if we get scared of experience. Stepping outside of our comfort zone is we can try and numb ourselves out and almost like grip-hold of the comfort zone and not want to let go of that. That then denies us a new experience and that growth. I like the link you’ve made there between experience and growth, particularly from the uncomfortable experiences. What about respect? Tell us about that.
I also build my philosophy and going through all facets of life is around gaining people’s respect, but also respecting others, whether it’s respecting the environment or the role you’re doing, or disrespecting people in general and their feelings and what their goals and determination are. If everybody shows that respect, we can all move forward a lot better and a lot more comfortable and build much better relationships. You leave much better experiences behind if there’s a lot of respect either way. It’s as easy as respecting the place you’re in and the things you’re doing, respecting other people. Driving a car, respecting other drivers. Walking along the street, respecting other people’s feelings and how they feel.
What does that give you when you bring more respect into your life? How does that make you feel in your experience?
You get a much better sense of self-achievement and understanding how other people feel. If you’re respected, you feel good. It’s that experience of being respected and treated well, then you respect and treat other people.
It almost sounds like developing empathy to starting to understand what it’s like or even possible to be in someone else’s shoes. Would you say that it speaks to that?
Yes.
I feel like it’s so important now because I see how quickly we can become divided as a society. Have you noticed that? It almost seems to be the way social media and media generally seem to be directing us to say what side of the fence you are standing on.
We’ve had protests and mini-riots going on in the streets from people who are anti-vaccination or they’re not happy with being locked down. There’s a lot of call through social media for our frontline staff and frontline people to be more respected and, “Stay at home, stay safe and look after them. Don’t go out, riot, protest and spread the virus, which then puts more pressure on our hospitals and frontline staffing.” It shows another importance of that whole respect in doing the right thing.
The final one is making a difference and that has already come up in the conversation. I get that from you that it’s in your DNA. Could you speak to us about that, making a difference? What does that mean for you? When you look back on your life, what would you like your legacy to be?
No matter what I’m doing, whether it’s personal, in work, in sport or with a bunch of mates doing things, you want to make a difference and leave something better than when you found it or started there. That has always been one of my key goals and philosophies. Whatever I do, I make sure when I’m finished, that it’s better than what it was in the past and you’ve at least helped improve it or make a change. You can’t always fix and improve everything, but as long as it has gone along better and it’s worth better for you.
“If you can learn from your poor decisions, you can grow and move forward to better things.”
Making a difference in the way I approach my work and the way that others around me are able to achieve their goals means, if I can help them lead and direct, give them the support and share my experiences and knowledge, then hopefully, I’ve left them in a better place, so it’s making a difference. In the sporting world, you want everyone, your athletes, coaches, supporters, volunteers, all to succeed at what they’re trying to achieve. If I can help them in some small way, then I feel rewarded by that.
What about going bigger picture with that and the role of footy in life? Where do you feel it contributes to people’s lives? How does that make a difference?
People will say, “It’s just about the players, coaches, administration staff or support staff.” At Port Melbourne, we pride ourselves on being a very much community-led organization. We would love to see ways and try ways and test ourselves on what we can do in the broader community. The vaccination center is a perfect example. We’re helping the Port Melbourne Medical Clinic vaccinate our community that we’re a part of. If that’s that small difference that we’ve made, then that’s a massive thing for us.
Football, at the elite level, it’s a bit more of an entertainment package. It’s about wins, losses and everything else. For us, it’s about getting more people engaged in fitness and exercise. If they walk to the game or walk to the ground and watch a game of footy and walk home, they’ve had more exercise than what they would have the day before. There’s a small change to them. It’s about getting that interaction and getting more people involved in any way we can. It could be a player, sponsor, supporter or local resident walking past and watching something different.
It speaks to that need that seems to have come up in the context of COVID of the need for connection with others and a feeling of belonging and not feeling isolated. I can see sport is a great connector. Thank you for fleshing out those three core needs. I have a triangle that works on an inner level and an outer level.
Generally, these coordinates are there for a reason. They are an inherent part of you. They are at the core fabric of who you are as an individual. Why they’re dear to you is that probably, at some point in your life, you’ve experienced the lack of them. They had been taken away. You’ve experienced what it’s like to maybe not have all the experiences that you wanted or to be cut off from growth. Maybe you have experienced disrespect or the inability to make a difference and the frustration that goes with that.
It’s important because sometimes we get scared of the thing that we lack in, but when you think about it, that’s where the passion comes from. You have to know what it’s like to have something taken away. We wouldn’t crave a long hot summer unless we knew a bitterly cold winter. Without winter, summer would lose its luster.
This is a bit like that, but we have to have known some kind of loss in our lives. We have to have had something taken away and go through the pain of that in order to value it now as our wiser older self. It’s important that as you’ve isolated these and identified them, that you do live these needs that you do bring them into your life.
The triangle helps you identify the most important one, which is your highest value, your North Star, and that is to make a difference. That’s why you’re here. Also, it tells you the path to achieving that and how you do that. This has come from you. Pretty much, it’s through experience and respect that you make a difference. That, if you like, is your personal mission statement. It’s probably the shortest mission statement on records. It’s not like normal corporate mission statements. They’re usually too hard to remember anyway.
Thinking about that through experience, so that’s speaking to constantly throwing yourself in the deep end. Doing those videos even when you don’t want to and whatever the next step is going to be that’s going to involve taking you out of your comfort zone, doing that as your modus operandi and encouraging your players to do the same. By doing that, you’re constantly growing. By constantly growing, you’re building your self-respect and also garnering the respect of others.
By following that path and staying true to that path, that’s how you will continue to make a difference because it’s going to keep you alive. It’s going to keep you engaged with what you’re doing if you allow yourself to go into the comfort zone, “I’ve done enough. Everyone is happy. I can sit back.” That’s where you’ll start to get back into what you felt in the corporate sector. That’s your personal mission and vision.
Once you live that in a sense like you probably are right now, if you satisfy the inner need, this is increasingly how you start in the outer world. There’s that expression, “When you can get out of your own way, that’s when you are of service.” What’s interesting here is that the triangle also defines your why, what and how. Your why is always what’s at the top of it, so it’s making a difference. Can you see that potentially, if you stay on this path and continue to grow, that your gift to others could potentially be showing how they could also make a difference?
Yes. It probably has come out throughout the session that I do enjoy helping other people and helping them get to where they want to be and do what they want to do. It’s something I can certainly see coming out more broadly.
Even if you never say that in any address, speech or pep-talk that you give, just the fact that you are being you and doing that, there’s a ripple effect. You might not even be able to quantify it, but that’s the effect you’re having. By you fulfilling your needs, that’s how you can then inspire others. You don’t have to give the sermon from the mount or a great speech. By you showing up as you, you already have that effect. That’s the why. That’s what gets you out of bed.
Interestingly, what you bring to the table is respect. What you offer to others, not just to yourself, is to develop respect. I imagine that would mean either fulfilling team members, members of the opposing teams, people who might not even be part of the community, people who might set themselves up as adversaries, but starting to see the world from a broader picture rather than, “It’s us versus them.” It’s respecting all people and the context and the environment from whatever walk of life. Do you feel that’s true to what you are putting on the table?
Yes, certainly. You try and do things a little bit differently. Through COVID, we’ve had a lot more meetings with the other CEOs of the standalone clubs and the other AFL clubs, trying to help each other out and be there as a sounding board or to throw up different ideas and solutions. It’s something that I can agree with as well.
The final one is the how and that’s experience. How you teach others and make a difference for others is by encouraging them through different experiences. You encouraging different experiences for others, how do you see that playing out in your current role or more in what you’re doing?
It’s about working with people. If you understand the person and what they’re trying to achieve, you can then best understand how to help lead them or share which experience or the knowledge that you have. One of the key things for me that happened in the corporate world and projects, but also in more so now in the sporting world is, you have to be prepared to fail or make mistakes and then it’s how you learn from those.
Back to what we’re talking about before with fear, everyone fears COVID and what’s going to happen next, but if you learn from it and make sure that you learn and act on those learnings, you’ll continue to improve and enhance your own experience. You’re not going to win every game of football that you play. You’re going to drop a mark. You’re not going to deliver a project on time. Some of the changes that you show, adapt and bring into an organization might not work. Some people won’t like them and some people will.
It’s how you deal with that experience, what you do the next step and how you learn from that change and that experience. The next way you do it, can you do it differently? If you’ve missed a goal, can you kick at it differently the next time? Do you line up slightly better? You went for a mark and dropped your head and you didn’t watch the ball into your hands. It’s little simple things. If you can learn from those, if you’ve made a change in the office and it hasn’t worked, how do you then adapt to make it better? What do you need to change to get it to work properly?
What you’re doing is reframing winning and losing and what sport is all about, “It’s all about winning and losing. You either win or you lose.” It’s so easy for us to go out with that mindset and think of the pressure that puts on the players. If you’re reframing that as, “Whether you’ve won or lost, it’s an experience,” and the goal is, “What did you take from it?” That’s what I’m hearing is your how. That’s how you lead.
It’s looking at every scenario slightly differently to see what you can do. Unpack the bad bits and assess those. Drop the bits you don’t need anymore, but continue to use your key strengths and bits that work. Make sure you enhance those and talk about them and communicate them.
I like how you’re bringing a refrain in an environment that could even be potentially divisive. I know how difficult it is to deal with loss and the shame that comes with that. If you can start to diffuse that, I can imagine that the players will become more enthusiastic, more impassioned and less obsessed about winning and losing. That’s valuable.
We have a tendency to run away from our fears and you’ve spoken about fear. It has been interesting knowing your take on it. I’m a great believer that the more we face our fears, the more likely we are to achieve what we want. There’s one final piece to this, which I’ll share with you. It’s like a star on top of the Christmas tree, the piece that sits at the top of the triangle, which is making a difference.
“You can’t always fix everything. But as long as it’s gone along better, it’s worth better for you.”
If you imagine that is your North Star, the thing that guides you to the future, and that’s for you the most important thing and you’ve isolated that, it’s brilliant that you have it. When we get clarity on that, life becomes much easier. We have our internal compass to follow. In order to preserve that, there’s an exercise that we can do and only take a minute to become aware of the thing that might stop you from doing that. Are you happy to play along with this?
Yes. Why not?
It’s another experience. Imagine that your bright future sits on your right-hand side. That is all about how you make a difference in your particular way through sharing experiences with people and allowing them to experience what life is like without the shame of loss or the egoic space of victory. It’s all about experience and respect. That’s how you achieve making a difference.
That sits out there on the right-hand side, but that was created by the lack of it. That’s the definition of a need. It’s something that comes from having experienced the lack when it’s something that you care about that’s part of who you are. Imagine flipping 180 degrees to the left and coming to what sits on the other side of making a difference. If you were to sum that up in one word, how would you describe that? What’s the opposite to making a difference in your book?
It’s failing at doing something. Not being able to help somebody or fulfill what you’re trying to achieve would be the thing.
Would you say failure is the word?
Yes.
How would that make you feel if, instead of making a difference, you were in that place of failure where you weren’t able to help others?
It takes me back to my corporate days when I worked and that’s how I felt when I made the change. I felt that I wasn’t being able to help other people and deliver on what I wanted to deliver on and stay true to my own ethos and what I wanted to achieve. I felt low and down and felt as though I wasn’t able to move or get any better at things that I was trying to do.
If you could imagine that the rest of your life was in that failure space, how would that make you feel going forward?
It would be pretty disheartening, but I would certainly be trying to find a way to get out of it.
I have a model called The 5th Door and the five doors. That would be your definition of doorway one, what I call living hell, which is that place of failure where you fail to live up to who you know you are. It’s where your true potential lies and the ability to help others and make a difference in their lives, and so being behind that door there and having that sense of failure. Thank you for being willing to take part in that.
What I invite people to do is not to run away from that door but walk through it every now and then. Allow yourself to feel that deepest fear because, sometimes, we fear it so much that we turn our back on it, run away and try to outrun it. That’s when it can come and smash us in the face. It can make a lot of sense to face that deepest fear, that fear of failure, and be okay with that. It’s almost by embracing that and being okay with that, that it’s not going horrendous in the future.
Thank you so much, Paul, for taking part in this exercise. One of the reasons we go through the Magic Triangle exercise is to show you that if you are sitting on the fence of your life and you are feeling a bit lost and unclear, it doesn’t take long at all to get clear. It’s just a process. If you’re reading this, I can certainly help you with that.
For someone who is in that space right now because of COVID or whatever, they’re feeling down. We hear a lot about mental health issues. That seems to be coming to the fore now, which probably isn’t a bad thing that at least we’re talking about it. You spoke to that fear of failing, of not making a difference. Maybe getting into that space of nihilism and what’s the point. What would you say to someone who is in that space?
All humans know when they’re ready for change and they know they need to do something differently, but it’s easy to stay in your comfort zone, sit there, let things go and hope that things will get better. You’ve got to be self-driven to want to make a difference. Work out the positives and negatives for the thing you’re in and have a go. The biggest thing is to back yourself, make the change and do whatever you need to do to get out of that spiral because it’s well worth it.
Paul Malcolm, thank you so much. I appreciate the fact that you have been a guest on the show. Everything you’ve shared about your journey, I’m sure it’s inspiring to anyone who is reading that who might be in that stuck space or wondering if there’s a bigger life out for them.
Thanks for having me.
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About Paul Malcolm
Paul Malcolm is an innovative, adaptive & results-oriented Chief Executive Officer/General Manager with over 28 years of business transformation experience in sport, financial services and government sectors including roles with responsibility for strategy, operational management, sport development & program management in Australia/Asia Pacific.
Highly developed commercial acumen with vast experience building key relationships & partnerships with stakeholders & vendors combined with proven experience building & leading high performance teams. Successfully implemented strategies to drive successful & sustainable business outcomes.
