This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other's stories - of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing.

In the interview, Jason shares how playing and coaching team sports like Rugby has shaped his leadership. He talks about how as a leader, you do not have to be the most clever person in the room with all the answers, and how he sees listening to different perspectives as a superpower. He told me his leadership is not about him, but about his teams. And I found that very powerful.

You can find Jason at the below links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasrees/
• https://twitter.com/jrees006

In the interview, we talk about

• I would say a lot of reasons I've shaped by that is I've played team sports. Like rugby is the sort of sport I played the most.
• The feedback is not "you've done this wrong." It's much more. "What did you observe? What went well, what didn't go well"
• "I try to actually put the time in my diary to take a step back. There's a danger that we are operational all the time,  we're hitting our KPIs, our targets, whatever we measure our business by and what that means is, and again, especially in the current work. People get burnt out. I think people get burnt out by just getting the tasks done."
• Everyone wants to feel relevant. Everyone wants to feel, they understand why a big company or a small company quite frankly, is going in the direction is doing going.
• You don't have to be the cleverest person in the room. What you need to do is make sure that you have people with diverse backgrounds, diverse experiences who are all able to look at problems in different ways. And sometimes the problem can be solved in a totally different way. And I think that's that for me is the superpower.
• I don't care where people come from. I think it's just better that we've got diverse ideas.
• Leaders need to tap into what that person's passion is, and if we can get it aligned to our company goals the corporate goals, then you create high performing team.
• I think it's not about the quantity of communication. It's about the quality of communication. And then listening basically plays a huge part.
• Don't be held back by the fear of failure, just be excited by what you can do.