{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Leading Awake","title":"3 Senior Leaders Admit It: Sometimes You Just Don't Know | S01E04","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2936,"description":"Three senior leaders get honest about what happens when the pressure is real, the answers aren't there, and everyone in the room is looking to you anyway. The MD behind Starbucks South Africa, the CIO of Tiger Brands, and the head of HR at Pernod Ricard Africa share what deciding without certainty has actually looked like, and what it took to step into it.\nThe question most senior leaders carry privately and rarely say out loud: what do I do when I'm supposed to know and I don't? This episode is built around exactly that. Leah McCrae asked a boardroom of executives \"is it okay if I don't know?\" and it turned out to be one of the most trust-building moments of her career. Eugene van der Merwe had no management manual for leading through a pandemic where colleagues ended up in ICU on ventilators. Devandre Lawrence went for counselling to understand the childhood trauma underneath the persona he had built, and found it was the thing that made him the leader he is today. The conversation that doesn't usually happen at this level.\nGuests:\nLeah McCrae is the Managing Director of Rand Capital Coffee and the force behind Starbucks South Africa. She built the brand through bankruptcy, COVID, load shedding, and supply chain chaos, and became a leader who describes herself as intentionally vulnerable, and means it.\nEugene van der Merwe is the Chief Information Officer at Tiger Brands. At the time of recording, he was approaching the end of more than a decade as CIO of AVI Limited, where he led an essential services company through a pandemic and a major cyber event, both times with people's lives and livelihoods genuinely in the balance.\nDevandre Lawrence is Head of HR at Pernod Ricard Africa. He came into a 24/7 FMCG environment as a gay man from a disadvantaged community, built a persona to survive it, and found his way through in a process that made him one of the most human voices in this conversation.\nThey explain:\n◼ Why \"is it okay if I don't know?\" was the most...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/13nLVsuQ0Vl1itKT5YpaJz3aZECFgDrhw5rexTxRzEI/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80Yjdk/NTRiZWViMzhkZGZh/NGUxY2E5ZDk1ODBk/MTlhYy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}