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Her Inspiration
Christine Rankin
Public enemy turned celebrity, Christine is devoting her considerable passion to the twin aims of creating transformational leaders and reducing child abuse

Her Insight
Fiona Stollman
Strives to change Kiwi’s casual attitude to applying sunscreen with her MyOzone SunBracelet

Her Inform
On Another Planet?
We take a look at gender in the workplace

Her Inspiration

Transforming the Rankin File
Christine Rankin

Public enemy turned celebrity, Christine Rankin is devoting her considerable passion and energy to the twin aims of creating transformational leaders and reducing child abuse.

Imagine pushing your trolley around the supermarket when a complete stranger suddenly hurls abuse at you - or worse, spits at you. And then, imagine going from that sort of opprobrium to becoming a celebrity overnight. While it’s common for celebrities to lose their God-like status, it’s very hard to come back the other way. Take Michael Barrymore. To escape public vilification at home, he was forced to take up residence down under.

Christine Rankin, by contrast, has survived trial by public condemnation to come back stronger than ever. Not many of us could. Being back in the limelight on national television in such diverse roles as agony aunt in How’s Life and ballroom dancer in New Zealand’s Dancing with the Stars cannot have been easy. And Christine Rankin admits it.

What’s enabled Christine to get through one of the most terrible periods of her life is her innate passion and determination, borne out of the terrible background from which she emerged, already battle-hardened. She refuses to dwell on it, but suffice to say she came from the wrong side of the tracks, had an appalling childhood, and motherhood pounced early.

“I come from very poor, very violent, very awful family circumstances. Because I had a very difficult beginning in life I know and understand what it’s truly like,” she says. While this helped her understand the needs of clients when she ran Work and Income, she concedes she never fitted the public service mould, unencumbered as she is by any form of university degree.

Christine raced up the WINZ ranks at dizzying speed. At the top, she ran the organisation on an “oily rag” budget of $600 million. Today, its operating budget is $1.2 billion. Despite this, the pervading but erroneous perception of her reign is one of excess. As might be expected from someone who’s come up through the ranks rather than appointed from outside, Christine’s leadership style was very different. “I went out to my front-line every week. While I had 6,000 staff, I kept my head office lean and mean.”

She couldn’t stave off the critics, however, and the pot-shots came thick and fast. Naively, she had believed it was politically motivated and she would be able to prove how good she was. In fact, the public was more interested in her appearance than her ability. The resulting fallout meant she didn’t go to the supermarket for two years. “It’s a place where people get the courage to say whatever they think, and women in particular were ghastly.”

Christine’s major regret about this time was not being allowed to tell her side of the story. But when she finally did get the chance, impressions of her changed and she went from public enemy number one to celebrity, seemingly overnight.

Unlike Michael Barrymore, Christine elected not to flee the country, although she did leave Wellington. Auckland, however, welcomed her with open arms and Christine is not merely surviving, she’s thriving. She runs a very successful business – the Rankin Group – with her son, Matthew, heads a national charity fighting child abuse and is a regular on the public speaking circuit.

Her battles with bureaucracy might have left Christine scarred, but she’s no less determined to effect change. Nowhere is this more evident than in her passion for her charity, For The Sake Of Our Children Trust. “We’ve got a major problem in New Zealand with child abuse of every kind. It’s so ugly and, while the average New Zealander is horrified by it, they don’t know what to do.”

She says although the official statistics show we murder 10 children a year, the true figure is probably 40. This makes us world-leading child murderers. “The terrible thing is that most of these children are murdered by step-fathers or de factos. Because the mothers have been beaten and abused from the time they were born, they accept it as the norm. If we can get people to stop drinking and driving, and to wear seatbelts when they never used to, surely to God we can turn our child abuse around,” she pleads.

Ever outspoken, Christine says successive Governments have created legislation and policies which have done nothing for New Zealand children; in fact the reverse. “It is society’s problem because those who are abused can often go on to become murderers, rapists and paedophiles.”

Whether speaking out about children or business, there’s no denying Christine Rankin’s passion and energy. In the business world, too, Christine is making waves.
The Rankin Group specialises in leadership and media training, and human resources. Its success is due partly to her notoriety and the fact that unlike Wellingtonians, Aucklanders refuse to hang off the Government’s coat-tails.

“Up here, they don’t care what Helen [Clark] thinks. I never ask to see chief executives or chairmen of the Board and don’t get to see them. Whether they’re curious about how short my skirts are, or how long my earrings are, or whether I’m really as dumb as the Labour Government painted me, I don’t know. But it works.”

Christine is a great believer in transformational leadership, which she defines as connecting people emotionally with what they do. A relatively new concept in New Zealand, transformational leaders “lead by their vision; they are very upfront, out-front leaders; they know what they want and what they expect of their people, and they’re very supportive. Transformational leaders enable and inspire; they don’t terrify.”

Examples of transformational leaders include George Hickton, Tourism New Zealand’s GM, Mainfreight’s Bruce Plested, Invercargill mayor Tim Shadbolt, former politician Roger Sowry and businesswoman Diane Forman, who’s recently undergone her own share of media scrutiny. “What she’s done in business has been amazing. She’s taken a gift her husband gave her and made it successful time after time after time. She’s probably the wealthiest woman in the country. Good on her. More power to her.”

Christine believes there are many more nascent transformational leaders hiding away in our organisations, but that “our culture holds leaders back. Other countries nurture their leaders from school. We’ve got a downer on people – they mustn’t be too successful or too big for their boots.”

Teaching management skills and transformational leadership is where most of the Rankin Group’s work comes from. “Transformational leadership is the way to get big results fast. When you apply the skills, your bottom line changes really fast. It’s helping people make an awful lot of money.”

Christine is very proud of being in business with Matthew; the mother-son combination being rare. “We laugh, we develop things together, and we reach great highs and lows. It’s an absolute privilege to work with that young man. I had him when I was 18 under horrendous circumstances.” Should things not work out, however, Christine has a back-up plan. “I’ve always had a hankering to sell estate. But I would do it totally differently and, hopefully, make huge amounts of money.”

The real estate industry would do well to look to its laurels, should Christine Rankin decide to hang out her shingle - which, with her passion and determination, is only a matter of time.

By Lynnaire Johnston

Her Insight

Newfangled Bangle
Fiona Stollman

in New Zealand, and more predominantly sun protection, is a major issue that is often overlooked by the average Kiwi. For many, applying sunscreen may be regarded as a chore, inaccessible or simply not fashionable. Fiona Stollman and the MyOzone SunBracelet strive to change that attitude.

Born in Egypt of French/Greek origin and raised in Switzerland, Fiona Stollman studied Political Science in Paris and Boston and is now married to a German entrepreneur. Fiona gained experience as a political researcher in Athens before moving to Germany where she was responsible for marketing and communications in a large IT company.

Possessing such a colorful cultural background herself, Fiona wanted to pass on to her children a similar passion for the wonders of the world. So for 2 years, Fiona, 5 of her six children and her husband hit the high seas, travelling around the world aboard a sailing boat. The intention, Fiona reports, was to expose her children to the few, still remaining, genuine cultures of the world and to teach them respectfulness for other walks of life.

“During this trip,” says Fiona, “we spent lots of time outdoors actively, either sailing, kayaking, cycling, walking or just interacting with people. We noticed that although we had the necessary sunscreen on board, we never had our sun protection when we needed it the most.” Hence the idea for an easily transportable, easily accessible suncare container was born.

Fiona and her business partner, Paul Snelling, spent 2 years researching and developing the SunBracelet and found the awareness of overexposure to the sun in Australia and New Zealand to be severely lacking. “We realised the alarming effects of unprotected exposure to the sun and were astonished at the gap between the government’s efforts to create awareness and still the lack of ‘private’ initiative in this area.”

Paul’s and Fiona’s research found that easy access and mobility, in the form of laptops, phones and iPods, are growing consumer trends as is the time spent outdoors due to time restraints being lifted by portable technology. Fiona feels that suncare protection had to be tailored to fit in within this consumer mentality. Their response was to fashion the SunBracelet and the guiding mantra: ‘Make suncare as fashionable as mobile phones or iPods’.

The SunBracelet is a waterproof, recyclable, one-size-fits-all container, holding 50ml of SPF30+ Zinc sunscreen that can be worn around the ankle, wrist or arm by women, men or children. The demographic: anyone involved in outdoor sports or activities such as jogging, swimming, fishing, surfing, golf, music events or any number of other lifestyle occasions. The beauty of it: no more fossicking around in your glove box, handbag or backpack for a tube of outdated sunscreen, notoriously covered in fluff and gunk, that’s difficult to manipulate and is typically empty when you need it most.

Skin cancer is the only form of its kind that can be prevented or minimised by regularly applying sunscreen. Dermatologists claim we must apply sunscreen every 2 hours to be sufficiently protected. Fiona believes that with the SunBracelet on hand, people can easily look after their skin and prevent serious skin damage. “It doesn’t only happen to others. Suncare should be as normal as teeth brushing, just more often.”

Newcomers to the competitive suncare market, the MyOzone team had their fair share of setbacks - the foremost of which being manufacturing, filling and packaging. “The challenges were proven huge for such a simple-looking item. The high degree of regulations of the suncare industry added to the complexity,” recalls Fiona. “Establishing a large retailer’s network with a new brand was the second challenge, and creating brand awareness and educating the customer is the third challenge for a brand without the advertising power of a large company.”

This, however, wasn’t enough to faze the focused Fiona, who feels that the support of members of the New Zealand business community encouraged the SunBracelet team to face the huge initial challenges. “Our dream is to make suncare ‘hip’. We’ve invested money and effort in developing fashionable, and thus appealing, suncare products. When a teenager tells me ‘how cool is this!’ after so many ‘noes’, I know that the effort was worth it,” says a happy Fiona.

The SunBracelet can be seen in major sport chains, pharmacies, outdoor lifestyle stores and sports clubs around New Zealand and Australia. The MyOzone team are currently having discussions with distributors in Europe, the US and South Africa and have finalised prototypes for the Asian market. It appears that, with such a driven team, making suncare a worldwide trend could easily become a reality.

By Kelly Alexander
For more information visit: www.myozone.net

Her Inform

On Another Planet?

Some people think that men and women are so different that they must originate from different planets! We take a look at gender in the workplace.

Certainly some obvious and important differences do exist, which means that communication challenges with those of the opposite gender don’t end at home or on a bad first date. It happens in the office, too, and all too frequently. Corporate miscommunications between the sexes are common - but there is hope.

Since discussion about gender differences is rife with controversy, a better way to look at it is through the lens of culture. Each gender is a culture unto itself - one that comes with certain norms and standards that can be misunderstood around those of the opposite sex.

An example of how bad miscommunications can get can be found in the case of Chevron, when a mass email led to a mass settlement for the company about a decade ago. The email proclaimed ‘25 Reasons Beer Is Better than Women’. The email wasn’t so funny to four female employees, who filed a lawsuit that cost Chevron US$2.5 million. In the male culture, this would have been intended as just off-handed humour, and whoever initiated it probably didn’t see anything offensive about it. Would an email entitled ‘Why Chocolate Is Better Than Men’ have created a similar response amongst the male workers, I wonder?

The differences in how men and women sometimes interpret humour can even affect how each chooses to exert power at work. While a man might casually chide a fellow co-worker at the coffee machine about something he said at a meeting, a woman generally wouldn’t think of doing that. Connie Glaser, a US-based speaker and author of Gender Talk Works (if you do it right): 7 Steps for Cracking the Gender Code at Work says in the female culture, the relationship, the connectedness, the rapport is ultimately the most important thing. “That’s what really gives women their base of power and influence. In the male culture, the sense of hierarchy and status is much more important, so you do see that kind of joking around to establish a kind of status amongst themselves. With females, you don’t see that - you see an effort to flatten [the hierarchy] out.”

Communication is the source of many gender-related workplace differences. A group of women may be more likely to change the topic of conversation to include a male colleague who has just joined them as a way of making sure he feels included. But men, given the same situation, may simply acknowledge the presence of the newly arrived female, and will likely not make a special effort to bring her into the discussion. Females’ assigned importance to give-and-take and cooperation extends into meetings, where women often will hold back, and when asked why they didn’t speak up, reply they wanted to wait their turn rather than interrupt, which some of their more aggressive male counterparts didn’t mind doing.

Of course, the examples above are linked to the prevailing stereotypes of men and women. We all know people who don’t fit these stereotypes. For example, men who are sensitive and gentle in their approach, or women who are aggressive and tough. I prefer to believe that behaviour is influenced by one’s personality type rather than by one’s gender.

One of the most commonly used personality profile tools, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, looks at people’s preferences to help us understand human behaviour. It uses four dimensions to describe behaviour. For example, where we focus our attention, what kind of information we prefer to pay attention to and what sort of lifestyle we prefer. Only the fourth of these dimensions, how we prefer to make decisions, shows a gender difference. In a recent study of the American population, 65% of those who make decisions using logic and objectivity are men and 65% of those who make decisions by being guided by their personal values and convictions are women.

To ensure men and women in the workplace understand where one another is coming from, it is important to be able to discuss these issues in an upbeat and constructive kind of way to minimise conflict and ensure misunderstandings are not made any worse. Perhaps think about how decisions are made in your organisation or how conflict is resolved. If you can create a culture of seeking to understand each other better and dispel any stereotypes that may exist, you stand more chance of eliminating the risk of legal action on the scale of Chevron. Appreciating and making constructive use of these differences can move any organisation to a more pleasant place to work - moving from irritation with the differences to acceptance. Men and women can complement each other and use their differences constructively, filling in each other’s blind spots and balancing decision making.

By Kathy Catton