Why You Need to Let Yourself Fail (And Other Unconventional Leadership Advice)
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Kevin: So today's guest is someone who many of you would know is a leader in the field of education. But we want to know the man behind the vision. So would you welcome the principal of Hillcrest College, Geoff Davis.
We're hoping that we're gonna see a different side. Oh, is that a walking stick? No.
Not yet. Not yet.
That's the, that's if the interview goes bad. If the interview goes bad, he takes out a big strike. Mate, thank you so much for doing this. Absolutely. Really appreciate you doing that. So let me just throw some rapid fire questions at you just to get so people might get to know you a little bit.
What was your first paid job?
Jeff: Uh, did a paper round in a small country town.
Kevin: Paper round? Okay. All right. Favorite color?
Jeff: Blue.
Kevin: Food?
Jeff: Meat.
Kevin: Music style?
Jeff: Uh, look, any... I love jazz, but I'm also into Christian, you know, contemporary music, so.
Kevin: Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Anita, she likes country and western. Two of the good ones.
Uh, you got a favorite TV show that you like to watch? Oh, sport. Sport. What about when you were growing up, we had less sophisticated cartoon characters. Was there a cartoon character that you particularly
Jeff: liked? Uh,
Kevin: gee,
Jeff: that's a good question.
Kevin: Yeah, I know. Yeah,
Jeff: yeah. Not really, but- No? No.
Kevin: You weren't a cartoon kind of guy?
Jeff: Not a... There wasn't... In a small country town, we didn't have the ad- advantages of those who lived in the city. We had nothing.
Kevin: Oh, all right. We'll pick that up in a little while. So what's your earliest childhood memory? To be honest,
Jeff: the, the very first thing I remember is watching the Moon landing. I remember- Oh
yeah, that was, um, you know, 1969, and I, I remember sitting down in front of the TV and watching the Moon landing and saying, "That's really cool."
Kevin: Yeah. One small step for man, one...
Jeff: Great leap for mankind.
Kevin: One great leap for mankind, yes. All right. Now, I know you've got many hidden talents, 'cause people have told me that you actually play multiple instruments.
But you've got another talent, but we're gonna leave that talent until we get to the object a bit later on. Mm-hmm. So let's leave that for the moment. Who did you write your first love letter to?
Jeff: Well, I had this, um, this girlfriend who was 6'3", and, uh- 6'3"? Yeah, yeah. She was a, a beast. Uh- ... in the best possible way.
And, uh, yeah, no, no, so that would've been at an early stage, probably halfway through high school, something like
Kevin: that. Mm. Wow. Mm. 6'3"?
Jeff: Yeah.
Kevin: Wow. It was
Jeff: a bit awkward. Photos only of her sitting down. Um, do we
Kevin: have a photo of that? I'd really like to see a photo of that. Okay. A couple more. Uh, if you could be someone else for a day, who would you wanna be?
Jeff: Yeah, that's a really good question. It probably be the invisible- Oh,
Kevin: hang on a sec. Is that the 6'3" girl?
Jeff: No, that's my wife. Is that your wife? That's Lynn. Right. That's Lynn in a, as a teenager.
Kevin: Oh, wow. There we go. We're gonna get to that. We'll get to that. Um, the Invisible Man. You'd like to be the Invisible Man?
Jeff: Yeah.
Kevin: Uh, why? '
Jeff: Cause I really, and, and this is why we head overseas so often, I can't go anywhere 'cause I've been a principal on the Gold Coast for 20 years, and that's thousands and thousands of families. And so when I... Like, I don't go to the shopping centers unless it's an absolute necessity because you just get stopped and you get talked to, and do you think I can remember someone from 20 years ago?
They can remember me, but I can't remember them. I was actually in the dentist chair, um, this week. I had a, uh, I had to get a false filling in and I had to get the other one ripped out. Dentist. Well, yeah, it's terrible. Oh, geez. And he's in my mouth and he's working and he's going, "You are the epitome about what we all aim for.
You know, you're successful, you've got a great wife, you've got great kids." And you're sitting there going, "Just work on my teeth, please." Just...
Kevin: It's hurting. Concentrate. Concentrate, concentrate. Yeah. All right, there's one last question here. It's from, uh, the first podcast that we ever did, and we, the boys had this cross connection, the young adults, and I didn't answer this question well.
So, um, maybe you might be able to answer it. W- it's a would you rather question.
Jeff: Oh, yeah.
Kevin: Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?
Jeff: 100 size, duck-sized horses. 100 duck-sized horses.
Kevin: I, I didn't know how to answer that, but what, why would you pick that? They're small. They're small.
Jeff: A big duck with a big beak has gotta be dangerous. All right.
Kevin: Good call. Good call. You did better than me on that one. So, um, let's talk a little bit about the current reality. Uh, tell us a bit about your family. Got a photo? Yeah. So
Jeff: I'm married to Lynn. We've been together over 40 years now, so we've had a, a long life together, and we have three beautiful children and they're all here, and then they're married.
And you can see that the two boys at the front there are trying to take over the whole show.
Kevin: Yes. Yes, I'm noticing that. Yeah. I'm noticing that, yeah. They're not small,
Jeff: so there's that. And we've got two grandkids, and they... Tor and Keely and the two grandkids live with us at home, so we are constant babysitters.
Kevin: Wow.
Jeff: It's just beautiful. It's a great- It's a great
Kevin: family ... we love it. It's fantastic. It's a great family. Yeah. You're right about the two boys taking over. They really are, aren't they? Like, big personalities.
Jeff: In every way.
Kevin: Yeah. So who's Geoff Davis outside of, say, your, um, public eye? Like, when you get in private, when you're chilling with family and friends, who's Geoff?
Jeff: Yeah, it's interesting. Most people don't realize I'm a 98% introvert, so I love my own time and spending time with myself. So pottering around in the garden or, you know, I rebuild cars, and so doing those sorts of things is something, if I'm by myself, I'm at my happiest or on the golf course, and that's almost by myself.
So that's how I, I view life and- So
Kevin: you find that kind of therapeutic for you? Like- Oh, absolutely.
Jeff: Like, being around people is absolutely exhausting. Yes, I run the second-biggest school on the Gold Coast, uh, second-biggest independent school on the Gold Coast- That takes a lot of energy and effort, and, uh, people don't realize that it's, you know, the constant connection with people is, is fantastic and God's called me to do that.
But it is not suited to my personality.
Kevin: Yeah, right. Mm. So you're very introverted? '
Jeff: Cause people- Very introverted ... people probably wouldn't think- And I married a very extroverted wife
Kevin: Really? And everyone
Jeff: agrees with that except my wife, who says she's only marginal.
Kevin: She's... Your wife thinks she's marginally- Extroverted
extroverted and you're introverted.
Jeff: I always explain my wife is the life of every party.
Kevin: All right. So you're basically now you're kind of a champion in the area of innovative education. You're sought after all round the world. You got your little book here, Leading a Learning Revolution, which we might do a podcast on later.
But getting to behind that, say, what, what kinda gets you out of bed? What fires you to get out of bed and to dri- this drive of how kids learn? What's, what's that?
Jeff: So why do we have classrooms which were designed in the 1700s? So I talk about it all the time. It's the fact that, uh, 75% of teachers sat in the front row of their classroom.
And so if you get to a teacher, a great question is saying, "In year 12, did you sit in the front row of your class?" Three-quarters are gonna say yes, and they go and get a university degree and they replicate what they loved. The problem is the world's changing, kids are changing, and we have to actually recognize that the best practice of learning is not a square box with a font of all knowledge.
If we go and take a look at Moore's Law, Moore's Law talks about the doubling of world knowledge. So if you go back and take a look at, uh, say, the 1900s, world knowledge doubled every 100 years. If you go to 1945, after the war, after the Second World War, we ended up with world knowledge doubling every 25 years.
Into the 1980s, it came down to about nine days. Into the 2000s, it... Sorry, nine years, it came down to four years. At the moment, it's less than 12 months. I was just reading a futuristic, um, article last week, and they're saying with the advent of AI and our ability to process data, we can transfer the knowledge that we have into new knowledge and double the world knowledge in 12 hours.
Right. Now, this is, this is where- So you're saying
Kevin: that, that's the reason why you gotta innovate, because it's, it's a different world completely now.
Jeff: So the... We're taking a 1700 model to create basic education in a complex world which is so different.
Kevin: Yeah. We've gotta
Jeff: iterate.
Kevin: Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, listen, um, that sounds like a difficult job, but let's look at your highlight reel and a blooper reel.
You know? Have you got a win, like, over the last- season, like, man, that really, we hit that, that went well. And was there one that you hit and went, "That was an epic failure"?
Jeff: I've got a win and a failure at the same time. So we looked at what we could do in terms of our middle years education and said that, "Okay, the classroom's wrong.
What can we do?" I actually ran out of classrooms, and I had 12 weeks to find eight new classrooms. I had no chance of doing it. So I proposed that we actually in-build a car park. And so we looked at it and we said, "How do we actually do that? What are the things that we need to create?" So we did that, and, uh, we, in eight weeks we built it and created this big open space learning area.
The highlight was we opened it, like, we literally finished it on the Sunday. On the Monday, we opened it. The kids came in, they threw off their shoes, and they ran around for 45 minutes just so delighted they had something different. And it was one of those years... I've still got the video on my phone and I watch it because it reminds that, that the thought process that went behind it took, you know, 20 years to develop.
But the excitement in the kids and the way they engaged it was something that was incredible. The flip side of that is I took teachers out of a square classroom and put them into an open space. Oops. Oops. Because they're used to one thing and, and I put them into something else. They ended up crying. And I'm talking every night I'd go and meet with them, and they just couldn't handle this new paradigm 'cause I didn't do the change management well.
So I had to go back into the classroom and actually start teaching how to innovate and how to create it. Now, a lot of our kids here, a lot of our youth who go to Hillcrest have been through that, and it is this synonymous thing about they learned a different way of learning, more responsibility, more accountability, more understanding of problem-solving.
These are the things that we need for our children in the future, so-
Kevin: Yes ... so it's, you
Jeff: know- One and the same thing.
Kevin: We end up with this- It's a great win and a learning- Yeah. So- Epic ... yeah, fantastic. Oh, that's, that's cool. 'Cause you've got a, you've got a kind of a word that I hear thrown around every so often called flarning.
What's that about?
Jeff: We often think of learning as something people teach us and we regurgitate. We actually learn more through failure. Like, you know, who has cooked a bad meal? Yeah? Who's learnt from that? Yeah. And I often talk to people about, um, when you learned to ride a bike. Did you, um, learn to s- ride a bike, or did you learn not to fall off?
Yeah. Both are actually true, but we actually, once we've fallen off once, we don't wanna do it again. And so part of that is, you know, with flarning, is saying we learn through failure. We're, we're in a world now, and particularly with the, the way in which Australians think, is that we can no longer fail.
And we've actually gotta teach our kids to, to push some limits and to... And I'm not saying do evil and naughty things, but I'm saying, okay, challenge your ability. Challenge your thinking to actually create the opportunity to fail, 'cause we'll learn through that. That's it. We often talk about if we, when we fail, that's our point where our learning starts.
Kevin: That's great. So if you don't- Take the risk of something new and fail, you're never gonna learn anything. That is great. Listen, I think I know the answer to this question, but I'll throw it in anyway. When you're standing on stage and you've got your suit here and you're doing your thing, you know, what is the one thing that people assume about you, about you and your life, that is probably further from the truth?
Jeff: Yeah, most people would think that's easy. It's easy because of practice, but not easy because of, you know, it's difficult to get up there, and it's not my natural source. So it takes a lot of energy to get up there and speak. And while I've learnt as a behavior to be able to do it, it's every time it's hard.
Every single time.
Kevin: Be real hard, too, if you, if you're also got that introvert side, then you do have some other things. You've got to create some skills to move through that. That's great. All right, let's go to the backstory, the formative years. Let's go back a little bit because, uh, you were once a student.
So, uh, where did you grow up, for starters? Small
Jeff: country town called Benalla, two hundred kilometers northeast of Melbourne.
Kevin: Wow! What was it like growing up in a country town? Um,
Jeff: it, you know, like there was twenty-two in my year level, so it was, it was a very different sort of experience. You didn't have many friends.
There weren't many people around. So yeah, it was just a...
Kevin: Okay. So give us, give us a little bit. What, what was the vibe like growing up in the Davis home, in your family?
Jeff: Yeah, so there was, um, my, my... Lots of stories about this, but my sister was a fair bit older, and Mum had had an accident, so she couldn't have children.
Then she had two in a row, so my brother was one year and three days younger than me. So we were raised as twins. Um, but he looked, uh... I don't even have a photo of him, but he looked exactly like my son, Joshua. And, uh, so we grew up as twins, and we did everything together. So, um, Dad was a truck driver or running local businesses, so he was not home.
Uh, my sister was at university, so it was just the two of us. Right. So Mum would throw us out in the morning and tell us to come home when it got dark.
Kevin: Right. So, so, so, so you're saying Dad was away a lot? Yep. How did, how did that affect you growing up?
Jeff: Oh, it meant my brother and I were completely... You know, we were best friends.
Um, we didn't have many other people in the town, so we just did everything together. So if there was trouble, we were there.
Kevin: I can imagine that, yeah. Okay, so, um, so growing up in your family younger, even though Dad was away a lot, was faith or religion a part of your relationship or part of that connection or just not a,
Jeff: not there?
Not a part. I was playing golf. By the time I became a teenager, I was a very good golfer, and I was playing a lot of golf. And so my Sundays were shooting course records and, uh, you know. And it was one of those things where faith wasn't a, any part of our life except for the fact that there was a local youth group which we went to occasionally.
Kevin: Right. Mm-hmm. Okay, uh, so- Everybody has those moments that happen in their life which they didn't see coming, they blindsided them, uh, but it changed the dynamic of everything. So have you got anything like that in your life?
Jeff: Yeah. So my younger brother, Peter, passed away in a motorbike crash when he was 18 and I was 19.
And he'd found faith. He'd spent more time in the church than I had. I was at uni at that stage. And, um, yeah, and so that, that put a whole perspective of what life was all about. Pursuing a career potentially in golf and doing some, uh, you know, study at university. Just that whole sort of perspective of what you think is going to happen changes.
Kevin: So how did that affect the dynamic? 'Cause you, you and Peter were very close. Mm. How did it fi- affect the dynamic within the context of the family after Peter had passed?
Jeff: Oh, the family fell apart and, and you... I was tried to hold, be the glue to hold that together, and that's, that's a challenging part of my life because it's, you're, you're trying to pull everything together.
You're trying to, uh, be successful in what you're doing, but the family's falling apart. So it was a time where I had to do a lot of deep soul-searching and trying to work out what was really important in life. Um, and at that point in time I was, you know, studying in, you know, 200 kilometers away in Melbourne and trying to make success out of that and, you know, practicing golf and wherever I could.
It was a, it was a very complex time.
Kevin: Yeah. So I'm assuming then with, with Peter gone, and Dad's a truck driver moving away, you kinda had to step up a little bit into that place in- Yeah ... the family.
Jeff: It was a, a very, very challenging time in terms of supporting Mum and, and so forth, and Mum has never really gotten over that, and so she's 87 now and she has no family photos at home and she...
Yeah, so it's, it's been a, not just a singular event, it's been a lifetime altering event and, uh-
Kevin: That was gonna be my next question, so how did Mum process that or Dad? So it's, uh, you never really recover then? Is that what you're saying?
Jeff: Uh, Mum and Dad, you know, like, it was a very tricky time.
Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. So- Okay
Jeff: yeah, very, very tricky.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah.
Kevin: Well, thank you for sharing that. Yeah. I, I appreciate that because once again, people don't know. We, we can always assume what's going on in someone's life and their past but we never know unless we get opportunity to actually talk. So go back to when you were a kid at school.
Were you the kid that was always sitting in the front seat or were you like looking out the window dreaming?
Jeff: Yeah, no, the window or out the window.
Kevin: Out- Oh, you'd actually get out the window? Oh, that's cool. There's no point
Jeff: being in the classroom if you weren't learning anything. Uh, schooling came very naturally to me so the, the concept was what they were teaching I was often miles ahead of.
So for me it was a big boring exercise Right. So banking, proving teachers wrong and stuff like that were probably more a- akin to what I was enjoying.
Kevin: So did that time, you growing up at that time, did that actually shape- Yes,
Jeff: that is my hair. Stop laughing.
Kevin: I was just looking at that. I was thinking, that is...
You could have just... Mate, you could have just done Australian Idol. The guy Sebastian with the hair doing like that. You can
Jeff: understand why Lynn fell for me.
Kevin: That's a good head of hair. That's a great head of hair. Yeah, all right. S- so do, do you... Oh, look, we... Oh, look, he's AI'd it. Man, look at that. Yeah.
Wow, Matt.
Yeah. What- when you look at that photo, what do you think?
Jeff: Yeah, great. Yeah, love it.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jeff: I don't have it up at home, I'll tell you that.
Kevin: S- so how did, how did that, a bad experience growing up as a kid in school, has that actually been the catalyst to shape some of the thinking around your innovation for the future?
Oh, yeah.
Jeff: Yeah, look, you take a look at the people who succeed in school. So if you think about schooling, and this is really, like, a completely different direction we talked about, Kev. But, yeah, we'll go there. So schooling is designed for average kids, so an average of an IQ of 100. But the problem is that there are kids above and below.
So the concept that schooling as this average me- um, mechanism for actually raising kids doesn't cater. It's not designed to. You can't get... Like, you know, if you've got a good teacher, like Brad Schurz, what an amazing guy. If you get a good teacher like Brad, Brad'll go, you know, two standard deviations. So, like, it'll be a da- a standard deviation up to 110, a standard deviation below to 90, and he'll cater for kids at maybe those three levels.
But there are 50% of the kids outside that, and it's an exceptional teacher that can engage everyone in a classroom. And so this is where we... our problem is, that we've, we've, we've gotta try and think of learning it from a different point of view, that the teacher is the font of all knowledge. Like, if you wanna get into teaching qualifications now, you need an ATAR of 54.
That's just ridiculous, because it's one of the, if not the, most important thing that we do in raising our children, is to educate them so that they have an understanding of what the future's gonna be like. The teacher as the font of all knowledge creates this massive issue about, um, you know, how our children are raised, particularly from a faith perspective.
If you've got a person who doesn't have a strong faith, what does that do? How does that influence?
Kevin: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, so you basically created this whole thing to deal with what you missed.
Jeff: Correct. Exactly. Yeah.
Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate it 'cause, you know that 50% you talk about? I'm in the 51. I'm in, I'm down there in that lower one year.
So listen, um, is... was there a sliding doors moment, like, for you? Like, like a conversation or anything that you had that if it would've gone a different way, you might not have ever ended up in education?
Jeff: Yeah, when I was... So I, I came to faith after my b- brother passed away. He'd found faith, and he was living a very incredible life.
And I did a bit of searching for a year and at uni and then joined a couple of the uni groups and ended up, um, be- uh, ended up at Murrameta Baptist Church. And, and I was working in the youth group there, trying to help out as best I could, and I really felt a calling to... So I said to the, the youth pastor at the time, who was going through a pretty tough time, I said, "I really feel that, you know, this is something God's calling me to, working with youth, becoming a pastor."
And he looked at me and straight down, straight down to my eyes and said, "You are not becoming a pastor. You are to become a teacher." And it was like, I'm not sure if it was to do with, uh, inspiration from God or the fact that he was just going through such a hard time. But the moment he said that, I stuck it out,
Kevin: and yeah.
Isn't that funny? Could have been a word from God, could have been just him talking out of his own terror and bad experience.
Jeff: Hmm. Hmm.
Kevin: But either way, God seems to have worked it out.
Jeff: Totally.
Kevin: That's cool. That's cool.
Jeff: So when did you- The argue- the argument would be that I'm in- I'm influencing, you know, thousands of people, thousands of families.
Could I have done that as a pastor? So the argument is that, you know, God had a calling there.
Kevin: Yeah. Hmm. That was gonna be my next thing. So when did you realize that education was moving on from you from beyond career to calling? Was there a point in time when you realized that, hey, this is where it's going?
Jeff: Yeah, when I started teaching and I began to, like, I introduced my first school, a, a school which is, was very non-Christian, I was able to introduce a, um, a Christian program into the kids, and we saw kids get transformed. Uh, Lynn and I were running a youth group then at, um, Dandenong Baptist, and we were running that, and we saw kids, after kid after kid, come and actually find Jesus, and their lives were transformed.
The concept about schooling is that, you know, like, it's about education. It never was meant to be about that. It was about to be, original intention of schools were that they were a place where people would learn about faith and learn to read and write. And so over the years, it's actually, they've tried to separate them to the point now where even Christian schools have a very s- very small faith component.
Faith is the most important thing our children need to learn. That's the thing we've got to actually emphasize, 'cause when LA fails, you need to lean back on something, and that's our faith.
Kevin: Very cool. So give us your definition of leadership. What is your definition?
Jeff: Yeah, leadership is a, is, like it's been researched multiple times, multiple ways, like hundreds and thousands of times, but there's no particular definition.
And I like to sort of think about how we influence people. And so from my perspective, I look and say, uh, the test of my leadership will be the people I've influenced and see what they've achieved, not what I've achieved. And so it's pointless me achieving everything but nobody else following. So if people are listening and following and doing things like, um- You know, what I'm, I'm talking about, what God's called me to talk about, then that's what, what I think is the most important thing in leadership
Kevin: Influencing.
That's cool. That's cool. Well, let's, let's change gears, and we're gonna talk a little bit about how do you lead through storms.
Mm. '
Cause we all know that leadership, um, can look great on the outside, but on the inside, the weight of responsibility can be really heavy. Uh, you yourself have faced a, a few leadership storms in your career.
Um, so when everything is kinda like turning against you, and everyone's turning against you, and everyone's questioning your motives and saying terrible things and all that kind of stuff, how do you keep showing up in that moment?
Jeff: Yeah, it's, it's a really good question. You know, faith has been an important part in everything I do, and believing what God's called me to do is, is that essence of why I keep turning up.
And so putting God first and seeking every morning my devotions, followed by prayer through my calendar about what's happening, God, turn up in front of me. And even through the, the toughest times when, you know, I was in the paper 42 times, um, with a vexatious attack, and it's literally, you've just gotta put God on the, on his pedestal and say, "Okay, God, I'm here to serve you.
Whatever the circumstance, use it." And it's just actually trying to ensure that don't put your own strength there, because your own strength will fail, but God's strength never fails.
Kevin: Right. So essentially, it was, it was relying on your faith in God that actually held you through that. Did you have any people around you that were kind of like what I call lightning rods, someone you could trust and just...
Did you have some people there?
Jeff: Yeah, uh, obviously I've got Lynn and, uh, you know, we've been through thick and thin over, you know, more than 40 years, and so we're very blessed to have, you know, been able to walk those journeys together. But there's a few other trusted colleagues, but one of the things about the higher up you get, the more you realize that the people who actually, um, are there to support you-
Kevin: Yeah
are
Jeff: smaller.
Kevin: Yeah. Mm. Yeah. That's a pretty good photo. Look, she looks extroverted to me. Yeah. What do you reckon? I reckon, I reckon about 65%. What do you reckon?
Jeff: Uh, 85, yeah. I always say 100, but I get in trouble for that, so I'll get in trouble again.
Kevin: So i- in, in the, uh, you- in your book- Yeah ... this, uh, this book here, again, in case you come in late.
You should get it. It's a good read. Um, there's a story that you mention in there about when you were in the very thick of it, and there's always this difficulty, like how do you stop and not run, and not run, not run? Because that's what you wanna do. Everything within you just wants to find a safe place.
But you, there's a story in there about Dr. Cathy that gave some counterintuitive advice to you during this time.
Jeff: Yeah, so in that season of a couple of years, and I was feeling like I was just exhausted, not sleeping well. And, and not because I was fearful, it was just one you've-- there's enormous amounts of pressure from every particular angle.
And, uh, I went and saw the doctors. I just needed, just needed a brief break, and I d- I j- just said, "Uh, look, I just need a couple of weeks off, just to recoup, just to go away." And she's known as a lady who's very compassionate, and a lot of people go to her, and she often gives them leave. And she just looked me in the eye and said, "Nah, we need you back at school.
Get up there. Get back there. I'm not giving you any time off."
Kevin: So she wouldn't give you time off? Nope. In the midst of all that, everything was going on? In the midst of
Jeff: everything going on, she said, "Get back up there." And it was a fascinating thing because it really showed me, and she's a, a faithful woman of God, and she could see that God's calling was there, and we had to be-- y- you've gotta be able to face the storm.
Yeah. And that was something which, you know, like it transformed me as a person because it, it's so easy to walk away. But when you actually sit down and think about it, to sit down, and I always talk about sit in it. If you've got a problem, sit in it. Allow God to solve it. Often we try and solve it in our own strength and, you know, I'm quite a capable person, and I can solve most problems.
But I've had to learn to be really patient and sit in problems. And it's one of the things I talk to my leadership team about. When they've got a problem, don't come to me straight away. Sit in it, pray about it. Allow the time for God to actually come and resolve it.
Kevin: Man, I think she gave you great advice because one of the key things when things are going bad, if there's a le-- if a leader disappears, it leaves a vacuum, it leaves a hole.
And man, that is when the gossip train starts flying, you know? So I, I think she did great on there for you. So has your view of God changed a little bit from when you were a teacher in a classroom to now in an executive principal kind of place?
Jeff: Oh, definitely. G- God is faithful, and you can't do a job like I do without actually having this, this, uh, deep connection to God because it's just like, there are too many complexities.
If you just focused on the day-to-day things, um, you would just-- your mind would just completely just get lost in that. But if you focus on God, not so much on the day-to-day things, and allow God to look after the day-to-day things, you, you'll see nuggets of gold turn up everywhere. You'll see people transform.
You'll see situations resolve that you didn't think possible. And so, you know, my view of God is that He will come into every situation. We are just so used to solving it ourselves that we don't give God the opportunity.
Kevin: Right. And I guess also in that line, probably the reason why you've learnt that is the fact that from a classroom, you've got, what, thirty kids or something like that you're influencing?
From a
Jeff: principal- No, not at our school. It's like twenty-seven. Yeah, but when,
Kevin: when you're thinking as a teacher in a classroom, you might have-
Right ...
whatever kids there. But, but when you're a principal, like it's, it's like being a pastor. Everything you say affects hundreds of people, if not thousands. So, so does that-- do you feel that weight?
Jeff: Oh, definitely. Like, you have to really pray through everything you say. Um, people listen, people respond. If you say things that... You know, one of the first things I learned in leadership was that I made the assumption that everybody thought like me. The reality is nobody thinks like me. And so in that context, I had to slow it down and say, "Okay, so if I'm thinking of 100 things, what are the three most important things that I need to share?
And how many times do I need to share it until people understand it? And how many times do I need to share it until they believe it?" Because we often think that our opinion is the same as everybody else's, and it's not. We have two ears and one mouth that's God-given. There's a good reason for that. And listening to people and actually recognizing that, you know, what we say needs to be critiqued.
And if we talk about, like, in history, people used to sit down on the, the porch and have a dr- drink like this, and, you know, may talk about the, the Israelite, um, the, or the Israelite people, where they'd say, "If you've got two Israelites sitting down, there's three opinions." Each one has a different opinion, and at the end of it they have the same opinion, and that's three different opinions.
What we think is that we're right, everybody else is wrong, and we don't even critique our thinking, and that's a real lost skill in the world. It is. And particularly when you come to the Bible, because the Bible is meant to be critiqued. It's meant to be discussed, and it's meant to be ingrained on your heart.
That comes through discussion like this. Yeah. So devotions, times where you get to meet and talk, they are critical things, and we've lost that as a society.
Kevin: Very good. Okay, let's look, let's look at le- legacy and personal coming towards a close. Like, here's a statement: "Legacy isn't what you accomplish.
Legacy is what others accomplish because of you." What does that quote mean to you?
Jeff: Yeah, and I, I think that, like, people say, "Oh, you know, I'm approaching the end of my career. What do I, I want the future to look like?" And I, I, I wanna look in 20 years' time and see that what we've started has taken hold. Um, I've just come back from South Korea, where I was the guest speaker three years ago, um, at their World Education Summit.
And at that World Education Summit, I talked to them about the need to move towards, uh, innovation, but they've got a very, very, very traditional classroom setup. I talked to them about you don't need to start with anything, you need to start with one or two classrooms. And so I visited all these schools, and one or two of their classrooms had been transformed into these incredible innovative spaces.
And it was this delight that what I said three years ago, they listened to and are working towards it. And so in 20 years' time, I hope that every school has starting to think a little bit differently, and that we actually have our kids learning about Jesus every day, but learning about the things that are important in the future, not in the past.
Kevin: Very good. So listen,
Jeff: um,
Kevin: how long have you been following Christ now? Since you were- Over 40 years. Over 40 years. Great. Um, is there a particular- A verse in the Bible that is your go-to verse, like, you hang on to it?
Jeff: Yeah. In the last book of Joshua. You know, we have, uh, is it Joshua 24- 15? 15. You know, "As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord."
And it's been that one where, you know, and Joshua was talking to the Israelite people, and it was just before he passed away. And he was telling them, "Pick your God. Pick who you're going to be. But as for me and my God, uh, me and my family, we will serve the Lord." And, you know, Josh gave me a, um... He got married two years ago, and he gave me a tie pin, which is, uh, it's got that on it, which is something which is synonymous, because it's our, something our family has.
But it's actually, um, engraved upside down. But I wear the tie pin upside down because I can pull it out and I can see it as the reminder that in my life and as for my family, we will serve the Lord. Oh, so you wear that? Every day.
Kevin: And so if you need to remember it, you just pull it out, turn the tie pin up?
Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. Well, why that one? You know, like, it's a big book. Yeah. There's lots of verses in there. Why that particular one? I think it's a choice.
Jeff: So every day we walk out of here and we go into the world, we have a choice. It's the choice that we have to make about how we live our life, how we transform others, and how we actually choose to be an example to others.
Now, people watch our family, we know that. Um, that's part of, uh, being a public figure, which is not something I love. But if people can actually say, "Hang on a sec, there's something different about them," and that different is faith, then that's what's really critical in what we do. And so, you know, I believe that, you know, the choice to follow Jesus and to make him the Lord of your life on a daily basis is what's the most critical thing for us as adults, because that actually shows our kids who...
what we mean, and that's how we create a generation of people who will follow Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
Kevin: That's great. So essentially, that verse is your drawing a line in the sand to say, "That's it, this is what's gonna happen," and you don't deviate from it. That's great. So I asked you to bring an object, and it's sitting down there, which is your golf club.
Um, how does, uh, what does this mean and how does it represent you?
Jeff: Well, it's interesting. So when I was... I had a, a season of trying to be a professional golfer, which wasn't highly successful, but it was a... I had a crack. And I ended up buying this club. This club's about 43 years old, and, uh, no one would ever have a, um, 43-year-old club in their bag.
But it was a special made club at the time, which is designed to get me out of trouble. And so whenever I'd... You know, if you think about playing golf, like, you can play safe, and most people like playing safe, and I was taught not to play safe. I was taught to have a crack at everything. You know, sheer violence, if you like.
And- The issue come that you get in trouble. So what's your get out of trouble club? Right. And this is, like, it's a 64-degree flop wedge, which means the ball, wherever you are, the ball just goes straight up, and where it lands, it stops. And so whether you're in the bunker, whether you're in the trees, whether you're in the rough, this was the club that got me out of trouble.
It's synonymous because I've carried it. Like, it's, I carry it in my bag and I will not replace it. Its grooves are all gone and, but it's still that memory of getting out of trouble. It's like having scripture in your heart.
Kevin: Right. Right. Gotcha. When you get in
Jeff: trouble, when you get in trouble, what do you lean on?
When I'm in trouble on the golf course, here it is. When I'm in trouble at work, which is every day, ask Kirsten, um, what do I lean on? I lean on scripture. I lean on my faith, and that's a really important metaphor.
Kevin: That's great. So what if someone else is in trouble? Do you carry that with you when someone else is in trouble?
Jeff: Lynn carries it occasionally.
Kevin: Okay. That's great. I mean, like, and you carried that for 40...
Jeff: 43 years. 43 years. Mm. It's had a couple of grips on it, but it's the same club.
Kevin: Yeah. Same club. Okay. Right, so he- here's one for you. If you could whisper one thing to the 20-year-old Jeff Davis, knowing the weight of what you know now and what's coming, what would you say to him?
Jeff: Uh, firstly, I'd say, "Don't sweat the small stuff." We often get too worried about the small things in life. There'll be bigger things that'll come across that you need to work through. And the second thing is to put your faith in God. If you can walk with God every step of your life, you'll have a, a, no matter what happens, you'll know that your life has been meaningful and worthwhile.
And often we just try and do it through our own strength, and we worry about things that you can give to God. Give it to God and let God do his magic.
Kevin: So when you say, "Don't sweat the small stuff," did you worry about a lot of stuff growing up?
Jeff: I think there's some things that I worried about I didn't have to.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jeff: You know, and I think that there's the, the concepts of, you know, what life may become, you know, do we have any real say over that? And the choices we make, are they, if they're not with God's step, what does it mean? You know, if you actually, you know, that sliding doors moment where the pastor said, "Hang on a sec, be- become a teacher," and I said, "Well, actually, I'm gonna do that.
It's been spoken to me, so I'm gonna believe it. I'm gonna do it and just follow it."
Kevin: Good. Okay. All right, so when all is said and done, when all is said and done, what do you hope future generations will remember you for?
Jeff: Yeah, I'd prefer think, uh, the invisible man. Um, I don't know. Like, it's, it's not a question I can easily answer.
It's a, you know, I see a lot of these, um, a funny story. Um, the children I first taught are now, are now grandparents. Huh? So- Whoa, that makes you feel old, doesn't it? It, it does. You're older than me. Um. Thanks for the reminder It's, it's just an interesting-- So, you know, if people who've gone through my schools, whether that be the public school system or the Hillcrest Christian College, if they can remember the person who had faith, and they remember that, um, you know, somebody who actually, like, wherever I've led, I put faith on the pedestal and said, "That's what they've gotta do."
And if that transforms lives, and they can see that that's helped them live their life,
Kevin: that's cool. Cool. That's pretty cool to be remembered for. Yeah. Well, Jeff, thanks for coming and sharing with us. It's been a pleasure having you here with us. Thanks, Tony. Thanks for letting us get up close and personal.