YouSaid · the spoken record

Roula Khalaf

lines on the record: 30
first: 2022-05-20
most recent: 2022-05-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“One is to listen. I think there is a great need right now for leaders to listen. Two, I would say, to be willing to change the culture of an organization, but while preserving what is most valuable. And three, I would say, focus on collaborative work, focus on getting people to work together and to understand that working together is what produces the best work. So teamwork, and have a great team around you. That's always the best advice to leaders.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know that failure played a role in my success. Do I have regrets? Have I done things that I would have done differently? I think that's definitely the case. I mentioned earlier that I wish I had done was to have covered other parts of the world. In particular, I always wanted to cover Russia and China. And I was always sort of told, okay, that, you know, like the next time, but now the story is too big. And one of the things that I tell journalists today is don't actually, I know I stayed in one. Job for a long time, but don't stay in the job for a long time. Diversify your experience, challenge yourself and get to know different parts of the world. And definitely go abroad. This is one of the great things that the FT offers. It's for you to be a foreign correspondent. So accumulate different experiences and as many as you can.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it does matter, of course it matters. I think we have to wait and see what he does with Twitter from what we know. What's driving him is the whole idea of that Twitter is not really respecting free speech. But the truth is that Elon Musk isn't going to be able to do whatever he wants with Twitter. There's regulation. There are governments out there. And I think that the EU has already issued a statement warning him. I think that there's a broader issue here, and that is who is the arbiter of free speech. And I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable if Elon Musk was an arbiter of free speech.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is what gets me to something that is extremely important for me and for the FT, and that is flexibility. You have to be able to move people around, to focus on what is important at one point in time, but then also to shift emphasis when that is required. So we built up a team on health and science during the pandemic. And if we hadn't been, if we weren't flexible, we wouldn't have been able to do this. So you have to not think in silos all the time. You have to be able to move people around and move people the way that people think also, shape the way that the staff thinks at times in order to change focus.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I think that that's one of the issues that we're always discussing at the FT. What is relevant to our readers today, but what is also You have to anticipate. You have to also coverage. And you also have to sometimes think that to invest in something that may not appear relevant today, but you know that it is going to be irrelevant. I mean, we invested in the climate capital hub. Frankly, exactly at the right time because climate became a massive issue for readers. Today, for example, our commodities team needs a lot more support because we are again in a commodities cycle, a commodities crisis. A couple of years ago, we weren't. And that's what”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, of course, it is lonelier. It is lonelier because, as I said, ultimately the decision does lie with you. And because are more likely not to come to you first, which is healthy for an organization. But I think that the team helps to make it less lonely. The fact that you can bounce off ideas, the fact that I'm close to my team and we talk every day. So it makes it less lonely.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the main difference is exactly what I was saying is as deputy editor you help to solve a lot of problems. A lot of people come to you because they don't want to go to see the editor. And you try to bring solutions to the editor and you try to resolve issues before they get to the editor. But at the same time, you know that there is somebody, your boss, that you can go to for the final decision. And I think that today, you know, I don't have the editor to go to for the final decision. The final decision rests with me. The great thing that I find, though, is if you have the right team around you, the right deputy editor, managing editor, assistant editors, and I have a terrific. Team, then they can also help you to reach the decisions. And I think I'm very lucky in having such a terrific team around me.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nothing terribly unusual in my running conference every day and I would do it for sometimes one or two weeks at a time. And so I think that I had the respect and the confidence of the newsroom.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not sure that I had to fight more for recognition because I had been at the FT for a long time. And I think that I had the respect of my colleagues. And the fact that I had been deputy editor for several years, so I helped to run the newspaper on a day-to-day basis, especially at a time when the editor was traveling quite a bit. And I had the confidence of the editor. So I think everyone saw me doing the job on a day-to-day basis. Obviously, being deputy editor is very different from being editor because you can always go to the editor for the final decision. And now every final decision rests with me. But I think everyone had seen me doing the job.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A younger generation who come into the FT, at least 50% and often more than 50% are women. And at the top levels, we're about 45% now, and I hope that we'll be 50% very soon. But I think that in the middle level, this is where I still have work to do. And I think that I'm often looking for women who may have left journalism for one reason or another and want to come back into journalism. And I'm very keen to hire women in those levels that maybe running a desk or running a team. So in team leadership positions.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, first of all, I think Lionel was very, very genuine and he really did want to deal with the alpha male problem. And we talked about it a lot when I was deputy editor. And I think that was probably one of the reasons that he had appointed me as deputy editor. I don't like to think of it as an alpha male problem. I like to think of it as, and that is indeed how I think of it. You need a diversity of views because that makes for better journalism. It makes for more creative ideas. It makes for a much more interesting debate. And I think that what I have tried to do is to have enough women in the room at every level of the organization. And what I found is that in some ways it is easier to get it at the top levels of the organization because you can promote people. But where it is more difficult is in the middle. We hire at least 50%.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think that the challenge is also that there will always be people who think we should go back completely to the way we were and people who think you don't have to be there at all. And I spent a lot of time trying to explain why I made the decision, why I reached the decision that I had reached about the three-day altogether Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And I had, in fact, talked to a lot.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, this is what we've been trying to do. We started in March with a new hybrid working system and with three days a week where I wanted everybody to actually be together in the office rather than teams deciding I'll be in on Monday and somebody else will be in on Tuesday so that we can try to get the best of both worlds.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People getting sick or their relatives were getting sick. And I think that in my discussions with CEOs and business leaders, I think everyone has found that you needed to pay attention to more than the work that the staff is producing. You needed to really to be a lot more caring, a lot more sympathetic to what people were going through. And I think that that is something that will continue long after the pandemic because the pandemic created this new concept of flexibility. And I think that there is a lot of benefit to flexibility. People have discovered a much better work-life balance. And I think that we have to try to preserve some of that while at the same time bringing people back to the office and recreating or rejuvenating the collaboration, the creativity that comes with people being together.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it taught me a lot about management. I think that the pandemic required a completely different style of management. And that's certainly something that I hadn't anticipated. And when I speak to a lot of leaders in the business community, they found also that management during the pandemic was different because it wasn't just about the work. It was also about how people have adjusted to a completely different lifestyle and a much more difficult lifestyle. They had to juggle homeschooling and work. There was a lot of mental pressure.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like, well, I like to describe it. This is a question, obviously, better answered by others at the FT, but I like to think that I'm fair. I'm sure that I'm relentless. I like to think that I'm approachable and that people know that they can come and talk to me. I've definitely tried to spread the message that I like to listen and that I'm willing to talk about everything and that people can just email me or knock on my door and come in.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, understanding of what it's like for people and what it's like for reporters on the ground, but what it's also like for the people who they are covering, you know, living through very difficult circumstances, living through trauma. And I think probably that helps.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't think so. It was definitely a dream of mine to cover the Middle East and to be a foreign correspondent. But I think what happened was that because it was a case of continuous crisis, my editors would always say, well, do this stay, do this now. And if you ask me one thing that I do regret is that I think I spent far too much time covering one region. But the region kept changing and the region is actually quite versatile and unbelievably volatile. And so I went from one crisis to another. And I learned how to cover crises. Like, what do you do when you're covering a big crisis? And I think that definitely helps me today in coverage of Ukraine, for example. I think you also develop a certain”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so he was very happy to be interviewed. And it was, of course, at the end of my research that I got in touch with him. And I remember he came into the office and was full of confidence and was therefore very shocked when the story came out. And the story was never called the Wolf of Wall Street. Then when he went to jail eventually, he wrote a book and he described me in the book as an insolent reporter, but he does say, I think that I was clever too, which was good of him. And I think this is, it's the book that then was turned into a Hollywood film, which I thought the film was dreadful, by the way.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, let me first say that the wolf, for those who did see the film, it was nothing like the film, really. He was not on Wall Street to begin with. He had a shop in Long Island, and it was a penny stock shop. So I came across him through some short sellers and people in the business who were looking at dodgy outfits. And I started looking into him and I knew that there was something not quite right in his business. And then when I contacted him, he was...”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's a spectacular rise and a spectacular fall of one of the world's leading businessmen. But I think it's also a story of hubris and to a certain extent possibly greed. I think that sometimes you can get carried away with the power that you accumulate. And I think that is a typical example of that.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's actually my home is in London. This is where my children grew up. But I also still think of Lebanon as home. And my father is there and I go and visit home. But that's not where I live anymore. And I haven't lived there since I went to college. And I made a deliberate decision that I wanted to live in the UK and to be a British citizen. And so that is my home.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Protected by your family, then you feel the trauma of war a little bit less. But we certainly moved around a lot and there was, you know, we was this black bag that my parents always had that had our passports money. And it was the bag that we all knew where it was because we knew that there would be times when we'd just have to grab it and move on.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it didn't seem unusual to me. And I think that whatever situation you're in, you adapt, the civil war in Lebanon was not one continuous conflict. So there were periods of very violent conflict. And then you would think that there's a ceasefire for several months. So in fact, I moved for one year to, my family moved to Egypt for one year. And then later on we moved to Greece, to Athens for some time. And at one point, we also moved to London. And so it was constant to move movements and constant change. But you do adapt. And I think children also create their own world. Their world becomes their family. And I think that as long as you feel...”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't know that it gives me a different perspective because I think that the FT has always been a global organization and certainly my predecessors had worked in different parts of the world. I think that I am a very international person. I grew up in Beirut. I studied in the US and spent 10 years in the US and then moved to London. So obviously my outlook is very international. But we also have a large part of our readership in the UK. And so we have to remain anchored in the UK.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that, as you know, trust and media has been declining. And what happened during the pandemic largely because quality news organizations We are obviously a business. And we know that quality journalism is a very expensive to produce. But I think that I feel, and I think everyone at the FT feels, that we also have a public service role to play. And therefore, in a world of fake news and growing propaganda and the ability to propagate this propaganda so easily through social media, it is our job to make sure that the truth is told and that the truth is spread. and that more people have access to it.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of our best and most authoritative coverage of the pandemic, including data journalism, free to read. And what was really interesting to me is that our subscribers actually really, really appreciated this. I got a lot of emails saying, I am glad that you're doing this and I am willing to pay for others to be able to access this information freely.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of great assets. And so we put a team together. And through our data journalism as well, really leveraged our data journalism. And we were able to establish ourselves as an authority. The other thing I did was that I felt that reliable authoritative information was very badly needed at that time. And so I made some of our coverage free, which was something that was new. I mean, we did in the past make some coverage very, very rarely free. But I decided, and I got the board approval to make some of the”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes and no. So what I try to do is delay a little bit some of my longer term ambitions. I'll give you an example that I came in and I wanted us to do a lot more on climate change because I thought that that is of great concern to business leaders, even those who didn't realize it at the time. And so I moved more slowly on the projects and focused a lot more on coverage and how we cover the pandemic. And one of the things that surprised me is that I didn't think, and I think none of us thought, that, you know, we were a huge authority in science and health. And yet what I discovered is that we have.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yes, it was six weeks before the world fell. I took over and we had to, everything changed in a matter of days. And as you say, I obviously came in with big plans and a lot of ambition. And it was obviously frustrating that I had to deal with something else. But there was also an upside. And that is that I had to focus all my time, all my attention on running the newspaper. So I didn't have anything else that I had to worry about. And I think that that helped us both in our coverage and in making us more sustainable and more secure as a business.”
2022-05-20 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with Roula Khalaf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT