The Nightly On Leadership: Formidable director of morning TV at Seven Sarah Stinson on controlling the chaos

Sarah Stinson operates by a series of seeming contradictions.

“Your greatest strength is your greatest weakness” is one of her favourite axioms.

Her office is an oasis of calm with cushy statement armchairs, lamp lighting and the flicker of a scented candle, but she would never describe herself as zen. She’s not an anxious person, unless you tell her to relax.

Encompassing both sides of opposing forces is how you get things done in the frantic world of breakfast television. As Seven Network’s director of morning TV, Stinson is responsible for 42.5 hours of live programming every week.

You have to be both composed and flexible to organise the chaos.

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“It’s the one thing you can control in an environment where so much is out of your control,” Stinson says. “Structure is really important, but every single day looks different.

“The show goes to air at exactly the same time each day. The meetings go ahead at exactly the same time each day. You just don’t know what the subject of the meetings is or which way (the show) is going to go.

“All of us need to be agile. In our industry, if you’re rigid, you break because things are going to change.”

Stinson has been in the business for more than half her life, ever since she walked into a TV studio 27 years ago. After more than a decade as executive producer for The Morning Show, she was promoted to her current gig four years ago.

Her first leadership role, at A Current Affair, came at a time when she was “very young to have that position”. But there was no spare moment to sit and process what it actually meant to be managing people much older than her.

“I was just firmly focused on, ‘I have to do this job, we have to win, we have to do this’,” she recalls.

Stinson comes across as intense — she locks into you — but also warm and inviting. She describes herself as tactile, and was earlier that morning grasping hands with Baz Luhrmann behind the scenes of his appearance on the network, like they’re already best friends.

When Stinson was younger, she used to get stressed out, and would wear high-cut tops to hide the nervous rashes that would spread across her chest up to her neck. And her hands would shake, because of the adrenaline racing through her body.

But she’s learnt to harness it for her own benefit. When she says that she’s “addicted to adrenaline”, there’s no pretence to it.

It’s an industry that is so rewarding, and an industry where you have the biggest highs,

She was in charge of The Morning Show on December 15, 2014 when the unthinkable happened directly across the road from the studios. Larry Emdur and Kylie Gillies were live on air when the staff and customers of the Lindt Cafe were taken hostage by a terrorist.

It was the lead-up to Christmas and that year’s X Factor winner, Marlisa Punzalan, was performing Silent Night right before an ad break. Stinson had gone upstairs to print something in her office, which overlooked Elizabeth Street. That’s when she saw police running past, guns drawn and pointed down.

“You know when you look at someone and you just know something isn’t right,” she recalls. “It was like panic.

“As journalists, our thing is to keep broadcasting live on air, but what happens if the terrorists are watching and then we’re giving away where the police are running from?”

She had to make the calls and quickly.

“Because it was happening behind us, Larry and Kylie were on air. I said, ‘we’re going to stay on air for now, but keep the shots tight’. Then the message came and the evacuation was happening. They were telling everyone to go to the MLC Centre (a block away).

“I just thought, if this is a terrorist attack, I’m not sending everyone to the MLC Centre, that’s right next to the (Reserve Bank of Australia), that’s right in the city. I want the team out.”

Stinson followed her instincts and defied the instructions. She gathered her team and told them to go instead to The Domain, and to get as far away from the city centre as possible. Each person was to have a partner they were accountable for, and everyone was to report to Chloe Flynn, now the executive producer of The Morning Show, once they made it home.

She went down to the control room and said that whoever wanted to leave should go now, and then there were just Stinson and two other people remaining to run the broadcast.

Faced with panels of lights, screens and buttons and an impossible-to-fathom terrorist situation across the road, her hands were shaking.

“There are all these buttons but I couldn’t (figure them out) because the adrenaline was there,” she remembers. “Then the police came in with big machine guns and were standing behind me and I couldn’t actually press the buttons.

“So, the director was next to me, he still works with me, and he said, ‘OK, I’m going to talk you through which buttons to press’, because we were switching the broadcast to Melbourne.”

He told her to stamp on her toe really, really hard because it would disrupt the adrenaline.

“I was speaking really calmly but my body was like, ‘this is so visceral’. I stamped on my foot so hard and then my hands just stopped shaking,” she says.

Years later, she no longer flushes red and her hands don’t shake, but she still tells any guest who is visibly nervous before they go on TV, especially someone not used to appearing in the media, to squeeze their toes really hard.

That adrenaline, though, that’s still coursing.

Anyone in a leadership position is asked how they log off, but with Stinson, that’s not the question because you already know the answer — she doesn’t.

“A term I don’t like is ‘the juggle’, particularly in an all-consuming industry. The news doesn’t stop, there’s always something. It’s sort of like Tetris,” she says.

When she was offered the director of morning TV job, Stinson had a six-month-old baby, Harry, who’s now four, and his sister, Francesca, who is now seven. To say it was an easy decision would be a lie, but a friend put it into perspective and asked her how she would feel when they announced someone else’s name. That clinched it. She wanted it to be her.

“But my family comes first, nobody can ever question that. Nobody will ever question that. When my children need me, I am absolutely there. It’s a drop-everything situation, and because of this amazing support network I have here, I can do that,” she says.

“The best role in life is being their mum and, to a much lesser extent, a wife,” she adds, finishing with a conspiratorial laugh.

She picks up her kids from school every day, she bathes them, reads them stories, and packs their lunch boxes. She has a support network at home, too — her mum stays with the family two nights a week and her mother-in-law is also on hand.

When one of her staff tells her they’re pregnant, she gets excited.

“We’ve got a few babies happening at the moment. You absolutely can do it. Some people say, ‘you can have it all but you can’t do it all at once’. For me, that hasn’t been my experience, but when I was younger, there were a lot of sacrifices,” she says.

“So, I missed out on being in nightclubs at 2am, which was probably a good thing!”

Whenever Stinson hears of a young woman who decides to not pursue a career in media because of the demands, it makes her sad.

“It’s an industry that is so rewarding, and an industry where you have the biggest highs,” she says. “There’s nothing more exhilarating than a great day in TV. But then you can also have the worst day ever — if the ratings aren’t where you want them to be, or if there’s been an error.

“I’ve made it sound as if it’s all amazing but the responsibility can be very isolating, and you can’t sleep at night because you’re thinking about a region where the ratings (are soft), and how you’re going to fix something or how you’re going to evolve the show.

“There’s such a spotlight on breakfast TV, it’s very noisy. Even if people don’t watch it, they talk about it.”

To borrow a laboured pun, she doesn’t switch off.

“I’m the same person at work that I am away from it. This is me, a little crazy, a bit out there, break a few rules, make it up as I go along, and don’t let the lack of experience or abilities stand in my way of doing something.”

A trip to the library with the kids is a multitasking opportunity — she walks out with Leigh Sales’ book and former Vanity Fair editor and raconteur Graydon Carter’s memoirs. Always on.

There have been lessons learnt from mistakes — “there are a billion” — and her leadership style has evolved because of it, and the industry has, too.

She wants to win, because that’s the job, but not at all costs.

“You have to have integrity, you have to have strength of character, you have to be a decent person,” she explains. “Being a decent person doesn’t mean you’re not tough or can’t have really direct conversations, but you need to play fair. If you don’t play fair, you don’t have longevity.”

Over the Christmas break, Stinson and her family went to Japan. It was her first time there and she inhaled it. Absolutely loved it.

“Everything is so chaotic, but it’s organised,” she says.

Sounds familiar. That alchemic mix of opposing forces, a country that is dynamic and teeming with people, ideas and stimulation, where tradition blends with innovation. Where there’s always something happening, always on.

And yet, somehow, just like morning TV, everything fits together just right so that it all works.

She adds, “I think we’re Japan. Can I say that?”