Blog & News
Expert strategies and insights into effective leadership development.
Mentoring for Corporate Women in Sydney
I love being a Business in Heels mentor. Not only are you able to support other incredible women in their career (and life) journeys, you also learn as much as you share in these sessions. Lisa Sweeney has created such…
The Primary Job of a Leader: To Develop Others
What is your primary role as an emerging leader? Or… Is leadership actually about developing people so the team can consistently perform at a higher level and behave autonomously? In this post I will explore why the most effective leaders…
What Have People Learned to STOP Doing Around You?
“What have people learned to STOP doing around you?” This is a question I sometimes ask in my leadership workshops. It always creates an immediate ripple of nervous laughter. And then you see the tentative smiles erode, it goes quiet,…
How Effective Leaders Work on Their Blind Spots
It was a privilege to speak yesterday at the Future of Events Summit in Sydney. A huge thank you to Stephanie Cassimatis of Pink Caviar Events for the invitation to present, and for bringing together such a diverse group of…
Confident Self-Promotion, Without the Wince
Self-promotion has an image problem. In many corporate environments, especially for women, it can feel like you’re choosing between staying visible or staying likable. But talking about your impact doesn’t have to feel like a cringe-worthy, inauthentic performance. The shift…
How to Give Constructive Feedback in 6 Easy Steps
I am constantly amazed how little feedback my individual leadership coaching clients get at work. Perhaps in a coaching session, they’ll talk to a challenge they’re dealing with and how they’re trying to solve it and I might ask them…
Personal Branding in the C-Suite in an Era of Leadership Complexity
I am speaking on 6 August at the Future of Events Summit in Sydney on the topic of effective Personal Branding in the C-Suite. Corporate leadership has always involved navigating complexity, but the demands on today’s C-suite executives are significantly…
Why Some New Leaders Fail to Build Team Engagement
Picture this: a newly appointed leader who inherits an existing team and then struggles to establish credibility. This is one of the common reasons organisations bring me in as a leadership coach. On paper, promoting this person to a leadership…
A Practical Guide to Confident, Natural Networking
I got asked by a client this week for insights into more effective networking. Seeing as most people find networking awkward, I thought the best approach was to think about how networking can come to us more naturally… and this…
Leadership Coaching is About Finding Solutions – Not Staying Stuck in the Problem
One of the things I believe strongly about leadership coaching is this: a good coach doesn’t keep their client stuck in the problem. Of course problems need to be acknowledged. People need space to identify their challenge, reflect and feel…
7 Curious Questions for Better Team Thinking
As children we ask the question “Why?” a lot, because we are trying to make sense of the world. When my son was a toddler I remember him asking me, when we saw a snail clinging for dear life to…
[VIDEO]: How to Build Trust in Your Team: Assume Competence
In today’s video, we are looking at how to build trust in your team by assuming they are competent. Welcome to my short form leadership training series, designed to evolve your leadership – one strategy at a time. No theory…
How Does a Leader Develop Empathy?
One of the most interesting moments in a workshop I facilitated last week, with a group of senior leaders, came during a discussion about empathy. We explored how quickly leaders move into problem-solving mode, often before people feel heard, or…
Who Must You Become to Reach Your Next Stretching Goal?
Say you have a big, exciting stretch goal you want to achieve such as, How do you approach it? Do you do what you have always done – or do you approach it with a fresh strategy? One of the…
Michelle Obama Live
I had the pleasure of seeing Michelle Obama on her live Australia tour this week at Sydney’s Tik Tok Centre – a fabulous venue overlooking Darling Harbour. My girlfriends and I did have nosebleed seats, as you can tell from…
