Lara Poloni0:00
Leadership is hard. It's hard work, but it's incredibly rewarding. I think the most important thing is to be open to different perspectives on how to be a good leader. There is no manual, no set of management books and theories that teach you how to be a leader. I do believe in concepts like the leadership shadow, where people look at the leaders around them and then have choices—whether it's graduates or other people in the workplace—about where to continue their career, where to work, what projects to work on. So good leaders have to do great things that make people want to follow them. Sometimes you learn your best leadership insights when you see what good leadership isn't. I think a diverse range of experiences is really important for developing your own leadership skills.
When I stepped into the chief executive role, I saw a tremendous opportunity that came with the role. There was a lot of power and influence in a role like mine, so I wanted to put that to good use. One of the ways where I felt that our organization and myself could really have a big impact was encouraging more women into our profession and addressing that at various levels. One of those was doing something tangible in the pay space, because we take for granted that men and women have the same access to the same opportunities and get paid the same all the time. We found out that it's not a level playing field, but through our efforts, I'm really proud that we have had a very strong focus on that. It's the right thing to do, it has definitely some business benefits, and it really has fostered some amazing shared values and great relationship building with our clients, which is an additional bonus. Most importantly, it's actually led to continuing to attract the most talented graduates that are out there available, who want to come and work for us, which is great.
It's a bit daunting stepping into a new role. You come into a new role and you often think, 'I need to have checked off every single attribute on the list,' but you quickly realize that you have time and that it's important to take a step back and, first and foremost, surround yourself with great people who can share the leadership burden every day with you and who have different perspectives. That makes for a very rich conversation and a diverse culture in the workplace. The other important thing that sometimes takes time to learn is that you've got to actually back yourself. You might hold back from making a bold decision or taking courage, but I think over time you learn to have more confidence in your own decision-making abilities. You still need to be decisive, and you still need to communicate with people, but you learn to trust your own instinct quite a bit more.
I think resilience is all about staying the course through very challenging times. In good times, leadership is very easy in many cases. So it takes a lot of fortitude and courage to stay the course, whether it's when you're first entering the workforce, encountering some new challenges at work, or indeed when the market changes—as it has for many of us who have worked in Australia for a number of years. You've got to keep your focus on the journey ahead of you, continue to learn from those challenges, and stay that course.
