Brave Feminine Leadership

Simon Traynor is a storyteller at heart. He does his board papers at the kitchen table on a Monday, after his first saltwater swim of the day, and he’s very deliberate about where his time goes.   At around 45, headhunters kept telling him he was too young for boards and still had another CEO role in him. He chose boards anyway. Together we discuss the day at sea in 2019 that changed how he thinks about risk and time, how he repositioned himself as a brand (first to himself, then to everyone else), why he has to professionally love the Board Chair before he says yes, and his honest advice that it takes twice as long as you expect. Simon spent more than 25 years building some of the world’s best known brands, starting in marketing at Nike in Australia and Europe, then leading businesses across Asia Pacific for Quiksilver and Coleman, before heading up YETI in Australia and New Zealand. He was interim CEO of the Movember Foundation, and today he’s a full-time non-executive director across Kookaburra Sport, Atomos, Paddle Australia, the Sorrento Writers Festival and 776BC, where he is chair. He’s a Fellow of the AICD. He closes with his own take on a Ted Lasso line: strong women stand up for themselves, and stronger men stand up for all women. Open, generous and so honest. A must listen. LISTEN & CONNECT: Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/aR8mPQSY1Jw  Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership Connect with Simon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-traynor/   WORK WITH US: The Executive Shift: An 8-week intensive for senior women ready to be recognised for judgement, not just delivery. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/the-executive-shift  INFLUENCE Mastermind: A 6-month peer advisory room for women at the top.  https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/influence-enquiry-call 1:1 Executive Coaching: Work directly with Melissa. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/executive-coaching Sign up for Leadership Inspiration in our Sunday Newsletter: http://bravefeminineleadership.com/sundayinspiration  

Rebecca Klaassen describes her leadership as rooted in kindness. She learned that early at Volvo Group, travelling the world in her twenties, loving every bit of the lean and continuous improvement training, and finding out that the best change starts with a conversation. These days, before she changes anything, she wants to know what it means to the people it’s changing. Together we discuss why the smartest organisations switch AI on last, the second ledger every CFO should keep, why empathy and intuition are now the whole job, and the bravery of telling your team “I don’t know yet”. Rebecca has spent more than 20 years leading transformation at Volvo Group, Wesfarmers, Microsoft and St Vincent’s. She’s the founder of QuantumFusion and, with Danielle Handley, co-author on Matthew Byrne’s Fifth Revolution research, drawing on 1,500 cases of organisations navigating AI. She closes with a line from Covey, “change moves at the speed of trust”, and adds one of her own: trust starts with being honest. Warm, practical and so timely. A must listen.     LISTEN & CONNECT: Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UUqobjs6TuU  Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership Connect with Rebecca: www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-k-478337b3 or https://snrsolutionsbydesign.com.au    WORK WITH US: The Executive Shift: An 8-week intensive for senior women ready to be recognised for judgement, not just delivery. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/the-executive-shift  INFLUENCE Mastermind: A 6-month peer advisory room for women at the top.  https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/influence-enquiry-call 1:1 Executive Coaching: Work directly with Melissa. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/executive-coaching Sign up for Leadership Inspiration in our Sunday Newsletter: http://bravefeminineleadership.com/sundayinspiration  

Sandra Wallace grew up near Wauchope on Birpai Country running barefoot around the paddocks, with a drop toilet and creek water hauled up in the family Kombi. Today she runs a 60-person business and lives in one of the harbourside suburbs she once looked up at from a Sydney ferry. Together we discuss the decade she spent wandering before archaeology found her, why she shapes a business the way you’d shape a sculpture, the mental load women leaders carry and what it quietly gives us, and her bold decision to give every person on her team an hour a week to be an activist for a cause they choose. Sandra is the founder and managing director of Artefact Heritage and holds a PhD in Aboriginal archaeology. Honest, unconventional and full of heart. A conversation that shows a business can be so much more than a place of work.     LISTEN & CONNECT: Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ing45TZZF-U  Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership   WORK WITH US: The Executive Shift: An 8-week intensive for senior women ready to be recognised for judgement, not just delivery. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/the-executive-shift  INFLUENCE Mastermind: A 6-month peer advisory room for women at the top.  https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/influence-enquiry-call 1:1 Executive Coaching: Work directly with Melissa. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/executive-coaching Sign up for Leadership Inspiration in our Sunday Newsletter: http://bravefeminineleadership.com/sundayinspiration  

Six months ago, Lisa Lynch walked in the door as the inaugural CEO of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. Forensic pathology. Death investigation. Tissue banking. A whole new area of health for Lisa, and she said yes on the very first phone call." Having Lisa back on the podcast is always a joy, and this might be my favourite of all our conversations. Lisa takes us inside her first six months as CEO. The goodbye email she sent on her last Friday. The stakeholder she forgot to put on her list (she laughs about it now). The corridor comment that had six people working on it before she got back to her desk. And the moment she calls the bravest of the whole journey. Lisa is CEO of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, a board member of Women's Health Victoria and a member of the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity. Why you should listen: If there's a CEO role in your future, hear this before you get there. Honest, funny and full of hope. You might be more ready than you feel.   LISTEN & CONNECT: Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UcRKoureM6Y Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership   WORK WITH US: The Executive Shift: An 8-week intensive for senior women ready to be recognised for judgement, not just delivery. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/the-executive-shift INFLUENCE Mastermind: A 6-month peer advisory room for women at the top. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/influence-enquiry-call 1:1 Executive Coaching: Work directly with Melissa. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/executive-coaching Sign up for Leadership Inspiration in our Sunday Newsletter. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/leadershipinspiration   

Think about the last few AI ideas your team brought you. A faster way to write reports. Summarising meeting notes. Cutting time out of a process everyone hates. All useful. And almost certainly all about saving time. Tim O'Neill sees it in nearly every organisation he works with. Even when his workshops actively ask teams for both, the ideas come back at roughly 80% productivity and 20% new revenue or value. Spotting the repetitive task in last week's inbox is easy. Imagining what's next is much harder. Are you up for that challenge? In this episode, Tim and I talk about what he finds when he first walks into a business (usually four AI tools, no standard and no plan), why the CEO should address the elephant in the room before anyone asks, and the healthcare client that lifted sign-up conversion from 75% to 85% by adding AI to a single step. We also disagree on whether the pace of AI is distracting leaders. If AI is on your board agenda and you're wondering where your judgement adds the most value, start here. About Tim: Tim has spent nearly three decades in Australian digital. He co-founded Reactive in 1997, became Managing Director at Accenture Interactive after the acquisition, and in 2023 co-founded Time Under Tension, a generative AI consultancy named AI Company of the Year in 2024. Connect with Tim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timoneill/ https://www.timeundertension.ai Want more conversations like this? Sign up for the Brave Feminine Leadership newsletter for leadership insights, research and practical thinking for senior women, delivered to your inbox. http://bravefeminineleadership.com/sundayinspiration LISTEN & CONNECT: Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/henRXhb0jpI  Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership   WORK WITH US: // The Executive Shift: An 8-week intensive for senior women ready to be recognised for judgement, not just delivery. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/the-executive-shift  // INFLUENCE Mastermind: A 6-month peer advisory room for women at the top.  https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/influence-enquiry-call // 1:1 Executive Coaching: Work directly with Melissa. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/executive-coaching  

There's a line in Jane Phipps's book where she recognises that she'd never been the problem, she'd always been enough. Many senior women will recognise the feeling behind that sentence. Jane is the author of The Heart-Centered Leader, a single mother who built her career through male-dominated industries, two rounds of workplace bullying, and a breakdown that finally forced her to stop. In this conversation she and Melissa talk about the difference between command-and-control leadership and heart-centred leadership, what it actually feels like to be "in a cage" at work, and how she learned to tell the difference between self-criticism and self-reflection. Guest: Jane Phipps, author of The Heart-Centered Leader. In this episode: The line from Jane's book that opens the conversation, and the childhood behind it Her first experience of heart-centred leadership, in the defence industry of all places What it felt like to be "in a cage" for eight years in a large Australian corporate The frog in boiling water: how you normalise treatment until it becomes unbearable Self-criticism versus self-reflection, and what changed once she stopped beating herself up How to hold people accountable without abandoning a heart-centred approach What she'd tell her younger self about dipping a toe in the water instead of staying silent Jane's book, The Heart-Centered Leader, is available now. https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1764035623   LISTEN & CONNECT: Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oob3YS1puu8 Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership   WORK WITH US: // The Executive Shift: An 8-week intensive for senior women ready to be recognised for judgement, not just delivery. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/the-executive-shift  // INFLUENCE Mastermind: A 6-month peer advisory room for women at the top.  https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/influence-enquiry-call // 1:1 Executive Coaching: Work directly with Melissa. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/executive-coaching  

Who is your female role model? I put that one question to eleven women this week, executives, a professor, a local government councillor, a health coach, a sales director, each of them formidable in their own right, and asked them to answer it honestly, and to tell me whether we actually have enough female role models to choose from. The answers ranged from Dolly Parton to Diana Ross to a 75 year old sprinter with ten state titles. One answer that stayed with me wasn't a name at all: Kirsten Chan pointed to her teenage daughter, who isn't in the rooms with women like the ones Kirsten has been mentored by, and asked how a girl who only sees female leadership on the news is meant to find a role model at all. For me, it was the quieter leaders who stood out most, the mentor at work, the friend who never asked for recognition, the woman running the local athletics club. And the thing that sits underneath all of it: you don't have to be famous to be someone's role model. We all get to be one. We recorded this before the passing of the extraordinary Dolly Parton who we will all remember as wonderful role model for her desire to make an impact on literacy in children.   Key moments: Kelli Hayes on Dolly Parton's focus, authenticity and Dolly's Imagination Program Jen Overbeck's unpublished research finding that the mother was the clearest role model people responded to, and what that says about the gap Kirsten Chan on Ingrid Johnson, the first leader she saw prove that leadership could be warm and still hold a room to account Emma Sinclair on the Put Her Name On It campaign and why unrecognised work looks like a shortage of role models Sally Clifford on Nicola Roxon's decision to know when enough is enough   WORK WITH US: // The Executive Shift: An 8-week intensive for senior women ready to be recognised for judgement, not just delivery.  https://bravefeminineleadership.com/the-executive-shift // INFLUENCE Mastermind: A 6-month peer advisory room for women at the top. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/programs/ceo_mastermind // 1:1 Executive Coaching: Work directly with Melissa.  https://bravegroupco.com/executive-coaching     ----------------------- Craving inspiration? I send an email each Sunday about leadership reflection, top tips to build an intentional & sustainable life and other things that have captured my attention and are too good not to share! Sign up here: https://www.bravefeminineleadership.com/leadershipinspiration Loving the podcast? Leave us a short review. It takes less than 60 seconds & will inspire like-minded leaders to join the conversation!   Are we friends? Connect with Us. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bravefeminineleadership Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership

Join Melissa, 4 CEOs and her co-founder Kelli Hayes as they reflect on some favourites along the way and explore their response to Brave Feminine leadership.    Contains some hot tips on people’s favourites over the years. Thanks for being part of our community. If you loved this or you have a favourite from over the years share it and let’s make some noise for 250 episodes sharing stories of Brave Feminine Leadership!     ----------------------- Craving inspiration? I send an email each Sunday about leadership reflection, top tips to build an intentional & sustainable life and other things that have captured my attention and are too good not to share! Sign up here: https://www.bravefeminineleadership.com/leadershipinspiration Loving the podcast? Leave us a short review. It takes less than 60 seconds & will inspire like-minded leaders to join the conversation!   Are we friends? Connect with Us. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bravefeminineleadership Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership

We've all sat across from that executive. Laptop open, phone buzzing, apologising because the last meeting ran over. Somewhere along the way, we decided that person is what success looks like. Melissa isn't buying it. In this solo episode, Melissa calls out the busy reputation for what it often is, and names the three skills most senior leaders haven't actually mastered yet. She also walks through an exercise she gives her clients, one simple week-long habit that changes how they see their own workload entirely. In this episode: Why being constantly drowning in work isn't the flex it looks like The exercise Melissa gives leaders to see what their calendar is actually hiding The one question worth asking every morning before anything else Why she'd pick one executive skill over all the others this year If you've listened to the end and you're ready to act, Melissa offers a small number of sessions each month to help leaders identify the one action that creates real change. Details are in the link below, along with more on The Executive Shift. WORK WITH US: // 1:1 Strategy session - map where next? https://calendly.com/brave-feminine-leadership/connect-melissa // The Executive Shift: An 8-week intensive for senior women ready to be recognised for judgement, not just delivery. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/the-executive-shift  // INFLUENCE Mastermind: A 6-month peer advisory room for female CEOs. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/influence-enquiry-call // 1:1 Executive Coaching: Work directly with Melissa. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/executive-coaching     ----------------------- Craving inspiration? I send an email each Sunday about leadership reflection, top tips to build an intentional & sustainable life and other things that have captured my attention and are too good not to share! Sign up here: https://www.bravefeminineleadership.com/leadershipinspiration Loving the podcast? Leave us a short review. It takes less than 60 seconds & will inspire like-minded leaders to join the conversation!   Are we friends? Connect with Us. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bravefeminineleadership Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership

Melissa and Kelli got fired up this week. Not at anyone. At a pattern they keep seeing in incredibly talented senior leaders: ask them what value they create, and what comes back is projects, process and detail. A shopping list of activity, with the actual value buried somewhere underneath it. The consequences are real. When a board hears a long list of tasks, they see a busy person. When they see a busy person, they conclude she is capable, reliable, a safe pair of hands, and not needed at the table when the decisions are made. In a restructuring market, that reputation is a risk. In the worst cases, the value of someone's work only becomes visible after they've left. This is a candid conversation between two former global CEOs about why articulating your value is so hard, why the "don't fix women" critique matters and where it stops, the line Google Australia MD Mel Silva gave Melissa that she has never forgotten, and the difference between mentors who teach you the job and sponsors who carry your value into rooms you're not in. It ends with a practical challenge: work out your headline. In this episode: The shopping list problem: why brilliant strategic leaders default to listing activity The system is real, and so is what remains in your control "Don't make me look under the rug for your achievements": what sponsors actually need from you Why early-career rewards for delivery quietly become mid-career liabilities Kelli's starting point: tie what you do to the organisation's strategic ambitions This week's challenge: define the value you create, in one headline, and test it   Read the blog: Melissa's post "Don't Give Me a Shopping List" is on the website now. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/post/stop-giving-me-the-shopping-list Join us on 29 July: The Impact Formula is a free 60-minute lunchtime leadership briefing where we go deeper on exactly this. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/impact-formula Talk to us: We open a handful of spots each month for a conversation. If you're questioning your own value equation, book one. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/book-a-call   LISTEN & CONNECT: Sign up to our Weekly Newsletter for Leadership Inspiration - https://www.bravefeminineleadership.com/leadershipinspiration Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bravefeminineleadership Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership   WORK WITH US: // The Executive Shift: An 8-week intensive for senior women ready to be recognised for judgement, not just delivery. https://bravefeminineleadership.com/the-executive-shift  // INFLUENCE Mastermind: A 6-month peer advisory room for female CEOs. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/influence-enquiry-call // 1:1 Executive Coaching: Work directly with Melissa & Kelli. https://calendly.com/the-brave-group/executive-coaching