Agile Leadership Lessons

In this podcast episode, Jocelyn Santosa, Partner at Watermark Search specialising in health, human services and life sciences interviews Toby Hall. Toby is the former CEO of St. Vincent's Health Australia and Mission Australia as well as having a wide portfolio of Chair and Board roles including For Purpose Aged Care, Sana Health, UNICEF, Sterihealth, Working Links and Goodstart Early Learning. Jocelyn and Toby have an engaging conversation covering topics including: The key factors differentiating high performing Chief Executives and their leadership teams in Hospital, Health and Aged Care Measuring the success of leaders and leadership teams working in this sector How leaders can work on knowing themselves better Listen to the full podcast below to gain insights and advice for current and future leaders.

Have you ever wondered about private equity and the experience of working with private equity? What do private equity firms look for in businesses? What do they look for in leaders? What is their operating rhythm? David Evans, Managing Partner at Watermark Search, has extensive experience in this area and in this episode he chats to Mark Baldassarre, a highly accomplished leader in Private Equity. Mark brings over 25 years of private equity and international banking experience. He is deeply experienced in acquiring, integrating, and growing businesses, as well as providing strategic direction to company boards and management teams. Mark has looked at hundreds of private equity deals and has invested and exited in dozens. David and Mark have a great chat explaining what private equity is and how it works. Mark then answers some interesting questions such as: When looking to invest, what are the key things that you are looking for when you evaluate businesses? What do you look for when you're assessing these businesses and the leaders? What is the difference between a good leadership team and average leadership team? How have the good leaders reacted to external shocks and how have they got through the change? What are some standouts in your experience around some leaders that have navigated change? What are the different operating rhythms that you partner with? What do you expect from them? How involved are you in the business? What are the board meetings like? How do you support owner managers or leadership teams with getting the business ready for an exit? Listen to the full podcast below to gain insights and advice for current and future leaders.

At Watermark Search, we believe that those with higher leadership agility have higher performance. We are passionate about supporting leaders reach this, helping them learn and giving them the opportunity to change, influence and increase their leadership agility. So how do we get we get data and science behind our philosophy and how can leaders use this data to enhance their own leadership journey?   To discuss this, we invited Peter Berry, Managing Director of Peter Berry Consultancy and Ryne Sherman, Chief Science Officer at Hogan Assessment Systems to join us on this episode. Peter is a keynote speaker, facilitator and executive coach who specialises in leadership development, coaching, change management and business performance. Ryne is an expert on personality assessment, leadership and organisational effectiveness.   Our speakers defined leadership agility and answered some important questions: What attributes do you need to be a successful leader and how does agility come into this? What are the key attributes of leadership agility? Can leadership agility be learned? What is the science and data behind how we should be measuring a leader? How important is it that leaders are aware of gaps in their personality and agility? How can leaders identify these gaps and how can we help them improve on them? How important is data in doing this? What are the key takeaways for leaders trying to increase their leadership agility?

As we enter different stages of this pandemic, we are seeing it effect individuals and businesses in different ways. Transformations are increasing and priorities have evolved. What was urgent and important at the start may no longer be as urgent and all of a sudden there are more pressing priorities. As a leadership cohort, how do we adapt, how do we lead and how do we engage with our teams in this fast-moving world? Joining Watermark Search International's Managing Partner, David Evans, in our third episode is Natasha Moore, Partner in Charge of Transformational Program Management at KPMG, Amanda Cattermole, CEO of the Australian Digital Health Agency, and Kieran Duck a published author on transformation. All three leaders have led through major transformations recently; Amanda was at the forefront of changing a health system to respond to a pandemic, Kieran went through a four-year transformation at Essential Energy and had to constantly adapt and rework the program due to the changing market environment, and Natasha had to rethink how they engaged with risk and amend collaboration tools to deal with the new virtual world. Our speakers discuss their organisation’s purpose, how their priorities evolved, how they, along with their teams, got through the transformational journeys by adapting, and about the effective processes and experiences that got leaders on board with the pace of this change. They also highlight what they have done and seen that has worked well to get their people to express an opinion and contribute during this change. Listen to the full podcast below to gain insights and advice for current and future leaders.

At Watermark, we're advocates of the for purpose sector. Not only do we contribute as a firm, but we also appoint many executives in for purpose entities. In this episode we are joined by three leaders from some of Australia's best known for purpose entities to share some of their experiences. Hosted by Watermark Search International's Managing Partner, David Evans. In this episode we're joined by; Colin Seery, CEO of Lifeline, who saw an increase of 30% in calls to the main crisis support service through the bushfires crisis and the COVID pandemic, Judy Slatyer, most recently the CEO of the Australian Red Cross, whose team had to quickly adapt from dealing with the devastation of the bushfires in early 2020 to managing COVID and the pandemic and Susannah Le Bron, CEO at the Y in New South Wales, (formerly known as the YMCA), who experienced the pandemic through a different lens, adapting to a crisis environment that directly impacted more than half of her organisation. Our speakers discuss leadership agility, and how they adapted to an unprecedented crisis situation. Anticipating change, assessing new risks and the importance of setting clear principles to guide their organisations and their people through the crisis. And the day-to-day tactics they implemented to remain connected with their teams, their organisations purpose, and to ensure themselves and their teams were looking after each other from a personal and professional point of view. Listen to gain their insights and advice for current and future leaders.

How did you react to events in 2020 and how has this affected how you're looking to the future? Philip Holliday, William Cox, and Elizabeth Mildwater share their experiences. Hosted by Watermark Search International's Managing Partner, David Evans. In this episode we're joined by; Philip Holliday, CEO of the NSW Ports Authority, whose team was deeply impacted by the events of 2020 reacting to the Ruby Princess (the cruise ship at the centre of one of Australia's largest coronavirus outbreaks), William Cox, CEO of Aurecon, who has a different perspective with his team of consultants who have seen all sorts of organisations evaluating their evolving requirements, and consequently how they must adapt their own business to support this changing landscape, and Elizabeth Mildwater, CEO of the Greater Sydney Commission, who has had to deal with changes in not only how we work but also how these events will impact us over the longer term. Our speakers highlight the changes in opinions on flexible working, how some companies who offered flexible working prior to the pandemic have now actually gone backwards and require staff to be in the office 5 days a week, or companies who have foregone the office all together and have moved to a fully remote workforce. They discuss the 3/2 hybrid working split and their concerns for the more inexperienced employee's learning and development with reduced opportunities for face to face mentoring and guidance from more experienced team members. How will this effect the future workforce? Listen to gain their insights and advice for current and future leaders.