Discovering your leadership style: ‘I’ve had to learn to rise above’

Dr Rachel David has had to navigate her share of high-stakes negotiations.

It’s required the CEO of Private Healthcare Australia to develop a pretty thick skin at times.

“[We] have a certain amount of money that is given to us by members of private health funds,” she explained to a packed crowd at the FW Leadership Summit.

“And then my job, along with others, is to negotiate with a whole range of people, some of them extremely powerful vested interests about what share they get.

“And so to be able to negotiate that, I’ve had to develop the ability to lead from the front, sometimes in the face of some very severe backlash and bullying”.

David spoke about how she has developed her own, unique brand of leadership as part of a panel of industry leaders at the FW Summit.

“You don’t necessarily have the information at hand to make the decisions.”

Despite hailing from a range of industries and backgrounds, there was one key insight that united these leaders. Namely, that leadership is a ‘work in progress’ of sorts.

Each of the panelists’ leadership styles have never been set in stone, they’ve instead grown and developed in the face of challenges and setbacks.

David said it took her a while to develop her voice as a leader.

“I have learned to love what I do, but that has been a very long journey from someone who was small, timid and led from behind, to someone who has been able to lead from the front,” she said.

She recalled being in rooms where people were “screaming at each other”.

“Some of these people have very high status in the community and are prepared to use that status to get their needs met, and some of them, unfortunately, at times, have resulted in deeply personal attacks,” she said.

“That’s obviously not something that, as a leader, I’ve had to learn to rise above and while setting very firm boundaries, not get down in the mud and respond to that kind of behaviour.”

While the director of the Australian Geospatial Intelligence Organisation Kathryn McMullan said she’s learned the importance of being “situationally dependent” as a leader in the defence sector.

“I’m a pretty agile leader,” she said.

“I kind of bring to the moment what is required, and whether or not that means I need to be a loud and firm voice, or I need to be supportive of peers”.

As was the case for David, McMullan said there were times when situations called for her to be firm and speak out as a leader.

“[In those] environments when actually the loudest voice is either talking over bullying or is really just pushing an agenda which actually isn’t in the community’s interest, then fundamentally, it is my responsibility to speak up,” she said.

An attendee of the FW Leadership Summit takes notes

CEO of Aware Super Deanne Stewart agreed with McMullan on the importance of not settling on one single leadership style or tone.

She said she’d seen certain styles of leadership, such as the more ‘command and control’ method, fall out of fashion as organisations embraced less hierarchical models.

“The thing that I’d say about that [command and control] style, if you overuse it, is that you are not necessarily hearing and getting really great perspectives and ideas from across your organisation,” she told the audience.

“So I would say to you, there is a time and place to use each part of each different type of leadership style.”

Chief People and Culture Officer at SG Fleet Lindsay Underwood said leaders needed to be agile because they often have to make decisions with limited information.

“As a leader, you’re obviously out of your comfort zone [and] you don’t necessarily have the information at hand to make the decisions,” she said.

“There’s a lot of change happening, and as a result of that, there’s going to be times we also need to be resilient.”

Sometimes, Underwood said, what’s important as a leader is the simple act of progress, and change itself – even if the destination is not determined.

“[In] some cases, you can’t solve challenges that come along the way,” she said.

“You just have to accept that by iteration, by experimentation, by being open to new ideas, being courageous, failing fast – you might not solve things, but you’re making progress towards something.

“… You’re just going to have to move forward rather than stay still.”