Dr Kellie Rose

Our Her Executive Network member said it best: “the greatest value was in the vulnerability and honesty everyone brought to the room”.

I have to agree with her. There is something quite powerful about creating the rooms where senior women feel safe to speak up, share openly, and ask for advice from other seasoned leaders. To both guide and witness these discussions is something special.

Throughout the year, our HEN members discussed the real challenges facing women in leadership from their own experiences: navigating and cultivating workplace cultures; prioritising and maintaining health while under constant load; ageism; and so much more.

While it was sad that last week’s lunch was the last one for our annual program, it was heartening to hear the loose plans for an end of year gathering take shape. Just because the program ended, the genuine interest and investment in each other’s lives and leadership didn’t.

Thank you to the incredible women who joined our inaugural Her Executive Network program, and my co-hosts Simone Outteridge and Lisa Ezzy from Steople

I took last week off for some quality rest and recovery, and as always, I was curious to see what landed for me on the other side of it.

💡 You know - the grand insight, the big idea, the epiphany that was going to change my life and business for the better. I got to the end of the week and I was still waiting for it to land.

Then it did, and it seemed too basic to matter; I almost overlooked it.

Simplify.

That was it. Not an exciting new initiative, not a business restructure, not a magical ops solution.

It was telling me to do less. And it was true - it’s exactly what I needed to hear. I have been pushing forward on too many fronts at once with multiple service offers, collabs, and ops projects all on the go concurrently.

🪫 No wonder I was feeling frazzled pre-holiday. The overwhelm, cognitive load, constant context-switching, and stress from too many priorities at once were physically and mentally exhausting.

Ironically, it’s the exact pattern I see in the executives I work with, playing out in my own body. While I was constantly doing more, my health was paying the price.

This insight may not have knocked my socks off, but it was exactly the right message - a clear reminder to focus on the most important things: my clients, my core coaching program, and building my community.

And of course, with my health at the centre.

The next 6 months call for greater simplicity, signal and focus; and less noise and distractions. I’m building for impact, and that means running in one clear direction, not five.

Sometimes, the most strategic step for success in both health and business is subtraction, not addition.

An unpopular truth: If your success depends on chronic override of your body’s signals, it is probably not a high-performance strategy.

It’s a short-term extraction model.
 
And I say short-term, because there is only so long you can transact from a depleting resource before it drops into deficit, and you’re overdrawing without replenishing.
 
How do I know? Because I’ve lived it. It’s why this is not said with judgement, it is said with care, because it’s where many senior leaders get caught out. And by the time they realise, they’re severely in overdraft.
 
From the outside though, you still look functional. You’re the duck gliding across the lake effortlessly. Your team is operating, your targets are being pursued and met, you’re delivering.
 
But internally, your system is working much harder than it should be to keep you operating – let alone performing at the level you expect of yourself.
 
Just because you’re still running, doesn’t mean things are working well. Real performance is not just about output: it is output supported by inputs from sufficient recovery, energy, and restoration over time.
 
This is why I keep repeating: health is the foundation for your performance and leadership. Without your health, you won’t have the others (for long).
 
Let’s shift our mindset from health as a fluffy nice-to-have to being your underpinning strategy.


📌If this is the reframe you know you need, my July coaching spots are open for a small number of senior leaders ready to reset properly with honesty, support, and strategy. Send me a DM and let’s connect.

We couldn’t find it, so we built it.

And I am incredibly happy, grateful, and thankful that we did!

Last week, , .bell_ and I hosted the inaugural Triple Thread Tapestry for a curated group of women leaders and founders across Brisbane.

This event wasn’t about the title, the role, or the company logo. It wasn’t networking or BD or sales pitches. It wasn’t stale questions about what you do.

It went so much deeper, to the woman behind all of that. And it was exactly what we had envisioned - an intimate group of women, with space to focus on themselves, connecting deeply and courageously through honest conversations, sharing experiences and learning from each other.

The insights shared and gleaned were quite profound, and there were more than one penny-drop moments of truth that landed.

This is how we create impact, together.

Thank you to the incredible women who joined us and who made this event as impactful as it was 🌷 I am already excited about our next one!

“It’s not just one day to be marketed. It isn’t talking about the infinity. It’s about putting me out of a job.”

These words from in her opening remarks at today’s IWD lunch landed hard with me.

I sat up and listened. Here was a woman with the same values, ethos and passion to make real change for women in the world.

🙋🏻‍♀️ I’ll be honest, for the past few years I’ve been very jaded about IWD events, the superficial conversation, the tokenism, and the cupcakes (why is there ALWAYS cupcakes??). I haven’t been very interested- especially when fielding requests to speak for free.

🎤 But this year, Dame was the speaker and I knew I had to be in the room. If ever there was a woman ready to speak truth to power, this is her.

While I have a hundred notes on the wisdom and insight she shared (which I’ll likely write about in an article soon), a few points really struck me:

💎 First, Jacinda is incredibly funny! Honest, real and authentic, her relatability was powerful.

💎 She redefined the way we use and think about power - thoughtful and compassionate, with an onus of responsibility to her people.

💎 She refused to adopt the “strong man” style of leadership and created her own - with deep empathy and humility, showing they’re a strength not weakness.

💎 Doubt and imposter syndrome is not a weakness, unless you let it stop you. Learn to coexist with it.

I laughed so hard, wrote so much, clapped constantly and shed a tear at how deeply inspirational she is. This is how we

And what a gift to be able to spend this moment with ✨