The Leadership Compass: The ultimate guide for women leaders to reach their full potential

Praise for The Leadership Compass

Michelle’s genuine and relatable approach to sharing her experiences in business and sports makes The Leadership Compass a must-read for women who are ready to take charge of their careers. This book is a game-changer! As a black immigrant woman, navigating the corporate world often left me feeling adrift, encountering setbacks that seemed insurmountable. However, Michelle’s astute insights and practical advice have helped turn my head a few degrees, allowing me to see possibilities that were in my blind spot before.

Amal Yusuf | GM Airport Operations, Delta Air Lines

Michelle has been successfully challenging and inspiring women to step into and realise their leadership potential for many years. I’ve seen her insights resonate with women at every stage of their career journey and have significant personal and organisational impact. I am grateful to have experienced and supported her leadership programs first-hand and to now have this knowledge in a book to share more widely!

Carol-Ann Gough | CIO, Great Southern Bank

Michelle Redfern is a refreshing voice in the equity space. There is no beating around the bush or mincing words – Michelle tells it like it is, and I was delighted in reading this book that she writes as she speaks. Michelle has a knack of being able to engage with people from shop floor to executive, and her book will be universally appealing for this very reason.

Bronwyn Woods | Head of Organisational Development, Bega Group

Michelle’s leadership experience is vast and her wisdom is deep. We’re blessed that she’s put her knowledge down in this practical and extremely well-researched guide. Every page brings useful information that is immediately actionable, with excellent self-inquiry work that is illuminating for understanding your own leadership skills. I love that Michelle addresses all stages of our leadership journey, from early in our career to C-level. And most of all, her customary pull-no-punches way of speaking truth about the systemic gender inequality that limits women’s potential is, as always, glorious. The Leadership Compass is a critical handbook for women seeking to advance their own leadership and organisations who need more women leaders.

Jo Stanley | CEO, Broad Radio; media expert and author

The Leadership Compass is a breath of fresh air in the conversation about women in leadership. In a world where busyness often hinders progress, Michelle Redfern guides women to focus their time and attention on what truly matters for advancing into and thriving in senior positions. Concise yet packed with substance, this book empowers women and challenges the narrative that they need ‘fixing’, highlighting instead the necessity of systemic changes for real progress in gender equity.

Melanie Ho | Author, Beyond Leaning In

The importance of developing business intelligence and understanding the financial drivers of a business cannot be underestimated and must be an area of focus for women aspiring to leadership. The Leadership Compass shines a light precisely on where to focus and provides timely and practical resources to help women apply learnings. Bravo Michelle Redfern!

Nickie Scriven | CEO, Chief Meta Chicks

The Leadership Compass provides a practical roadmap for women seeking to meet their career ambitions. Michelle’s engaging style, personal anecdotes and tips will make you smile but also realise the importance of pragmatically focusing on business, financial and strategic acumen in order to succeed in your career.

Corinne Proske | CEO, Trust for Nature

Michelle Redfern acutely understands the tenets of good leadership and why women’s participation at the top is key to Australia’s overall social and economic success. This book provides a brilliant step-by-step guide on climbing the ladder and fulfilling your purpose.

Tarla Lambert | Editor in Chief, Women’s Agenda

The Leadership Compass fills the gap that a lot of women miss when undergoing traditional leadership courses. Michelle stresses the importance of needing to change the system, not the women. She walks through her process in a witty and honest way, which really helps you connect with the author and the material. I feel that this book should be recommended reading for both women and men at FanDuel.

Juliette Gorson | Data Science Senior Manager, FanDuel

THE LEADERSHIP COMPASS

This book is dedicated to the women who have been a compass throughout my life and taught me how women’s leadership shows up: Nana, Mum, my sisters, my daughter, my nieces and my aunties. But, most of all, this book is a tribute to the woman who has helped me unlock the best version of myself: my beloved wife Rhonda.

First published in 2024 by Major Street Publishing Pty Ltd

[email protected] | +61 421 707 983 | majorstreet.com.au

© Michelle Redfern 2024

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Printed book ISBN: 978-1-922611-99-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-923186-00-2

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher.

Cover design by Tess McCabe

Internal design by Production Works

Printed in Australia by Griffin Press

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Disclaimer: The material in this publication is in the nature of general comment only, and neither purports nor intends to be professional advice. Readers should not act on the basis of any matter in this publication without considering (and if appropriate taking) professional advice with due regard to their own particular circumstances. The author and publisher expressly disclaim all responsibility and any liability to any person, whether a purchaser of this publication or not, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication and disclaim all liability in respect of anything and the consequences of anything done or omitted to be done by any such person in reliance, whether whole or partial, upon the whole or any part of the contents of this publication.

Contents

Foreword by Susan L Colantuono

It was 2016 and I was CEO of Leading Women, a renowned global firm delivering leadership development programs for women and gender dynamics training for managers. As part of my strategy to further extend its reach, I was negotiating with a consulting firm in Australia for whom my IP was complementary.

Now, if you’re one of the more than 4.4 million viewers of my TED Talk, ‘The Career Advice You Probably Didn’t Get’, you know that my IP is truly revolutionary. I had discovered what I called ‘The Missing 33%™ of the career success equation for women’ and the ways that it served as a barrier to women’s advancement – in terms of both what women were told we had to do to soar in our careers and what most managers delivered to women on the rare occasions they chose to nurture or support our ambitions.

In essence, The Missing 33%™ was (and based on my 2023 updated research, still is) women’s perceived – and in some cases actual – lack of business, financial and strategic acumen.

Given the centrality to my leadership programs of The Missing 33%™ and related content to build business, financial and strategic acumen, I had very specific criteria for who would be sufficiently qualified to deliver them. Therefore, when the Australian firm said they would identify a woman who would deliver my programs, I insisted on the criteria being met. This was to prevent career-advice-as-usual syndrome from drowning out my messages about the importance of The Missing 33%™ and avoiding the programs devolving into the typical ‘management training with a dose of work-life balance’ that permeates the women’s leadership development industry.

I rejected a number of candidates for lacking actual executive leadership experience, and then they served up the resume of someone named Michelle Redfern.

Wow, I thought, she’s definitely been the operational and strategic executive that I’m looking for. If she’s personable, good in front of people and believes in my message, she could be the perfect woman to deliver my programs in Australia and New Zealand.

We actually met when Michelle travelled to the US to observe one of my programs. They were right. She was perfect!

She was brilliant, dynamic, personable, open-minded and a staunch feminist with corporate career and leadership success experiences that, when put into my model, provided insights about her career success that made perfect sense.

When she arrived in New Jersey to observe the delivery of one of my programs for women in middle management, our mutual admiration was cemented and our working relationship began in earnest. She delivered programs for Leading Women to great accolades, developed her own successful consulting practices and, when I later launched Lead to Soar, the online network for ambitious women, Michelle took over as owner. In the years since we met, I was awed as Michelle added her own personal experiences, insights and models to my IP in order to make huge differences in the careers of women around the world and the organisational cultures within which they work.

Fast-forward to 2023. Michelle tells me she is writing a book. I’m thrilled beyond belief. Her messages about the importance of business intelligence (BQ), emotional intelligence (EQ) and social intelligence (SQ) are crucial to you and others like you who aren’t able to attend a program with her. Because she adds so much to conventional wisdom about all three areas, the content deserves much wider exposure than Michelle could possibly deliver through her extensive LinkedIn following, her Lead to Soar network and podcast, and her Advancing Women consulting business.

Reading chapters 2 and 3, for example, reminded me of how an oyster adds layers of shining beauty to a central grain of sand. If my work on the importance of business, financial and strategic acumen is that central grain of sand, Michelle’s further insights are creating a glorious pearl to lay in your hands and those of other women around the globe!

Then, the pièce de résistance: in chapter 10, Michelle steps forward to tackle the fundamental truth that cracking the secret to women’s advancement requires managers and organisational cultures to change. She goes further to explain why and how.

Throughout it all, Michelle’s shares personal experiences and ‘Go deeper’ guidance to add the real-world grounding and actionable advice that transforms The Leadership Compass from simply another book into an ambitious woman’s career companion. It’s truly the ultimate guide for women leaders who seek to reach their full potential and for organisations that seek to create conditions to make that possible.

You might think that my comments are biased because of our working relationship – and, of course, they are. But, every day inside the Lead to Soar network and throughout my LinkedIn feed I see women from all over the world, from individual contributors to CEOs, from all different professions and industries, express gratitude for Michelle’s coaching and wise insights. The feedback she receives from participants in her leadership programs is extraordinary, and many of the women I know who’ve participated have gone on to ever more rewarding careers.

Still wondering if The Leadership Compass is worth the read? Dive in. Your career aspirations will thank you!

Susan L Colantuono

Founder of Be Business Savvy and author of No Ceiling, No Walls and Make the Most of Mentoring

Preface

I Am a Leader

For much of my career, I struggled to give myself a label because I felt I wasn’t anything. I’m not a doctor, engineer, firefighter, hairdresser, lawyer, accountant or any other type of professional with a certification and a prescribed set of technical proficiencies. However, while I did eventually gain a degree, I realised I already had a vocation with technical proficiencies.

I am a leader.

When I became conscious of the importance of leadership and the skills needed to be the best leader I could be, I became more deliberate about exposing myself to, and inserting myself into, situations and environments where I could learn how to be a great leader. That included watching, talking to and learning from leaders near and far away. It involved reading many books, particularly biographies of leaders, so I could discover the secret sauce of leadership. It meant attending conferences and events where keynote speakers would expound on the virtues of great leadership and how to ‘do’ leadership well. It led me to put my hand up for any training courses and professional development opportunities that came my way.

I also learned on the job and from the leaders I reported to, and sought out opportunities to stretch and grow through the new leadership roles I applied for and was appointed to.

One thing characterised my leadership journey: I learned my leadership craft largely from men. Why? Because I didn’t have a woman boss (at the executive level) until I was a senior manager in my late 30s. Given I’d been in the paid workforce from the age of 15, that’s a lot of years learning from a lot of blokes.

When I look at the representation of women in CEO and executive roles worldwide in 2023, there are certainly more