Brave Feminine Leadership

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/bravefeminineleadershipLinkedin: 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/bravefeminineleadershipLinkedin: 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/bravefeminineleadershipLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-feminine-leadership