FOSTERING A CULTURE OF LEADERS AND INNOVATION
I was fortunate to have an ambitious father who embedded leadership heavily into my life. I feel it is important for any leader to have a mentor, and this is the reason we focus so heavily on mentorship at Supashock. A mentor is someone you can draw life and business experiences from. Importantly, they will help to embed the mindset that the risk of failure should not prevent you from achieving something great.

I believe in raising a generation of leaders who are mentors within the business, foster our culture and embody Supashock’s values of Passion, Integrity, Respect, Innovation and Determination.

At Supashock, our definition of culture is ‘the ability to empower people to make good decisions in the absence of policy and procedure’. If your team can execute this, that’s when you know the culture is right. We need policy and procedure given the industries we operate in, but our people need to feel empowered to take calculated risk, because I believe that leads to personal growth, innovation and market disruption.

Our team is comfortable, but accountable. This means they have the psychological safety to take the leap. Sometimes the leap does not pay off. A negative business outcome will not result in reprimand for a team or individual. I don’t need people to hesitate the next time they are faced with a decision, but as a team we must make the active effort to complete a root cause analysis to understand why. Armed with this knowledge, we can then move to the next design, or the next opportunity with a further honed strategy to back our decision making and drive innovation.

In my eyes, the key qualities of leadership are belief, the desire to never give up, and a sound strategy delivered by a clear head. It is tough, and a never-ending journey of learning. Everyone thinks they want to be a leader but let me tell you, at times, leadership is a thankless task. Sometimes you ask yourself, why am I doing this, but backing your own ability to have ongoing drive, resilience and a positive attitude is what keeps you moving forward. Seeing your people flourish is incredibly gratifying and the wins are fantastic. Sometimes those wins are accompanied by losses, but if you learn from the loss and maintain belief in yourself and in your team – you will be a successful leader. We need to remember, no leader does anything on their own, you need to bring the best people along with you.