Empowering Leaders

Tom Allen has spent more than 15 years at the highest level of professional football, including leadership roles at Aston Villa and Arsenal FC, where he helped shape one of the Premier League's most admired high-performance environments.

Tom shares the leadership principles that transformed Arsenal from a club in turmoil, into Premier League champions under Mikel Arteta. You’ll hear some of the creatively brilliant strategies used to deliver messages with lasting impact, and the importance of curiosity, connection and clarity in creating a club where culture, not tactics, are their biggest competitive advantage.

This episode explores what leaders in every industry can learn from elite sport. From creating psychological safety to build genuine trust across teams, to embracing continuous learning that allows people to perform at their very best, there’s something here for everyone.

You can listen to the live podcast in London with Mikel Arteta and Steve Kerr that Tom references in this episode here and Luke's conversation with Milwaukee Bucks' Troy Flanagan here.

We’re so proud to have Tom - and many others from Arsenal’s leadership team - as part of our Aleda Connect community.

…

Aleda Connect was created to provide unique collaborative opportunities for leaders at the top of their fields. We connect a small but diverse group of successful leaders who understand the challenges of high-level leadership. With them, they bring their willingness to share, learn and grow. Aleda Connect provides a supportive, confidential environment where creativity and connection thrive.

Ready to be in the room with exceptional leaders? Take the next step here: https://bit.ly/49tn4AD

Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former professional footballer and Socceroo Bruce Djite knows what it takes to perform at the highest level on the field, but his most impressive achievement may be what came AFTER football.

After retiring from a sporting career that saw him play across five countries, including representing Australia on the world stage, Bruce made the successful transition from elite sport into executive leadership.

In this conversation, Bruce shares the mindset that made that transition possible, and the leadership lessons he's carried from the football pitch into the boardroom, where he now serves as Executive Director of the Property Council of South Australia.

Bruce reflects on the power of perseverance, resilience and preparation required to make it as a professional athlete, and how those traits become the greatest benefits former athletes bring to the workplace. He also opens up about balancing a demanding career with family life, what success looks like in this season of his life, and why making time for the people who matter most is his greatest priority.

...

Aleda Connect was created to provide unique collaborative opportunities for leaders at the top of their fields. We connect a small but diverse group of successful leaders who understand the challenges of high-level leadership. With them, they bring their willingness to share, learn and grow. Aleda Connect provides a supportive, confidential environment where creativity and connection thrive.

Ready to be in the room with exceptional leaders? Take the next step here: https://bit.ly/49tn4AD

Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For more than two decades, Chris Lendrum has been immersed in the world of elite sport. A significant period of that time was spent leading the systems, culture and people behind one of the world's most successful high-performance sporting organisations, New Zealand Rugby, where he worked with the All Blacks, Black Ferns and the Olympic gold medal-winning sevens teams.

In this episode of Empowering Leaders, Chris shares the leadership principles that have driven sustained success at the highest level of world sport. From building trust through connection and creating teams that thrive under pressure, to making difficult leadership decisions with empathy and integrity, he generously offers practical lessons that apply to leaders across all industries.

At the heart of this conversation is the beautiful and powerful Māori concept of winning with mana, and the belief that success isn't just about the result, but about how you achieve it. 

Learn. Lead. Collaborate.

Aleda Connect was created to provide unique collaborative opportunities for leaders at the top of their fields. We connect a small but diverse group of successful leaders who understand the challenges of high-level leadership. With them, they bring their willingness to share, learn and grow. Aleda Connect provides a supportive, confidential environment where creativity and connection thrive.

Ready to be in the room with exceptional leaders? Take the next step here: https://bit.ly/3IYnLrS 

Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As an intensive care paramedic, Sally Gould has spent over 15 years on the front lines of emergency medicine, witnessing both the chaos of life-and-death situations and the quiet resilience that defines her profession.

In this episode of Empowering Leaders, Sally reveals how she stays calm in high-pressure situations, the role humour and humanity play in managing trauma, and why empathy is one of the most important skills in a crisis.

She also shares her thoughts on why building trust through great leadership, camaraderie and emotional support isn’t just advised - it’s critical.

Whether you lead a team, work in a high-pressure environment, or simply want to maintain composure when life gets stressful, this episode is packed with practical insights and advice you’ll want to add to your life skills tool kit.

You can learn more about Sally’s life and career in her brilliant memoir, Frog: The Secret Diary of a Paramedic. Find out more here. 

Learn. Lead. Collaborate.

Start your leadership journey today with Aleda Connect, our signature, cross industry collaboration program. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly sessions, Aleda Connect really is the learning experience of a life-time.

Curious about what makes us so different? Head here and we'd love to tell you more.

Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens to our relationships when the most available, most responsive, most patient listener in our lives is an AI?

Bryony Cole has been sitting with that question longer than almost anyone. As the founder of the Future of Sex platform, she stepped into one of the most uncomfortable conversations a person could choose to have, more than a decade ago, and never looked back. What started as a curiosity about technology and sexuality has expanded into something far broader: a serious, global reckoning with what intimacy, loneliness, and human connection look like in an increasingly digital world.

In this conversation, Luke and Bryony go to places that feel both strange and surprisingly close to home. From children in Australia using AI for companionship, to couples outsourcing their arguments to ChatGPT, to the very real question of what it means when your partner turns to an algorithm instead of you at 3am, this is a conversation that holds a mirror up to habits most of us already have but haven't fully examined.

Bryony is not an alarmist. She is also not naive. She calls herself a through-topian: someone who believes we will find our way through, but only if we are honest about what we are already doing and clear about what we want to protect.

Learn. Lead. Collaborate.

Start your leadership journey today with Aleda Connect, our signature, cross industry collaboration program. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly sessions, Aleda Connect really is the learning experience of a life-time.

Curious about what makes us so different? Head here and we'd love to tell you more.

Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's a moment in this conversation where Matt Wadewitz describes getting a phone call at 3am. He'd saved the name in his phone just in case - because he'd hoped it was coming. The voice on the other end had a beautiful Spanish accent. It was Mikel Arteta.

That call is a good entry point into who Matt is and what he's built. Because Aleda Connect - the global leadership program he co-founded with Luke - didn't find Mikel Arteta through a cold pitch or a clever marketing strategy. It found him the same way it's found nearly every one of its 700-plus members: through word of mouth, through one curious leader telling another, through the simple and powerful idea that great people want to be around other great people.

This is episode 250 of Empowering Leaders, and it felt right to mark it with the person who was there for episode one. Matt and Luke go back further than Aleda - further than podcasting, further than leadership development - all the way to a cold Saturday morning at South Adelaide when a tall kid showed up without having trained, nicked Matt's position on the team, and still somehow left with a new best mate.

In this conversation they go back to the beginning. The ankle injury that ended Matt's AFL dream the night before he was supposed to sign with Essendon. The year he took a group of disengaged kids to a beach in Adelaide and told them they were going to solve an unsolved murder. The conversation with Luke where he was expecting a high-five and instead got talked out of a job he was about to take. And the question Luke put to him that changed everything: why not just take it further?

Eleven years later, the answer to that question is a community of leaders spanning sport, business, the arts, and everything in between - connected not by industry or geography, but by the shared conviction that you can always be better for the people you lead.

People mentioned and their conversations with Luke on Empowering Leaders

• Steve Kerr & Mikel Arteta LIVE: The Leadership Playbook
• Emma Hayes LIVE from London: For Women, By Women, Football & Beyond
• Dr Troy Flanagan: Making history in the NBA with a 'no burnout' mindset
• John Bertrand - Achieving the impossible
• Eddie Jones - Striving to be the greatest of all time
• Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson - The Thinking Teacher (Part 1)
• Ben Northey — conductor, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
• Anna West — sleep specialist, Arsenal FC
• Craig McRae — Collingwood AFC head coach, Aleda member
• Stacey Morlang — Aleda team member
• Timmy Bristow — school principal, Aleda member, previous podcast guest
• Paul Waterson — founder, Australian Venue Co., Aleda member
• Luke Beveridge — Western Bulldogs head coach
• Neale Daniher — episode with daughter Bec Daniher — CEO of FightMND

Learn. Lead. Collaborate.

Start your leadership journey today.  Meet with co-founder Matt Wadewitz or one of the amazing Aleda Connect facilitators to learn how you can grow within our signature leadership program.

Head here to find out more about our signature, cross industry collaboration program, Aleda Connect. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly or monthly sessions, Aleda Connect is the learning experience of a life-time.

Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brad Johnson holds the Western Bulldogs games record - 364 games. 558 goals, six All Australian selections, a Hall of Fame inductee. He is, by any measure, one of the greats of his generation.

This is a beautiful conversation with a genuinely extraordinary person that still trains like he's trying to earn his spot - he drove an hour to be first at the track the morning this conversation was recorded. He's genuinely, almost inexplicably, one of the happiest people you'll ever come across - and, according to Luke, has been that way since he was seventeen years old.

In this episode of Empowering Leaders, Luke Darcy sits down with his former teammate, and longtime friend for a conversation about what it actually looks like to give everything to something - in football, in business, in family - and still be standing tall on the other side.

They talk about Brad's son Jack, who is chasing a career in motorsport at serious cost, and what it means to be a dad who shows up without getting in the way. About his daughter Ella, whose singing career paused through COVID and might just be starting again. About the eight years he and wife Donna spent building Zena - a protective sportswear brand for women in contact sport - starting from nothing, holding strong through two years of dead ends, to now being stocked in Rebel Sport and sold internationally.

Brad opens up about his cancer diagnosis last year - a lump under his arm, six weeks of radiation, an operation, and a first clear scan six months later. He talks about what it took to stop trying to work through it and about Donna telling him to for once in his life to focus on himself.

You'll hear this brilliant past episode referenced: Paul Waterson: From intensive care nurse to running pubs with the Australian Venue Co. Check it out or re-listen now.

01:49  AFL Legend Brad Johnson & Luke Darcy: 17-Year-Olds at the Western Bulldogs
03:49  The Athlete Brad Johnson Was — Endurance, Speed & Strength
04:52  Brad Johnson's Positivity: Natural or Performed?
06:02  Parenting Kids Who Chase Big Dreams — Ella's Singing & Jack's Motorsport Career
08:31  Supporting a Motorsport Career: The Real Cost of Jack Johnson's Racing Dream
10:33  Leadership Lessons from Jack Johnson's Pitch to Melbourne Business Leaders
12:01  Brad Johnson on Parenting Differently to His Own Father
14:34  364 Games for the Western Bulldogs: Habits, Discipline & the Scotty Wine Story
17:16  What AFL Players Underestimate When They Retire
18:42  Brad & Donna Johnson on Starting Zena Sport — Building a Business from Scratch
23:36  Finding Your Lane: Stop Chasing Everything (The Hedgehog Moment)
25:17  Brad Johnson on the Aleda Leadership Community
26:21  What Brad Johnson Is Most Proud Of at 50
31:10  Brad Johnson's Cancer Diagnosis: Radiation, Surgery & First Clear Scan
34:04  Brad Johnson's Daily Routine After Cancer — Walking, Sauna, Weights & Golf
35:24  Leadership Advice: Bring Your Quality to the Table
39:12  Collaboration, Paul Waterson & Learning Outside the Sporting Bubble
42:09  The AFL Premiership Brad Johnson Never Won — and How He Made Peace With It

We are privileged to have Brad as part of our Aleda Connect community. Head here to find out more about our signature, cross industry collaboration program, Aleda Connect. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly sessions, Aleda Connect is the learning experience of a life-time.

Learn. Lead. Collaborate.

Start your leadership journey today. Meet with founders Luke Darcy, Matt Wadewitz or one of the amazing Aleda Connect facilitators to learn how you can grow alongside people like Brad within our signature leadership program.

Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Timmy Bristow was nine years old when he ruptured his pancreas playing footy at recess, crawled to the tap, and waited alone in a dark staffroom until his mum finished her shift. By the time she arrived he was blue. A few hours later he was on an ambulance plane to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne with a thirty percent chance of surviving surgery. 

While Timmy was in hospital, of the young AFL players who showed up on the ward to help cheer up the young patient was… Luke Darcy. But in that moment - neither of them could have possibly known they'd end up here, having this conversation today.

Timmy grew up in country Victoria, excelled on the sporting field, and for twenty-one years carried the secret that he'd been sexually abused by someone in a position of authority and trust - in an institution that covered it up. He held it through his teens, through footy, through becoming a husband and a father. Until his sister said she'd tell their parents herself if he didn't.

In this conversation on Empowering Leaders, Timmy and Luke talk about what that silence cost and what breaking the silence felt like. They talk about the 28.5% of Australian children who will experience sexual abuse before they turn eighteen, about Timmy’s mammoth effort to run seven marathons in seven states in seven days for Bravehearts, and about what Timmy has built on the other side of all of it - an incredible school he leads the way he wished he'd been led, a personal philosophy of connection, vulnerability and consistency, and a refusal to become a statistic.

We are privileged to have Timmy as part of our Aleda Connect community. Head here to find out more about our signature, cross industry collaboration program, Aleda Connect. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly sessions, Aleda Connect is the learning experience of a life-time.

Learn. Lead. Collaborate.

Start your leadership journey today. Meet with founders Luke Darcy, Matt Wadewitz or one of the amazing Aleda Connect facilitators to learn how you can grow alongside people like Timmy within our signature leadership program.

Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Lexi Edmondson walked down to Bondi Beach to celebrate finishing her master's degree, she had no idea her life was about to change forever. What began as a summer evening by the water for hundreds of people became one of Australia's most devastating acts of violence - and Lexi ran towards it.

In her most in-depth interview since the December attack, Lexi sits down with Luke Darcy to take us inside the night itself. She talks about the chaos, the moment her training kicked in, and about how the iconic Bondi community responded in the aftermath. Lexi shares the healing power of reconnecting with the people she helped, and the extraordinary gesture from Rabbi Levi Wolf and the Jewish community that brought everyone together.

Armed with fresh surf lifesaving training and sheer instinct, Lexi and fellow volunteer Jimmy McIntosh became part of the community of first responders who helped treat and carry 60 people to safety that night. In the days that followed - amid the grief, the trauma processing, and the slow work of rebuilding - Lexi and Jimmy fell in love.

In the six months since Lexi has been able to identify what a tragedy like the deadly Bondi attack can strip away - the corporate ambitions, the performative rituals of modern dating, the conditions we place on living fully. Lexi shares why she has walked away from a path she thought she wanted, returned to clinical practice to help people one-on-one, and said yes to a relationship that moved at the speed of life.

Plus: the ChatGPT proposal fail, the ring they promised not to buy (and then bought!), and the moment Lexi's mum clocked Jimmy before Lexi even had a chance.

Lexi speaks beautifully about the importance of community, finding courage, championing feminine leadership, and finding the light when everything feels so dark.

Learn. Lead. Collaborate.

Start your leadership journey today. Head here to find out more about our signature, cross industry collaboration program, Aleda Connect. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly sessions, Aleda Connect is the learning experience of a life-time.

Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Harry Moffitt spent decades inside one of the world's most demanding institutions - Australia's Special Air Service Regiment. He's served in conflict zones across the Middle East including Afghanistan, lost friends, mentored some of the country's most elite operators, and now works as a corporate psychologist helping leaders, athletes, and organisations perform under pressure. He's also the author of Eleven Bats and The Fourth Pillar, a book about a pillar he believes most high performance programs are missing entirely.

In this conversation on Empowering Leaders, Luke and Harry explore what it means to train the whole human. Not just the body or the mind, but the philosophical and moral interior that most people never think to tend to. Harry traces the idea back to a remarkable Australian coach named Percy Cerutty, who in the 1950s and 60s built what might have been the world's first institute of sport from a tin shack on the beach at Portsea. His STOTAN philosophy blended the best of the Stoics and the Spartans into a radical approach to resilience and human performance.

Harry also speaks candidly about the Ben Roberts-Smith war crimes case, one of the most significant and divisive legal proceedings in Australian military history. Harry has worked closely with people on both sides of the investigation and brings a perspective that is measured, informed, and unflinching. He talks about what the case has done to the SAS community, why he believes there is worse yet to come, and what integrity looks like when loyalty and accountability are in direct tension.

Harry speaks with the kind of hard-earned clarity that only comes from actually living what you're writing about - the cost of being away from home, what he now understands about presence, about community, about the difference between chasing things and building a life. 

He talks about grief for his friend Lochlan Muddle, about leadership under pressure, about walking the floor as a leader, and about why talking to yourself out loud might be one of the oldest and most powerful practices a human can cultivate.

03:29 The four pillars of high performance
05:50 Percy Cerutty and the STOTAN philosophy
09:33 The whole human: Ancient wisdom and modern performance
14:46 A philosophy for living a meaningful life
18:41 Absence, regret and family
20:45 The SAS brotherhood
22:33 Lochlan Muddle: loss and pride
25:42 Ben Roberts-Smith and a divided community
31:51 Fog of war, moral armory and where the line is
35:17 Afghanistan: did we win?
40:37 What great leaders do consistently
45:50 The ancient art of talking to yourself
51:15 Routines, habits and self first
57:05 Walk the floor: the one piece of advice
1:00:14 Who would Harry collaborate with?
1:04:34 The greatest leader in Harry's life

Learn. Lead. Collaborate.

Start your leadership journey today. Head here to find out more about our signature, cross industry collaboration program, Aleda Connect. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly sessions, Aleda Connect is the learning experience of a life-time. 

Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.