Episode Seven of the Spiique Up Podcast, and the final episode of Series One, features Christine Holman – a professional non-executive director who has extensive executive leadership experience across finance, commercial, strategy, business development and mergers and acquisitions. Christine grew up in Mumbai and at the age of 17 decided she wanted to spend a year in Australia. Her initial trip to her now adopted home included a pay phone conversation with her mother which changed her mindset about attaching meaning to every job you do, and her life.  In this conversation Christine shares her early struggles in Australia, explains the value in diversity of experience by working across businesses and seeking new opportunities to stretch yourself, how connecting people to purpose will help keep individuals and teams aligned and that leading through uncertainty is one of the challenges leaders of today must embrace.

Episode Six of the Spiique Up Podcast features Jason Disborough holding dual leadership roles of Chief Commercial Officer – Enterprise and Chief Executive Officer – Multinational Accounts (International) at AON. Leveraging his skills as a mathematician Jason started a risk consultancy business that was purchased by AON in late 2001. Jason stayed on at AON and has spent the past 20 years in various leadership roles with the business, including four years in London. In this conversation Jason outlines the importance of personal curiosity and reflection, how leadership stability at the top of a large multinational business is critical and how the continuous reinforcement of simple messages can help individuals within businesses stay aligned. Ultimately, being a leader can be tough but at the same time enormously satisfying.

Episode Five of the Spiique Up Podcast features Stew Winspear – Co-Founder of Spiique. Stew started his career at PWC in Hobart in the early 1990’s before embarking on a 25 plus year career in restructuring, turnarounds and transformations across the Asia Pacific and the UK. Stew and his two partners, Julia van Graas and David Hewish, founded Spiique in 2018 to help support CEO’s optimise outcomes through leveraging there experience in some of the most time critical corporate situations of the past twenty years. In this conversation Stew shares his perspectives on the challenges leaders face with the ever changing operating environment, how organisational planning horizons are getting shorter and shorter, how alignment is something that must be checked constantly in order to drive high performance across businesses and that whilst business can be tough it’s important to have fun and enjoy the journey.

Episode Four of the Spiique Up Podcast features Four Fold Consulting co - founder Anita Fleming. After starting out in consulting Anita spent over 13 years in large organisations across people, culture, strategy and transformation roles. These experiences helped reinforce Anita’s views on the traits of great leaders, that organisational purpose, values and principles help drive alignment, that organisations are living organisms where alignment is dynamic and that in the ever changing operational environment being able to tap in to and read emotion is becoming increasingly important for leaders.

Episode Three of the Spiique Up Podcast features Nick Humphrey, founder and managing partner of Hamilton Locke. Nick has worked in tier one law forms for nearly three decades and when he started taking on leadership positions over ten years ago he wanted to understand why staff churn rates were so high. This led Nick to speaking with people outside the law to help identify how to build high performing teams. His findings were the seed that started Hamilton Locke. Nick shares the importance of organisational purpose, the power of culture, how small actions leaders take can make a huge difference and that never compromising on talent is critical when it comes to delivering the outcomes clients demand in a such highly competitive field.

Episode Two of the Spiique Up Podcast features Margot Faraci - Managing Partner at Derwent, leading their Financial Services Practice. After starting out as a lawyer Margot’s interest in how people treat each other led her to a career in banking and finance and ultimately senior leadership roles. In this conversation Margot shares her thoughts on how permission to engage in respectful debate can help create a culture of speaking up not simply doing what we’re told, the importance for leaders to regularly ask ‘have I missed anything’, that workplace flexibility is a mindset leaders must embrace in the future and that listening, yet being strong in your decision making, will help optimise outcomes.

Episode One of the Spiique Up Podcast features Starling Trust founder Stephen Scott. Stephen’s studies in behavioural science led to a 30 year career conducting investigations on the ground in 50 countries. During this time Stephen saw the same thing happen over and over again: people who made bad decisions / bad actions felt they had no choice in doing otherwise. People thought they had to go along to get along. This was a predictable pattern which got Stephen thinking about how to spot patterns in data proactively.  And Starling Trust was born. Stephen shares his career journey, the founding of Starling Trust and his views on alignment being centred around complementary actions, the importance of creating cultures of candor and how leadership is not about you, but about the people you lead.