Jodie’s Story

The most valuable aspect of the Deloitte Mentoring Program was the time and space that it provided to reflect on my priorities and leadership qualities at this stage of my career.

There was a powerful advantage to being away from the academic environment for this program, and to view the world to which I’m acclimatised with fresh eyes. We attribute a lot of bad behaviour and bad practice in academia to its competitiveness, so it was refreshing to speak with someone from a different, highly competitive environment where the measures of success have been very deliberately shifted.

Explicitly valuing people’s track record of developing and enabling teams rather than focusing solely on individual achievement has been a major paradigm shift for the organisation. In this environment, followership as evidenced by staff retention and loyalty becomes a highly prized credential and a mark of a successful leader.