Ep.7 There’s No Straight Line to Success

After more than 20 years and 18 different roles within one multinational beauty business, Aurelie De Cremiers knows a thing or two about leadership. She joins Nick and Lauren to reflect on a career spanning France, Australia and New Zealand, including the challenge of turning around a struggling business and discovering that its biggest problems weren’t strategic, but cultural. Aurélie shares why trust is fundamental to a successful team, the difficult feedback that changed her leadership style and why getting results means little if you can’t bring people with you. Now an advisor and board director, she also talks about backing your instincts, navigating cultural differences and why leadership accounts for so much of a business’s success.

Performance coach, consultant and bestselling author of Better, Andrew Horsfield joins Nick and Loz to talk about the messy, uncertain space between where we are and where we want to be. After 18 years working as a live, in-the-room facilitator, Andrew opens up about the vulnerability of putting his ideas into a book, and what years inside executive teams have taught him about leadership, self-awareness and creating meaningful change. Sometimes, he says, the problem a business thinks it has isn’t the real problem at all. And sometimes, telling a CEO the problem is them is exactly what needs to happen. Andrew shares why changing our environment can be more powerful than trying to force new behaviours, how he protects his own energy through an “ideal week”, and why the discomfort we often label as imposter syndrome can actually be a sign that we’re doing something worthwhile. He also reflects on the blunt piece of feedback that exposed his own need to be liked, the mentor who changed his trajectory, and a simple daily practice for getting better without a coach. From leadership and performance to parenting, people-pleasing and learning to get comfortable with uncertainty, this is a conversation about what it really takes to move forward when you don’t have all the answers.

On this episode of The Sounds of Eclat, we sit down with Jarryd Roughead 283-game Hawthorn premiership player, Coleman medalist, multiple All-Australian, former club captain and now list manager at the Adelaide Crows. From a country kid in Leongatha drafted at 17 alongside Buddy Franklin and Jordan Lewis, to captaining four premiership sides, Jarryd takes us through the highs of a golden era at Hawthorn and the moment everything changed: a melanoma diagnosis on his lip in 2015 that returned a year later, having spread to his lungs. He opens up about the fear he never let himself feel, the immunotherapy trial that gave him his life back, and how leaning on his footy club as a second family got him through it. He also shares why he walked away from coaching to learn list management from the ground up, and how his own experience as a player now shapes the way he builds a team from the other side of the table.

Mandy Loftus-Hills, Partnerships Director at The Local Project, joins Nick and Lauren to unpack a career that didn’t exactly follow a plan. From starting out in a cabling company to finding her way into real estate, publishing and eventually The Local Project, Mandy reflects on the people and setbacks that shaped her along the way, including a career-defining mentor, being unexpectedly fired and navigating the “champagne and razor blades” reality of sales. She shares what she’s learned about the loneliness of leadership, becoming a better listener, going back to your technique when the results stop coming and why honesty and clear communication remain at the heart of how she leads.

On this episode of The Sounds of Eclat, we sit down with Michael Voss Brisbane Lions triple-premiership captain and former Carlton coach and Rita Cincotta, author, leadership expert and executive coach, to unpack what real leadership looks like when the cameras aren't rolling.