More Impact, More Easily

About the author

Rebecca Houghton is Australia's leading middle management expert, the founder of BoldHR and the publisher of the landmark B‐Suite Benchmarks, Australia’s only comprehensive dataset profiling more than 1000 middle managers. With more than two decades in talent and HR, including senior roles as Head of Talent and Careers at Australia Post and Head of Recruitment at Bupa, Rebecca pairs executive experience with something leadership development has long lacked: data.

Through BoldHR, she has partnered with some of the nation's biggest employers across the public sector, fast‐moving consumer goods (FMCG), retail, tech, energy and virtually every other industry with a middle. In doing so, she has trained thousands of managers to become what she calls ‘B‐Suite Leaders with C‐suite impact’: mid‐level leaders with the confidence, clarity and clout to operate like executives — without the title.

This work doesn't just transform managers but also builds evidence. Every organisation Rebecca works with feeds into a growing dataset that shows what's really happening in the middle of Australian companies — a part of the workforce that, until she measured it, no‐one had seriously bothered to understand. In 2024, that work culminated in the release of the B‐Suite Benchmarks — the first dataset of its kind, finally giving executives unprecedented insight into the state of middle management. This research provides a baseline, a clear definition of what good looks like, and a way ...