The Leadership Star

PREFACE

This book is designed to help leaders at all levels — from newly minted team leaders to established CEOs — to build and sustain highly engaged teams.

It presents a five‐point framework that I call the ‘Leadership Star’ — a visual memory device I created to help me recall and apply engagement lessons that I'd learned through trial and error and from watching great leaders in action. As a self‐taught leader — I don't have an MBA — these lessons were collected over a 30‐year career in banking that spanned roles on four continents and culminated in my time as CEO of Westpac from 2015 to 2019.

While my experience has predominantly (though not exclusively) been in a commercial, financial services setting, feedback from other leaders with whom I've shared these lessons convinces me that they apply equally to government, academic, community and not‐for‐profit organisations as well.

Although many of the stories in this book are drawn from my time at ANZ, Royal Bank of Scotland and Westpac, this is not a book about those companies or my time as CEO of Westpac.

Because of the circumstances of my departure from Westpac — which I touch on briefly at the end of this book — I am conscious that some people may dismiss what I have to say, or seek to highlight differences between the lessons in this book and what they see as my failings as a CEO.

While I am all too aware of my weaknesses, the experience of other leaders who have applied the Leadership Star convinces me that the model ...