2024 Executive of the Year Awards Sydney Judge: Colleen Callander
When it comes to leadership, Colleen Callander has earned her stripes. Now, as the Founder of Mentor Me Women and Co-Founder of Human Elevation, the former Sportsgirl CEO is sharing her experiences with the next generation of leaders.
A fascination for people and what makes them tick meant that Colleen Callander unwittingly became a student of leadership at a young age, setting her on a lifelong path of learning. Now, after almost 30 years working in retail, 13 of those as CEO of retail giants Sportsgirl and Sussan, that path is now taking a new turn.
She is now the owner and Managing Director of Callander & Co, and as Co-Founder of Human Elevation and Founder of Mentor Me Women, she is sharing the lessons she learned along the way with a new generation of leaders and companies seeking to transition to a more people-focused style of leadership, which is where she excels.
Although Callander has had many inspiring mentors during her career, her own leadership philosophy was heavily influenced by her upbringing.
"My father was this very strong Italian man for whom it was all about work and working harder. And my mother, who was one of 12 children, was this real nurturer," she tells The CEO Magazine. "I feel fortunate to have experienced both of those styles and to have taken valuable lessons from each.
"I have always believed hard work is essential, however, it’s equally important to nurture and support people along the way."
"I have always believed hard work is essential, however it’s equally important to nurture and support people along the way."
It’s not about choosing purpose and passion over profit, Callander insists – it’s about harnessing their power to drive a business forward.
"I never shied away from the fact that making money and delivering shareholder returns are super important," she notes. "But what I’ve always focused on is creating environments where people feel valued and connected, where they feel their work really matters and that they can step into their confidence and have the confidence to share their voice.
"They also need to feel bigger than just the seat they sit in because everyone wants to feel part of something bigger than themselves."
Over the years, this leadership philosophy has evolved and gathered momentum, but her belief in focusing on people and placing them at the heart of everything she does has endured.
"I think that’s really where people shine, and I think that’s really where amazing stuff happens in organizations," she reflects.
Rewriting the story
Callander decided to leave Sportsgirl in 2020 in order to pursue her passions – a mammoth decision after such a lengthy tenure. But while the move represented a big leap of faith, her timing turned out to be spot on; the perfect opportunity came along shortly after she stepped down, when she founded her Mentor Me Women program during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
"I suppose it was a gift for myself but a gift to others, too," she explains. "It was all about making mentoring affordable and accessible for women, because often women don’t know where to go to find mentors and it can be very expensive if you want to get a coach or get into a networking group."
While she started off thinking it would be fun and rewarding to share her knowledge, she quickly found that she was also learning a lot.
"One of the things I realized, particularly mentoring women, is that everyone has a story even if, often, we don’t really think that we do," she says.
"Some days that story is one of challenges, failures, setbacks and resilience. And on others, it can be about joy, collaboration and success. But we learn through storytelling, we challenge ourselves and challenge each other. And the most important thing that happens is we build human connection. So one of the most joyful things of mentoring people is really unlocking their story."
"If we don’t build solid foundations for ourselves, not just as leaders, but as human beings, then we won’t weather the storms that come our way."
The four-week mentoring group program was designed to guide and support women to better understand their story – what’s truly important and meaningful to them, and then harness these learnings to enhance both their professional and personal lives.
"There are quite a few key messages that I love to share," Callander says. "The first one I always talk about is that leadership starts with self. I think that’s where a lot of people go wrong today – they think leadership roles are about leading other people, but it actually starts with leading ourselves first."
She likes to use the analogy of building a house to illustrate this point, setting the foundations as self-awareness, values and purpose.
"If we don’t build solid foundations for ourselves, not just as leaders, but as human beings, then we won’t weather the storms that come our way. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the house is, if the foundations aren’t solid, then it doesn’t really matter," she stresses.
Confidence is another crucial focus of her mentorship, with Callander seeing this as a major area that is holding women back from achieving their professional ambitions.
"This is a big one for women – we all suffer from imposter syndrome and self-sabotage and so on," she explains.
"Confidence is an inside job. It’s not something we gain from someone else," she says. "It’s actually like a muscle – the more we use it, the more we nurture it, the more we care for it, the stronger it becomes."
Shining a spotlight
Having been highly commended in the CEO of the Year category in 2014, and served as a judge for the first time in 2018, Callander understands only too well the benefits of participating in The CEO Magazine’s Executive of the Year Awards. This year, she returns once again as a judge and is excited about the opportunity.
"I’m very passionate about shining a spotlight on what we have to offer here in Australia and the talent that we have," she says. "But I think the big thing for me is that it just recognizes and celebrates exceptional leadership and people who are really making a positive impact, not just in their organizations, but in the community and sometimes in the world."
The judging process has been completed already, and she has been impressed by the standard of the nominees.
"To me, they’re all winners. There’s not just one winner. I think anyone who’s nominated is already part of a winning team."
All roads lead back to that, according to Callander, which is why she runs an entire session around just that. And she is quick to point out that it’s an issue that does not solely exist among women. Many people from all walks of life lack confidence and don’t realize that there are solutions out there.
"Men have confidence issues, too. Maybe they just don’t want to admit it as much or talk about it," she says. "But what has really been a game-changer is the idea that if you change your story, you can change your life.
"We all have this inner critic that plays havoc in our minds every single day. It is highly judgmental and can leave us feeling stuck, deflated and likely to self-sabotage. This critic feeds on the stories it tells us – or, more importantly, the stories we tell ourselves.
"So I really work on giving people the tools to be able to change their narrative, shifting those stories of ‘I’m not worthy, I’m going to fail’ or ‘I’m never going to get it done’ to a much more empowering story that enables them to take action."
Beating burnout
With technology pervading every aspect of our lives, switching off at the end of the working day has become more difficult than ever. And with the lines so blurred between our professional and personal lives, burn-out is becoming ever more prevalent.
"In 2023, approximately 62 percent of Australian employees experienced some form of burnout," Callander shares. "That's higher than the global average and that's pretty scary."
It’s a topic she understands deeply on a personal level, having experienced it herself – hitting burnout in 2007 when her three children were all under the age of 10.
"I used to be the red Ferrari that never pulled into the pits, never put air in the tires, never put petrol in the tank – no car goes that well, unless we do the basic fundamentals for," she says. "My career was going gangbusters but I ignored my health, always pushing to go faster, be better, and do more – until I hit burnout. So for me, I had to change the way I lived my life and I made a lot of significant changes."
She found a life coach, learned to set boundaries and started to say no – although she admits, she still struggles with this to this day.
"I knew people who would go to bed, then wake up, open their laptop and work in bed for another eight hours, and that’s really destructive."
That’s why boundaries are another area she explores in such great depth through her mentorship, because they are often so overlooked in real life.
"We all know we need them, but very few people have them," Callander says. "Boundaries are the guidelines and rules and behavior that we want for ourselves. And if we don’t set our own boundaries, someone else will set them for us, and we’re never going to like them because they’re not on our terms."
It’s a topic she explores yet further in her book, Elevate, which she co-wrote with life coach Shannah Kennedy. Since its launch in Australia and New Zealand in December last year, the book has been rolled out in the United States, with publication in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan set for September.
"We’ve also had interest from Korea and China and so we’ll see what else happens – it’s exciting," Callander says.
"One of the chapters in the book is about preventing burnout because we can’t show up as the best version of ourselves when we’re on the burnout train. We give people the skills on how to recognize burnout, how to prevent it, and the things we can build into our life and our leadership that actually allows us to stay off that burnout train."
The pandemic was both a blessing and a curse when it came to burnout and confidence, according to Callander.
"Our homes are our sanctuaries, and all of a sudden our homes became a place of work and we could not get off the hamster wheel because we were constantly there," she reflects. "I knew people who would go to bed, then wake up, open their laptop and work in bed for another eight hours, and that’s really destructive."
The great divide
Adept at finding a silver lining in most situations however, Callander believes the turbulent period created an opportunity to change the way we think about business.
"It brought some really interesting innovation," she muses. "What it also did was separate good leaders from great leaders, or in some cases poor leaders from great leaders. I saw the cream rise to the top, and then we know what happens to the rest of it. It sinks to the bottom."
She calls it the ‘leadership great divide’ with the impacts of those undercurrents still being felt. Yet still some leadership practices persist, which Callander believes should be shown the door.
"There are people who create environments of collaboration and then those that create environments of fear – I’d like that to be phased out. There are people who create environments of autonomy and empowerment, and then those who prefer micromanagement – and I’d like that to be phased out," she says.
"I think we would have a much nicer world, and much more productive and progressive organizations, if we did that."
"For a long time, people thought that kindness was a weakness and I actually believe the opposite is true. It really takes courage and strength to be a kind leader."
It’s a shift that is already underway, with Callander heralding the arrival of the ‘kindness economy’ during her last conversation with The CEO Magazine in 2021.
"We’ve been able to shine the spotlight on kindness a lot more, and I think the pandemic helped with that," she says. "For a long time, people thought that kindness was a weakness and I actually believe the opposite is true.
"It really takes courage and strength to be a kind leader. It’s a superpower for leaders. It’s also a currency we can trade for trust, loyalty, commitment and high performance."
This new era of leadership that is upon us really embraces and drives creativity, innovation and engagement, Callander believes, and she is excited to be a part of this transition.
"I really love sharing my leadership journey and my learnings," she says. "I’m very passionate about the next generation of leaders."