Courage over charisma. Character over confidence. Evidence over ego.
Most people go looking for great leaders in the wrong place — upwards. If you want to know how to spot a great leader, stop scanning the executive floor and start watching what happens in the four seconds after something goes wrong. Here are five signs of a great leader at work, three Australian leaders worth naming, and the reason the best ones almost never have the biggest title.
TRUE STORY
Wednesday night. International departure gate. 1am, everyone tired and slightly over it. I got talking to the couple next to me. Both middle managers, different organisations, same face — that particular look of people who hold the entire thing together and get thanked for approximately none of it.
We got onto what I do. And then she asked me the question. Not as small talk. She asked it the way you ask something you have been carrying around for a while:
“So where are all the great leaders?”
Not who. WHERE. As in: where have they gone? Why aren’t they above us? Why are we being led by people who wouldn’t survive a fortnight doing our jobs?
Then they called the flight.
I have been asked that question in boardrooms and on stages for twenty years. It has never landed on me the way it landed at that gate — because the two people asking it were, as far as I could tell, the answer to it.
Here is the reply I didn’t get to finish. It’s a two-parter, because it turns out I had rather a lot to say. Shocking, I know.
Three great Australian leaders worth naming
When someone asks that question, the worst possible response is to go philosophical on them. They didn’t want a framework. They wanted examples of great leaders. So they got names.
Paul Scurrah — courage over charisma
Paul led Virgin Australia into and through voluntary administration in 2020 — the most brutal stretch in the history of Australian aviation. He stabilised it, protected every job and route he could, got it sold, then stepped down when the new owners decided they wanted a different sort of leader. He went on to run Pacific National, and since November 2025 he has been Managing Director and CEO of Fiji Airways. In January he was made a Member of the Order of Australia.
But the résumé isn’t what I admire. What I admire is that the thing he was most consistently praised for was how he treated people while the ground was disappearing beneath them.
Anyone can lead when the numbers are pretty. Leadership is what you do at 2am when there is no good option left and you still choose to tell your people the truth.
Christine Holgate — character over confidence
Christine built Blackmores into an ASX200 company, led Australia Post, then went through one of the most public and punishing episodes any Australian executive has ever endured. Six months later she picked up Toll’s old Global Express business — a company bleeding money — and rebuilt it into Team Global Express. In 2025 she stepped up to Group Executive Chair, now driving the group’s international expansion.
She has put it better than I could: the lesson was never whether bad things would happen, because they will. It is how you rise afterwards and how you conduct yourself, because that is the part people remember. And what she was determined to do walking into that business was make sure her people had a voice and that the leadership team actually showed up.
Show up. Give people a voice. That is the entire strategy deck.
Peter Birtles — evidence over ego
Peter led Super Retail Group for 13 years, growing it from around $500 million in sales to $2.6 billion. He was a Male Champion of Change and moved on female representation at board and executive level before a single soul was making him do it. He now chairs Metcash and Universal Store and sits on the board of Good360, which redirects surplus goods to Australians who need them.
Peter is the quiet one. No personal brand campaign. No interest whatsoever in being the story. A steward, not a star.
We have very nearly stopped recognising that as leadership. Which says considerably more about us than it does about him.
Three completely different humans. One thread: not one of them leads for the applause.
Why the best leaders are rarely at the top
This is where the temperature of the conversation changed.
The great leaders are mostly not at the top. They never were. We just keep looking up there because that is where the lighting is good.
They are the nurse unit manager who quietly rebuilt a roster so a grieving staff member could get through the month. The operations supervisor who has never once thrown his crew under a bus in front of an executive. The twenty-eight-year-old team lead who noticed someone had gone quiet in meetings and actually did something about it. The finance manager who says “I got that wrong” out loud, in front of everyone, and by doing so makes it safe for eleven other people to do the same.
This is leadership without a title, and it is the most common form of great leadership there is. I have coached hundreds of these people. And I know who reads The Spark, because I built it for them. You are not a spectator in this story. You are the shift lead, the practice manager, the site supervisor, the team lead nobody has thought to develop. You are what that woman at the gate was looking for while she was looking upwards.
You will never be on a magazine cover. You are, without a shred of exaggeration, the reason your organisation still functions on a Tuesday.
Three leaders who have stayed with me
Jaime, at the Port of Brisbane. The commitment she made to her own development was extraordinary, and she matched it with the same commitment to her teams. She was always herself, and she used her voice.
Vee, at Nando’s. The passion she has for her company and her people is the kind you cannot teach. You feel it in the room before she says a word.
Matt, a senior leader at Seymour Whyte. His energy and his willingness to be vulnerable in the pursuit of becoming a better leader gave me hope.
None of them were trying to be impressive. They were trying to be better. That is the difference — and it is the only one that has ever mattered.
How to spot a great leader: 5 signs
Great leaders will not announce themselves, so you have to know what to watch for. These are the five signs of a good leader I look for in every organisation I walk into. Read the list twice: once for the people around you, once for yourself.
- They move towards discomfort. They have the conversation nobody wants to have, early, while it is still small and survivable.
- They give credit away and absorb blame. Watch the four seconds immediately after something goes wrong. That is the whole test, and it takes less time than a kettle.
- They are the same person in every room. Same tone with the CEO as with the cleaner. Consistency is the most underrated leadership trait on earth.
- They can admit “I don’t know” and “I got that wrong”. They can say it without it costing them anything internally — which is what makes it safe for everyone else to do the same.
- They grow other leaders. Because the real measure of a leader was never what they built. It is who they made.
Notice that not one single item on that list requires a title. Which is rather the point.
TRY THIS WEEK
Take the list above into your coaching this week and work one line of it. My pick: “Where did I move towards discomfort this week — and where did I quietly go around it?”
Then answer the harder half: what did going around it cost the person on the other side of that conversation?
What about younger leaders? They are not entitled — they are early
Because I am so deeply over the eye-rolling.
They ask for feedback instead of waiting seven years for someone to remember to give it. They expect honesty. They hold boundaries my generation was told to be grateful we didn’t have.
We call that entitlement. It is not entitlement. It is a healthier relationship with work than we ever managed to build for ourselves — and a great deal of it is very good leadership instinct arriving about thirty years early.
If they seem demanding, it is because they are asking out loud for the things we quietly needed and were far too frightened to request.
I would rather coach that than fix another decade of learned silence.
Why leadership coaching goes to the people who need it least
Back to that couple at the gate. Neither of them had a coach. Neither had ever been offered one. The coaching budget in both their organisations goes to the twelve people at the top — the ones the woman next to me was asking where the great leaders had gone.
That is the actual problem. We reserve development for the people who need it least, then wonder why the people doing the actual leading burn out quietly and leave.
Before you go
If you read that list and someone came to mind — tell them. Today. Ninety seconds. Most great leaders have absolutely no idea they are one, because nobody has ever bothered to say it out loud.
And if you read that list and quietly recognised yourself? Sit with that for a minute. You might well be the answer to the question you have been asking.
You are already standing on the other side of that door, which is the entire reason this lands in your inbox. If you have been reading The Spark but haven’t started coaching yet, this is the week. Seven days free, then A$29 a month — the price of a couple of coffees, for the person carrying the whole thing on a Tuesday.
Start your seven days — staging.worksparks.com/
Frequently asked questions
What makes a great leader?
Great leaders move towards difficult conversations early, give credit away and absorb blame, behave the same way in every room, admit what they don’t know, and develop other leaders. None of these traits depend on seniority, charisma or a title.
How can you tell if someone is a good leader at work?
Watch the four seconds after something goes wrong. A good leader protects the team and takes responsibility; a poor one looks for a name. It is the fastest and most reliable test there is.
Can you be a leader without a title?
Yes — and most great leaders are. Leadership without a title shows up as the supervisor who never throws their crew under a bus, or the team lead who notices someone has gone quiet and acts on it. Influence and trust are not granted by an org chart.
Who are some examples of great leaders in Australia?
Paul Scurrah, Christine Holgate and Peter Birtles are three very different Australian leaders who share one trait: none of them lead for the applause.
Why do organisations only coach senior leaders?
Cost and habit. Traditional executive coaching is expensive per head, so budgets concentrate at the top — which leaves the frontline and middle managers, the people doing the most leading, with nothing. AI coaching platforms like Worksparks exist to close that gap.
Next week, Part 2: why so many people at the top are such poor examples of it. The data is genuinely damning, the neuroscience explains nearly all of it, and it is not the story you think it is. Small spoiler — it is mostly not that they are bad people. It is that we built them this way.
Know someone who has been quietly leading brilliantly with nobody noticing? Forward this to them. It might be the ninety seconds that changes their week.
Sonia McDonald | Founder, Worksparks | CEO, LeadershipHQ