Lucy Foster and Catherine van der Veen, General Manager Strategy and Growth, Challenger Limited on combining their leadership styles to redefine the leadership narrative.

Lucy Foster and Catherine van der Veen, General Manager Strategy and Growth, Challenger Limited on combining their formidable yet distinctive leadership styles to redefine the narrative of leadership and designing their roles to suit them.

 

Key Insights

(01:41) How did they start their leadership journey?

Lucy and Catherine have been in partnership for six years but before that have had long individual journeys for 16 years. Lucy studied medical science then entered financial services and wealth management. Catherine took her cues from her leaders when she was still a young emerging leader. They say that people often forget that before they were partners, they were individuals, who brought their individual experiences into the partnership, giving them their complementary style. They have learned from each other’s journeys.

(26:27) What tool can Catherine share to the audience to add to their Leadership Toolbox?

Catherine calls it the whisk for making the omelets. The gist is, you draw a wheel on a

piece of paper and have a dozen eggs beside the wheel and if you divide that wheel up into hours the day, each egg represents 2 hours of your day and you allocate those eggs to where you want to spend your time and energy on.

(28:14) What tool can Lucy share to the audience to add to their Leadership Toolbox?

Lucy shares that your have to be ruthless with your time. Look at your diary every single

week and if you’re not taking out at least three or four meetings, you’re not being ruthless enough. Throw things off the bus. We have a tendency to be busy for the sake of being busy but Lucy is quite happy to turn up to a meeting and within 2 minutes leave, if she doesn’t think she needs to be there.

 

Important Resources and Links

If you’d like to learn more about how CommBank is supporting the growth of women in business visit https://www.commbank.com.au/women-in-focus.html  

Host of the Leading Women podcast, Shivani Gopal is a serial entrepreneur, speaker and advocate on a mission to create a more equal world. She’s recognised as a leading business thought leader helping professional women navigate their careers, businesses and financial success.

As the Founder and CEO of The Remarkable Woman and Co-Founder of Upstreet, Shivani was recently awarded the 2022 NSW Excellence in Women's Leadership Award and the Top 50 Small Business Leaders award, As a dedicated advocate for gender equality and for closing the wealth gap for everyday Australians, Shivani launched “Equality 2050”; a campaign to achieve gender equality within our lifetimes. If you’re interested in learning more about Shivani visit her website: https://www.theremarkablewoman.com.au/

The Leading Women podcast is proudly brought to you by Commonwealth Bank.  The series is produced by Nicole Hatherly, recorded at RadioHub Studios with post production by Cooper Silk and Iain Wilson.

 

Things you should know: Guests featured in the podcast are speaking from their personal experiences only. As this podcast has been prepared without considering your objectives, financial situation or needs, you should, before acting on the content consider its appropriateness to your circumstances. CommBank does not necessarily endorse the views of a particular individual or guarantee the accuracy of the information provided.