Renee's career didn't start where you'd expect — she dropped out of a science degree six months in, took a retail traineeship instead, and was running a flagship store within six months of that. From there she was asked to run the business in New Zealand at twenty-one, then handed an even bigger regional role covering South Africa, Singapore and Malaysia, and worked her way all the way to the C-suite. And then, after all that, she went back to study and completely changed direction — today, she's Head of People and Culture at one of Australia's biggest independent media agencies.
In this episode, we get into the stuff no one really says out loud: how to actually build influence when you have no authority to force anyone to do anything, why \"what can I do for you?\" might be the worst question a leader can ask, why good leaders go looking for the hard conversations instead of waiting for them, and what it really means to make a team's job possible instead of easy. Renee's spent two decades in rooms she wasn't necessarily meant to be in yet — and she's handing over exactly how she got comfortable there.