The Compass
Reflections, strategies, and real leadership insights to help you navigate change, challenge, and growth.
Mentoring vs. Coaching vs. Counselling: What Today’s Ad Leaders Actually Need
Mentoring vs. Coaching vs. Counselling: What Today’s Ad Leaders Actually Need
Leadership support is everywhere, but often misused.
Ask a leader if they’ve had a mentor, coach, or counsellor and they’ll usually say “yes.”
Ask them if they know the difference and… silence.
The Emotional Tax of Leadership: Why Burnout Is the Biggest Competitive Threat
Leadership today demands far more than business acumen. It demands emotional stamina.
The modern leader isn’t just tasked with driving outcomes. They’re expected to hold space, regulate culture, coach performance, and buffer stress. The cost? Emotional burnout.
A 2024 Beyond Blue study found that nearly 60% of Australian media and advertising leaders report high levels of stress, emotional fatigue, and decision exhaustion. Most worry they “can’t show weakness.” That silence is dangerous.
From Redundancy to Resilience: How Advertising Talent Can Rebuild Their Edge
The advertising industry is on break-glass alert. Agencies are laying off employees, shrinking teams, and recalibrating service offerings—all in the name of efficiency. According to a recent analysis, this trend isn’t a failure; it’s shape-shifting. But for everyone let go, it’s a moment of reckoning.
The Quiet Crisis in Middle Management (And Why It Deserves Urgency)
Middle managers are the organisational glue we keep forgetting to reinforce.
They lead teams, translate strategy, manage projects, soothe clients, mediate tension, uphold culture, and respond to both executive pressure and frontline frustration — often within the same day, sometimes within the same meeting.
They are not just conduits. They are shock absorbers. And they are breaking.
Is Your Leadership Style Fit for the Future Or Just a Relic of the Past?
We’re not leading teams anymore.
We’re leading systems; through chaos, complexity, and constant change.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: most leadership today is built for a world that no longer exists.
We still reward charisma over clarity. Certainty over curiosity. Control over connection.
We still idolise the loudest person in the room — the confident operator, the strategic genius, the one who “gets sh*t done.”
But that leadership model?
It was built for predictability.
And we’re not in that era anymore.