see the Manly ferry stop and if you're from Sydney you know it doesn't usually stop for anything
all the people clambered to one side of the ferry and the whole boat was on its angle but
it was just tremendous and I remember sailing back just going what am I going to dream about
tomorrow because I've been dreaming about this gold medal for so long. Belinda Stowell is an
Olympic gold medal winner from the Sydney Olympics and has now gone on to lead other athletes to
Olympic gold medals and world championship glory. Had an incredible ability to recall what happened
as well as the feel and the natural talent that you see in the boat. He's the first one to
win gold back-to-back in that class. Fascinating, curious and interesting pioneer in her sport.
The trailblazing female athlete that she is reflects on her impact and the journey that
she's had. It's the people behind you that you're bashing the wall down but it's hopefully opening
the doors. Plays a little part in female sport as well for the impact of what I might have done.
Belinda believes that self-regulation is central to anyone wanting to have an impact
It's really easy to just let it rip and you feel good for the 10 or 20 seconds that you might have
said something but you're going to have to mop that up for the next two months because of what
you might have said and how it was received. Belinda is also living proof that telling people
your goals is absolutely vital if you want to bring that vision to life. I was talking to a
sports psych once, I didn't want to say look I want to go and win an Olympic gold medal in Sydney
2000 but finally after 45 minutes you made me get it out. We are really privileged to have Belinda
Stowell as part of our Leader Connect community. She's been an incredible contributor,
we curate groups of five to six people from around the globe to come together
to learn, to connect and to share. We would love to have you join our Leader Community,
go to leadercollective.com and book a discovery call today. Huge thanks as always to Jason Nicholas
and his team from Temper Bedding. We really appreciate their support for bringing conversations
like this one to fruition. Great leaders, great athletes, people who have great success understand
the importance of sleep. Temper are NASA approved, they are the world's leader in bedding and sleeping
on a temper bed will change your life.
Quick favour before we get started, if you're enjoying the Empowering Leaders podcast and would
like to help it grow, please leave us a rating and review on whatever platform you're listening on
and subscribe today. Belinda Stowell is a legend of world sailing, an Olympic gold medalist in
Sydney 2000, a world champion on a couple of occasions and twice voted the female sailor
of the year and an inaugural inductee in the Australian Sailing Hall of Fame. Belinda has
gone on to be a great mentor and coach to generations of world champions.
And Olympic gold medalist, Belinda, it's great to catch up with you.
Yeah, it's lovely to catch up with you too, Luke.
24 years ago, Sydney 2000, you alongside Jenny Armstrong became the first female sailors to win
an Olympic medal in Australian sporting history. You won Olympic gold, your boat was called the
Ugly Duckling. Amazing memories. Can you take us back to that day and how's that changed your life?
It was an incredible week to know you look back and you go, right, we were the best
in the world in those two weeks because as you know, in sport,
changes pretty quickly. But to get it right in those first two weeks was amazing. And
to sail on Sydney Harbour with the spinnaker up and the Australian flag up the front and to be
scooting along in a beautiful sea breeze in September with crowds cheering that we don't
often get in sailing was pretty incredible to be realising the dream that you have for so long as
an athlete and dreaming of that gold and to be able to cross the line in first and to see the
Manly Ferry stop. And if you're from Sydney, you know, it doesn't usually stop for anything.
But all the people clambered to one side of the ferry and the whole boat was on its angle. But yeah,
it was just tremendous. And I remember sailing back to Rushcutters Bay where the sailing was
stationed out of and just going, what am I going to dream about tomorrow? Because I've been dreaming
about this gold medal for so long. So yeah, it's an incredible relief. But boy, it's opened some
doors and just being part of a leader is probably one of those doors. So I'm very, very lucky.
Linda, I'd love to talk to you about that. I love that you can still see the smile on your face,
four years later. And we're recording this right in the middle of the Paris Olympics. And we're
seeing the Fox sisters and their family story. And this morning, a 14-year-old skateboarder
won an Olympic gold medal. And it just, you can see the joy. The fact that you've got
that detail still 24 years later, and it's still something that brings you joy is quite remarkable,
isn't it? Oh, it's amazing. I've got a lot more wrinkles, but hopefully a lot of them are from
smiling. But it's those tingling feelings of seeing something like that. And I think it's
winning a gold medal or win a medal really in that excitement and that sense of relief and
achievement is, it brings back the same sort of feelings in my gut too, when I see that and just
that overwhelming sense of connection to what they might be feeling as well. It's very special.
And we might jump straight into, you and I were just talking before we started
and hit the record button. Very soon, Matt Wern is back-to-back Olympic gold medal winner
in a few hours time. You spotted him as a 10-year-old and you've
dedicated your life really to after you achieved your athletic dream to help others achieve theirs.
What's it like, the joy of winning your own gold medal or coaching someone to an Olympic gold
medal? Oh, look, they're different because winning a medal yourself, being an athlete,
you get all the highs and you get all the lows. The highs are amazing because you've got this
physical sense of relief as well as your mental relief. And you've been basically thinking about
every single thing you do, whether it's sleeping, eating, training,
such a long time, that to be able to win and that joy and elation that you get physically,
as well as the lows that you get when you don't hit your mark, you go into a pretty big low around
your own self-doubts, your own analysis. But as a coach, you don't quite get the same high
because you don't have the physical relief because somebody else is actually doing that performance,
even though the coach is a performer. And you're standing there as close as ever,
you're the closest person to that.
You're the closest athlete performing, but you're not performing yourself. So
it's not quite the same high, but it's definitely probably a deeper low because it's all your
responsibility as to why it might've gone wrong. So yeah, I think there's a difference, but to see
the joy in other people and to give other people opportunity and to open doors for their lives as
well, that's incredibly special because that's legacy. Absolutely. You spotted Matt Adwerne as
a 10-year-old. What did you see in that young lad at that stage that's gone on to really create
Oh, he has always been curious. And we speak about that in Alita and we speak about that a
lot as coaches, but he was a remarkable young man. Even when he was young, 14, 15, he was
thirsty for information, thirsty to ask the question, curious as to why he would come up
and had an incredible ability to recall what happened as well as the feel and the natural
talent that you see in the boat. So yeah, there is a lot of that.
Yeah. Amazing story, Belinda. Going to your own self and you don't have the level of success
you've had as an athlete and a coach without traits, I suppose, of discipline and resilience.
What did you find within yourself to achieve that? What do you think set you in such good stead?
Grit. I think self-leadership is really such a big part because self-motivation,
you can't coach it. You have to come to training with self-motivation and you have to,
as a coach, you have to come with your self-motivation to drive and to lead others
as well. And I just think it's an integral part of being a driven high achiever in that you have to
go through those days. And I guess it doesn't really stop. So it's like every morning is
something for me where I do things that might be uncomfortable on a day, but it's part of the
routine. So I swim in the ocean every day, religiously every day of the year. If I'm
close to a boat, I swim in the ocean every day, religiously every day of the year. If I'm close to
a body of water and I have to get in it. And so it seems like that there, we just, you pursue that
to challenge yourself, to improve yourself, to get better every day. And I think that's
self-leadership. If you can't lead yourself, then it's very difficult to lead others.
And so being able to also live to strong values and I have a huge value of respect.
And how does that drive me in my own leadership? If I'm respecting others and respecting people
or equipment or...
Or property or doesn't matter what it is, but definitely people of all levels. And so you've
got to lead from actions rather than words. And I think doing it rather than talking about it's
pretty important.
Yeah. Brilliantly said. You have lived in a sport where wind conditions, weather conditions,
waves, and so many of the elements are unpredictable. And I assume to be good at it,
you're making decisions in real time in a race that maybe you could make a few hundred decisions
and be able to make a few hundred decisions. And I think that's really important.
Being better at that than your opponent maybe is the key to success. What made you a good
decision maker under pressure?
I think observation is a really big part and vision drives decision. And being able to see
and observe and have a really good understanding of what the wind's doing or observing the wind,
but also observing competitors. But there's so many inputs and being able to prioritize
information quickly to be able to make a good decision.
And I was lucky enough to have Jenny on the boat as well. And she
had already had experience in Olympic games. And to recognize patterns is huge because you're
recognizing patterns of formations, patterns of where people are positioned. You're recognizing
wind patterns, wave patterns. And so I think under pressure, there's also a huge element of
self-composure. And that comes back to leading self. Because if you don't know how you are
under pressure, then that's very hard to improve.
And to make sure you're keeping those things in check when you have to make a quick, good
Linda, you've been coaching the coaches at the Australian Institute of Sport based in
Western Australia and influence across many, many different sports. Your husband, Arthur,
is over in Paris and coaching world-class athletes as well. What are the patterns you've
seen that, in your mind, make a great coach?
Understanding people. But first of all, understanding self. And that's a big part of my life. And
that ability to have emotional regulation. Because it's really easy. We often said, Arthur and I
talk about it a lot. If you sometimes get frustrated, it's really easy to just let it rip
and you feel good for the 10 or 20 seconds that you might have said something. But you're going
to have to mop that up for the next two months because of what you might have said and how it
was received. And so being able to communicate. But nothing can allay the passion that people
bring as coaches and as athletes and sports people, as you all know. But then how do you
emotionally regulate? And it's that thirst for learning and never feeling that you know
everything. It's like that wanting to be better, to improve, because that's what your athletes
want to do. And I think being able to communicate that as well.
Fascinated that you said that and spoken about this on this podcast and this forum a little
bit. I played professional sport in an era where there was no emotional regulation from
coaches. They gave as much...
As much as they possibly could. It was a ferocious nature of feedback and often really personal.
And as you said, you probably spent months trying to rebuild a relationship if it ever
got rebuilt afterwards. And it feels like the new generation of coaches that you're mentoring
totally understand emotional regulation. And do you think that applies to other areas of
business and sport and life where really no one likes being personally abused? No one likes
being confronted in that way? And do you think that that era is dead and the new era...
Of being able to emotionally regulate is the way forward?
Oh, 100%. I just think we can't... It's not really acceptable anymore. Nobody likes being
criticized. And we've got the concept of a critical friend where you've got those people
that do need to give you the hard word, but it's how it's delivered and it's how the relationship
is critical. And it's so... It transcends across... It's not just sport, but sports where
the spotlight is on and you can see those behaviors.
And there's a lot of different cultures where it is still acceptable, but definitely in
Australia and our culture, it's not. And the young coaches, there's a lot of young coaches
that we've been... That we've got on our courses like the Gen 32 program and different programs
that we've got through the Institute that older coaches and younger coaches, they're
saying, I don't want to coach like I was coached. And I think that is a pretty important piece.
But also, I mean, I've been so lucky to connect.
With different people in different worlds and even talking to a fighter pilot saying they
were doing it differently and even in their world and their enormous experience, relationship and
understanding the person first rather than barking orders, it has changed. And I think it's for the
Lenny, you've been generous enough to mention Alita a couple of times and love to talk to you
about it. We curate groups of people around the globe of five or six people who come together,
and non-competing areas to learn and to connect. And you've got a really fascinating and curious
coaching group. Craig Fitzgibbon is a legend of the NRL. Dean Cox is a legend of the AFL world.
Dean Vickerman's a three-time premiership coach in Australian basketball. And I know you've been
an amazing contributor and incredibly valued. Tell me about, even with all your experience,
the opportunity to connect and collaborate with different leaders. How's that been for you?
Yeah, it's been incredible actually having a different arm because obviously collaboration
In success, nobody succeeds alone. The collaboration that I had to work on throughout my
career, both as an athlete and then as a coach, to learn from others is huge. And so in the sailing
bubble, you tend to know your sport really well. But to be able to move into my role now where I'm
coaching 10 different sports programs within the WA Institute, so working with coaches from 10
different sports, as well as the NRL, I think it's been a huge success. And I think it's been a
huge success. And I think it's been a huge success. And I think it's been a huge success. And I think
it's been a huge success. And I think it's been a huge success. And I think it's been a huge success.
Probably another five or six sports with the work that we do through the AIS coach development
team. But then having a leader in addition to that has really been fantastic for me to talk to
icons of their sport in team sports, because that's something that I felt I didn't have
a great insight into. And so to be able to be in a group with Fitzy and Dean Cox and Dean Vickerman,
where they've been so open to me, and I kind of felt,
a bit like an imposter in the beginning, just going, I don't even know if I'm giving value to
this group. Where do I fit in here? So it was actually a little bit of a journey. I remember
having a conversation with Stacey and she's like, no, no, you're bringing something else to the team.
And that's the power of collaboration is that you don't need groupthink. You actually need somebody
who comes from a different angle sometimes. And that's been wonderful. Yeah, it's brilliant. And
I love that you're such a curious person. And I understand just you've been physically to visit
different environments and you've been able to connect in person and follow up on that space.
So have you been able to practically implement some of the things in your daily world from
those connections and different conversations? All the time. I actually love learning from
people. I get really a lot of joy from hearing their stories and from learning from their
frameworks or how they operate. And just sometimes it's a phrase or it's a way of
communicating. Sometimes it's a way of thinking.
And to be able to bring that back and maybe it's just sharing a small gem that I've got from
the Alita group to be able to bring it back. And I know Arthur and I have spoken a lot and it was
tremendous because Arthur was working with these sailors that are going 60 kilometers an hour. It's
a new class for Paris and having to overcome fear and get some courage to go out there and hurt
yourself. And it was wonderful because I spoke to Fitzy. I said, look, Arthur's really got these
young guys. They're all under 20. Would you like to go out there and hurt yourself? And he said,
would you be able to let Arthur come and speak to you? And Fitzy, of course, he's being the man he
is. He just said, yeah, no problem. That opened the door. And Arthur's just had his athlete win
a silver medal. And one of the first things he said was, you know, Fitzy really left a mark on
me. So being able to connect somebody else and connect all the other coaches, that's just probably
a home example. But what I do in my role at work is connecting the learning that I get from so many
people to help them and help them improve in their own way.
I've been using this term a lot, Linda, that success leaves clues. And I think you're so
well-placed on that. And the language you talk is such a pattern of what we've seen. And we've
identified that over the course of a number of years of sitting across from incredible people
like you with great success. And you actually mentioned a couple of these dimensions that we
love talking about. And your description of self-leadership just rang so true. And could
you maybe just rephrase that again, why the idea of self-leadership means so much to you?
I come back to that if you don't.
If you can't lead yourself, you can't lead others. And I know I've gone through some really
interesting times in my career, both as an athlete and as a coach, and now as a coach of
coaches. The self-doubts, the lack of confidence in my ability, the lack of even appearance,
being different, you know, having a lot of musculature in my days when I was competing
was not acceptable to the social side of what a female should look like. And it's
amazing now that females and sporty females are so accepted and applauded, really. But all of those
things come back to leading self and to be able to look at your self-doubts, to get over them,
to lean on other people to help you. All of that comes from self-leadership because you've got to
be able to reach out and be humble enough to ask others to help you lead yourself sometimes. But
other times it comes from this grip.
By motivation from within, and I seem to have plenty of that.
Which is why you jump in the water every day. I imagine no matter the weather, no matter where
you are, it's pushing yourself through that. And I think for people to hear, I love these
conversations because I'm sitting across from an Olympic gold medalist, a coach who's had
success in every area, but self-doubt is something even Belinda Stowell has, and even
Craig Fitzgibbon, everyone you speak to him across in this forum, he talked about self-doubt
on a regular basis. And I think it normalizes it, doesn't it?
Natural. And I went through a coaching course through the AIS in the middle of my career and
talking about the inner critic and the inner coach. And it was a really vulnerable time for
me because I had to actually go, I've never heard the inner coach. I only hear the inner critic.
And how do I find that? Things like that. It's just that continuous improvement,
searching for ways to be a better person, to be a better coach, to be a better athlete,
to be a better human.
You've picked out 10-year-olds and had an impact on them where they're on the edge of history,
The gold medals potentially is the first time in the sailing world of Australian Olympics.
How have you thought about that impact on others in a daily basis? It's a big part of your role
is coaching the coaches. Have you been thoughtful about the positive impact you can have every day?
Yeah, it's going into a different career a couple of years ago, moving out of
being the head coach at WA Institute of Sport and moving into coach development was
a big step to go, right, hang on, I'm moving out from something I've done for
18 years. It's my whole world of sailing. Where do I go?
With this and how do I share the knowledge that I've had? And I'm realising now and just
having a conversation with a young female swimming coach yesterday and realising the
impact has given me a lot of joy and more purpose and more broadly to be able to
see the impact, but also to see Matt Wern and to see these young sailors that
both Arthur and I saw at eight, 10 years old that are now at the Olympics and that legacy of the
ones that maybe didn't make it to the Olympics. And I think that's a big part of the impact.
There's a whole score behind them of people that haven't made the Olympics, but they're all
there in coaching. We've got young coaches from WA now spread around Australia. And that's the
impact piece is that it's not just one action. It needs to flow on and be
continuous over time and to look around and see the impact of things that we might've done.
And I know the trailblazer doesn't usually get the reward. It's the people behind you that
you're bashing the wall down, but it's hopefully opening the doors and
I hope that that was also part, you know, a little part, plays a little part in female
sport as well for the impact of what I might've done to be able to continue to do with coaches.
Yeah. As we said, we started the conversation 24 years ago, you and your sailing partner,
Jenny Armstrong pioneering away. It doesn't happen, I suppose, without a really clear vision
of what you both wanted to achieve and what you're wanting to achieve in this part of your life as
well. How have you gone about sharing and creating those visions for success?
Yeah. I was talking to a sports psych once about what I was trying to do. And, you know,
he spent 45 minutes trying to ask me what I wanted to do. And I didn't want to say,
look, I want to go and win Olympic gold medal in Sydney 2000. But finally, after 45 minutes,
he made me get it out. But it was, I was talking to another psych a few years later and he said,
well, basically you only made one decision in five years. I said, well, that's pretty true.
Because everything, once you have a vision,
everything behind it makes sense. And coincidences start happening because you've got this
decision that you know where you want to go. And I think vision is also important when running the
program to be able to have a great vision of where do I want to be in five years time? Because what
we're doing now is the result of what we were doing five years before or what the athletes
were being trained up five years before is pretty much what we're looking at now. So to have a good
vision, you need that vision. And I think that's what we're doing. And I think that's what we're
doing for the collaboration piece as well, to be able to bring people along or to show and share what
your vision is. You're not going to get any help if you can't tell people what you want to achieve.
So I kind of think vision is pretty important. Beautifully said in a great way. You said the
coincidence starts to happen and the world starts to line up for you when you've got,
you know, I want to win Olympic gold at Sydney. There's the pathway finds its own way. It might
have been before we started recording you, we're talking about Matt Wern and history potentially
being made. And I asked you about your vision. And I said, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't
know about the quality. So there's a curiosity there. And you've used that word curiosity
a few times already. Why does curiosity strike out for you as something that's so important?
It plays to the continuous learning. And I think if we're all continuous learners and we're trying
to be better today than I was yesterday is pretty much brings the curious questioning.
Sometimes it's in reflection because learning's done in reflection. And so to also be curious
around what happened so that I can make a step to go, what do I want to happen next? And I think,
yeah, it drives the question why. And yeah, I think that's pretty important both
to look back as well as look forward. We had a brief discussion about the legendary
John Bertrand and been fortunate enough to record a podcast with John and have John in our
elite community. And I had the pleasure of seeing him this week. I've never met anyone more curious
in my life than that.
It's actually remarkable being around him from someone at the restaurant. He wants to know
everything about how the restaurant's being run or you sit across from someone.
Have you ever seen anyone quite like that in terms of curiosity?
Yeah, there's a few athletes like that, but John's definitely a leader in that area.
Takes it to a whole new level. How about communication and communicating with clarity?
It's something that we've seen as a real pattern for people with success. And I'm assuming your
role coaching different sports.
Art of communication. How have you thought about that?
The art of communication is something that I think is always on the list because as coaches,
you kind of got these things of progression and you go, okay, we've got to progress this,
this, this. And you sort of have this idea that you've ticked something off on the list. So you
move to the next level of what that looks like. Whereas communication, I feel like is something
that you never tick off. It's something that you just have to get better at and you'll be
challenged by it in many ways. And it's something that you never tick off. And I think that's
individual that comes in your path. You might have to communicate in a different way, whether
it's body language, verbal, how you present. Yeah. Communications usually fixes everything as well. So
whenever there's problems, it's like probably the communication didn't work, but being on a boat
with only two people, it's an incredible team environment because neither of us do the same
thing in sailing on a 470, the boat, the mixed dinghy. And it's two completely different roles,
but you've got to work in unison because of the nature of the role.
You also have sometimes an introvert and extrovert. So there's different dynamics. So it's really
about what we learned there through the communication and coaching a team of two versus
coaching a single handed individual. You multiply the time by three or four when it becomes two
people involved, because there's another element of getting the communication right. And so you
take that to broader teams, to organizations like, you know, I worked for Westpac, but
you know, going all the way back to my childhood and growing up in Zimbabwe and learning communication
right from the word go in a different way, different culture, understanding different
cultures. And as we travel, communicating to everybody from the cleaner to the CEO and back
down again. And, you know, communication is, it's the art and connection piece for all of us, I think.
I love what you said. It's not something that's ever got a tick next to it. It's,
you're always having,
to work on and never really solve, is it? You're having to learn all the time. I haven't heard
anyone say it in quite that way. You've mentioned collaboration. How important has that been for you?
A little story around my career as an athlete. And I came from Zimbabwe. Mum and dad was still
there when I was sailing. And I had a brother and a sister, two sisters in the country and
Olympic campaigning is not cheap. And we won the trials and I had the grand total of $89.43
in my account. So if ever you want to know about collaboration,
it's how do you get more in your bank account when you're trying to go and win a gold medal.
So, you know, reaching out to my yacht club, my brother was integral in helping that and being
able to collaborate with the community first and your home community. And everybody at that yacht
club was asked to donate $20, you know, and boy, did that 20 grand from 2000 members, put another
step towards Jenny and I being able to go and spend four months in Europe and buy proper equipment to
be able to compete at the games. And so, you know, collaboration starts right at home, but it
extends now. And I'm so lucky in collaborating. I've got a brilliant team with the AIS coach
development team. I always applaud Bill Davrin, who leads up our team in how he managed to recruit
great people. And Alan McConnell is one of our team members. And so to be, and he's also on the
leader, but yeah, I think collaboration now, I haven't been able to do that. I haven't been able to
really step outside my comfort zone and ask people for time, but I feel better about it because I
think collaboration and learning is critical. It feeds all the other things.
Linda, what a great story to have your home club, literally everyone chipping in to help you
fulfill your dream. That must have been incredible to go back and say thank you with an Olympic gold
medal. That must have been incredible.
I get tingles still thinking about that because being able to come home with a gold medal when
we were ranked seventh.
27 or something ridiculous outside of the seventies before in that campaign. And to be
able to come home with a gold medal and that heavy medal in your hand and to everyone realized, hang
on, I've got a small piece of that. And even in Australia, I always say that gold medal is part
of Australia and to bring it out and to show it to people, the joy that it brings, that's also
collaboration because it's a country's medal. It's not just your own.
Yeah, beautifully said. Belinda, who's been the greatest leader in your life?
Look, I think there's been a few and there's some people who I look up, look at and say at
different times, people have stood up and been great leaders. I always think someone like Nelson
Mandela was an incredible leader for all of us and coming from Africa and seeing what he did was
something where you go, that's just remarkable to change how things are done and being able to lead
culture and culture differences and racial differences. I think, you know, I experienced
that myself, but I think it's remarkable.
To have somebody like that, even though, you know, you don't know him, but I think somebody
like that leading is important in our lifetime. I sort of lean on Arthur's leadership and what
he's done recently. I think it's fantastic to build a class and build momentum behind it to
create success for that. So we probably challenge each other's leadership at home, but it's always
in such a good way. But yeah, I think there's just phenomenal leaders out there as well as
that personal side.
And a lot of people I know have said it's their father or something like that. But, you know,
definitely my dad was a leader from behind rather than a leader from the front. And so I think,
yeah, there's just probably not one that stands out.
I love that you've been able to take from Nelson Mandela to your partner that you live with every
day. It's grabbing bits and pieces of that is fascinating to me. In the world of a leader,
we are a bit obsessed with collaboration and what happens when you're in a relationship,
and you bring people together and the connections and the brilliant stories that come out of it. And
you've got access to great opportunities to do that in your world. Has there been someone you
thought, wow, you know what, whether it's in the sailing world or your coaching world or
another curiosity of yours, you thought, I'd love to connect and collaborate with that person. Is
there a name that springs to mind? Yeah, I was thinking about this because I knew you'd throw
it to me. So I was trying to go, right, who are those leaders out there that I meet? And from one
side, I'm so lucky in this role.
That I play now in working with coaches, and that I do have connections. And so from one side,
it's like, who could I spend more time with that I already know? And recently, Ray Simpson,
a fighter pilot, or Miriam Fox with Jess, where I know them, and I'm already spending time with
them. But I also kind of went, no, what outside the square? Who else is a phenomenal leader? And
thinking of female leaders as well as males, it's quite out there. But I'd really be interested in
Pink, because she's a leader in the arts world. She changed how, you know, the,
how women look, but she also changed things, because she just does things her way. And I think,
yeah, she'd be a really interesting leader to sit down and have a chat with.
Yeah, I'm on to it. I'm on to it, Belinda. That's, you know, how incredible would that be? I'd love
to get her with you. And as you said, it's when you think about, I'm, I'm curious with your answer,
isn't it? For an era where so many young girls are growing up with body image issues, and
yeah, it's an epidemic that's out of control. And, and she's just as tough and sells out everywhere
she goes. And I think, you know, I think, you know, I think, you know, I think, you know, I think,
but being herself and yeah, what a remarkable story. It's not an answer I was expecting.
She's such a performer. And I kind of went, wow, it'd be really interesting to see where
her self-leadership comes from, because that's a big piece. She obviously is a strong self-leader.
And I love that someone from the arts with some, with your unique sporting background,
when you get those different ways of thinking together, incredible things happen. And that
would be a collaboration. I would love to, to be a part of all for Belinda. Thanks so much.
I've heard so much about you. I know you're revered.
In the world that you're in, we're really privileged to have you part of the leader
community. Thanks so much for your contribution and your curiosity.
And thanks so much. And thanks very much to a leader. It's, it's opened a lot of doors for me.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Empowering Leaders podcast. Huge thanks as always
to our great friends at Temper. And we encourage you to check out our Leader Connect program.
New episodes are out every Wednesday morning at 6am.