Leadership, people and organisational performance
Leigh Russell has spent her career at the point where leadership decisions become people’s lived experience.
She has been CEO of Swimming Australia and Netball Victoria, held senior people leadership roles in elite sport, and now serves as a Chief People & Communications Officer, alongside RPCo coaching & advisory. She has led through growth, change and public scrutiny. She understands the pressure on a CEO to make sound decisions while building an organisation where people can do good work. Her experience gives her a practical understanding of what it takes to turn ambition into the leadership capability, systems and everyday behaviours that support it.
Leigh is also a seasoned culture review specialist. Her work has ranged from organisation-wide reviews to focused work with individual teams. She has contributed to reviews involving EY Oceania and Rio Tinto, led a review for Airservices Australia and two reviews for the Australian Antarctic Division, and worked with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Across these assignments, she helps leaders hear what people are experiencing, understand the patterns behind it and decide what to do.
Her board and governance experience spans sport, health and community organisations, including work with VicHealth, Football Australia, Tennis Victoria, AFL SportsReady and the State Sport Centres Trust. She has also partnered with Elizabeth Broderick & Co on workplace culture projects. Leigh is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and is accredited in Extended DISC and Life Styles Inventory.
Clients value Leigh’s ability to ask the direct question, hold a difficult conversation with care and make complex issues clearer. She works with CEOs, boards and leadership teams who want experienced judgment, honest insight and practical progress—whether they need an executive coach, a culture review, a fractional people leader or an adviser alongside them.
A confidential space tih think clearly, lead deliberately, and work through what matters.
Senior leadership can leave little room to examine your own impact. You are making decisions, supporting others and responding to change, often while managing expectations from every direction.
Leigh’s executive coaching gives you time and perspective to look closely at how you lead. She brings experience as a former CEO, senior people executive and board director to conversations grounded in your actual role, relationships and challenges.
Help your leaders and teams work better together.
Teams rarely need another set of ideas to admire in a workshop. They need time to address the decisions, relationships and ways of working that shape their performance every day.
Leigh designs and facilitates leadership and team development around the challenges a group is actually facing. She helps people have the conversations they need, build a shared understanding of what good looks like and agree on changes they can put into practice.
Executive & leadership teams: Leigh works with leadership groups to strengthen trust, role clarity, decision-making and collective accountability. The work may support a newly formed team, a group navigating change or an established team that needs to reset how it works.
Team development & offsites: a well-designed offsite creates more than a day away from the office. Leigh helps teams step back from day-to-day demands, examine what is helping or hindering them and leave with clear commitments for working together.
Leadership development: Leigh develops leaders through the situations they face: leading people, giving feedback, handling tension, making decisions and building capable teams. Programs can combine facilitated sessions, reflection, coaching and practical work between sessions.
Understand the experience of your people - and what is shaping it.
Culture is visible in the everyday experience of work: how decisions are made, whose voices are heard, how leaders respond to concerns and whether stated values match what people see.
When those experiences differ across an organisation, a review can help leaders understand why. Leigh Russell conducts culture reviews that bring together people’s perspectives, organisational context and the systems affecting how work gets done. The result is a clear account of what is working, what needs attention and where action will matter most.
Experienced judgement for complex people and organisational decisions.
Some challenges do not fit neatly into a program. A CEO may need a sounding board on a difficult people issue. A leadership team may need to rethink its structure or priorities. A board may need a clearer view of how leadership, culture and organisational risk connect.
Leigh Russell provides tailored advice that helps leaders understand the issue, weigh their options and decide what to do next. She draws on experience as a CEO, senior people executive, board director and culture adviser.
People strategy and organisational performance
Align people priorities with what the organisation is trying to achieve, and identify where leadership capability, roles or ways of working need attention.
Leadership and executive advice
Work through sensitive decisions, leadership challenges and periods of change with an experienced perspective outside the organisation.
Culture and workplace challenges
Consider what may be driving an issue, how it affects people and performance, and what a credible response requires.
Governance and implementation
Translate decisions into clear accountabilities, practical plans and follow-through.
A clearer view of how your board governs, decides and works together.
An effective board needs sound structures and information. It also needs the right conversations, clear roles, constructive challenge and a strong working relationship with executive leadership.
Leigh conducts board reviews that examine both governance arrangements and the way a board operates in practice. Her approach draws on experience as a director, executive and adviser, and is tailored to the board’s purpose, context and current questions.
When a growing organisation outpaces its people function - or a board needs a credible people voice before it can justify a full-time hire - Leigh steps in as a fractional Chief People Officer: executive-level people leadership for one to three days a week. The depth of a CEO and CPO, without the full-time cost.
Leigh is one of those unicorn-like creatures - hugely successful and credible. Her experience and insight are delivered in a frank and candid style that cuts through without shutting down thinking.
Because Leigh is also completely relatable, she shares openly, is funny, warm, and encouraging, and in doing so, creates the ideal environment where people can trust, be vulnerable, and grow. You’re left with absolute clarity and confidence in the opportunity to radically believe in people and your unique value as a leader.
Katherine Gobbi
Executive General Manager, TAC