Enough about me. Does this sound like you: 
👉 Your culture needs work. 
👉 Your leaders lack confidence or capability. 
👉 You’re struggling to find and keep great people. 

If you’re nodding your head, let’s chat. 

At boldside, we run leadership and culture programs that build: 

👉 Leaders people want to follow
👉 Cultures people never want to leave
👉 High performing, engaged teams 

Want in? DM me. 

When I’m not doing that, you’ll find me in two places:

1. Behind the microphone on the podcast: this is work - an Australian Podcast Awards finalist - where I help people navigate the weird and wild world of work. 

2. Behind the laptop writing words about work for Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. 


Ready to take your leadership and culture to the next level?  Let's go

HR friends: If you’ve ever heard ‘ooh here comes HR’ when you’ve walked into a room, this is for you. 

So what do we do when things annoy us? We turn it into merch obviously. And, I’ve got 10 hats left from our People and Culture Unconference. If you want one, put ‘HAT’ in the comments and I’ll send it to you (Australia only). 

Ps. I’ve started wearing this at home in hope that my kids do what I tell them more frequently. (doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect).

#peopleandculture #HR #culture

Shelley Johnson

Are you ready to
👉Take your team from standard to stand out?
👉Become the leader people want to follow?
👉Build a culture people never want to leave?

I help businesses all over Australia develop epic leaders and teams. 

At boldside, we run culture, leadership and HR projects to help you: 

👉Solve the culture problems holding your team back 
👉Develop managers skills and confidence 
👉Build a high performing team culture 

If you want in, DM me. 



When I’m not doing that, you’ll find me behind the microphone on my millennial career podcast - an Australian Podcast Awards finalist - where I help people to build a career they love. 

Ready to take your leadership and culture to the next level? 
Let's go

Leadership development for bold businesses | HR coach & author | this is work podcast

OH HEY! We're hiring our next Leadership Coach to join Boldside. YAY!!!

Does this sound like you: 
You're obsessed with developing leaders and building high-performing teams.

You're this weird blend coach, presenter and truth teller (in kindness ofc). 

You're a pro at helping teams and leaders confront their blindspots and have honest conversations that lead to growth.

You've got experience in any of these areas: Learning and Development, HR  Org Development or Exec Coaching and you really (I mean really) get the challenges of leading a team. 
 
Here's the high level details: 
1. We're looking for a Sydney based Leadership Coach who can facilitate workshops and leadership programs with the most AMAZING organisations all over around Australia. 

2. We're fully remote so you're v autonomous. 

3. You're up for travel. 

4. Full-time or 4 days a week.

Know someone amazing for this role? Tag them in the comments. 

If you want to know more, we've teamed up with Chad Lawson from u&u recruitment. Get in touch with Chad, and he'll give you all the details. 

Applications close: 30 January 2026

You know those times you wish you had said addressed an issue on your team sooner, but you missed the moment. And now it feels awkward to bring up because you've avoided it or tolerated it for a while. If this is you, I feel you. The good news is, you've got a solution. Hit the reset button. Here's how 👇

#leadership #culture #HR #peopleandculture

Reset Conversation

If you're in a leadership role, you need to write this down or get it tattooed somewhere: culture is the good behaviour you celebrate and the bad behaviour you tolerate. 

Culture isn't the values on the wall (as much as we all wish it was that easy). It's what we're willing to ignore, overlook, or downplay. It's the tough conversations we avoid because they're in the 'too hard' basket. 

Equally, it's the behaviour that you celebrate that reinforces culture. The little things that add to the team vibe. The small behaviours that stack up over time. 

BOTH matter. 

#culture #leadership #career #HR

If you're about to onboard a new team member, this is for you (and it's a v. good gift imo). 

It's SUCH a good way to set clear expectations from the beginning, and it fast tracks the onboarding process.  It helps you get all the unspoken expectations on the table from the start. 

#hiring #onboarding #leadership

Onboarding a new team member? Here's how 

I might be melting in Townsville this week, but worth it to hang out with  North Queensland Toyota Cowboys, Glencore Australia and Mike Carney Toyota 

Kicked off the year with 3 AMAZING organisations for culture and leadership projects and workshops.

Big takeaways:

1. People are the strategy. Get the right people, they deliver the strategy. 

2. Energy isn’t infinite. We need regular energy audits to find out where we’re spending it, and work out if it’s a good investment 

2a. Energy is contagious.

3. Great leaders help their teams hyperfocus on the highest value work.

3a. But, to hyperfocus on the highest impact work, you have to ruthlessly eliminate some really good ideas. It’s not just about eliminating distractions and nonessentials. It’s saying no to good ideas so you can say yes to great ideas. And that is v challenging. 

4. I love it here. Like even if it’s a million humidity (it’s a thing) and completely melting, it’s one of my fave places to work from. 

Today, kicking off year 2 of Mike Carney Toyota’s leadership program and CANNOT WAIT. ✨ Adore this leadership team. 

#leadership #culture

Every organisational problem is downstream from leadership.

Toxic behaviour being ignored. 
Burnt out high performers. 
Unclear strategy. 
Team performance issues. 
Lack of role clarity.
Lack of trust. 
High employee turnover. 

These problems are get labelled as an HR issue, or a culture issue or a process issue. 

But before they are any of that, they are a almost always a leadership issue. It starts with a leadership skill gap or avoidance of accountability or unclear leadership expectations.  And the fallout is huge. 

So many organisations get stuck in a vicious cycle of trying to treat the reactive downstream issues (which are always messy and complex and painful and urgent). But to really solve it, we have to go upstream and give leaders the tools they need to do the role well from the beginning of their leadership experience right through to Exec level. 

It means first time leaders need a leadership onboarding process. It means existing leaders need 360 feedback and mentoring and ongoing development. It means Exec teams need support to work as one team instead of representatives of their technical function. 

Solve the leadership problem, and the rest will follow. 

#leadership #HR #peopleandculture.

If I could underline stuff on LinkedIn, this post would have excessive underlining, because it's SUPER important but VERY overlooked.  

Every amazing leader I've worked with has developed these two skills: 1) Insight and 2) Influence. But we tend to have one area that’s stronger, and one we struggle with. Here's what that looks like: 

1. Leaders who have insight without influence find their good advice and ideas get overlooked (side note: I HATE when this happens, these people need to have their voice and ideas heard way more).  

2. Leaders who have influence without insight manage to make bad advice sound really great at the time (side note: we’ve all seen this and it's very frustrating). 

It’s why you need both insight and influence to lead well. So, if you want to become a better leader, start by working out which area you need to grow in. 

If you struggle with insight, building this skill is not as complicated as we think (I don’t know why we overcomplicate this stuff).  

Insight comes from the art of noticing. Insightful leaders notice the little things others miss. They listen for longer than the average person. They notice the verbal and non-verbal cues. They ask more questions. They observe micro behaviours and ask how these behaviours are influenced by macro systems. They spot the patterns and trends. 

If you want to improve your insight, at Boldside the tool we use is called ODD (yep, odd - use it any time something odd happens at work) and it goes like this: 

1: Observe: what are you noticing? Don’t create meaning yet, just notice what’s happening. Focus on the facts.
 
2: Distance: Step back from it. Challenge your assumptions. Create some space from the situation, look at it from multiple angles. 

3: Diagnose: Once you've done that give the situation a diagnosis or label. What is the core issue or concern. 

Taking the time to critically reflect on challenges and think about the patterns, themes and trends helps to build your insight. 

--------

If you want to improve your influence and ability to get buy in here’s how: 

Get clear on: 
People: who do you serve and what are they interested in. What do they care about most. Speak to what matters to them. 

Problems: What problems do you solve really well? How do you add value? How can you communicate your impact in a more compelling way (complexity kills influence).  

Presence: What presence do you want to have? When you're connecting with people, how do you want them to feel? Focus on staying interested, rather than being interesting (shout out to Robert Greene, who says the most influential people are outer-directed rather than self-focused). Influential people make people feel seen, heard and valued.  

Long story long: Your insight is only as good as your ability to influence, but your level of influence will always be limited by your level of insight. If you want to become an amazing leader, you need both. 

#leadership #culture #growth #HR

If you're avoiding an awkward and tough conversation at work, this is for you. 
Reminder: Said and awkward is better than unsaid and tense. 

Ps. None of the situations listed below are from my own personal experience. 
Pps. Absolutely none. Not the hugging the CEO/hiccups/inside out shirts. That would never happen to me. ever. 

#leadership #culture

More awkward than the tough conversation

Feedback is a dialogue, not a monologue. But, if you find yourself monologuing your way through constructive feedback, I feel you (all the verbal processors 💁🏼‍♀️). 

When we’re in tough conversations our nerves kick in. It means we're more likely to ramble, waffle and monologue our way through it (a bad time for everyone involved).

If you fall into the monologue trap, the best strategy is to intentionally ask curious questions. Just like you'd write talking points for a difficult conversation, write down the questions to open up the conversation.  

Here are some of my go-to questions to stop the monologue: 
What's your take on this? 
How are you feeling hearing this?
What are your thoughts hearing this? 
Could you walk me through [x]? 
What might I be missing? 
What might I not be seeing? 
What could we do to solve this?
What might help right now? 
What are some quick fixes? 
What are some longer-term changes? 
What do you think we need to do differently? 
How can I help?

#leadership #feedback #peopleandculture #HR

Look, I think it’s  important we settle this once and for all. What does EOD actually mean? 

Ps. When did we change from COB to EOD? 

Pps. I’ve been told by people who are way cooler than me (not hard) that saying COB (close of business for any Gen Zs) is like saying PowerPoint instead of slide deck. It’s not cool. 

But I digress, what does EOD mean?

I'm going to make an outrageous claim, but it's LinkedIn, so why not. These 2 questions are hands down the BEST questions to ask yourself at the start of a year. If you could only ask yourself two things, make sure it's these:

1. What's the one thing getting in the way of your success?
2. What's the single most important action you can take to deal with it?

Ps. No names or externalising the problem to someone/something else. It's almost always an internal challenge. 

Pps. Ray Dalio always bringing the hard hitting truths. 

#leadership #culture #growth #2026

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