Boldside

Our mission is to build stand-out leaders and epic teams who help you succeed at yours. 

You won’t find traditional HR at Boldside. We assume you've been there, yawned at that, and are ready to see real change. 

We focus solely on growing your leaders and building your dream team. Because when you’ve nailed that? A killer culture, unbreakable teamwork and a bigger impact are all in a days work. 

Our services:
1. Leadership Workshops & Coaching 
2. Team Culture workshops 
3. HR projects 

Ready to take on more confidence, better people and bigger impact? Step into our office (aka DM me).

Founder & Leadership Coach

The Sydney Morning Herald

Contributor, Business & Careers Column | Sydney Morning Herald

My Millennial Money

You’ll find me behind the microphone on this is work (an Australian Podcast Awards finalist) and this is daily. Both podcasts help thousands of people every week to navigate the weird and wild world of work.

Podcast Host | this is work & this is daily

Compassion Australia

As Head of Organisational Capability, my role focused on designing leadership and talent development programs to increase business capability.

Head of Organisational Capability

Compassion is an international aid and development organisation and the fourth largest charity in Australia. Working in 25 countries, Compassion’s mission is to release children from poverty. 
Leading the People and Culture team involves: 
- Creating a stand out employee experience 
- Developing an epic culture & exceptional leaders
- Talent acquisition and management 
- Organisational design
- Learning and development
- Employee Relations
- Payroll Management

People and Culture Manager

Allambi Care

Allambi Care is one of Australia's leading residential, disability and foster care service providers. Based in the Hunter Region, Allambi employs over 1000 staff, and many volunteers.  Allambi's programs support community members by providing access to the services and care required to reach their potential. 

This role involved HR Generalist duties including;
- Recruitment and Onboarding
- Learning and development
- Performance Management 
- Award interpretation 
- Return to Work Coordination and WHS
- Workforce planning

Human Resources Officer

Roster Coordinator

Youth Worker

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

On a high from yesterday with Ralph Lauren’s Australian Leadership Team. 

We ran a full day workshop for their Leadership Offsite in the Yarra Valley to define their ways of working. 

There are so many amazing things to say about this team. It’s hard to narrow it down. They are people-centred, bold and ambitious. They care but, not in a superficial  ‘we should care’ way, but in the ‘it’s who we are’ way. And it’s contagious. They’re also v cheeky, curious and obsessed with learning. So our kind of people. 

Getting to spend the day with them defining how they work together as team, and talk all things leadership and culture was a dream day.

Huge shout out to their Head of People Amra Broughton. You are world class, love seeing how you lead.

Ps. Forgot to get a group photo so the best I have is this Yarra Valley farmstay selfie. 🤦🏼‍♀️

#leadership #culture #peopleandculture #HR

Shelley Johnson

Ralph Lauren

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

Yep, this stoked to be on the Gold Coast today with Mulpha for their 6 month leadership program. Today’s session: The Art of Feedback & High Performing Teams. 

Then to Melbourne for Boston Consulting Group (BCG)‘s People and Culture Forum. We’re running a workshop on Leading at all Levels (cannot wait - dream team). 

And wrapping the week up with CareSuper for their custom Leadership Program: Care to Lead. This program has been blended in person and online built specifically for CareSuper and it’s been SO amazing to partner with their People team to bring it to life. 

Ps. If you’re in People and Culture and want to invest in your leaders in 2026 DM me. 

#leadership #culture #HR #peopleandculture

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

Have unapologetically high expectations 
AND…
Have a system to help people meet them.

When we’re hiring and onboarding new people, we want them to know (in no uncertain terms) that we have high standards. We’re unapologetic about them. We communicate early that we’re anti-mediocrity. 

But (and this is SO important) we also go out of our way to coach and develop people to exceed expectations. It’s equal parts support and stretch. Because this is the kind of environment where people do their best work.

It's having this deep belief that people can grow and thrive in challenges. BUT ALSO (caps are necessary to emphasise this point), there have to be mechanisms internally to help them get there.

So, if you’ve got high expectations, be unapologetic about them. Own it. There’s power in having high expectations of people. It helps people see how they can grow. It also helps them move past limiting beliefs. And at the same time, you need a system and support that helps people reach them.

Here’s how: 

1. Spell out the expectations and standards clearly and early. Make the outcomes explicit.

2. Prioritise fortnightly 1:1s. They don’t need to be long, but they do need to be consistent and intentional. 

3. Build your coaching skills. As a manager, give less advice and ask more questions. You’ll help people to uncover their biggest learnings.

4. Make it safe to fail. As a leader, you need to de-stigmatise failure (don't know if it's a word but let's pretend it is). When there's a mistake made, focus on the problem, not the person. Get them to identify the learnings from it and communicate why those learnings are so valuable. Failure becomes less fear-inducing when we show how it helps us. 

5. Celebrate people’s strengths and give them more opportunities to use them. Give regular and specific positive feedback.  

6. Identify the skill gaps together, and design an action plan to close them. Focus on one skill at a time, they'll make faster progress. 

7. Make self-reflection and personal accountability a cultural norm.

8. Give fast feedback. Don’t wait to share constructive feedback; get into the habit of communicating it as soon as you can.

#leadership #growth #culture

Ok, so if you’re tired and your team is tired this is for you (also hey, I feel you). 

The end of year fatigue is massive and most leaders are v. tired but trying bring the energy. And, it’s hard to know how to tackle tiredness when you’re struggling to get to the finish line yourself. 

If this sounds like you and your team, here’s 5 things that can help (not totally solve but definitely help): 

1. Notice, listen, acknowledge where people are at. Notice the behavioural trends. Ask people how they are really going and listen. Acknowledge where people are at. Play back what you’ve heard to validate them. And be honest about your own energy levels. It helps. 

2. Don’t jump to the solutions. When people are struggling we want to help, but often that means we jump straight to giving all the advice.  Instead, the goal is to understand the challenges. Ask open questions like: what’s draining your energy? What helps you to recharge? What helps you switch off? What parts of the role are distracting you at the moment?  How can we create more space for those energising parts of the role? 

3. Look out for the responsibility takers. These are the people on your who take high ownership (you know who you are, and we love you). They pick up the slack for others and are known for solving problems.   But, they are less likely to speak up when they are overwhelmed. And more likely to run on 4 hours sleep. So proactively check in with them. 

4. Create space to reflect. When people are feeling fatigued it can be hard to make decisions about priorities.  Walk through their priorities with them to spot any low value work that can be dropped.

5. Analyse the workload to work out what to remove. At boldside we use this framework: 

Double-down: what do we need to double down on and hyperfocus on. These are the high impact things that need to happen before end of year. 

Deprioritise: what can we deprioritise. These are the low urgency activities. 

Delete: what low value work can we delete. This is the busy work that doesn’t drive value. Do everything you can to remove this stuff. 

#leadership #career

AHHHHHH. My little heart is very full. This week we ran our first ever People and Culture Unconference and GOODNESS ME. I can't put words to how magic it all was. So I will try next week to do it more justice.

The headlines, we had HR leaders from all over Australia meet up for two v special days to talk all things People, Culture and leadership (and pilates because why not). Here's a lot of photos to hopefully substitute my lack of words. 🥹 

#leadership #HR #peopleandculture

One way to fail as a leader is to see leadership as an add-on to your role. Like an optional extra. Technical expert first. People leader second (or maybe even third or fourth). It's something you do only if there's time.

When we see our role in this way, we ultimately deprioritise people. The 1:1s get cancelled. The coaching and mentoring don't happen. We get stuck doing all the work instead of developing the team. It's a vicious cycle. And when there's a problem, we call HR and ask them to take over, not realising we've been avoiding a core part of our role the whole time. 

If you have a team, leadership isn't an optional add-on to your role. It is the role. 

#leadership #culture #HR #peopleandculture

So many leaders confuse alignment with agreement. But they aren’t the same thing. Aligned teams don’t have constant agreement. 

The most healthy, high performing and aligned leadership teams I’ve worked with have had stacks of disagreement. It’s just that they’ve built both the mindset and skillset to work it through. 

The mindset part is that they don’t see those moments of conflict or debate as unhealthy. They see it a sign of psychological safety and know it’s how they improve. Speaking up and challenging each other is seen as a positive. 

The skillset part is they’ve have tools that enable healthy conflict. They depersonalise issues and debate the ideas, not the individuals raising them. They know how to own their part when things go wrong. They seek out other people’s perspectives. They stay curious. 

But after they’ve debated the ideas and got to an outcome they take an aligned position to back to the organisation. No weird backchanneling or throwing other functions under the bus. They own the collective leadership decision even if they didn’t originally agree with it. 

#leadership #culture #team

The bad news: If you put your culture on autopilot, it will drift. And it doesn't drift in the good direction (unfortunately). Teams drift towards toxicity.

I heard an amazing CEO say this a v. long time ago, and it's rattled around rent free in my head since then.

The good news: if you want a healthy, high-performing culture, you absolutely can get there, and it's less complex than we think.  

It takes: 1) Clarity 2) Commitment 3) Consistency. Here's how to shift your culture: 

Clarity: Start by setting clear expectations of what healthy looks like. Get your team to co-create it with you (I posted how to do this in a really practical way last week. The link is in the comments). 

Ask your team: What do we look like when we're at our best (aka: our most healthy and high performing. What behaviours stop us from getting there right now? 

Commitment: Get everyone's buy-in on the culture you need to be your best as a team. 
Ask your team: What personal actions will we all take to shift the culture in the right direction (think: daily, weekly, monthly)? 

Consistency: Schedule regular culture check-ins. Ask people to regularly reflect on which behaviours the team needs to celebrate and which poor behaviours we've tolerated that we need to course-correct. 

Where we go wrong is that we treat culture as a project, instead of something that requires continual focus and effort. It's discipline and habits. It's being clear about expectations, getting the team's buy in and consistently celebrating the good stuff, and addressing the tough stuff. 

Ps. This was from my keynote at Sonder Summit a few months ago. Definitely one of my fave events of 2025. If you don't already know Sonder. They are amazing, and you MUST follow. 

#leadership #culture #HR #peopleandculture

The 'soft skills' aren't soft. ⁠
They take stacks of hard work. ⁠
⁠⁠
I think about how hard it is to: ⁠
1. Lead in challenging times [resilience]⁠

2. Own a mistake [vulnerability]. ⁠

3. Admit you don't know [humility]. ⁠

4. Put the others above your personal agenda [teamwork]⁠

5. Ask inquisitive questions and suspend judgment [curiosity]. ⁠
⁠
#leadership #career #growth #HR

Soft skills aren't soft

One of the big challenges with team culture is spotting the early warning signs of problems. 

When we're busy, it's easy to miss the subtle signs of problems. If you feel like you need a bit of a culture reset, here’s an activity we use in our team culture workshops Boldside, that you can run with your team to clarify what healthy culture looks like .


Get your team together and run this activity we call the ‘Culture Flags’.   Takes about 30-45 mins. 

Step 1. Green flags
List out all the good behaviours you need on your team. Use green post it’s and stick them on the wall so everyone can read them). More is better and be specific. Define what your team looks like at its absolute best. 


Step 2. Orange flags
List out all the subtle, unhelpful behaviours that slowly damage your culture but often get overlooked. Use orange post it’s. These are the behaviours that we tend to downplay or make excuses for. Think small/micro behaviours people often overlook but that slowly undermine performance and trust. 


Step 3. Red flags 
List all the toxic behaviours you won’t tolerate. Use the red post it’s. These are way more obvious. Most people spot them easily and when you have a healthy culture they stand out.


The behaviours to watch out for most are the orange ones. 

Most leaders and teams know how to spot toxicity, it’s the subtle behaviours where they get unstuck. Things like: Silence, entitlement, apathy, and gossip (usually disguised as debriefing).

Healthy teams know the non-negotiable behaviours that set them up to win. Plus they are clear on the subtle behaviours that undermine their culture and they address them early. 

#leadership #culture #HR #peopleandculture

20 things you’ll need to hear in your career at least once (in no particular order):

1. You haven’t missed the moment. Keep going. 

2. Being interested IN people is far more valuable than being interesting TO people.

3.  Leaders carry an unseen weight. And the thing about weight is you can’t carry it forever on your own. Find mentors who get it. Do everything you can to share the weight with the right people.  

4. To do your best work, you need to become your best self. You’re one of one. You don’t need to imitate someone else. You need to become more you.

5. Effortlessness is rubbish. Trying hard is hot. 

6. The single biggest influence on your career is you. Not your boss. Not your org. It’s you. And it’s a good thing. It means if it’s not working, you get to change it up. 

7. Your beliefs either block or build your career. But most people overlook the importance of what they believe about themselves. Listen to your self-talk because that is where your belief system shows up most. 

8. The single biggest risk in your career isn't failure. It’s comfort. If you are failing you’re in a good place. The biggest learnings aren’t from success. It’s our big fails that are the biggest catalysts for growth.

9. Embarrassment is even worse than failure, but it’s the cost of entry to your next stage of growth. And, failure and embarrassment aren’t the same. You can fail in private and learn in private (much more appealing IMO). But, embarrassment always has a public-ness to it. It messes with your ego. It’s the cringey-ness of having people watch on as you inevitably screw something up. But learn to embrace those moments. Laugh about them. They are good for you. 

10. “The wins are never as good as you think and the losses are never as bad as you think” (v. talented friend of mine said this to me earlier in the year, and it’s stuck in my head).

11. Nothing worth doing is easy. If it’s tough/painful/takes effort, it’s worthwhile. 

12. Fight for margin every day and every week. Margin is where your best ideas come from. Margin is the precursor to creativity.  

13. Be an easy laugher (v good quality in a human)  

14. Invest in a good pen. You will not regret it.  

15. Also, occasionally show up to a meeting with a notepad and a pen instead of your laptop. Go analog. Hardcopy is good copy. 

16. Rumination is not the same as reflection. Play it back once and then move forward. 

17. A quick way to progress in your career is to make your boss's life easier. 

18. Mediocrity wants you to tone down your strengths. It wants you to play small to fit in. But fitting in and playing small is boring and dull. And you’re anything but. 

19. LinkedIn is saying I’ve exceeded the character limit so i can't do the last point.  I guess sometimes you need other people to tell you when to stop. 

#career #leadership #growth

What I’m thinking about and/or working on at the moment: 

The power short breaks. 
Creating a ‘to-don’t’ list. 
Writing down interruptions to find the systemic issue. 
Talking about 'the why' more often. 
Giving detailed positive feedback. 
Differentiating between core work vs deep work vs busy work. 
Doing everything humanly (an inhumanly) possible to eliminate busy work. 
Wondering why it's so hard to eliminate busy work. 
Noticing resentment and using it as a signal to have an honest conversation. 
End of day routines (way better than morning routines). 
Where did all the bands go? Too many solo acts imo.  
Fun out-of-office replies. 
Weaponised incompetence at work. 
Un-tired leadership.
The price tag of caring and the reward of caring. 
Leaders need insight and influence. Your insight is only as good as your ability to influence. But influence without insight is just bad advice that sounded good at the time. 
There's a big difference between reflection and rumination.
Autonomy comes with accountability. The more accountable you are, the more autonomy you get. 

#leadership #career

Leadership development doesn’t have to look like 187 ppt slides. Sometimes it looks like this (ie: surprising, delicious and ridiculously fun).

This time last week, we spent the day with 100 leaders from Brisbane Airport  for their Annual People Leader day. And every person got their golden ticket to BAC’s 2026 Leadership Development Program.

It’s been so amazing to partner with this team for over 2 years on a whole stack of leadership projects, and can’t wait for what’s coming in 2026.

Here’s some of my highlights from working with Brisbane Airport:

1. Clarity over certainty. Leaders can’t provide certainty (as much as they want to) but they can be intentional about communicating with clarity.

2. High performance starts with cultural health. This leadership team doesn’t just have the values on the wall. They live and breathe them.

3. Connection leads to collaboration. Creating space where leaders connect, build relationship and seek to understand different perspectives is the precursor to collaboration.

4. Consistency is the foundation of every other leadership skill.

5. The ability to make work fun and laugh easily is a leadership superpower, and one Bris Airport has A LOT of. It’s helps with so many things like team resilience, creativity and grit. 

So much more to say about this day. 

Shout out to Larinda Morrison and Jane Dionysius. Love watching the way you both lead.  Dream day with dream team
 
 #leadership #culture #HR #peopleandculture

Brisbane Airport

Head of Human Resources at Brisbane Airport Corporation

Executive General Manager People, Culture & Governance | GAICD

This week’s work travel random thoughts:

- I’m just a girl standing at airport security with my odd socks, patiently waiting for my shoes and feeling very vulnerable.

- I’m just a girl standing in front of the mini bar fridge wondering if my next move will bankrupt me. 

- I’m just a girl standing in front of the self help section at the airport book store wondering if this next book will finally fix me. 

- I’m just a girl standing in front of a revolving door wondering whether I can hop in yet or not. 

- I’m just a girl standing at the car hire place wondering why this process takes so long. 

- I’m just a girl, standing at a new cafe anxiously wondering if I order at the counter or if its table service. 

- I’m just a girl standing in a meeting room wondering who’s got the wifi password. 

- I’m just a girl standing in the aisle of the plane as it lands, wondering why everyone else is also standing up so early. (JOKING I would never EVER stand up early).

Happy Friday friends. May the work-related travel be ever in your favour.

‘I’m going to put my manager hat on now'...  😬  The hat thing is one my big pet peeves in difficult conversations. 

You know when people go: 'I’m going to take my friend hat off and put my manager hat on'. I don’t get it. Why do we need the hats? Why can’t we be ok with our working relationships having multiple dynamics to them? They can be messy and complex, but that’s what real relationships are like. They aren’t one dimensional. 

When I hear the ‘I'm putting my manager hat on now’, it lands in this disingenuous way. I know that's not how it's intended. But it makes me wonder whether the person feels they need to switch into positional authority mode with me. It also just makes me feel weird. 

I’d rather a manager to say: 'Hey, Shell, I really care about you, and because I care, I need to have this conversation with you. It might be tough, but I know it will be worthwhile'. 

If you have a genuine friendship with the people you lead, there are MORE not less, reasons to have courageous conversations. It’s because you care for that person that you step into the mess. 

Anyway... I'll take my rant hat off now. What's your take on the hats?

#management #leadership #culture #HR

What happens when the feedback is right, but the delivery is wrong?

Maybe the message was fair, but the tone was super brutal. Or it was dropped on you five minutes before a big meeting. Or worse, the location was off (the lunchroom convo with everyone from Finance eavesdropping is always a bad time).


What’s your take? How do you respond? Also, the voting options are too limited. So put it in the comments.

#leadership #culture #HR #team

taplio

Shelley Johnson's Linkedin Analytics

Shelley Johnson

Performance ScoreShelley Johnson's LinkedIn Performance

What is Shelley talking about?

Shelley Johnson's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

.css-6ytdur{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39, 43, 72, 1) 0%, rgba(33, 47, 183, 1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Shelley Johnson's Linkedin Analytics

Shelley Johnson

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Shelley Johnson's LinkedIn Performance

What is Shelley talking about?

Shelley Johnson's Best Posts .css-1emoo84{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:400;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);}(last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Shelley Johnson's Linkedin Analytics

Performance ScoreShelley Johnson's LinkedIn Performance

Shelley Johnson's Best Posts (last 30 days)