Business Builders Podcast

Leadership insights from the Australian Army with Tony Mackay

May 12, 2021 Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian Season 1 Episode 6
Business Builders Podcast
Leadership insights from the Australian Army with Tony Mackay
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In today's episode our hosts Brenton Gowland and Ron Tomlian talk with their guest Tony Mackay about insights into leadership development based on Tony's 21 years of experience in the Australian Army.

Some of the topics covered include: 

  • It takes 10,000 hours to become expert in anything, including leadership
  • How leaders develop
  • The difference in skills between technical and leadership roles
  • Formal leadership training is critical
  • You can self direct your leadership training by observing and copying role models
  • The quality of your mentors can determine the quality of your leadership
  • Current leaders need to identify and train future leaders
  • Leadership development creates better outcomes that career development
  • The responsibility for becoming a leader rests on the individual, no one can make it happen for you
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Brenton Gowland:

Today on the Business Builders podcast, we're talking with Tony Mackay about his perspective on leadership development based on his experience in the Australian Army. Ron talks about an opportunity he lost through neglecting to develop his staff and I give a personal insight about where I originally learned about leadership. Welcome to the Business Builders Podcast, where each fortnight we bring you insights that will help you succeed in business. We're your hosts. I'm Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian. Now, this week, Brenton, we have Tony Mackay joining us to speak about leadership development, which is a key practice that will help us grow our businesses.

Brenton Gowland:

And Tony of course is one of the hosts from SA Business Builders, the networking group that we are all a part of and the networking group that's actually inspired this podcast. Now Tony will be bringing us a perspective on leadership development that comes from a foundation of over 21 years service in the Australian Army. Tony worked in various engineering, logistics, project management, advisory and leadership roles during his time with the army, which included five years service with the fifth and seventh battalion mechanised infantry. Tony also served three years with the fourth battalion commando unit and has deployed overseas on active service. Tony discharged from the army as a warrant officer class one in 2008, and has since held senior roles within federal government including as director of governance and innovation and chief of staff at the Australian radiation protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.

Ron Tomlian:

Try saying that three times quickly.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh mate it's a mouthful, but anyway, more

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely I really looking forward to hearing what recently, Tony has been the business unit leader for the APP Corporation here in Adelaide and is now the defence business development manager for Ventia, Australia's fourth largest Defence Contractor. In 2014. Tony started Insync Management Tony has to say. But let's start with a couple of quick messages Solutions as a means of sharing the knowledge and experience he gained during his military career blended with his public service and private industry experience. So I'm sure our discussion is going to be jam packed with insights for you, our listeners. from our sponsors.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely.

Ron Tomlian:

Today's episode is sponsored by Nucleus creative agency. Now as we discussed in our last episode, research shows that the average person is bombarded with somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 advertising marketing messages every single week in Australia. And in amongst that sea of clutter, it can be quite difficult to make your brand, your products, your services and your messages stand out from the pack. As a result, it can take a great deal of effort, time and money to get people to visit your website, to win a meeting or engage with your story. So it's critically important when they do arrive at your website or engage with you that story that you're offering and your brand all work together to connect with your audience and inspire them to start a conversation with you. Because let's face it, you don't often get a second chance. Now the team at Nucleus have a complete suite of integrated agency services to help you tell your story and a strong track record of helping their clients grow their business and achieve their objectives. So if you need help selling your products and services, developing your website creating engaging video experiences, educating your market or developing your brand. Nucleus can help you. So please visit www.nucleus.com.au to see how they've helped other businesses just like yours.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely. And if you'd like any advice from our team at Nucleus, or you want to have a discussion, please just get in touch using the contact form on the Nucleus website. And either myself or one of our team will be more than happy to arrange a meeting. Now of course, our other sponsor is SA Business Builders. And of course as I said earlier, SA Business Builders inspired this podcast now SA Business Builders are a social group that facilitate events that encourage the development of high quality relationships between skilled business professionals in order to inspire friendships, opportunities, initiatives and business growth. So each month SA Business Builders run an event here in Adelaide, South Australia, where we get around 60 to 80 people together for social events where we hear about relevant business topics that are relevant to us in business today. And if you'd like to attend, please just reach out to either Ron myself or in fact, our guest Tony Mackay because we're all SA Business Builders hosts and we would love to chat and you can reach us on LinkedIn or any of the normal channels. Now if you're listening from abroad or Interstate and you're coming to South Australia, we'd certainly love to meet with you and get you involved. However, we'd encourage you to check out some of the great networking groups that are in your area. But if you're in South Australia, of course SA Business Builders is definitely an event you should look at and interestingly enough Ron we've had people contacting us from the podcast asking to come along.

Ron Tomlian:

That's fantastic, isn't it. That stuff out in the media really does work.

Brenton Gowland:

Apparently people are listening to us we better be, we better be on point. Lucky we've got Tony here today.

Ron Tomlian:

I was just gonna say with Tony here, we'll have to stay on point. So with that it's now time to hear from my guests. Hello, Tony.

Tony Mackay:

G'day Ron, g'day, Brenton. It is fantastic to be here.

Brenton Gowland:

It's great to have you.

Ron Tomlian:

It's great to have you on the Business Builders podcast. And what a great topic, one that's very dear to my heart. Now for knowing you, it's clear that you've got a passion for leadership development. So where did that come from?

Tony Mackay:

Right. Well, I guess it all started back in 1988, when I joined the army at the ripe old age of 17 and a half. And at 17 and a half, I was actually pretty old for a, for an apprentice who joined the army, the majority of the people I joined with were 15, and nine months old when they signed up and had just turned 16 when they actually started as soldiers.

Brenton Gowland:

So you were the wisdom of the group were you?

Tony Mackay:

Well, it's interesting, you should say that, because I was sort of recognised, I guess, to have some leadership potential. And it may have been the fact that I was a year and a half older than a lot of the other guys. So you know, that probably led to me maybe displaying a little bit more maturity than some of the other the other guys and being identified for honorary rank as a, what they call an apprentice Sergeant Major. So with that role, I had responsibility for looking after about 100 apprentices, soldiers, and that included, you know, sort of marching them around looking after their admin and even included discipline. So you know, at the age of 18, I was leading parades and marching people around and looking after the welfare.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, sounds like you were destined for leadership Tony, that's actually really impressive.

Tony Mackay:

Got a taste for it.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah good. So you left the military after 21 years. Can you tell us and our listeners, what happened after you left? And what inspired you to want to share the lessons you've learned in the military with the private sector?

Tony Mackay:

Yeah, sure. Well, I guess I experienced some, I thought, really good leadership when I was in the military. And when I left, I saw some some gaps in capability in leadership capability. And I've kind of wondered why that was. And it became obvious to me that people hadn't had the same level of training that what you get in the military, so I thought, there's an opportunity here to share what I'd learned in the military. And I was in some relatively senior roles straight out of the military. So I took it on myself to do a bit of mentoring of some of the junior staff and, and also of other staff that were other people that I'd met through networking. And I did that for quite a while just as a, you know, to help people out and eventually it sort of grew into Insync Management Solutions where I was, you know, doing it for commission as well. So.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, interestingly enough, we spend a lot of time with different people who've been ex military service, people who've actually gone into leadership roles, and there seems to be some sort of, as in teaching other people about leadership. So there seems to be some sort of correlation between what you learn in the military and actually being able to for certain people, obviously, to be able to then inspire and teach others how to lead. So can you tell us about how that comes about?

Tony Mackay:

Yeah, look, the military has a very deliberate approach to training. And that extends to leadership training. So there are two streams that you have within the military. There's the Other Rank Stream, and then there's the Officer Stream. So I went down the Other Ranks Stream, but we'll talk about the Officer Stream because that's probably more relevant. So the the officers join, joined the military as cadets and go through some training at either ADFA or on I'm talking army.

Brenton Gowland:

What's ADFA?

Tony Mackay:

The Australian Defence Force Academy.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, so our listeners might not know the acronyms. So we'll have to....

Tony Mackay:

Good point.

Ron Tomlian:

It used to be known as Duntroon.

Tony Mackay:

No, no. Duntroon is a separate organisation. Yeah, so the Royal Military College duntroon is the more regimental side, so you can you can go to the Australian Defence Force Academy and do you know, academic degrees and the like, and some some do both so they'll go through ADFA and they'll go through RMC. Others may just go for RMC.

Brenton Gowland:

Which is?

Tony Mackay:

The Royal Military College Duntroon.

Brenton Gowland:

Got it.

Tony Mackay:

Thank you. And they spend, you know, a couple of years learning the theories of leadership and practising that within in a safe environment. And then they are commissioned, normally as lieutenants and they go out to units. And then once they are in units, normally as a lietenant, they will be a platoon commander, and they'll have 30 soldiers that work for them. In amongst those 30 soldiers. They'll have a platoon sergeant now the platoon sergeant is an experienced soldier who has upwards of you know, 10 years of experience already and has been a corporal so he's been in charge of leading a section of nine people himself. So he's got, you know, actual real world military training and leadership experience. So one of the key roles of the sergeant is to act as a mentor for the lieutenant and and there's a very honest, open and frank relationship that they have. And and that's something I don't tend to see so much in industry, you don't tend to have people who's who have a secondary role to be a deliberate mentor for people who are in leadership roles.

Ron Tomlian:

It tends to be more accidental to anything else.

Tony Mackay:

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm really interested to hear you talk about the concept of servant leadership, something that I'm passionate about it In relation to military, because I think most people are, have the view that military is all about command and control. And, quite frankly, in a modern society, even in the military, I can't see how that can work. And you've just cleared that up.

Tony Mackay:

The military is very much a servant leadership organisation. In fact, probably next to the church, it's probably the leader in that in that space. And it's a real, I have this conversation with people all the time, they really don't understand. They watch movies, mainly American style movies, and they see, you know, Full Metal Jacket and things like that. And they think that there's all this yelling at everything, and there's an amount of that, you know, especially during the initial training. You've got to break people down and build them up into the, into the mould that you want them to, to end up in. But the reality is, is that we have a very small military, and we can't afford to operate in a war of attrition style, where we just yell at people and tell them to go off and do things, we need to have people who can think and contribute to the plan. And, and it is very much a servant leadership methodology. And to the point where one of the things that got me into the leadership space was that, you know, coming up and becoming a sergeant and, and doing a bit of research and understanding that the even the word Sergeant is derived from the Latin Serviens, which means to serve.

Ron Tomlian:

Interesting.

Brenton Gowland:

And it's very interesting, because when we talk about, you know, people going to different places, and they're deployed, they talk about their service, that was their service to the country. So it's a very interesting kind of point you make there because everything we talk about in Army, or in defence is they're serving their country.

Tony Mackay:

It's absolutely a service. And that was another point I was going to make. So thank you for bringing that up. It is a service. And, you know, even it's one of the things I felt when I left the military was that there was something missing. And that was that service piece. And I'd looked for something to do that to allow me to continue to provide a service, which is why I became a Justice of the Peace.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, great. So you were talking about that piece was missing you talking about in the corporate world?

Tony Mackay:

Just generally, I think, for me, I'm having spent 21 years serving, you don't stop serving when you finish that job.

Ron Tomlian:

It's interesting, because I don't think the common perspective of business is about service. But the truth of the matter is, in a modern environment with employees will require you to as a leader, to provide them with guidance and support. It is a service in I'd like to think of leaders as the people who are serving their people. And their their people are serving the customer.

Brenton Gowland:

Well it's interesting when you think about it, because it's our job to remove all the blockers for our staff to be able to do their job and serve our clients. Yes. So our job as leaders is really to guide them and to create a way for them to effectively work for our clients.

Tony Mackay:

Couldn't agree more. Absolutely.

Ron Tomlian:

So Tony, what do you see as a key message for leaders who do want to take on this service role in terms of developing upcoming leaders within their organisation? And within their ranks? If you like.

Tony Mackay:

Yeah great question Ron. The probably the thing that I would say is that there's the Peters Principle. Which is that people rise to the level of their incompetence, effectively. You know, it's, it's been a known thing for quite a while. But there's also this concept around, you know, taking 10,000 hours to become an expert in anything. And one of the things that I find is that through the military, we deliberately train leaders from the day they join, so that and mentor and more way through the journey so that they're effective leaders, and there are only two types of leaders. There are effective leaders and non effective leaders or ineffective leaders. So the point I'm making here is that if you want to train people in your organisation, to be effective leaders, you've got to start their leadership journey at the start. Not when they're appointed. What do you mean by at the start. So people tend to start off in a role, a technical role. And then over time, they're recognised for their, you know, the work they do, they may do some more courses, technical courses, they become, you know, really proficient at their job, they rise to a certain level, and all of a sudden, they promoted so that they're now looking after people. And that's a very different set of skills from what they've been training in their technical roles. And so that's rising to the level of their incompetence piece. And when they're at that point, looking back at that 10,000 hours to become an expert that I was talking about before, it's too late to start, you should have started that that journey that 10,000 hours. And to put it into perspective, 10,000 hours to become an expert in something is about three hours a day for 10 years, seven days a week. Now you don't have to do 10,000 hours and become an expert, but you do need to do around, say 7,000 hours of deliberate training to become proficient and that's still about two hours a day for 10 years. So if you spend 10 years in, in technical roles, and then all of a sudden you recognise to become a leader of your section, or maybe a branch or a division or whatever, and then you Start your leadership journey, your 10,000 hours behind where you should be. And this is where mentoring is really, really good in business, because you can't, you can't afford in business necessarily to do what the military does, which is, you know, put people through two years of solid training and then have a chaperone to mentor them all the way. But you can start recognising potential leaders early and, you know, setting up some more formal mentoring for those people to help them along the way so that when they do get to that point of being in a leadership role, they're not starting from a very low base, starting from the level of some, you know, experience.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, in my experience, and this is a while ago, the in business leadership is often thought of as an afterthought, and it's equated with the disciplines, like technical disciplines of management. And I see the two as quite separate. And management is about managing things. And leadership is about managing people. So the stock and trade of a leader is understanding people. And yet very few people, as you quite rightly said, very few people do any development in that area until they're leading people, and it's too late.

Tony Mackay:

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay. So the core of this podcast is really giving insights to business people who are listening, and we know that there's a number of people who are listening who are in leadership roles within businesses now, and actually CEOs, etc, etc. So can you explain to us how the military trains its leaders and how we in business can learn from that style of leadership training?

Tony Mackay:

Yeah look um. There's the deliberate leadership training. So it's all a normal sort of business, leadership, I guess, lessons that you would teach anybody around style, the principles, development of character, those sorts of things, but then around the the actual experiential learning that goes along with that leadership, training, and that very specific mentoring that goes along with it. So the I guess the military is in a very privileged position in its training continuum, that it has a lot of breadth of training scenarios that it can run, and it has the time and the money to do it. Probably the best thing that business can do is to try to build into its own, I guess, career development for people to have the opportunity to lead teams, even if they're not in those roles, so they can get experience of actually leading people.

Brenton Gowland:

To both fail and to learn.

Tony Mackay:

In a safe environment to fail and to learn. Yes.

Brenton Gowland:

And how do you set up that safe environment if you're running a business yourself?

Tony Mackay:

Yeah, fantastic question can be, could be quite challenging, if you if you wanted to do that on any sort of large scale, but you can always scale these things down and build it into I guess, chaperoning people with somebody else who's doing an actual real project, for example. Having somebody to shadow them through that project so that they can actually be, I guess, engaged in the in the process and pick up the skills through experience.

Brenton Gowland:

So like you were talking about earlier, like an internal mentoring system?

Tony Mackay:

If the business allows for it. Yes. If not, then it's worth looking into some, you know, maybe external mentoring. As such, some professional organisations I know I'm doing it for AIPM, Australian Institute of Project Managers at the moment, offer mentoring programmes. I'm sure, Ron, you're obviously mentoring a number of people. And so yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

I think the other thing too, is that any manager, any leader can help their people. We were talking about it before the podcast. That you can learn by from watching great leaders, you can also learn from watching lousy leaders, because if you reflect on their practice, and I'm a great believer in the power of reflection, and getting people to think about, well, what work there and what didn't, and how can you take that into your practice? I think that's important, but I think every leader has the responsibility to raise the level of their people in terms of their development, leadership development in particular, because really, their responsibility is to replace themselves eventually.

Tony Mackay:

Yeah, definitely.

Brenton Gowland:

Or to move up.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. I have personal experience. I'd lost a certain promotion once. On the basis that I was the best man for the job, I thought. But the person who is making the decision said, Ron, fantastic. You can you can do the job. You're the best man for the job. But we can't replace what you're doing at the moment because you haven't done anything about developing your people. So do something about that, then we'll think about it.

Brenton Gowland:

That's very interesting.

Ron Tomlian:

That was a hard lesson to learn, but probably one of the most important lessons of my life.

Tony Mackay:

You made yourself indispensable.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes, I did. And anyone who's indispensable can't get out of that.

Tony Mackay:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

So a good lesson for leaders develop your people, otherwise, you're stuck.

Tony Mackay:

The other thing that I was going to raise was that that side conversation we had earlier on about self awareness and self regulation. I think there are the two very critical aspects to anyone developing into a leader and talking about that whole emotional intelligence piece. I mean, in the old days, we used to call emotional intelligence, something very different. We call it maturity. And now we've put some technical labels around it. But effectively, that's what it is. It's maturity. And one of the ways that people can guess, demonstrate maturity is through the role modelling of other people and seeing what it looks like, you know, what good looks like and then from there trying to, to model that themselves. So that's another sort of way that people can try to, I guess it's almost, it's like a form of mentoring but you do it yourself. You identify someone as a role model. And you try to replicate what they do?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, I think he talked about the importance of what leaders currently can do for their people or should be doing for their people. I think if someone wants to be a leader, or wants to have that as a potential for their future, they have a responsibility to start thinking about their own development. And that comes with self reflection, self regulation, as you say, and being being the type of person who thinks about what did I do today? And how can I do it better in terms of my relationships with others?

Brenton Gowland:

Now, quick question, and I think we've talked about this before. But can anyone become a leader Tony?

Tony Mackay:

I always say there are no born leaders. Leaders are shaped by their environment, their conditioning, and the quality of their mentors. And the answer, I think, is, can anybody become a leader? I think the answer is yes. Does everybody want to be a leader? I think the answer is no. And also, should everybody be a leader? And the answer is probably no. And some people are you know, their, the way they develop the character that they have, the values that they have, and so on, predispose them, I guess to being better leaders.

Brenton Gowland:

So if I'm a young person sitting in a business, who's maybe in my 20s, and a young professional, and I've got aspirations of leadership, what should I do?

Tony Mackay:

Well, the first thing you should do, I think, is be patient. I think there's a...

Brenton Gowland:

Is that a thing that young people do nowadays? I'm just wondering.

Ron Tomlian:

Don't show your age Brenton.

Tony Mackay:

That's what I was bringing it up, actually, because there is a, I guess, a propensity in people nowadays, to want everything very quickly. And leadership, like I said, earlier, leadership is, in a large way, it's it's to do with the maturity. And maturity, as the word says, takes time. So be patient, observe others, learn from others, and then repeat. So yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

You however were thrust into leadership at 17 and a half.

Tony Mackay:

Didn't get everything right.

Brenton Gowland:

But you started to learn.

Tony Mackay:

It was a hugh learning curve. And I had great mentors, and I had great training.

Brenton Gowland:

So while they're being patient, what should they do? Should they go out and look for mentors? Should they get involved in groups where they can actually get some leadership experiences. There have got to be ways. You even mentioned the church earlier. And I know from my background, I'm going to reveal something here. I used to be in the church when I was younger, but I used to refer to where I went, because it was about 3,000 or 4,000 people in this church. And I was like, I learned how to run a business by being in that place.

Tony Mackay:

Churches a great sort of organisation for teaching leadership, I think. I look at it from a bottom up and top down approach, I think that the individuals got a responsibility to personally, you know, identify if they feel that they want to be a leader at some point in their life, and a lot of young people don't know what they want. But again, with that 10,000 hours to become an expert, if you think you want it and start looking into it and doing something for yourself. You know, the world won't do it for you, you have to take action. But from a top down perspective, if you're a leader of an organisation, legacy is important. And replacing yourself is important. So you know, identifying, having an approach to identifying potential future leaders and doing something about it, is important.

Brenton Gowland:

So what would that approach be from your experience?

Tony Mackay:

Oh, I would absolutely make leadership development, a key aspect to the business rather than career development. Because like I said earlier, I think that, you know, we focus a lot on our career as being the technical skills, and we forget that it also has to include the leadership skills, and Ron said it perfectly, you know, we manage things, and we lead people. But what we tend to do is we train people all about the things and then we throw them into a situation where they're in charge of people.

Brenton Gowland:

That's really interesting, because we want our staff to take responsibility and you know, take on roles and own them. So leadership development is a really interesting way to think about that.

Tony Mackay:

Absolutely.

Ron Tomlian:

And I think if you ask leaders who currently running businesses, and you said, What's the number one problems you have, they won't talk about revenue or marketing, they'll talk about people.

Brenton Gowland:

That's funny.

Ron Tomlian:

People problems are the problems that make organisations come unstuck.

Brenton Gowland:

I literally just came back from a meeting where I was talking to someone and they were talking, sharing that exact thing.

Tony Mackay:

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that we did when I was in the military and it was actually run by what we call the Padres. And Padres are effectively priests for anyone who doesn't know. They would run character training. And I actually learned a lot from that. Character training all about, you know, what are the great character traits that that people should try to develop in themselves, you know. And these are things that used to be common, you know, 50, 60, 70 years ago. They seem to be a little bit less common nowadays. They don't have the same intrinsic values as what they used to have. And there are things like courtesy and responsibility, being on time, you know, all the normal things that you can do quite easily. Well, these are the basis, the foundations for being a good leader.

Ron Tomlian:

You're absolutely right. Well, we've got to start wrapping up now Tony, but one last question. Given that our audience is mostly senior leaders who are already established within their organisations, why is your message so important to them?

Tony Mackay:

One word, Ron Legacy. I think leaders need to identify potential leaders early and provide them with some deliberate training, but also mentor them. They need to start with the end in mind. And if they want to make sure that they have leaders who are competent and capable to lead when they're appointed but they have not started their 10,000 hour journey at that time.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay, Tony, well, thank you for your time today. It was insightful, and I think a real benefit to both us and our listeners. So if people want to get in touch with you, and get some leadership coaching, or just make contact, what's the best way to reach you?

Tony Mackay:

Yeah, well, they can contact me via my website, www.insyncms.com.au, or email me at info@insyncms.com.au. Or they can contact me through LinkedIn. I'm pretty, pretty active on LinkedIn, pretty easy to find.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes, you are. You're everywhere on LinkedIn.

Ron Tomlian:

Fantastic. And once again, thank you for your time today. It's been a great discussion.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely, Tony, that was great. And I've got to admit, I'm sitting here thinking I just want to keep talking about this, because some of the things that you've brought out really have kind of dropped little nuggets in my head, particularly around for me where you were talking about rather than doing career training, doing leadership training. Because that flips that whole thing on its head. Because we want to develop leaders who can run our businesses to free up the leaders of the business in the management to actually do what they do best. And that is structure a company that's ready for growth or achieving their goals, whatever that might be. But anyway, we need to wrap up now. So look, if you're finding the Business Builders podcast useful, please let us know. We'd love your thoughts. We'd love to know any topics you'd like to talk about. And you can of course reach Ron Tomlian or Brenton Gowland on LinkedIn, we are more than happy to talk to you. And we'd also love you to give us a review if you're listening to this and you're finding it useful. So either on Apple podcasts or your favourite podcasting platform.

Ron Tomlian:

And please remember to check out our sponsors, Nucleus at www.nucleus.com.au. They're experts in helping your business and telling your story so that you can grow. Please check them out at www.nucleus.com.au

Brenton Gowland:

And please reach out to us if you'd like to get involved with SA Business Builders. Interestingly enough, we just had someone reach out to us today on LinkedIn. They are now coming to the next event. So until next time, that is goodbye from me.

Ron Tomlian:

And goodbye from me.

Brenton Gowland:

And Tony. We will see you at the next SA Business Builders event.

Tony Mackay:

Looking forward to it. Brenton

Brenton Gowland:

And Ron and our listeners we look forward to speaking with you again on our next podcast

Ron Tomlian:

See you then Brenton.

Brenton Gowland:

Bye for now Ron.

Introduction
How the Australian Army inspired Tony to develop a passion for leadership
Why Tony feels it is important to share the leadership lessons he learned
How the military train their leaders and what business people can learn from this approach
Can anyone become a leader?
What young people can do to learn leadership skills
Why developing leaders is so important for current senior business leaders
Wrap up
Feedback invite for the Business Builders podcast
Final sponsors message
Goodbyes