Meet Tracey

A letter to you no matter where you are in your leadership journey

Everyone has those moments in their life that show them who they are, the ones that challenge them and help them see exactly what they need to be doing in life. Like so many of us, my career and life has seen wins and losses, but most importantly there is a lot of learning. In order to understand exactly who I am and how I can help you and your team get to that next level, I would like to share some of them with you.

I’ve learnt that no matter where we are in life all of us need to constantly be learning.

This doesn’t mean sitting behind a desk, doing courses and studying all the time, it can mean so many different things. For me it meant trying stand-up in a pub, running a bar on an island, jumping out of planes and even trying tap dancing as an adult. It doesn’t matter whether you succeed, or even if you’re good at it. As I discovered, tap dancing isn’t for me, but the important part is that I learned a huge amount about myself through the experiment.

Throughout my career I’ve had many opportunities to explore leadership and culture within a business or group. I’ve worked in the automotive industry, in hospitality and have decades of experience working in the education sector. Across all of these industries I noticed a few things. Firstly, across every sector, the elements that bring out the best in people are the same. The conditions that help us thrive as human beings and contributors to our work environment span across industries and contexts. Secondly, as leaders we all need support in our journey in order to bring the best out of our people.

We are the architects of both culture and strategy. Never underestimate the impact you make.

The difference that a leader can make on a team was highlighted to me one night very early in my career. I returned to a school where I had previously been the conductor for the school orchestra. Part way through the evening I was invited by the current conductor to come up and lead the orchestra in a piece that we had been playing for years. It was wonderful sharing the collective experience of making music with that group of students again. After the performance, a parent came up to me to say that even though they hadn’t seen the switch take place, they could hear the difference as soon as the piece of music started.

All of the culture, connection and teamwork that we had created previously came forth in the way they played, every person coming together to create magic. Was it better? Not necessarily, but there was a different chemistry produced.

The smiles were huge as we came to the last note of the piece and the applause came. This experience early on in my leadership career really highlighted for me the impact we as leaders have on our teams and the role that culture plays in achieving great results. Developing cultures where everyone wants to collaborate, deeply listening to each other and learning from each other, is one of my missions with each and every one of my clients.

In what was to be one of the most traumatic and extreme experiences of my life in 2015, so too came my greatest learning. While out on a motorbike ride with some close friends, two of our friends had a fatal accident. After an initial and hard grieving period, I jumped back into work using the things that were going well in my life as a distraction. I loved my work, I loved being a mum, I loved working with leaders and creating better workplace cultures. So I decided that in this time of overwhelm I would be everything to everyone: family, friends and clients. But I wasn’t being the person that I needed in that moment, I wasn’t showing up for myself. For years after the accident, I continued to function from this space of putting everyone else’s needs above my own. Over functioning at its finest! ‘I don’t need help – I help’. As a result, my life began falling apart. I was exhausted, I was burnt out, relationships started to crumble and I realised that despite doing good work, I wasn’t bringing my best to my family, or myself. I realised this needed to change. I couldn’t continue to limp along in life like this. Externally I may have looked like I was smashing goals, but internally I was struggling.

I made the decision to create a life that supported me. I needed to have the freedom to do what was good for me, not only what was good for others. It took a few years but I managed to develop the supports that I needed, in my family and friends, in my business, in all areas of my life. I also learnt how to give myself compassion and space to do the things I loved and fill my own cup. I then was able to live far more healthily and achieve goals more easily, because, while I was still helping others, I was helping myself first. This came with an important lesson. As a high-functioning person, the temptation can be to do it all yourself. But through this process, I learned that asking for help didn’t mean I had failed and often I could do even better work and get better results if I did allow others to help. It pushed me as a leader to not only listen to my head (the results, the what I ‘should’ be doing), but also my heart (what is best for me and the people around me). I realised that if I wanted to continue to get better results, I needed to nurture my relationships. The relationships that fill me with joy, help me see what’s possible, help me through tough times and help me to be able to give as well. Not only with others, but also my relationship with myself. I had to practise and fully embrace the role of ferocious warmth within my own life.

If you are a leader who is feeling exhausted, and like you’re doing it all yourself, I want you to know there is hope. You aren’t failing, you are learning, and by allowing others to come on this learning journey with you, you are opening the door to amazing transformation and opportunity.

The third life changing event for me came at the end of 2023. This solidified all of the work that I had done across the past few years. In October 2023, I faced a major health challenge. But instead of my world shaking like it may have when I previously had to face life changing revelations, I was able to take it in stride. The supports that I had built into my life helped me to recover in a way that surprised me and my doctors. My mindset had shifted so that I was able to step into this traumatic space knowing that I would be able to cope. I had friends, family, colleagues, and professional supports who all showed up for me and truly helped me to survive a crisis situation. I was truly able to experience the power of the collective. It required me to be vulnerable and courageous and in doing so I was able to tap into immense wells of love and support. It reinforced what I already knew to be true about leadership, in a personal context. In order to achieve peak performance in any area of our life or organisation we need to be balancing the head and the heart. We need to be equally focused on these sides of ourselves to get results. Our head gives us plans, strategy, logic, action but our heart gives us connection, support and compassion. We need to have the ferocity to be living our purpose and achieve what we are aiming for, and the warmth and connection to bring others along for the journey. We need to be balanced in our approach. We need to embody ferocious warmth in everything we do.

How does this all help you?

Through my own lived experiences, research and work I have been able to pinpoint what makes a leader great. I’ve written 3 books on leadership, culture and organisations and use all of this knowledge combined with an authentic and engaging delivery style to help you and your team get to where you need to be. I don’t just teach you about Ferocious Warmth as a concept, I live and breathe it in my own life. I know that, with how fast the world is moving, we need to be strategic and we need to see results. However, I also know that we aren’t going to get there without the collective strength of our teams. We need to collaborate, we need to be always learning and we need leaders who are willing to walk the walk and show their teams that this isn’t just a numbers game. I’m here to help you get your team out of their comfort zone and into the learning zone, because when we’re learning, we’re growing, and getting better at what we do. I’m here to partner with you as we create cultural shifts within your organisation and build something great as a collective. I’m here to show you that with the right balance of head and heart, you and your team can achieve amazing things.

Tracey Ezard

I acknowledge and honour the traditional owners of the unceded land on which I live, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and future. I acknowledge and honour all of the traditional owners of this beautiful land we share.

Speaker. Author. Educator. Facilitator.

2022 Hedley Beare Educator of the Year ACELVic
2023 Breakthrough Speaker of the Year Professional Speakers’ Australia
National Fellow Australian Council of Education Leaders (FACEL)
Certified Speaking Professional – Professional Speakers’ Australia
Board Chair – The Corner Store Network www.cornerstorenetwork.org

Ferocious Warmth Leadership
Creating Deep Learning and Collaborative Cultures
The Buzz Academy

“I wanted to thank you for your inspiration, support and passion for making a difference which has always made me think about what I could do better in all my leadership roles and informed my actions. It has been a pleasure working with you and I have always recommended your books for those leaders if they weren’t already familiar with your work.”

– Senior Leader