IntactTeams

At Intact Teams we custom design impactful leadership programs and coach individuals and teams to realise their potential

31/08/2026

The Strategic Relationship Map is the exercise I wish every senior woman did early in her leadership journey.

Here is the model:

🗺️ SPONSORS

Senior leaders who advocate for you in rooms you are not in. The highest-value, most underinvested relationship for most women. Without one, your advancement is entirely dependent on being in the right place at the right time.

🗺️ ALLIES

Peers and colleagues who amplify your ideas, have your back in meetings, and give you honest intelligence about what is happening around you.

🗺️ MENTORS

Experienced leaders who offer perspective, honest feedback, and guidance based on their own journey. Most women have these. They are valuable. They are not sufficient.

🗺️ CHALLENGERS

The people — at any level — who tell you the truth, question your assumptions, and make your thinking sharper. Rare. Essential.

Now map your own network against these four categories.

Where are the gaps?
That map is your starting point.

👉 Mapping your own network is one of the exercises inside the Inner Edge Leadership Accelerator, running September to November. Download the program guide viahttps://businesswomenaustralia.com.au/new/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Inner-Edge-Leadership-Accelerator-Program-Guide-1.pdf

30/08/2026

Hard truth: being liked is not the same as being sponsored.

Most women I coach are very well liked.

They are respected. They are appreciated. They are described as 'incredible' and 'brilliant' and 'such a team player' by the people who work with them.

And then they are passed over.

Because being liked in the room is not the same as being advocated for outside it.

Sponsorship is specific. It is the senior leader who says your name when there is an opportunity — not because they were asked, but because they know you, believe in you, and are willing to put their own credibility behind your advancement.

Research is unambiguous: sponsorship increases women's likelihood of advancement by up to 30%.

And women are significantly less likely than men to have sponsors — despite equal or stronger performance.
This is not a pipeline problem.

It is a sponsorship gap.

And it is closeable.

But only if you stop waiting for it to happen organically and start building it deliberately.

🔥 Has sponsorship made a difference in your career? Tell me below.

📩 LeadershipLens this week: Strategic Relationships. https://intactteams.com/leadershiplens-strategic-relationships-are-not-networking/

28/08/2026

Porter Gale wrote something about networks that I think most people misunderstand.

"Your network is your net worth — but only if those relationships are real."

The emphasis is on real.

Not collected. Not curated. Not strategically assembled.

Real.

The leaders with the strongest networks are rarely the ones who are best at networking events.

They are the ones who are genuinely curious about people — who invest in relationships long before they need anything from them, who show up with generosity rather than an agenda.

Strategic relationships are not a performance.

They are the natural result of being genuinely interested in the people around you — and deliberately making time for the ones whose work and character you respect.

The strategy is not in the calculation.

It is in the consistency.

👉 Building relationships like these is part of the work inside the Inner Edge Leadership Accelerator, September to November. Enquire via https://businesswomenaustralia.com.au/inner-edge-leadership-accelerator/

27/08/2026

Networking fills a room with contacts.

Strategic relationships put the right people in your corner when the decisions that shape your career are being made.

Those are not the same thing.

And most women have invested everything in the first — and almost nothing in the second.

This week's LeadershipLens newsletter is about the Strategic Relationship Map — and how to build the relationships that actually move your leadership forward.

In it I cover:

→ The four relationship types every senior leader needs — and which one most women are missing

→ Why sponsors matter more than mentors for advancement

→ How to build strategic relationships with genuine integrity — without it feeling transactional

👉 Subscribe to LeadershipLens: https://intactteams.com/blog/

24/08/2026

The Peer Learning Triangle explains why some cohorts transform people — and others don't.

For peer learning to be genuinely transformative, three elements must coexist:

🔺 PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

The foundation. Members must feel safe to be honest, vulnerable, and imperfect. Without this — the real conversations happen in the car park afterward, not in the room.

🔺 PRODUCTIVE CHALLENGE

Peers who ask hard questions, offer honest perspectives, and resist the pull toward comfortable agreement. Support alone is not enough. Challenge is what creates growth.

🔺 SHARED CONTEXT

Enough common ground — in role, level, or experience — that the learning feels relevant rather than theoretical. The more specific the context, the more useful the peer insight.

When all three are present, something remarkable happens.

The cohort becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

And the growth that was impossible alone becomes not just possible — but inevitable.

The Inner Edge Leadership Accelerator is designed around exactly this triangle.

Ten weeks, September to November. Download the program guide viahttps://businesswomenaustralia.com.au/new/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Inner-Edge-Leadership-Accelerator-Program-Guide-1.pdf

23/08/2026

Hot take: executive coaching is overrated.

I know. I am an executive coach. Stick with me.

Coaching is powerful. I have seen it change careers and cultures and lives.

But coaching has a blind spot.

A coach — however skilled — cannot give you what a peer can.

A peer has lived your experience. Navigated your terrain. Felt your specific pressure.

A coach can ask the right questions.

A peer can say: I know exactly what you mean, and here is what I tried.

The most significant growth moments I have witnessed in my career as a coach and facilitator have not happened in one-to-one sessions.

They have happened in cohorts.

When a room of capable, honest people decide to be real with each other.

That is where the most durable development lives.

The Inner Edge Leadership Accelerator is built around this insight.

Applications now open. https://businesswomenaustralia.com.au/inner-edge-leadership-accelerator/

🔥 Coaches — am I wrong? Tell me below.

21/08/2026

Helen Keller understood something about collective effort that most leadership programs miss entirely.

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."

Simple. True. And almost completely absent from how most organisations approach leadership development.

We send leaders on individual programs.

We give them individual coaches.

We offer individual feedback.

And then we wonder why growth feels slow, isolated, and hard to sustain.

The most powerful catalyst for leadership development is not a better program.

It is a better room.

A room where people are willing to be honest.

Where vulnerability is met with recognition, not judgment.

Where the question 'is it just me?' is always answered the same way: No. It is not just you.

That room changes things that solo development simply cannot.

👉 That room is exactly what the Inner Edge Leadership Accelerator builds. Ten weeks, September to November, with a cohort of peers. Enquire via https://businesswomenaustralia.com.au/inner-edge-leadership-accelerator/

20/08/2026

The most transformative leadership development rarely happens in a classroom.

It happens in a room where someone says out loud what you thought only you were experiencing.

And the room says: me too.

That moment — the one where you realise you are not alone in your struggle — is worth more than any course, any coach, any framework.

This week's LeadershipLens newsletter is about Peer Learning — why it works, why most leaders don't have it, and why the Inner Edge cohort is designed around it.

In it I cover:

→ Why solo development has a ceiling that peer learning breaks through

→ What happens in the brain when you feel genuinely heard by someone in the same arena

→ How to find and build the peer community that will accelerate your growth

👉 Check out the full newsletter here: https://intactteams.com/leadershiplens-the-thing-thats-missing-from-most-leadership-development/

16/08/2026

The women who need this program most are often the last ones to put themselves forward.

They're delivering. They're trusted. They're ready for the next level.

But something keeps getting in the way. Timing. The cost. Not quite feeling certain enough.

If that's you, I want you to know the door is still open.

We've extended early commitment for the Inner Edge Leadership Accelerator to 21 August.

Register by then and pay $2,550 + GST instead of the standard $3,450. A $900 saving.

Not a BWA member yet? There's an even better rate available through membership. Reach out to Lyn to explore that option.

Program starts 11 September. Spots are limited. https://businesswomenaustralia.com.au/inner-edge-leadership-accelerator/

15/08/2026

If you've been thinking about investing in leadership development for the women on your team, this is worth a look.

The Inner Edge Leadership Accelerator starts 11 September. It's a 10-week online program for executive and professional women, co-facilitated by Lyn Hawkins (Business Women Australia) and me.

We're offering a 20% group discount for organisations enrolling four or more participants.

$2,040 + GST per person if you register by 21 August
$2,760 + GST per person at the standard rate

The early commitment deadline is 21 August. After that, the discount closes.

If you'd like to talk through whether this is the right fit for your team, reach out to Lyn at calendly.com/lyn-hawkins or to me at [email protected].

Full details and program guide: businesswomenaustralia.com.au/inner-edge-leadership-accelerator

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