Mentoring Unlocked

What if the conflict your team is avoiding is actually the key to better decisions and stronger performance? In this conversation, Maud Lindley speaks with Pip Murphy, Principal Consultant at Serendis Leadership, about one of the most critical challenges in today’s workplace: how to navigate conflict and disagreement constructively. Drawing on her career across trading floors, top-tier consulting, and executive leadership, Pip reframes conflict not as a threat, but as a diversification of ideas. Just as portfolio diversification lowers financial risk, diversity of thought leads to better decisions. The challenge is that our human instincts work against us. Pip explores the fight, flight, and fawn responses that drive workplace conflict, from open aggression to invisible patterns like groupthink, white-anting, and political manoeuvring. She shares a practical framework for diagnosing the root cause of conflict and introduces the concept of above and below the line thinking to help leaders guide others through high-stakes conversations. For mentors, her advice is clear: pause, diagnose, and focus on the person in front of you, not the ghost of the difficult colleague. If your organisation is serious about performance, this conversation will change the way you think about disagreement.

In this episode of Mentoring Unlocked, Maud Lindley sits down with Urs Koenig, former UN peacekeeper, NATO commander, and leadership expert, to explore what leadership really looks like in high-performance environments. Urs shares powerful insights on building trust, balancing accountability with care, and why vulnerability is a practical leadership skill, not a weakness. From real-world military experiences to executive leadership, this conversation challenges traditional views of authority and offers simple, actionable ways to lead and mentor more effectively. If you’re a leader, mentor, or HR professional focused on developing high-performing teams, this episode is packed with practical takeaways you can apply immediately.

In this episode of Mentoring Unlocked, Maud Lindley sits down with Michaela Wortley, Oceania Inclusiveness Business Partnering Lead at EY, to explore how coaching can become a powerful lever for leadership and culture. After nearly three decades at EY, Michaela shares the story of how an informal initiative evolved into a formal internal coaching practice. One that now includes more than 30 trained internal coaches delivering over a thousand coaching hours each year. By embedding coaching within leadership development and talent programs, EY has created a powerful mechanism for helping leaders navigate transitions, reflect on their leadership identity, and bring organisational values to life. Maud and Michaela also explore what mentors can learn from coaching. Rather than simply offering advice, the most effective mentors combine experience with curiosity, asking thoughtful questions that help others develop their own insights. Together, they unpack how coaching skills like listening, curiosity, and reflection not only strengthen mentoring relationships but also foster more inclusive leadership by encouraging diverse perspectives and deeper understanding. For HR leaders, mentors, and organisational culture builders, this conversation offers practical insights into how coaching and mentoring can elevate leadership capability and create more thoughtful, inclusive workplaces.

Maud Lindley speaks with Renee Law, COO of Atomic Group, about the leadership lessons which shaped her global career, and the mentoring moments that have had the greatest impact. Renee shares how her instinct for seeking out uncertainty has shaped her courage, adaptability, and approach to leading teams through complexity. She reflects on the shift from directive leadership to creating space for others to think, learn, and grow. A standout moment in the conversation is Renee’s approach to helping mentees move past what’s holding them back. She explains that fear often comes from carrying old experiences — a mistake, a difficult relationship, or a past setback — long after the moment has passed. Through thoughtful questions and calm presence, she helps people name what they haven’t let go of and release it, clearing the way for confidence and forward momentum. It’s a powerful look at how mentoring unlocks self-belief, resilience, and genuine transformation.

In this episode, Maud sits down with Jeff McKenzie, Sales Director for Australia and New Zealand at Lindt & Sprüngli, to unpack two decades of leadership, transformation, and the power of mentoring. From his early beginnings in HR at Streets Ice Cream to senior commercial roles at Pernod Ricard and now leading Lindt’s sales team, Jeff shares how curiosity and human connection have shaped his career — and his approach to developing others. For Jeff, success starts with relationships — building trust, understanding individuals, and fostering a culture where people feel valued. He credits his HR and psychology background for helping him see beyond transactions to the humans driving them. Jeff reflects on the lessons and people that have impacted his career and made him the leader he is today.

Maud sits down with Alex Richardson, Advisory Board Member at MentorKey and the International Mentoring Association. Alex brings over a decade of experience in the Australian mentoring space, including co-founding one of the country’s earliest mentoring platforms. With deep insights into both tech and human connection, Alex shares what truly drives impact in mentoring and where he believes the future is heading.

How do you ignite self-belief in people? Especially when they lack relatable role models. Exploring the answer to that question serves as the north star for Maud’s conversation with Penny Ransom, Chief Investment Officer at LendLease, who mines her own experiences as both a mentee and mentor. The pair take on how mentors can guide people to make sound career choices by better understanding their role in the relationship.

How can our mentors help us break free from limiting beliefs and see the world in new ways? This question is the core of Maud’s conversation with Julie Washington, Director of Talent Development at Serendis Leadership, who is "living the dream" with her role in shaping the leaders of tomorrow. The impact that a great mentor has on their mentee stems from understanding that the world is not black and white. The "a-ha" moment comes when both can challenge deeply ingrained perspectives that shape our worldviews. How? For one, helping mentees find their own answers means asking yourself, as the mentor: “What makes you think that what you are about to say is more important than what I am about to think?” Julie also shares her story of going to school with Jamie Oliver - a man who by his own admission had trouble learning but has gone on to change the world, having found mentors that unlocked his talents. We can all learn something from Julie's take on Oliver, and where Julie and Maud ultimately land on the most transformative thing a mentor can do for their mentee.

In this episode of Mentoring Unlocked, Maude interviews Ingrid Massey, Chief People Officer at CBRE Australia. As the head of HR strategy and transformation programs for a global organisation, Massey understands the critical value of mentoring grounded in empathy, powerful questions and authentic interactions. In this podcast, she shares her personal approach to mentoring, from helping mentees see different perspectives and the importance of building rapport up front, as well as insights into how mentoring programs can be structured across enterprises. In this episode, Maude and Ingrid discuss: • Ingrid’s own career trajectory, which went from advertising to HR, and the knowledge base that senior HR executives need to have. • Where to find mentors from, and a great mentoring relationship can have several different focuses – career mentors, relationship mentors, and strategy mentors, for example. • The challenge for managers and mentors alike in focusing on the immediate performance and needs against the mentee’s future career goals. • The value of empathy both for mentors and as a general best practice in leadership. • The tough act of balancing empathy with the need to be able to have tough conversations, particularly for people in HR. • How effective mentoring often comes down to being able to hold up a mirror and help mentees understand the impact that they’re having with their decisions.

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Mentoring Unlocked, where we explore the stories of mentoring. In this episode, Maude speaks with author, journalist, and communications expert, and founder of Andiron, Jonathan Englert. As Jonathan notes, many young writers and journalists struggle to find mentors in their formative years, despite it being so critical to mentoring and professional development, as he later discovered when he was fortunate to find mentors that sparked his curiosity and built his confidence. In this wide-ranging interview, Maude and Jonathan discuss: • The difference between role modelling and true mentoring – based on the mentor’s ability to ask the right questions and the best approach to encouragement. • The mentors in Jonathan’s life, including David Scalar, and the positive experiences that he took from those interactions. • The importance of mentoring in organisations, in developing awareness and understanding among team members. • The strengths and limitations of AI and its application to mentoring relationships. • The role that mentoring has in breaking cognitive biases.