The women leading South Australia’s biggest businesses
South Australia’s business landscape is changing, with more women taking on senior executive and board positions across some of the state’s biggest and fastest-growing organisations.
As sectors including defence, engineering and health attract significant investment, businesses are competing for the leadership talent needed to drive growth. For Yasmine Johnson of EGM, that means looking beyond traditional ideas of what an effective leader should look like.
“For me, effective leadership comes down to two things: connection and courage.,” she says. “Great leaders genuinely know their people: what motivates them, what matters to them and what enables them to perform at their best. But that connection also has to be accompanied by the courage to have difficult conversations.”
Johnson says strong leadership does not mean avoiding uncomfortable conversations or lowering expectations. Instead, the best leaders can create supportive workplaces while still holding people accountable and maintaining high standards.
That approach is also reflected in the growing influence of women across South Australian business. Johnson cautions against assuming women share a single leadership style, but says their different experiences can broaden the perspectives around executive tables.
“What women do bring is a different set of lived experiences and perspectives to leadership teams that have historically been dominated by men,” she says.
In her experience, many successful female leaders embrace strong relationship-building skills, emotional intelligence and an inclusive approach to decision-making. Offering those qualities alongside different leadership styles can improve the quality of debate and strengthen business decisions.
Yet barriers remain for women seeking senior roles. Johnson points to the traditional structure of many executive positions, where long hours and almost unlimited availability can create difficulties for people with caring responsibilities.
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“Many senior roles have traditionally been designed around an assumption of almost unlimited availability, which can disproportionately affect people with primary caring responsibilities, who are still more often women,” she says.
There is also an individual challenge, with women sometimes deciding they are unable to take on a position before speaking with an employer about how the role could work.
“There are two sides to it,” she says. “Businesses need to genuinely design senior careers in ways that allow talented people with different circumstances to succeed, and I’d encourage women not to make the organisation’s decision for them. Put yourself forward and have the conversation.”
For South Australian businesses, increasing diversity in leadership is also a commercial consideration. A broader range of experiences can challenge assumptions, improve decision-making and help organisations prepare for future leadership needs.
“Diversity in leadership isn’t just about representation; it’s a business issue,” Johnson says. “If everyone around the executive table has followed a similar path and had similar experiences, you naturally narrow the perspectives applied to decisions.”
Representation can also influence the next generation of talent. When emerging professionals see women occupying executive and board positions, senior leadership becomes a more visible and achievable career pathway.
The need to strengthen that pipeline is particularly pressing in sectors experiencing rapid growth. Johnson identifies defence, engineering and health as areas where there is already strong demand for female executive talent.
“The challenge now is making sure the pipeline develops quickly enough. It’s not enough to want more women at the executive level: organisations need to think about how they’re developing, sponsoring and giving meaningful operational experience to women earlier in their careers so they’re ready for those roles.”
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That means succession planning needs to begin well before someone reaches the executive level, with businesses providing women with meaningful operational experience and access to senior sponsors who can help them progress.
Johnson also believes the leadership approaches demonstrated by successful women offer lessons that extend well beyond gender.
“One thing we can learn from many of the successful women leading South Australian organisations is that authority doesn’t have to look like the traditional model of leadership,” she says.
Rather than separating commercial performance from workplace culture, she says some of the strongest leaders combine both.
“Some of the best female leaders I’ve worked with are incredibly strong commercially, but they combine that with curiosity, emotional intelligence and genuine connection with their people. They don’t see being people-focused and being performance-focused as competing priorities.”
The result is a broader understanding of what leadership can look like: commercially focused without being rigid, collaborative without sacrificing decisiveness, and empathetic while maintaining accountability.
As South Australia looks towards its next phase of economic growth, Johnson says the focus should ultimately be on creating the conditions for the strongest leaders to emerge.
“Ultimately, I think the conversation needs to move beyond simply asking how we get more women into leadership and towards asking whether we’re creating environments in which the best people can lead.”
For a business community facing major opportunities across multiple industries, making better use of the available talent pool could be a competitive advantage.
“We can’t afford to unnecessarily exclude half the talent pool because of outdated assumptions about what an executive career or an effective leader is supposed to look like,” Johnson says.
EGM Partners is a proud partner of the South Australian Business Index lunch and networking event. Join us as we count down the top 100 South Australian businesses. This year’s event will be held at the Adelaide Convention Centre on Friday, October 16. Purchase your tickets today!
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