How this national security leader learned to command a room

Kathryn McMullan is one of the country’s most senior national security leaders. She’s in charge of a very important – but little understood – part of our intelligence community.

She is also someone who knows how to command a room. As Director of the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation, Kathryn has learned how to hold her own in the most intimidating of environments.

In this week’s episode of the FW Leadership Series podcast, McMullan speaks to host Helen McCabe about the, at times, elusive concept of executive presence.

Here are three of our favourite leadership takeaways: 

A natural leader?

McMullan sees her executive presence as partly innate because she has “a degree of natural confidence” in her leadership abilities. 

“I hate saying this because it makes me sound not very humble whatsoever… But yeah, I’ve always gravitated to leadership roles,” she said.

However, there are elements she’s worked on to improve her executive presence. In particular, tailoring her different communication styles. 

“Different organisations have different cultures, different communication styles and the staff are fundamentally motivated by slightly different things,” she explained. 

Persistent and consistent 

When asked what irks her as a leader, McMullan’s response was instant: a lack of ambition. 

“While I’ve spent most of my, nearly all of my working life in government, I don’t actually really consider myself a bureaucrat,” she said. 

“[Bureaucracy] where everything is so risk-averse grates with me because actually at the end of the day, I’m here to advance things. I’m here to achieve things. 

“And so, if people have no ambition and aren’t prepared to take considered risks and considered steps to advance that ambition and that mission, that really frustrates me.”

The way she overcomes this is by being “persistent and consistent” 

“You’re persistently pursuing your objective and you’re returning to the issue, but you’re consistent in the why,” she explained. 

Too hard, too fast 

But she added that her greatest setbacks as a leader have come from moving too rapidly. 

“I think most of my failures have been when I’ve gone too hard too fast and I haven’t done the groundwork to take everyone with me,” she said. 

“I did it once at a previous organisation… And the message was the organisation is not ready for this yet. You need to take a breath.”

Her other key leadership failures have come from letting problems fester for too long. 

“My faith in humanity sometimes is misplaced. I hold myself to a high standard, I hold others to a high standard and sometimes that is to my detriment,” she said.