Leadership works best when relationships come first.
Helping leaders strengthen trust, communicate well, and support their teams to perform at their best.
A few interesting things worth sharing with you.
A love of learning started early, with a Social Work degree straight from high school - the perfect foundation for future learning.
Seven years managing frontline operational teams led to a Master of Health Management, built on the belief that leaders and managers need to learn the skills to make real impact.
A bet made while applying for the highly competitive Australian Churchill Fellowship: if successful, a PhD would follow too. Both happened.
Quality professional development sometimes requires a long-haul flight. An advanced certification in Team Coaching from The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London, was worth every hour.
Once a month, a ten hour drive leads to a dip in the ocean - all year round, even in winter.
Every Friday at 5:30am, The Friday Fundamentals moves from my brain to my screen to your inbox - a weekly leadership journal full of reflections, resources and the occasional stories about ocean swimming.
About.
About this practice.
BM Consultancy is a leadership development practice partnering with senior leaders, executive teams, and the People & Culture professionals supporting them across government, non-profit, corporate, and small to medium business sectors.
The work focuses on what's actually getting in the way: the dynamics most teams know are there but rarely get the conditions to address. Fractured trust, unproductive conflict, the conversations that keep not happening. The elephants in the room that everyone sees and nobody names.
This is not generic leadership training. Every engagement begins with a diagnosis to understand what's really going on before designing the right response.
Who This Practice Works Best With
Since 2016, this practice has partnered with leaders, leadership teams and whole organisations across Australia to lift team performance and shift culture.
Different industries, different sectors, different organisations and at different stages of growth.
Senior leadership teams
Scaling organisations navigating growth, change or leadership transition
Government, non-profit, corporate and SME sectors
Founder-led and family-owned businesses
Industries including agribusiness, legal, private health, insurance, veterinary, real estate, retail, finance and education
Core Values
You can learn a great deal about someone once you know their core values. Here are mine.
Achievement
An interest in leadership took hold early in high school, through the Peer Support Program, where a Year 11 student is allocated a group of Year 7s to support their transition. That responsibility was taken seriously enough to take over the family dining table all weekend to prepare.
The experience taught valuable lessons about group dynamics, especially how to engage the most reluctant participants, and sparked a lasting love of groupwork that forms the foundation of this practice today.
Integrity
This practice operates within the values of the Australian Association of Social Workers with a commitment to genuine partnership over brief solutions, and workable outcomes over quick fixes.
Integrity sits at the heart of every engagement.
Knowledge
An insatiable appetite for learning, especially when it comes to how people relate to each other at work, shapes everything this practice offers.
Time away from clients is spent reading, researching and staying current so every consultation is informed by the best available evidence, not just experience.
Churchill Fellow (2013)
I was awarded the prestigious Winston Churchill Fellowship (Australia) to identify the key strategies required for health services to effectively work together in response to children and young people at risk of child maltreatment. The Fellowship involved interviewing experts in Canada, United States of America, England and Ireland.
To learn more about this study, access the research report here.
The Highlights
Doctor of Philosophy (2020)
My doctoral thesis describes the practices of child and family health nurses when working with children and families where child maltreatment was suspected. The study adopted a pragmatic approach and through mixed methods methodology to study a cohort of practicing child and family health nurses in New South Wales.
My thesis can be found here.
“Thank you for all your wisdom and work.
The things you taught me in those few sessions have been profoundly helpful.
It has changed how I show up and work and in life.”
Senior Leader, Human Services Sector (working 1:1).
25+ Years Experience. Qualified Social Worker. PhD + Churchill Fellow. Evidence-Based + Practical.
Works across government, NFP, corporate, SME.
Leadership Development Approach
Leadership development begins with an honest look at what’s going on. And it’s often not what people expect.
Every engagement starts with an initial consultation to diagnose the real issue.
I don’t deliver generic programs nor off-the-shelf solutions.
The work is built around the real challenges teams are facing, with practical strategies that embed into how people lead and work together day to day.
“Having Belinda come into our team when we were at our most vulnerable has been the most valuable gift to us to rebuild and refocus and do great things as a leadership team.”
— Senior Manager, Human Services Sector (leadership team coaching)
How I can help:
“Learning to be a better leader through this workshop has also allowed me to be a better Dad.”
— Leadership program participant, Organisation Development Project, Senior Manager (Agribusiness Sector).
In The Media
Company: Dr Belinda Mawhinney: a champion of co-working in a small regional towns on Apple Podcasts
