Gilbert Lorquet: The People Who Don't Have to Be There

On the Subject of Leadership · Nov 10, 2026 · 1h 5m

"A title gives you almost no real authority if people do not want to follow you," says Gilbert Lorquet, and he learned it at a junior football club, where nobody is paid to turn up. As the inaugural chief executive of the NORTH Foundation and chairman of Football NSW, he now leads donors, volunteers, and directors who could all walk away, and he explains what that teaches about leading the people who are paid to stay.

We talk about the grateful patients whose gifts went to another hospital because a clinician said it was simply the job, why American boards treat giving as part of a director's…