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What Do You Dare? Backing Yourself Before You Feel Ready | Cherie Mylordis · Project Emerald Collective

• Cherie Mylordis: in her late teens, she actually started a role which was really at the dawn of the technology era. She was operating a Burroughs adding machine. So her role was in bookkeeping, and you know, before that it was done in a very manual way, and then Burroughs created this adding machine where people could actually process bookkeeping transactions in a slightly more automated way. And that Burroughs adding machine was actually the predecessor to the first Burroughs computer. So it's really uncanny that I went on and studied computer science and have started a career in consulting that blended technology and organisational change. And a few years before my mother died, she actually said to me, I wonder what I would have achieved if I'd been born in your time. Eve: Welcome to the Project Emerald Collective podcast. I'm your host, Eve McIntyre. Here we have honest conversations with women about who we are, what shapes us, and how we can live with more intention and trust ourselves. From identity and belonging to fashion, work, and the choices we make every day, we explore the ideas and experiences that help us come back to ourselves and our own innate wisdom. Let's get into today's conversation. Welcome everyone. Today I'm joined by Cherie Mylordis, an executive advisor, speaker, and leadership coach whose work centres on future fit leadership and transformational change. Cherie's career has spanned consulting and large-scale transformation, including five years in leadership roles for the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Paralympic Games, an experience that fundamentally shaped her understanding of purpose, leadership, and human potential. Today, Cherie's the founder of NextGenify and NextGenify Academy, a LinkedIn top voice and the newly appointed president of the New South Wales division of the Women's Chief of Enterprises International. At the heart of Cherie's work is a desire to help people imagine bigger, navigate those pivotal moments, and turn their ambition into meaningful outcomes. Cherie, welcome to the Project Emerald Collective. Cherie Mylordis: Thank you so much, Eve, and hello to all of your listeners. It's wonderful to be here for this conversation. Eve: tell us about the woman that you are today and the work that feels most meaningful to you right now. Cherie Mylordis: Well, I think at this stage of my career, It's really about bringing together all of the wisdom and all of the insights and finding meaningful ways to contribute. So I'm far more selective now in the work that I do. It really needs to have some element of purpose to it. I'm always looking for leaders who are open to thinking differently and exploring new avenues or new trajectories and having that appetite to imagine bigger because I've seen time and time again. the extraordinary outcomes that that can lead to. Not just for themselves, but for their teams or for their organizations. And so that's really what I'm about. It's about showing up, being bold myself and putting myself out there, getting out of my comfort zone in in each project. Every project I think needs to be a little different and a little daunting for me to really thrive and and bring out my best. I need that little element of it's it's a little bit out of my depth. but it always has to have that purpose underneath it. Eve: Yeah, absolutely. what connects your work through Nextgenify and Nextgenify Academy and the WCEI? Cherie Mylordis: Nextgenify is really building on my experience in consulting and leading large, complex transformational change. That's a common element of my work and my career. about eight years ago, I stepped out of the corporate world because I felt quite constrained in terms of the advice and the input that I could give. So I wanted to get on the outside of organization so I could be a little more objective in terms of how I show up. what I do through Nextgenify is I work with executives, I work with leadership teams to give that advice and to lead them through it's often an inflection point in their organizations and helping them take stock of that inflection point, imagine bigger and set a bold trajectory that is purpose-driven but also helps their leaders show up in a more contemporary way. that is really focused at that executive at that C-suite level and there's a lot of coaching that happens there as well. Particularly for leaders who are stepping into a big transformational role. So they're already an accomplished leader, but they're stepping up and taking on a big, bold transformation. And what that led to was a realization that there's a lot of very high potential people in organisations that don't have access to executive coaching or some of the really contemporary and amazing professional development tools and resources and techniques that are out there. that's why I built Next Genify Academy because I want leaders at all levels, even if you don't have the title, to have access to these proven contemporary tools, techniques, and models. So that they can actually show up and be ambitious and step into that role of a leader, as I said, even without the title. So that's how the two pieces complement each other. One is really working with the executives, and the other is working with current and emerging leaders to help them set a trajectory so that they can be an effective future fit leader and not just constrained by the paradigm of how they have been led or managed. Eve: talk to us about how you got into WCEI. Cherie Mylordis: Well, it was an introduction, I guess, with all of us joining WCEI because it is a membership organization that is based on an introduction. I was introduced by a member who was very well known nationally. I went to one event and I saw a panel of very accomplished board directors speaking about the issues that boards are facing today. And I was really captivated by the conversation. And the experience and the wisdom in the room. And I thought, wow, look at this incredible group of accomplished women who have achieved so much, but they're there to actually contribute. And that was the first taste I had on what Women Chiefs of Enterprises is all about. It's about accomplished, purpose-driven, entrepreneurial women showing up, being part of a community and supporting each other in whatever way makes sense in terms of their strengths. And also what they need. So that really attracted me, and it I felt like I'd found a piece that was missing in my work and in my career that I hadn't really realized until then. This beautiful community of purpose-driven women that are there to show up and support each other. And I just really wanted to be a part of that. here I am 18 months later, stepping into the president's role as of last night. I couldn't have imagined at that First event that a year and a half later I would be the president of the New South Wales Division. But it's an extraordinary opportunity to contribute and to work with the committee and other members and take this legacy that's been established by my predecessor to the next stage. Eve: When you described your introduction to WCEI and hearing that from that panel, that actually mirrors my experience recently at the Hobart. Cherie Mylordis: Really? Eve: stage. So just want to take a moment to recognise. Cherie Mylordis: What? Thank you so much. And I think that's really a common experience that we have. We show up, we see this extraordinary group of women, whether that be watching a panel, a keynote speaker, or at more of a social event where we get to talk to each other in more informal ways, that seems to be the common thread. That the highly accomplished women that are there with that generosity of spirit and no real agenda to sell to each other. We're just there to support and and belong to an Extraordinary community. Eve: I know that your mum played a big part and shaped, the woman that you are today, tell us about her. Cherie Mylordis: Yeah, thank you. And I'm really glad you brought this up because I actually had the opportunity to speak last night when the pin was passed to me to step into the president role, I said to the room, My family know that I have a number of mantras that I that I share with them that are really dear to me. And one of those is with privileged Comes responsibility. And that really speaks to my story in that I come from a long line of women who have had to navigate quite extraordinary challenges in their life. so speaking about my mother, I am a Kiwi by birth, but I have an Australian dad. I actually learnt last night that there's a term for that called quasi, Kiwi Aussie blend. So there you go. Eve: Yeah. Cherie Mylordis: So my mum was a proud Kiwi. in her late teens, she actually started a role which was really at the dawn of the technology era. She was operating a Burroughs adding machine. So her role was in bookkeeping, before that it was done in a very manual way, and then Burroughs created this adding machine where people could actually process bookkeeping transactions in a slightly more automated way. And that Burroughs adding machine was actually the predecessor to the first Burroughs computer. it's really uncanny that I went on and studied computer science and have started a career in consulting that blended technology and organisational change. a few years before my mother died, she actually said to me, I wonder what I would have achieved if I'd been born in your time. And that really stayed with me because, at the time when my mother was working, in Australia and I think in New Zealand as well, there was legislation called the marriage bar, which meant that women could not continue working in the public service or for many other organizations once they got married. Because they were expected to stop work and Keep house for their husband and have a beautiful home when their husband came home from a hard day at work, have dinner ready, the children needed to look beautiful, all of those things. Now many women actually didn't reveal at their workplace that they were married, so they wouldn't wear their wedding ring. But then once they were expecting a family, they couldn't hide it and so they had to quit. So that was the era when my mother was working, and she did give up her job when she got married. She helped my father with his business and looked after the family. And sewed our clothes and did all of those things. So I think it was a really insightful comment that she made to me seeing my career and where it was going, and really wondering, I wonder what I could have achieved if I'd been Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: born in your time. So that's where again I'm very grateful for the upbringing I've had, and I just feel that sense of responsibility in what I do because I do have extraordinary opportunities. That that the women before me didn't have. Eve: absolutely. It seems so unfair that that that Cherie Mylordis: It has. Yeah. Eve: w the marriage bar was even brought in. It's hard to believe. Cherie Mylordis: I know. It's hard to believe, isn't it? And now I have two young adult daughters. for them to even imagine that is is really hard. Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: But also, when I started my career in consulting, I was not allowed to wear pants. I had to wear a matching skirt and jacket and stockings in the heat of the Brisbane humidity in summer. And again, for them to think that, they could be employed by an organisation that didn't allow them to wear pants to work, again is unthinkable. So, we've come a long way, but we've still got a long way to go. But it's really interesting when you look at that perspective of what you know my mother Eve: Absolutely. Cherie Mylordis: had to do, what I had to do, and now what what it's like for for my daughters. Eve: Yeah, it's wild. What progress have you witnessed within one generation? Cherie Mylordis: I've witnessed a lot more women in professional roles. even when I stepped into consulting. It was very male-dominated, especially in technology as well as consulting. so the women in the organization tended to be more in the administrative roles. And Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: so that was a paradigm shift in the era that I was in, my generation. it's a lot more normalized now in terms of women entering the workforce in those professional roles. So that's very good. we do see the drop-off. We see, what happens when women get to that age of wanting to have children and how they navigate that. I think now it's far more expected that both parents work, whereas in previous generations, as I've already shared, it's it's expected that the the woman would not work. So I feel there's a lot more of an expectation for. how do we juggle all of that and and hold it all together? And if we think about what that means for organisations such as Women Chiefs of Enterprises, the the women's organizations in previous eras were very different because women had their children younger, so by the time they were in their 40s, their children had probably, grown up, they've they've left home, and suddenly you've got capable women who are now looking for something else to do. So when you look at the country women. Association or Zonta or Probus and those sorts of organizations, they had women with a lot more time on their hands to actually Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: get involved. So it's quite a paradigm shift now for women in these organizations to juggle usually a full-time role. They've probably got older children or children that may still have an involvement in the family, but they also are often in caring roles for their elderly parents. So they're juggling a lot more. this stage. So that really does mean that the the way women show up and contribute to these organizations is quite different from those days. Eve: Mm, yeah, absolutely. where as women, do we still have further to go in making the Changes that are needed in society. Cherie Mylordis: So much. I think women have a natural tendency to hold themselves back a little more than men. So we always think, when I have that next qualification, or when I get that next piece of experience, or do that next training course, I might be ready to apply for that next role. Whereas men tend to go for it when they're maybe 70% there, whereas we feel like we've got to be at least 90% there. And I think these organizations Such as Women Chiefs of Enterprise is a great way to encourage women to step up and imagine bigger and back themselves. So we've got that support around us to cheer us on and encourage us to take that bold step. So yeah, that's a key thing that I see. We still feel that sense of wanting to tick all the boxes rather than to step into an opportunity because we've got the potential and then to grow into it. I think we've got a long way to go there. And that's where coaching and mentoring and belonging really does I think make an enormous difference, no matter what age or stage your career you're at. Eve: Yeah, absolutely. I guess it comes back to surrounding yourself with the right people that are going to encourage you to dream bigger and to, be bolder and live to your full potential and your the fullest expression of yourself. Cherie Mylordis: Mm, absolutely. And I think also what I've learned time and time again is we learn and grow the most when we are a little bit out of our comfort zone. And Eve: Hmm. Cherie Mylordis: so it doesn't mean you're, jumping into a chasm, but what it means is if you sort of think about the end of your fingertips and and that's your capability, well you want to go a little bit beyond that. You just want to stretch yourself a little bit further because that is where we grow the most. If we can get to the other side of a challenge that we think, I'd Love to do this, but it's quite daunting. And am I up for it? That's actually a really healthy place to be because you've got to dig deep, you've got to draw on your resources, you've got to look at you know creative ways potentially to tackle this challenge. And when you get to the other side of that, that is incredibly rewarding because you've got to a level of mastery. And so once you get to that, then it's like, what's the next thing? And when I look back on my career, that's actually what has happened. It wasn't necessarily always intentional, but that is what has happened, and I can see all of the dots connecting when I look back. So that's a key thing that I would encourage women to do is just try and put yourself just a little bit out of your comfort zone. Look at your support and who's around you and who you can draw on, but really do try and stretch yourself because that is how you will learn and grow the most. Eve: Absolutely. And what responsibility do we have to the women coming after us, our daughters? Cherie Mylordis: I think it's about being honest and and well, firstly role modelling, but also being honest about, it it's not all peaches and cream. we've all worked hard to to get to where we are. so being honest about the challenges, about taking on something daunting, how you navigated through it, reflecting back on those those achievements and those challenges. we learn the the most when something goes wrong. If we Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: have a happy path all the way through, then when something does Does come along that's unforeseen, some challenge, then we're less resilient, we're less less able to to deal with that. Now that doesn't mean I want you to have a a terrible boss or you know, have some awful thing happen to you. it may happen from time to time. None of us can all have the perfect, dream run in terms of who we work with. but but those moments are the times to reflect and actually rather than talk about, a failure, I don't like the term fast failure, I like the term fast learning. You know, when something goes wrong or perhaps not in the way that you wanted it to, it's a really good opportunity to pause and reflect and go, well, what have I learned from this and what will Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: I do differently next time? I didn't have any role models in my life. I didn't have anyone in my family who had gone to university or who had had a corporate career. So I was really navigating this in a very n raw And what I became was what I call now a conscious curator. So I was hyper observant of everyone around me. And I would look at a leadership style or some examples or a situation. I'd go, I like that, I'm gonna take that. I don't like that, I'm not gonna do that. So I was very consciously deciding the things that I did want to take on or embody. Perhaps it was a trait, a leadership style, whatever it was, and very intentionally making a Conscious decision about what I didn't want to embody. Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: And again, I think that serves you very well. So that would be a key piece of advice to people, especially in the emerging stage of their career, be that conscious curator. You know, really notice what's going on around you and then think about which elements you want to take on as yours but which ones you don't. Eve: Mm. Yeah, absolutely. It's having that awareness that you can shape the woman that you're becoming. Cherie Mylordis: Absolutely. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it, Eve. Mm. Eve: Hmm. So saying yes before you're ready, your career has been shaped by significant leaps. from studying computer science that you mentioned and joining Accenture to stepping into the Sydney two thousand Olympic Organisational Committee, Cherie Mylordis: Yes, that's Eve: what have those pivotal decisions taught you about backing yourself before you feel completely ready? Cherie Mylordis: I think because I didn't have the role models or the people around Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: me that had forged a path that I was going on, I I tended to feel a little out of my depth at times. I tended to feel, a bit shy, a bit insecure about what I was taking on. we call it imposter syndrome. I I can certainly Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: relate to that. And so if I talk about the Sydney Olympic example. I got the job to join the strategy team for the Sydney Olympic Games Organising Committee, and I was number fifty-two of an eventual workforce of thousands of employees and then 50,000 volunteers and a hundred thousand contractors. So I was there right at the beginning. And Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: I remember screaming down the phone to my mum telling her I'd got the job and I couldn't have been more excited. It was the job of my dreams. But then on day one when I turned up to start my job, I couldn't have been more terrified. I was shaking like a leaf because I thought how could I possibly be joining the strategy team of the Sydney Olympic Games when I've never even attended an Olympic Olympic event, let alone organise one. Why on earth did they pick me? I remember being even a little scared to go and talk to you know people in another department. It was really just the 40 executives in charge of all the functions and a few people in the finance team. And I remember feeling really daunted and scared about how I would even start talking to people. But you know what I realized was we were all pretty much Olympic rookies. There were a few people that we hired that had Olympic experience, but what happened was we were given that permission by the executives to figure it out. And I was in a very small team of people like me who had that consulting experience. So we were used to going into lots of different organizations, different sectors, different types of projects, and we had to come up to speed very quickly. So this was just that on steroids, where we had to come in and figure out what does it mean to pull together an Olympic Games? How do we stitch together all of these functions into a cohesive strategy? And so because we were sort of all in it together, we just rolled our sleeves up and we we collaborated and we just figured it out. We knew we couldn't do it on our own, and so we just had to be quite vulnerable and try things and work through it together as a team. And to then fast forward five years to the closing ceremony and hear the IOC president declare Sydney as the best games ever was just the most remarkable feeling to have been there right from the beginning. And at games time, I was actually in the main operations centre monitoring the games every day. I was starting at 6 a.m. I actually had two little girls by then. I had a twenty one month old daughter and an eight month old daughter. so life was pretty crazy. It was quite a juggle. And my beautiful mum moved in to help run the family in the background while the games were going on. are probably underestimating what you're able to achieve. You're probably Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: underestimating what your potential is and what you can achieve if you say yes before you're ready. If it feels like something that you would love to do, if it feels like something that has some element of purpose or your dream role or your dream organization, then I would encourage your listeners to say yes before they're ready because that's how you really learn and grow and achieve things that you may not even have imagined. Eve: that's so inspiring and what an incredible environment to have had this permission to work it out if no one had done it before, then you were navigating this new space together. what was the leadership Cherie Mylordis: We wouldn't Eve: like that you were working under? Cherie Mylordis: Well that actually I'm glad you asked that, Eve, because that was such a pivotal moment in my career because We couldn't operate in the normal hierarchy, right? With the typical, Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: command and control, you've got a very fixed job description and this is what you do, and stay in your lane and just do your job description. Yes, we had a job description and we had a role, but we were very outcomes focused because Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: we had a fixed date of a very big deadline. The eyes of the world were watching, and that date wasn't going to move. So Eve: Yeah. Yeah. Cherie Mylordis: that fueled us in a very different way to focus on key milestones and to focus on outcomes beyond the job description. Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: And so that really was a big lesson in well how do leaders show up in that situation because you know there's a lot of protocol when you're organizing Olympic Games. There's the International Olympic Committee, there are the National Olympic Committees, all the teams that come. Every sport has very strict requirements because you know to to win a a race or to get the record it has to be very precise conditions, right? And so those conditions all have to be in place. So what we had to deliver was very clear. How we did it, we didn't have any playbooks or procedures or documents from previous cities. That has all changed since Sydney. The IOC brought our body of work and created this Olympic knowledge transfer program and capability that has continued ever since Sydney. And so what that meant from a leadership perspective was they needed to give us air cover, so they needed to manage the protocols and the politics and all of that because there was a lot of that. Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: Basically, we needed to give us permission to collaborate and get things done in a far more autonomous way. Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: And that collaboration went beyond organizational boundaries. I mean, I remember going to meet with the CEO of Surf Lifesaving Australia because I was involved in setting up the volunteer program. And we wanted to get first aid qualified volunteers for the medical program who better than Surf Lifesavers. They're volunteers, Eve: Yeah. Cherie Mylordis: they have the medical skills, and they can. Bill at their buddies who come in from around the country as well, and that's also gold Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: when accommodation is scarce. I didn't have to go up the hierarchy and get permission from a senior executive who then introduced, who the CEO talked to that CEO to then get things happening. We just didn't have time to do that. And so that has really sparked my insights and my thinking about what good leadership is all about. It's Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: not about you're at the top and therefore you have to make all the decisions and have all the Answers and you've got that status and that power and that authority. It's actually more about enabling people to do their best work and Eve: Absolutely. Cherie Mylordis: deliver outcomes. And when you flip that, it's absolutely Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: extraordinary what happens inside an organization. People Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: step up, they they want to be involved and included in trying to figure out how to solve a problem or meet a challenge. And when you create those conditions as a leader and show up more as a coach than a manager, Eve: was there any particular moments when you nearly allowed fear and self doubt to stop you? Cherie Mylordis: Well that first day, thought, I can't do this. I seriously could have done that on that day. I felt so terrified. What what am I doing here? Who am I kidding? So that that's probably the biggest moment. in my consulting career I can remember being in some challenging situations. one was a project with the Civil Aviation Authority. So I was sent down to Canberra to work with the Civil Aviation Authority I was in my early to mid-twenties. I was very hardworking, I was very professional in in everything I did, but this was a very male-dominated organization with engineers and project managers and people in very technical roles. Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: And I really felt that I had to prove myself and I felt like there was a risk of me not being accepted on that project. I remember trying to learn nine pages of acronyms before going into those meetings. to try and prove that I had some affinity with the work and that I could talk their language and recognize some of their vocabulary. And I don't know if a male person would have had to have done that because that perhaps they would have been more accepted because they were working with, other men. And so, yeah, that was probably a key moment where I felt like the stakes were very high. that Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: I was showing up I was young and I was female in a very male-dominated organization where the men were also a lot older. So yeah, there's moments like that when it's a real test of you know the grit and And I think it's all about, trying over-preparing to try and demonstrate your capability, which ideally you shouldn't have to do, but sometimes that's Eve: Yeah. Cherie Mylordis: what it takes. Eve: Mm-hmm. how do we tell Cherie the difference between something being wrong for us and something simply being outside of our comfort zone? Cherie Mylordis: Mm, that's a really good question. I think it has to feel like something that matters to you. I could never have imagined working on a With a client that maybe was in the tobacco industry or making sugary drinks or, that's a very broad example. But is it something that you feel some connection to? it could relate to your personal purpose, or it could just be that the organization is doing something that resonates with you. I really love a book that I'd love to recommend to you, to your listeners, which is Playing Big by Tara Moore. And what Tara Moore talks about is having your inner mentor on your shoulder as opposed to your inner critic, right? Now we Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: all have our little inner critic, that voice in our head that tells us we're not ready, we're not good enough, we're not smart enough, all those things. But if you draw on your inner mentor and really project forward what does your future self look like ideally in five or ten or twenty years? And then when you're faced with an important decision. Actually think about your future self and go well is this step taking me towards or away from my vision of my future self? That's a really good way of thinking about whether something's right or wrong for you. Now, your future self may not be someone that you ever get to. You might take a different twist or turn in your career, but it still gives you a bit of a guiding light, it gives you a bit of a direction to head towards rather than just looking at each situation. on its own and thinking, well what do I do here? If you've got some sort of aspiration that can then help you with a decision as to well it's just taking me in that direction or a way and then I can help you with is this right for me or is it wrong? Yeah. Eve: Mm, that's such a good way to look at it. Cherie at what point did you begin questioning traditional ideas about career progression titles and what success should look like? Cherie Mylordis: when I was in my consulting career with Accenture, so big top-tier organization, and I was, progressing very well. I was at the manager level and I was progressing well towards senior manager and then partner. At that time I had a year away. I lived in Europe with my now husband and I had I was granted leave of absence, even though it wasn't the policy to do that. They wanted me to come back. But halfway through that year away, where I was actually working in Europe with the market research organization. I thought, you know what, I think I'd like to work inside an organization and get that experience as opposed to always working on the outside as a consultant. So I contacted the partner at Accenture and explained that situation. And they understood, and when I came back, they still wanted me to help them out with some projects while I was exploring job opportunities until the Olympic role came up, and so that was really when I started to think: is the consulting career really the path I want to take? Because the further you go up the ranks, the more you have to focus on business development and selling work. Whereas I was more focused on doing the work, I love doing great work. But I'm not so interested in the selling side of things. So that's when I really had that moment. And I think having that time away overseas gave me that time to reflect and consider. So yeah, that was the really key point. And then the Olympic experience, obviously, that's a very finite piece of work. Once the Olympics is delivered, none of us had a job, so we had to think about what was next. I did take some time out because I had young children. As I mentioned, we had our son the year after, so I had three very young children. I helped my husband with his business in the background and got very involved in the community and then stepped back into the corporate world some years later. And that was also a key point where it was like, well, where do I want to go now? And I I got into you know change and transformation and all of those things inside a number of big iconic blue chip organizations before I then decided to step out of the corporate world. and I guess contribute from the outside. And I think that final stage of stepping out of the corporate world was informed by that Olympic experience where we did have more autonomy and we were able to collaborate more. once I got back into the corporate world, I felt like I wasn't really delivering the value that I had the potential of delivering. I felt quite constrained in the typical corporate hierarchy again. I got great experience across big iconic organizations at the forefront of agile and design thinking and complex change. So I got some great experience doing quite groundbreaking work, but I got to a point where I thought I Really need to change things again, set a new trajectory where I am again putting myself out of my comfort zone and working more independently and providing that advice. I think the common thread there is you sort of get to a point where you're feeling a little unsettled and you're not sure Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: whether this is really the direction you want to take. And at that moment, if that's the way you're feeling, I think that's a good sign to really pause and reflect, read a book like Playing Big and set that trajectory of what that future self might look like, and that might help you then decide what the next step is. Eve: Absolutely. And has the definition of success changed for you over time? Cherie Mylordis: Hmm, I mean success is not about status for me. success is about outcomes. So if I can equip or enable leaders or teams to achieve something extraordinary that's potentially beyond what they thought might be possible, that's to me what success looks like. And that's why I say my purpose is to enable extraordinary. Because extraordinary means doing something good or special that's not ordinary. That can mean different things to different people. And that's why I love getting involved in this other type of initiative that I haven't mentioned yet, which is innovation sprints. So I work with big global multi-billion dollar companies. I am accredited as an innovation coach and I get approached to work on these sprints, which are quite an intense three-month experience where organisations form teams and they give them a big problem to solve and someone coaches them through that process as part of a an initiative that will involve multiple teams working through various challenges in a in a defined period of time. And so I tend to work on these sprints probably about one a year to to keep my my involvement with this area of innovation and thinking big and trying to solve big problems. And that's something that I find very rewarding because when the team comes together, they're very daunted. We give them a bit of shock and awe about the disruption that's happening in the world, and then we coach them through this weekly assignments. And you know, we get to the messy middle where they're feeling very stressed and overwhelmed, and they don't know where whether whether they're going to come up with a good idea. And somehow in the final stretch, magic happens and they knock it out of the park. And it's just so rewarding to see. People within a three-month period come in and go, we put our hand up for this, but we're not really sure why we're here and what this involves. Eve: Yeah. Cherie Mylordis: And then to see how fulfilled they feel and what they've actually achieved in a three-month period with these conditions, it's absolutely remarkable. And so that's Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: what fulfills me when I see those outcomes and when I see them you know being interviewed by perhaps you know an internal media team to say, What would you say? to a participant who might be joining a project like this in future, they will just beam and they will say, don't hesitate, just do it, trust the process, it'll be the best experience of your career. And so that just fills me with pride and fulfillment, things like that. Eve: Mm, yeah, absolutely. And what do you witness is the biggest change for participants over that three month period? Cherie Mylordis: Well, they learn to think differently and work differently. So it shifts their mindset in terms of we imagine bigger, we we take Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: on a big problem that the organization has has given them and we think really big moonshot ideas and we use some quite you know contemporary techniques and tools to to work through the process. So at first they're feeling daunted and out of their depth but every week being at coach I'm giving them that fast feedback. I'm encouraging them I'm sharing them the tools I'm helping continue Connect them with other examples or other people that they can talk to. so they become a lot more courageous to talk to people. They might talk to a university professor about something or a startup, and so they they get more confidence to step Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: out of their comfort zone, they get more confidence to share big ideas and collaborate as a team and support each other as a team. And so what I use a term that is they can they can't unspeak. See it. Once they've Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: gone through this process and they've they've shifted their mindset and they've shifted their ways of working. They can't really go back to the old way. And that's one of the reasons why big organizations love these sprints as well, is that the people that have participated shift the culture. When they go back into their teams, they start to show up differently, they start to work differently with their colleagues, they start to ask different questions, and that starts to create ripple effects in terms of culture change. So yeah, it's the courage, they fall in love with the problem and they become so passionate about solving that problem. And they want to see it through usually after the sprint. They want to get the organization to back the idea and support them to continue with that idea often. But it's a shift in the way they show up at work. So they're working in a far more fit-for-purpose way for today's world when we've got to navigate Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: more ambiguity, more complexity, and not just do a defined role. Eve: Mm. And how does that play out to their personal lives? Cherie Mylordis: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think it does change how they show up in their personal lives too, because they they become very purpose driven. They they want to work on something meaningful. it fuels them in a different way. It it fuels that intrinsic motivation and that might actually influence what they get involved with outside of work as well, whether they Eve: Hm. Cherie Mylordis: start volunteering on something that they're interested in or just activities that they involve their family with. it does have a ripple effect in in their personal life as well, I find. Often Eve: Mm. Yeah, absolutely. It'd be hard for that not to play out when you've changed and grown so much internally, through that process. Cherie Mylordis: Yes, exactly. Well, a bit like your work where you're, you're so passionate about sustainability and, fast fashion and and all of those things, solving these problems. if they've got something that they care about outside of, work as well, it's probably going to spark a further interest or involvement in that thing that they really care about. Eve: Mm, yeah, I guess and realising that your action and your contribution makes a difference. Cherie Mylordis: For sure. Yes, one person can make a difference. Absolutely. Yes. Eve: Mm. Mm. what have you personally had to unlearn, Cherie? Cherie Mylordis: Good one. I think perfectionism, I tended to always be the sort of person that wanted to go over and over and over, a deliverable and make sure it was absolutely perfect and not want to sort of hand it over until I was absolutely sure it was perfect. whereas what I now embrace is a concept that I call working out loud. it's about sharing something. Go here's an idea, here's a here's a shared document that's got a a bit of a a mock-up of what this might look like. What do you think? So that sort of working together in a more organic, more transparent way and collaborating is a far more effective way of actually working and it doesn't have to look polished and perfect. And I bring that into my consulting work and my advisory work and my coaching work as well. So I help the people that I work with show up that way as well. And so it's that learning by doing where the way I show up on my projects is by bringing in some of these methods, that starts to shift the way they show up with their teams as well. I think that perfectionism, don't sort of hand something over until it's polished and perfect to working out loud and having that more collaboration approach and that co-design element to the work. I think that's the biggest thing I've I've unlearnt and and adopted. Eve: what do you find interesting about conscious unbossing and younger generations deciding that they don't necessarily want to become the boss? Cherie Mylordis: I love this term, Eve. Now, this term conscious unbossing, I didn't make it up, I wish I did, but it came out of some research in the UK where it was Robert Walters, a recruitment organization. They interviewed tens of thousands of people in the workplace in the UK a couple of years ago, across all ages, industries, demographics, and what they noticed was the Gen Z cohort, so the people that are sort of in the early stage of their careers towards their sort of mid-20s. They were saying, I don't want to work up, work my way up to become a manager. I don't want to be a boss. And it was like they didn't want to, you know, run a PL or necessarily do the people management stuff. They wanted more flexibility, they wanted perhaps to take a side hustle or a side step in their career and to do different things. And so this term conscious unbossing came out of that, and in many ways it was used as a more provocative headline to go, Gen Z, they're just lazy, you know, they don't want to be a boss. They're very entitled and they're very picky about what they want to do. Whereas I see it very differently. I Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: see it being, well I don't want to be the boss that I see. I think Gen Z are very purpose-driven, they want to do interesting work, meaningful work, they're very ambitious, but they don't necessarily just want to follow the traditional corporate ladder where you Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: have to go this step, this step, this step, and then that's that's all there is for you. that's really I think a message for organizations to go, well, how can we attract and retain Gen Z? Maybe they do go off and travel or do something. How might we welcome them back when they've had new insights or new skills? What else can we do to motivate people to take on interesting work? Gen Z is going to be about 30% of the workforce in the next five years, and so we can't ignore them. And Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: the interesting thing that I also add to this conversation in articles that I write and interviews that I give is that this isn't unique to Gen Z. I Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: actually conducted some research a few years ago where I interviewed 200 leaders across. Across 24 different countries, multiple industries, and at various levels of their of leadership as well as different ages. And what came through in that research was everyone wants to do meaningful work. And Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: what was stopping them was that lack of clarity and direction. It was also working in a more bureaucratic environment where they're, being micromanaged or with that real command and control, that hierarchy is in place where they have to stay in their box and stay in their lane and think. Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: Twice about whether they want to share an idea. So I can certainly say that this is not a Gen Z specific issue, but Gen Z have raised the profile of it, and this sassy term of conscious unbossing has attracted attention, which I think is fantastic. But everyone wants meaningful work, they want the opportunity to contribute, and that's how we bring out the best in people so that they can do their best work. Eve: Mm, yeah, absolutely. it's great to see that Gen Z are intentionally choosing not to live on autopilot and you know, wanting Cherie Mylordis: Well Eve: to contribute in a meaningful way Cherie Mylordis: it it's an opportunity for organizations to show up and embrace this and Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: then they can attract incredible Gen Z talent and you know nurture them and it can be win-win. Eve: what are the top, three things that you think organizations will need to adopt to accommodate for this change? Cherie Mylordis: Great. Well, I have a term that I've developed based on researching and seeing what good looks like in terms of leadership and organizations that I think are more future fit and future focused, and I call it work in 3D. And the 3D stand for Dare, Ditch, and Dial. And I think if organizations can show up this way, that is how they can attract the right people and achieve quite extraordinary outcomes because they've got that. Bold purpose, that dare, what is it that we're striving to achieve? Even if it feels almost impossible, if it's worth striving for, then you can get people behind it, and you might be surprised what problems you can solve when you create the right conditions. So that's the dare part. And then the ditch part is actually being open to getting rid of ways of working, processes, tools, whatever it is that no longer serve us. If if you've got things that are slowing you down. That are impeding the delivery of value, then you know, give people permission to contribute that. And you can actually make it fun. You can have, competitions or incentives or even a super ditch day is something I've seen done really well where you invite people to contribute. Because if you ask people what Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: is stopping them from doing their best work or what is slowing them down, they will tell you. But often they don't feel like they have permission to contribute. So that's the Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: second day. Which is the ditch, and then the third D is dial. So we're dialing up these more contemporary ways that are fit for purpose, the more collaboration, more autonomy, more working out loud, more transparency. And so, you know, we're not telling people in a more sort of rigid way how they do something. We're setting the trajectory of the outcome we're trying to achieve, and we're giving them permission to figure it out together with that coaching available to Support them, and that's what made a difference in the Olympics. We we had the permission to figure it out, we had something big and bold that was really worth doing, and we had supportive leaders who were helping us clear blockages or facilitate connections or whatever it was they needed to do to help us deliver the outcomes. So working 3D, Dare, Ditch, and Dial. My vision is: imagine if nobody wanted to. Work for an organization unless they said, Yeah, we work in 3D, come and join us, and it'll be a rewarding opportunity for you. You can do this on a personal level in your personal life. You can do this in your own role. You can do this at a team level or at an organization level. You can really apply it at any level, for Eve: any woman listening could actually start today and think, what do I dare? What do I dare to dream? What am I Cherie Mylordis: Yes. Yes. Eve: prepared to ditch to get there? And what am I gonna dial in on to allow me to get there? Cherie Mylordis: Absolutely. Yes. Anybody can do that starting now. And the trick is just to start taking very small steps. Don't wait Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: till you've got the whole big picture figured out. Just just start and and you'll be amazed how these little steps will start adding up and and you'll start to see a difference. Eve: do you think that we all have a big vision that we can tap into, or how would you suggest the women listening allow themselves to dream bigger? Cherie Mylordis: I run sessions actually in terms of helping people define their purpose, which I call their dare. So you can do this at an organizational level, you can do this as an individual. What what do I dare? And so there's some clues that you can draw on to help you tap into that because I believe everybody has a purpose. It might change over time, but it wouldn't change frequently. It's not so specific that it might change every year or or so. But it's really digging into what do I really care about? If money wasn't an issue, what would I love to do? If I couldn't fail, what would I love to do? So you sort of take money and risk off the table, it starts to open up your ideas on what would you love to do. In my leadership research that I mentioned earlier, I had eight questions. And one of the questions was: if I gave you three magic wishes so that you could do your best work. What would your wishes be? And when I asked that question, people paused for a moment and their eyes lit up and they they really came back with fascinating responses. And what I discovered of those answers, so I interviewed 200 people and I gave everyone three magic wishes, right? So there's 600 magic wishes. Now Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: of all of those magic wishes that people came back with, how many do you think actually needed magic? to to make them real. Have a guess. Eve: I don't know, maybe a third? Cherie Mylordis: Six, only six Eve: Yeah. Cherie Mylordis: of them actually needed magic, like the matrix pill or something like that. Most of them just needed a different type of leadership, a bit more autonomy, more collaboration, different culture to actually achieve that magic wish. Most of it was actually fixing outdated workplaces that that hinder progress as opposed to enable it. And so yeah, it's it's amazing when you ask a question like that. It just gives people that chance to pause and think differently because that's not a question they would normally get. And it's it's Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: incredible what comes back. Eve: Yeah. I guess we should be giving ourselves permission to ask that of ourselves as well. Cherie Mylordis: That's right, yes. Eve: let's touch on your new role as president of the New South Wales WCEI, and what do you hope to contribute through the role over the next two years? Cherie Mylordis: Well, I want to bring these these values and this ethos that I've developed to this role as well. So as you've probably gathered, I'm I'm very into being clear on our purpose, collaborating, being very transparent about what we're doing and how we're doing it. with the the committee or the council that I'll be working with, firstly what I want to do is send out a survey to the members. I want to really understand from that survey what do our members field A have to contribute to the community and also what do they need. And then we're going to have an off site We're gonna share with each other, what are our superpowers, what do we contribute to this group, but then we're also going to delve into the survey results and co design some some events and some sessions into the year ahead that will help our members you know contribute what they have to contribute and and meet their needs and I think there'll be some matching that'll emerge there. And so I'll very much be building on all the things that have been done very well already. We've had incredible educational events where we've had guest speakers and panels, we've had arts arts events where we you know might go and see the Archibald Prize winners and have a guided tour. We had a Metro art tour of the new Metro stations in Sydney and their artworks recently. We always have a culinary experience. So certainly I'll be building on what already works. I won't be throwing all that out. What do people already love? And how can we augment that and take that to the next step by tapping Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: into what our members are looking for as well. But in a very collaborative Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: way. Eve: Yeah, absolutely. And bringing those superpowers, that each of us have out to enable that environment. Cherie Mylordis: For sure. Because it's not about again status as being the president. My role is to enable, fantastic events and extraordinary outcomes for all of our members. And we'll be working as a team to to ideate on that and think bigger and perhaps create a few spaces where our members can, be safe and be vulnerable and and get that support through various challenges that they might be facing. Eve: Mm, absolutely. Yeah, that's that's the kind of leadership that's needed at the moment in the world what do you wish you had understood about yourself earlier in life? Cherie Mylordis: That you're not unique in being, shy or feeling a little intimidated by stepping into a situation, especially if you haven't had role models around you. you're just as capable as anybody else. So back yourself. don't hold yourself back, I guess is something that I wish I knew at an at a younger age. It's taken me quite a long time to to be comfortable enough to, get up and speak and and share these insights. And I wish I had the confidence and the courage to do that earlier. Eve: Mm-hmm. what are you being called to imagine bigger for yourself? Cherie Mylordis: Well, for myself it's it's really taking care of myself. So making sure that as I, get older I'm really imagining bigger in terms of, health and well being and fitness and and not just assuming that as you get older you get less mobile or whatever. I want to bust those myths and I'm very active in terms of Pilates and gym And also mindfulness. I'm very into, writing every morning what I'm grateful for and I love the insight timer. meditation app. So you know trying to have that balance. But I I almost feel like I'm just getting started at this stage of my career. I don't you know a lot of people at at my age are sort of they're thinking towards retirement whereas I feel like I'm I've just got so much to share and contribute and and be a part of and so in terms of imagining bigger I think it's about just redefining what work and what life looks like at at this stage of my career and not being constrained by the typical paradigms. I I want to bust all the myths, about mature women perhaps not feeling as valued or not having the opportunities being passed over. I wanna I want to help bust those myths. Eve: Mm, absolutely. How inspiring. And what does taking your power back mean to you? Cherie Mylordis: Hmm, I think it means being really honest about who you are, why you do what you do, and and how you show up. So that's taking back your power, not in terms of status or being in a position of power, but it's more of a soft power. Eve: Mm-hmm. Cherie Mylordis: Being that person that is, I guess, enabling others to step into their zone of genius and take on, challenging things that would be rewarding to them. That to me is about stepping into your power, how to use your insights to equip and enable others and nudge them. them to take take bigger steps forward, learning from my own experience. Eve: Is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience? Cherie Mylordis: Well, going back to the work in 3D and my big dream of, you know, imagine if every organization said we work in 3D or or a person said, I don't want to work for an organization unless they work in 3D, because that gives you an indication of the conditions inside the organization. when we go to networking events or we meet people, what's a common question you might ask? I think one of the most common is what do you do? Right? Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: We all do that. hello Eve, how are you? What do you do? Imagine if it became commonplace to ask another question instead, which is, hello Eve, what do you dare? Eve: Mm. Cherie Mylordis: imagine if that became commonplace because then it's not asking people what their job is. it's shifting their thinking about their identity and what they would love to contribute in the world as opposed to what their current job is. And that can then open up conversations about, I should introduce you to this person because they're also doing this, or have you read this book or there's a podcast interview? And that starts to open up conversations about taking that idea further. And I think that would just be so wonderful if that became a normalized question that we asked. Eve: Absolutely, I'm taking that. I love that. Cherie Mylordis: what do you dare? And how can I help you? Be more daring? Eve: Yeah, absolutely. thank you so much for your time, Cherie, and thank you for sharing your knowledge. Cherie Mylordis: Yeah. Eve: It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today where can people connect with you and learn more about your work? Cherie Mylordis: Well you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm the only Cherie My Lordis on LinkedIn and I regularly post insights, tips, tools, and I have two websites, nextgenify.com and nextgenifyacademy.com. feel free to connect with me and message me on LinkedIn. I'd love to know what you dare and and what you're working on. Eve: Thank you so much, Cherie Cherie Mylordis: Thank you for having me, Eve. Eve: Thank you for listening and a big thank you to our guest today for sharing her story and perspective with us. If something about today's conversation stayed with you, I'd love you to keep exploring it with us. We have the Project Emerald Collective community on skool where we continue these conversations, have monthly check-ins, Follow the moon and its cycles and explore different questions each month, raising our awareness and encouraging us to keep checking in with ourselves and developing our intuition. And it's a place where we can learn from one another. You'll find that link in the show notes. until next time, take your power back, one conscious choice at a time. If you think today's conversation would resonate with someone, please Take a moment to share it with them. 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