Creating a world of difference
The purpose that underpins Fisher Leadership and every adjacent business is ‘creating a world of difference’.
We create a world of difference by partnering with organisations to build inclusive leadership, grow diversity and enable sustainable capability ecosystems for the future.
Fisher Leadership is an Executive Search firm with 20 years’ experience placing great leaders for greater impact at board and executive level.
We believe that leadership is the defining factor that can make or break an organisation today. At a time when talent is scarcer than capital, organisations must attract future-ready leaders. Fisher Leadership Executive Search has built a long history and deep relationships in understanding how and where to find new talent with the capability to lead through new challenges.
In a time where automation, augmentation and addition will shape the future of work, we put people at the centre of every challenge, and human workplace challenges at the centre of our business.
A Great Place to Work
We are proud to be recognised as an employer of choice.
Great Place to Work® has surveyed more than 100 million employees since 1992. Future Leadership and our three businesses, Gig Executive, Fisher Leadership and CLA Solutions are proud to be named a Great Place to Work. Every day we challenge ourselves to activate a future leadership mindset internally as well as externally. We do this in three key ways:
• measuring our individual, team and organisational success according to our common ‘why’ which is ‘creating a world of difference’
• living our values in action so that our ‘how’ is always founded on caring, collaborating, solving and impacting
• embrace intersectional diversity across social, cognitive, skills-based and identity markers to shape a truly inclusive and psychologically safe culture
• activate a mindset of curiosity alongside a practice of life-long learning to ensure our internal position on capability-building for the future is reinforced and leveraged amongst our team
The Great Place to Work benchmarking and insights empower leaders with real-time reporting on how their employee engagement is performing against the world’s top companies. Certification is the mark of great employee experience. We are proud to create a world of difference alongside this community of recognised change-makers.
Our History
When Jo Fisher left her role as a tech executive twenty years ago, she was frustrated with the lack of diversity and robust decision-making at leadership tables, She founded Fisher Leadership and for the past two decades, more than 50% of all appointments have consistently seen highly qualified women leaders placed in high-profile roles. This intention extended to bringing social and cognitive diversity to every shortlist. Nearly 3% of our appointments are Indigenous leaders, a representation aligned to Australia’s First Nations population. We have been recognised with a global AESC Award in 2020 for impacting leadership diversity in the APAC region.
How we work
With Fisher Leadership Executive Search, we take a highly intentional approach to selection, seeking out excellent candidates from our deep and diverse talent pools and beyond. We leverage trusted relationships, a long-standing global network, and an experienced in-house research team to curate a balanced and diverse shortlist.
We actively take into account multi-dimensional aspects of diversity, in partnership with our clients. Together, we help refine role definitions to position the organisation and appeal to today’s top executive talent. Timing, targeting and outcomes are integrated into the overall search strategy.
What we do best
Organisations trust us not just to find and deliver great leaders, but to nurture people through the high-stakes journey. Our care for candidates sees us maintain an industry-high NPS of 9.1, and our robust search methodology has meant we are one of the few internationally accredited Executive Search firms in Australia. Our global AESC status ensures the highest standards while our IMD membership gives us access to talent across the globe. Our partnership with CLA gives organisations access to coaches, organizational psychologists and wellbeing experts, while our Gig Executive business provides on-call executive talent to cover times of change in the short term.
What we believe
Overriding the ‘mirror-tocracy’ means working with panels to highlight unconscious bias, shifting from experience-driven assessment to a behavioural approach through the capability lens. Using our purpose-built Leadership Capability Framework, we correlate future skills, cognitive diversity, and leadership style with potential gaps in existing leadership teams.
Curating the right mix of diverse leaders around the decision-making tables of the future is critical. Diversity generates better debate, better risk management, better strategy and better outcomes.
Diversity generates capability, and capability underpins the true value of diversity.
Every aspect of our business is geared to challenge and lead the executive journey of the future. We believe that to thrive in the new economy, businesses leaders must question the answers rather than answer the questions.
Our Values
Future Leadership’s values underpin our processes, the way we treat people, and our approach to business. Our values represent the way we work, every day.
We prioritise a safe environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging and value. Our passion propels us to do the right thing, go the extra mile and ensure our interactions are filled with authenticity, integrity and empathy. We trust and are kind.
We work together to listen, connect and support each other. We approach interactions with open-minds, humility and respect to ensure we learn, share ideas and benefit from collective wisdom.
We think curiously and creatively to achieve future facing solutions that are innovative, fit-for-purpose, and deliver results. We are high-performers and market leaders at the top of our game.
We create a world of difference by delivering measurable and sustainable outcomes. We embrace innovation, and commit to positive change, for people and for planet.
Our Commitment to Sustainability Practices
Over the decades, Future Leadership has invested significant resources in developing our approach to Sustainability. In consolidating our sustainability agenda, we have reviewed in depth what we as an organisation must do to ensure we live and promote sustainable business practices. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide our guiding light. We have applied the ESG framework as the most appropriate means to focus our efforts.
Throughout the report, the SDG icons are used to reference the alignment of our initiatives.
Global Partnerships
A Connected Community
At Fisher Leadership we believe partnership is the new leadership. We understand the value of strong communities and feel compelled and grateful to contribute proactively to the places where we live and work. We put back a significant amount of profit into community causes that align to our purpose of making a difference, and our sustainability goals for leaders around cognitive diversity, mental health and the future of work.
Some of our key contributions to empowering diverse leaders include our foundational partnership for the Diversity Council of Australia’s Diversity and Inclusion Network, our founding sponsorship of the Mandarin Careers Platform for the public sector, our longstanding partner with IPAA to host the International Women’s Day gala dinner, as well as to curate the Senior Executive Women’s Network mentoring program.
Another highlight for us is impacting highly talented individual leaders including our sponsorship of Indigenous health leader Cara Lee Cray to undertake an MBA at Deakin University, and our sponsorship of Indigenous artist and story-teller Greg Matthews, as we partner with RCH150 – the Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation to raise awareness for their 150-year celebration of community impact. Our participation in shaping the new working world is channeled into partnerships such as our representation on the National Education Advisory Committee for the Australian Institute of Company Directors. As well as our participation in the Committee for Melbourne technology and future skills taskforces and a content partnership with the Future Work Summit shaping the human experience of work in decades to come.
Global Partnerships
When we think about leadership, we are thinking global. As the exclusive local partner to the IMD International Search Group – a global top 20 executive search organisation, Fisher Leadership enables clients and candidates to connect across regions, cultures and sectors. We are also a fully accredited member of AESC, the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants.
A Connected Community
At Fisher Leadership we believe partnership is the new leadership. We understand the value of strong communities and feel compelled and grateful to contribute proactively to the places where we live and work.
