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Celebrating Ten Years of Leading Roles Success

Celebrating Ten Years of Leading Roles Success

07 June 2022 Michele Zavaglia

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Leading Roles are celebrating ten years of providing specialist recruitment and HR services to local governments in Australia.


Leading Roles was established in 2012 by Mark and Eleanor Ogston, focusing on delivering high-quality executive recruitment services to local government. At the time, many recruitment agencies were offering personality and relationship-based advice to councils to fill key roles with little regard for the specific skills and experience required to pivot those organisations and the broader local government sector to success.


From the beginning Leading Roles adopted a client-centric approach, taking the time to understand their client’s needs and conducting a thorough market assessment to deliver the best possible candidates to councils.


“We have worked hard to listen to our clients, understand their specific needs and establish bespoke recruitment strategies to source the highest performing candidates. We have also invested in our people who have extensive executive, technical and operational experience and are united in their commitment to care for our clients, candidates, and the work they undertake.”


An emphasis on CEO and director level roles has led Leading Roles to create their leadership framework tailored to local government to evaluate leaders, which has continued to evolve over the last ten years.


According to Mark, “Leadership in local government is completely different from the private sector. Leaders in local government are focused on delivering benefits to the community they serve, as opposed to a financial benefit to the business owner or shareholders in the private sector. Our leadership assessment framework is specifically modelled on the needs of local councils, which ensures that we only recommend leaders who have the skills, attributes, and values to deliver high value to the communities that they serve.”


Over the last ten years, Leading Roles have placed 40 Chief Executive Officers, over 150 Executives and Directors, plus over 700 specialist and technical staff. Eleanor and Mark are proud of the number of high-performing people they have placed in councils and, more importantly, their impact on the councils and their local communities.


“When we measure our success, we look at the outcomes achieved by the people we have placed in the communities they serve, not just the volume of people that we have placed in councils. We understand the huge impact a good leader can have on communities, which is why it is so important to get the right person in the role.”


Leading Roles services has evolved significantly over the last ten years and now include permanent executive recruitment, temporary recruitment, and HR advisory services for councils. They have the largest dedicated team of local government recruitment and HR specialists dedicated to transforming the performance and culture of local government through high-performing people.


Looking to the future, Mark and Eleanor are excited to be a part of developing leaders for local governments to help them overcome the growing challenges and constraints they face.


“There are significant challenges facing local communities from the wealthiest to the least wealthy; the earlier these organisations can arrive at solutions to these challenges, the better. Leading Roles will be here for the decades to come to help councils acquire the necessary skills and experience to overcome the challenges these organisations face.”


To celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Leading Roles, the team and their valued clients enjoyed a great evening of friendship, fine wine, and food at the stunning Bougainvillea House at Howard Smith Wharves. 



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