Emily Chancellor on leadership: Why environment beats job titles
Emily Chancellor is a Wallaroo, captain of the NSW Waratahs, a board member of the Rugby Union Players Association and an early careers recruiter at Richard Crookes Constructions. She believes that the environment a person works in shapes what they can achieve more than their job title or starting skill set. Her approach rests on a simple principle she introduced at Sydney University rugby: trying is cool. High standards and genuine warmth can work together, and teams perform best when visible effort is encouraged rather than mocked. For CEOs, the takeaway is that culture is built in how a team responds when someone attempts something new.
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The need-to-know:
Treat visible effort as an asset, not a risk. Tall poppy behaviour silently stops people from attempting new skills, and every unattempted skill is lost capability.
Set the standard by working at it beside your people. Chancellor leads by being ahead and inviting others to chase her, which makes high expectations feel available rather than exclusive.
The people outside the room need the most attention. A fifteen-second message to someone on leave, injured or seconded tells them they still belong, and it costs the leader almost nothing.
Let’s go a little further
Emily Chancellor did not grow up knowing that women could play rugby. She spent her childhood on the Waratahs members' side with her father, hoping a kick for touch would land in her hands. It took a university email about a rugby sevens combine, ahead of the Rio Olympics, to show her the path existed.
About a decade later she captains the NSW Waratahs, represents Australia as a Wallaroo, sits on the board of the Rugby Union Players Association and works in early careers recruitment in the construction sector. At 35 she is the oldest player in both squads. Her view of leadership was shaped in places where talent, experience and confidence varied widely, and where the leader's task was to make high performance feel available to everyone.
The defining insight
Chancellor's central belief is clear. The environment someone works in matters more than their job title or the skills they bring on day one. She allows for obvious exceptions in specialist professions, but the principle holds for most teams.
She learned this at Sydney University. The men's club fielded seven teams. The women had one. That single squad included the Wallaroos captain, several international players, aspiring representative players and women who had never caught a ball. Nobody was kept out of the hard work. If you wanted extra fitness or tackling practice, you arrived early and joined in. When Chancellor later became a leader in that group, she named the culture: trying is cool.
The tension she names
Chancellor speaks openly about tall poppy syndrome, which she sees in Australia and particularly in women's spaces. People pull others down because they fear being overtaken, or because someone else is showing courage they have not found in themselves.
Her answer is practical rather than moral. Criticising someone who is working to improve does nothing for your own development. Helping them does, because you practise the same skill alongside them. In most offices, she observes, people stay inside their boxes because they fear failing in public. Once an environment treats attempts as learning rather than exposure, people begin to step forward.
Her ACL rehabilitation in 2024 added a second layer. Watching her team play in South Africa at 2am, a single message from a teammate saying they wished she was there told her she had not been forgotten. She now makes a deliberate habit of checking in on anyone outside the team environment, because people in the flow of performance rarely notice who has dropped out of view.
The leadership lesson
Chancellor does not see standards and warmth as opposites. She wants environments with high expectations, where the leader is out in front and inviting others to catch up. She pairs that with honesty about her own state. She credits Vanessa Riley, who leads her people and culture team, with showing her the effect of standing in front of 800 staff and admitting she was not having a good day.
Demanding standards without warmth create fear. Warmth without standards create comfort. Chancellor's approach holds both.
The CEO application
Many organisations reward results while quietly penalising visible effort. The person who volunteers for an unfamiliar project or asks a basic question in a leadership meeting often pays a social cost. Over time, people stop trying anything they might not finish well.
There are three useful questions for a CEO. How does your executive team react when someone attempts something and falls short? Do you set the standard from a distance, or are you visibly working at it with your team? And who in your organisation is currently outside the room, on leave, unwell or seconded, and when did anyone last reach out to them?
None of this calls for a program or a policy. It calls for leaders who decide that effort is worth protecting.
Chancellor's career began because someone sent an email inviting athletes to try. That invitation changed the direction of her life. What invitation is your environment extending to the people who have not yet stepped forward?
Question for you
If you were honest about how your leadership team responds when someone tries something new and gets it wrong, what would you find? If that question is uncomfortable, Phil would welcome an email to talk it through.
When you're ready, there are two ways I can help you:
1. CEO Coaching: For CEOs and soon-to-be CEOs who want to lead with clarity and grow their business without sacrificing what matters most. A tailored 12-session experience with three interconnected elements: scaling you as a leader, elevating how you lead others, and creating conditions for sustainable business growth.
2. Leadership Events: What if your leaders left the room thinking differently about ambition and their role in achieving it? I've worked with military special operations leaders and leadership teams at Cochlear and Lifeblood where poor leadership costs lives. Looking for real stories, frameworks and insights that shift how leaders think about ambition, create leverage and build teams worth following? Book me for your next conference, offsite, or leadership event.
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