#22 - Sally Calder: Building Respectful Workplaces, Trusting Instincts, and Being Brazen

In this episode of the Natural Genius podcast, Sam Bell speaks with Sally Calder, CEO and Co-Founder of RespectX, about leadership, courage, and creating workplaces where people can genuinely thrive.

Sally has spent decades working across government, human services, consulting, and organisational culture. After many years as a partner at KPMG leading culture, diversity and inclusion work, she made a bold decision to leave and build a new technology platform aimed at addressing one of the most persistent challenges in workplaces: making it safe for people to speak up.

RespectX was born from that conviction.

In this conversation Sally reflects on the golden thread across her career, the importance of trusting instinct, and why leaders must learn to make complex challenges simple and compelling.

She also shares the design principles behind RespectX and the real-world impact the platform is already having in organisations across Australia.

This episode explores:

• Leadership courage, culture change, 
• How individuals and organisations create safe and respectful environments where people can do their best work
• Why trusting your instinct can shape a career
• The “golden thread” that only becomes visible when you look back
• Leaving a successful partnership to start a new venture
• Why respectful workplaces matter for performance and wellbeing
• The story behind founding RespectX
• Five design principles for safer workplace reporting
• Making the complex simple and the simple compelling
• The role of courage in culture change
• Why the next generation may finally shift workplace culture for the better

Chapters

01:04 Sally’s career journey and the “golden thread”
05:18 Trusting instinct and saying yes to opportunities
09:02 Creating workplaces that enrich people
12:24 The story behind founding RespectX
18:16 Designing a safer reporting platform
23:27 Early adopters and building the RespectX movement
27:23 Measuring trust and workplace safety
31:10 Real examples of culture change in organisations
36:12 Channeling rage into constructive change
40:29 Leadership lessons: making the complex simple
44:10 The responsibility of leaders to set clear standards
47:00 RespectX as a movement for cultural change
49:23 Closing reflections

Guest links

Sally Calder: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallycalder
RespectX: https://www.respectx.com.au/
Shey Newitt (RespectX Co-Founder): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shey-newitt-phd-70200b33/

About Natural Genius

The Natural Genius podcast explores how people discover and express their natural strengths, instincts, and contributions.

Through conversations with leaders, thinkers, builders, and practitioners across many fields, the podcast explores the signals that guide meaningful work and the choices that shape a life.

More at https://naturalgenius.com.au

Credits

Hosted by Samantha (Sam) Bell in Violet Town and Melbourne, 4 March, 2026.
Produced at the Violet Town and Peregian Beach offices, 4 – 16 March, 2026.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the Natural Genius Podcast. We're here to help you tap into your natural genius. Let's go. Episode three here on the Natural Genius Podcast was Lisa Gamboni, and in sharing that on LinkedIn, Claire Harb popped up with a comment. Loved this, Lisa Gamboni. It brought back great memories of working with you and Sally Calder. Seeing you both in your element encouraged me to remain authentic and compassionate as a leader and to harness the value of listening and making space for others. Lisa and Sally went on to have a nice banter there on LinkedIn. And I contacted Sally thinking it would be great to hear from her about the great ripple effects and business insights and community development work that she has done. So I'm so looking forward to having a chat with her. Enjoy hearing from Sally Calder. Sal Calder. I hope you don't I'm calling you Sal. We I can be Sam if you like. So tell us about the painting behind you there, Sal, because it's a great story.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

The painting behind me, it's actually a screen print, and you can probably can't quite see the top of it, but if you could see the top of it, it's actually a mountain range in central western New South Wales. So the screen print is called February 1991. It's by an artist called Gail English, who um was the sister of a friend of mine in Young. And it's really just a representation of what it's like in Young in February, when you know the ground is really hot and it's dry and it's crunchy, it's fast, it's yellow, and it's just getting ready for autumn rains to come, for all of those broad acres to be sown down with pasture and to spring back into life. And I've always loved it. I lived in Young for 15 years with my first husband. I had all of my children in Young. Uh, and my best friends still live in Young, so I go back all of the time, even though I'm Melbourne based. And so I've always loved that piece of work. But interestingly enough, um, I live in a lovely old um Art Deco house in Easton Kilda. And my next door neighbour who has a house that's quite similar, um, lovely people, when we when we moved in and bought the house 11 years ago, I think, I went and had a drink with her, and you would not believe it. She also has a work by Gail English, and I've never seen Gail's work anywhere else. So isn't that kind of freaky?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

I felt like it was a oh, how about being welcomed to an area or like a street that is outstanding? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then Sal, also before we hit record, I said to you in looking at your LinkedIn and your profile, you must be so proud because you have created so many ripple effects in so many ways. And you went on to talk about how you've just how you started RespectX and the journey there. So could you recap that again? I just loved hearing it.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Sure. Um, well, I think like most of us, most of us sort of, many of us don't know what we actually want to do, you know. Many of us finish school, maybe go to university, think we might know what we want to do, and but most of us are still trying to work it out. And I I speak to women all the time, you know, who are my age saying, oh gosh, I'm still trying to work out what I want to do. And I was one of those women. Um, and I was a partner at KPMG. I'd been a I've been at KPMG for a very long time. I had a very successful career. Um, and two and a half years ago, I left my partnership at KPMG to found Respect X, and we can talk about what RespectX is and what it does in a moment. But um, I was saying to you, Sam, that I didn't, there wasn't a whole lot of thought that went into it. I didn't kind of do a careful risk assessment, I didn't do a careful business plan, I didn't kind of think through, you know, the financial implications of leaving a partnership and actually founding a new tech tech business. I just knew I had to do it and I just trusted my instinct and I just trusted my guts and I was compelled to start this business. And it was only really about a year ago when I sort of started to look backwards and look at my career and look at where I started. I mean, I started as a as a research assistant to a shadow minister in federal parliament, and that story is important, and we'll get to that in a moment. But if I look at everything that I've done, I could see that actually every single part of my career had led me exactly to this point. And in fact, while some of those career decisions I'd made had just felt opportunistic and disconnected, there was a really, really strong golden thread that connected everything and brought me exactly to this point. And when I looked backwards and realized that, probably for the first time in my career, I did feel really proud of myself for two reasons. Number one, I felt proud because I'd always just kind of said yes to things that felt right. I don't know why, but I'm gonna say yes to this. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna say yes to this. It just feels right. And at the time I may not have known why, but I just trusted myself and said yes. The second reason that I felt proud was I felt proud of my courage because um it's very easy, you know, when you particularly for women, particularly for women when they reach middle age, to think, uh I mean, I don't like the term middle age. What is middle age anymore? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

I don't mean I mean 20-year-olds who feel quite well, especially because we've got longevity, longevity as a real trend at the moment. So what is middle age?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

I'm confused. I don't quite understand what middle age is, but but I think it's very easy to get to a point in your life where you feel like you want to take the safe option and you, you know, I I want to do the safe thing, and that never occurred to me. Now, I've you know, occasionally I do think, God, what was I thinking? But actually, I'm really proud of that courage. Um, and I don't quite know where that comes from either. But yeah, so they would be the two things where I have had cause to say, yeah, I actually am pretty proud of myself.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Oh, Sal, don't you think that that is just such a beautiful thing to be able to say? I wish that for more people.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so. So I think one of the lessons there's just like trust yourself, trust your gut, say yes, do what feels right, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

And this podcast, Sal, was partly created to be able to encourage that instinct and that deeper, tapping into that deeper knowing. And I've just recorded an episode with Tony, and she was saying, she was really sweet, she's about to be in Sydney, and she was saying that she trusts that she's gonna meet the right people. She's gonna meet the person in the coffee shop queue, and that in the events that she's organizing to have in Sydney, that the right people are gonna, she's gonna, she wants 50 people to turn up and she knows that that's gonna happen. And I don't say that lightly because she sounds like she just does a lot of stuff and makes things happen, so she's not sitting on her hands. Uh, but I do love, I love what you say about the golden thread, and also we don't always know what that golden thread is gonna hold, and then as you say, you find this moment in time where you look back and go, Oh, that's how it all links together.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Yeah, yeah. So I think there's something in there around being kind of um optimistic and being brave and just having a crack, you know. And I think uh I suppose one of my my concerns for um, you know, I've got five children who are all in their sort of mid-20s to early 30s, and I do see a sense of um, you know, uh maybe it feels to me like it's not quite so easy for for the next generation coming through to kind of just be a bit brazen. Um, I feel like we didn't have that much choice when we were, you know, at school at university, like you just sort of had to be brazen. It was a competitive world back then. So yeah, I don't know. I think I think um saying yes, trusting yourself, having a crack, I think if you kind of follow that, things will emerge.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Oh Sal, I love your words. And I also want to mention your LinkedIn because in reading it, in preparing for this, I just loved use words like I'm passionate about creating places where we work, study, and play to be to also be places that enrich us and help us to be better humans, more curious, kind, courageous, clever, and compassionate. Those five words together, Sal. I mean, go you good things. Well, how do you do that, Sal? Tell me.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Well, um, so let's talk about RespectX. So RespectX is a it's an it's a digital online reporting platform for anyone to put their hand up and say, you know what, I've seen or I've experienced something, it doesn't feel okay. I want to say something because I want somebody to actually intervene and and make this stock. So it's basically it's an end-to-end complaints management system, but it's it's much more than that. It's uh it's really using, making it safe and simple for people to say, hey, that's not okay. And it's using kind of reporting, early anonymous reporting as a way to change culture and to make cultures all of those things, workplaces kinder, more compassionate, more creative, more curious. And we know, I mean, the global evidence is absolutely unquestioned. No one can perform at their best if they don't feel safe, if they don't feel respected, and if they don't feel included. So if you think about, well, what are the things that make me feel unsafe or make me feel disrespected or make me feel like I don't belong, we've all had experiences of that. And and um, that's what we're trying to stop. We we really, I mean, I've spent my career, my entire career, working with people who've been victims or survivors of something. And I suppose what happened for me was I just got to, you know, my late 50s thinking, oh Jesus Christ, I've been doing this stuff for 40 years. And we actually have not moved the dial on the rate at which people are harmed at work or at university in this country. Despite having some of the toughest legislation and the toughest regulatory frameworks and requirements for workplaces and universities in the world, one in three Australian workers will still experience some kind of harm at work every year. Every year, one in three, as a result of bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault, discrimination, racial vilification. Number has not moved at all. One in five university students will experience sexual harassment or sexual assault during their time at university, one in five. I mean, that's just unacceptable. And despite all the work that we've been doing, people are still not reporting, they're still not putting their hands up. In fact, at universities, only 8% of people ever say I was assaulted, I was harassed, right? And the why don't they put their hand up? They haven't put their hand up because it's not simple enough and they can't do it safely, they can't do it anonymously. So um, we really wanted to like for me, I just got to a point where I thought that is such bullshit. And I don't want a world in which people can't just do and be their best. So, what can I do to make it easier for people to put their hand up? So that's that's kind of the story of why we why we built Respect X and why? Because, you know, Samantha, you and I, we're gonna spend most of our life at work. Um most of us, I don't know about you, but I've worked every day of my life since I was 22. Um, that's and I'm 62, so that's 40 years. So apart from a few months of maternity leave with each of those children, I've worked every day of my life. And yes, I work into it for financial reward. But if I most of my life at work, I want more than money. I want to I want to make some friends, I want to actually grow and develop, I want to have some fun, I want to contribute something, I want to feel good about what I'm doing. I've got that workplace to actually help me become a better human. And better human for me means kinder, more curious, more compassionate, and cleverer. So, what can I do to actually give everyone that exhibit. Whether you're working on a factory floor or whether you're running a global company, we all should have that opportunity. So, how can we basically stop the shit so people can get on and have to? That's that's why I do what I do.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

So that is extraordinary. Tell me how did you decide that this was the solution versus any other solution that you might have come up with?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

So um can I go back to the very beginning and oh my gosh, yes, uh leaders.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

So my very first job out of university was um at Fed in Federal Parliament, actually the old Parliament House, that's how old I am. It was the last couple of years in the old parliament house, and I was a research assistant, essentially, um advisor to a shadow minister, then minister when there was a change of government.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

What did you study at uni?

SPEAKER_00 14:16

I I did an arts law degree. Um I only was interested in politics. Uh yes and no. I was actually far more interested in Australian literature, actually, which is what I did my master's degree, and I didn't ever finish my law degree. I was a I was a terrible legal student and would have been a terrible lawyer, I suspect. But but that's what I went off to do. Um, changed course halfway through, did a master's of Australian literature, thought, what am I going to do? Started working in politics. Because I think politics is a great kind of training ground, actually. Now, interestingly enough, um, so I was in Parliament House in the mid-80s, and um and it was a pretty wild show, let me tell you, it was a bubble. And what went on at on the on the hill stayed on the hill. And people flew in from around Australia for two weeks of sitting time, all sorts of things went on, people went back to home base and it never happened, right? Now, when we were building RespectX, the Brittany Higgins story broke. And I remember designing RespectX and saying to my colleagues, oh my god, 38 years after I was working in Parliament House, nothing has changed. And that to me was a real sign. Like what, like, you know, the sign that we're not making enough progress. We're not making enough progress quickly. So that's sort of the beginning of the story. I then spent, uh, when I left that uh Parliament House, I spent 10 years running primary health care services in rural and remote New South Wales. So I ran child, child sexual assault services, child protection services, rape crisis services, domestic violence, all that sort of stuff. I sort of saw what deep lack of opportunity looks like. I I worked with victims of child sexual assault, um, victims of sexual assault and their families for 10 years of my life. Um, and I suppose that was the first time in my life that I worked with people who were potentially the third or fourth generation of in their family who'd been unemployed. So, you know, you get really up close with what does lack of opportunity actually create. Um, I then worked in local government in Victoria and again worked in that kind of human service delivery, and again just saw um some people had lots of opportunity, other people didn't have enough opportunity. So, how could we kind of level the playing field? These are what we can draw. When I went to KPMG, I spent a lot of my um my career was around going into organizations which had had some kind of what I call a reputational failure, but it was usually some kind of a scandal. So there'd been sexual harassment or there'd been some kind of you know problem. And invariably you would go in and look at okay, what went on, why did it go on, what could we do to stop it? And it's always the same thing. It's always, it's not, you know, there's power imbalances, there's traditionally embedded hierarchies, there's traditionally embedded cultural norms. Uh, it's not safe for people to actually put their hand up and say something's not okay. When those people do, they're victimized, their lives are made worse as a result of them saying something, nothing happens anyway, and their story is never kept private. So why would they? And this just was the recurrent story and the recurrent evidence over and over and over again. And actually, my one of the last pieces of work I did at Heavy MG was for a global mining company, and they asked me to do uh a review of the global reporting platforms that were available. And when you looked at what was there, the traditional kind of whistleblowing platforms, they're they're not designed to be simple, they're not designed to make it safe and easy for people to say simply, hey, this happened to me, it's not okay, can you make it stop? So, and you know, and and we know that unless people report, unless you know early that something's going on, you're never going to have the data you need to be able to stop it. So for me, it was just so blatantly obvious. If we could get reporting rates up, if we could make more people put their hand up and put their hand up earlier before things had escalated and gotten out of control, uh, if we could do that, we had a chance of actually really starting to break the back of what too many people are prepared to accept is just the way things are around here. That's bullshit. We've got to stop that. So um I knew that making uh that building a reporting platform that made it simple and safe was the was the the thing to do, and that's what we've done. And it's working. And tell me more.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Tell me about it's working. That it, I mean, I'm just fascinated. Keep talking, please.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

So um so my co-founder, Shay knew it, and I, and Shay worked with me at KPMG. She's a broniac, amazing woman. Um, she's got a PhD in governance and ethics, she's all about the research. She's all about, okay, this is great. We've built this amazing platform, but we need the evidence to demonstrate that it's actually doing what we promise it will do. We promise that RespectX will prevent bad behavior and it will prevent people getting hurt as a result. That's our promise to the world. Um, so she's all about collecting the data to demonstrate that that is actually happening. Um, so uh tell you about RespectX. So we um seriously did not ever envisage ourselves as tech startup founders, who I always thought were 20-year-olds in skinny jeans and sneakers. But guess what? Turns out that they're they can also be six-year-olds um in skinny jeans. I like a good high-waisted wear myself, but a bit of a bit of a heal.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Uh just to give you a sort of thing. I love that. Let's get fashion clear on this.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Well, let's change the stereotype because I was just up in um at the what I some people call the uh nerd hotel up off of Singapore, and uh I was the eldest there, and I wasn't a tech bro. So yeah, I hear you.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yeah, so um we we really just started from a place of okay, we want to we had five design principles when we kind of sat down with a blank piece of paper and thought how are we going to build something? And our five design principles were number one, safety. We wanted to be able to ensure that whoever picked up their phone to make a report on the Spectex would be safe. So that was number one. Number two, simplicity. It had to be super simple. Our design brief was you had to be able to turn your back on a conversation and make a report in under 20 seconds. So safety, simplicity, number three, compassion. Compassion is our shorthand for person-centric and trauma-informed. Um, I've spent 40 years working with victim survivors and their families. So when people say person-centered victim, uh trauma-informed, that's the that's the world that I come from. It's the job that I've done for all of my career. Um, and I can talk more about that if you like. So, compassion, number five, it had to be compliant. So, it had to take the fear for employers and and other people away from God. I'll get it wrong. There's so many new pieces of legislation. How do I know what to do? We wanted to make it really easy for people to be compliant. And number five, we wanted to base it on common sense. Like, you know, most people don't want to go through a complicated investigation, a complicated process. Traumatic in itself. They just want to say, hey, something's happening. It's not okay. And they want it to stop. So we wanted to bring some common sense to this conversation as well. So let's keep it safe, let's keep it simple, compassionate, compliant, and build it on common sense. So we start from a place of principles. Those design principles, we really just we just built, we designed a tech solution. We designed what the workflows would look like, what would look and feel like for the person making the report, but also for the person on the other side, the case manager. You know, most organizations want to do the right thing. They try best to do the right thing. So how can we make it all of those design principles had to apply to the the back end, the employer case manager as well? So we did for workflows, we found an extraordinary um young developer who came in and built the tech for us. He is he's now the CTO in our company. He's a rock star. Um we've got a development team that worked with him now of amazing, amazing, um, amazing women uh who work with our C. So yeah, that it was it was um it was Shay and I um writing it down the workflows on paper, and it was um this incredible young developer building it for us. And we really we went out very early on in when we really just had a an embryotic product. We had amazing, amazing, amazing early adopter um clients. So North Melbourne Football Club were, I think, actually our first ever client, and they, you know, I mean, have they have been the most amazing client, they are so incredibly committed to North Melbourne Football Club being a place of safety and respect where everyone can do and be their best. Extraordinary chair, CEO, and chief people officer, three great women. Um, and you know, look at the success that they've had in the AFLW, by the way, with under Darren, an extraordinary coach. Like, really, I look back on that now and think, oh god, North Melbourne Football Club, thank you so much, because we were brand new. But we had some other great early clients, so the Australian Association of National Advertisers, great, great peak body. Um, through them, actually, we were connected to Nestle. You know, Nestle, a global, the biggest food and beverage manufacturer in the world. Nestle, uh client of ours, um, they use us across Oceania. We're talking to them about a broader global rollout. So it was just really um that we was we we we've always had so much belief um that what we're doing is the right thing. We've always believed that our respect is the best solution out there. And when you just it's really about finding people who are passionate about creating workplaces and places of study where people can do and be their best, you just connect with those people.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

So I'm so very impressed. If something in this conversation lit you up, there's a signal in that. If you want help tuning your own signal into a clear next move, start with a three-minute signal check-in at naturalgenius.com.au. And if you want focused support, book a signal lab and we'll work through it together. Now back to the natural genius. There's so many other things I want to get to in terms of insights you can share. I want to just drill down a little bit more with RespectX for the moment. So you were saying that you're having great outcomes. Tell me the sort of things that you're really proud of from I mean, I love hearing the story as well in terms of how the team's built and how the tech was built and the designing, because that sounds so impressive as well. So tell me a bit more about what you're seeing about moving the dial that was so important to you as it its conception.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

So we started RespectX with one clear purpose, and that was to stop the shit. That's our purpose. We just want to stop the shit. Now, how do you do that?

SPEAKER_01 26:06

So we're gonna have to put explicit content on YouTube, thanks to you.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Sorry. Um, I'll come back to that. It's actually quite a good story about stop the shit. I'll come back to it. Remind me.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

I'm sounding, I'm sounding uh unimpressed, but I'm laughing at the same time, Sal. So please keep on it.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Um we trade as RespectX, but our our um our registered company name is actually STS Safety P T Y L T D, and STS stands for stop the shift. Um, and I'll I'll come back to that.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Um firecracker. Keep going, please.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

So the first thing is, you know, you've got to get real about this stuff. You can't just stick a you know, I'm I'm sticking in a reporting platform job, job done. Actually, if you want to do this properly, you've got to be prepared to understand, first of all, you've got to understand what is actually going on in our company. What is the actual rate of bad behavior that people are experiencing? You know, what is really, what's our baseline? Because you're only doing you're only doing this for two reasons. Number one, you're doing it to drive bad behavior down, so reduce prevalence. One reason you're doing it is because you're trying to drive trust up. So if people feel safe and if people trust you, they will perform better and everybody wins. So, you know, in this field, the field of gender-based violence, the field of um psychosocial behavior, risk and harm, there's a so much measurement of activity. And that's all bullshit, actually. There are only two numbers that matter. And the first number is what's our prevalence? Is it going down? The second number is how safe do people feel and how much do they trust us, and is that going up? Everything else is just noise. So the first thing that we do when we go into an organization is when we onboard that organization, we, as part of the onboard process, we do collect prevalence data. So we can go back to every organization, two days of onboarding them, and say, this is the rate, this is the how this is the percentage of people in your business who have experienced sexual harassment or assault in the last 12 months, who've experienced bullying in the last 12 months, have experienced discrimination in the last 12 months. This is the percentage of people who made a report about that. This is the uh percentage of people who feel like people trust one another in this organization. This is how much they trust you, and this is how many people agree that we treat one another with respect.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

And Sal, sorry to interject. Tell me, how do you get that data when the ways may not be safe yet?

SPEAKER_00 28:50

So when we are onboarding, the onboard process is it's a series of five or six kind of interactive videos that people can watch on their phones or on their on a laptop. When they're going through the process, that we ask them a bunch of questions and they just answer yes or no, yes or no, yes or no, and then we collate the data at the end. So they can't actually finish the onboard training without it just answering those questions as we go through the process. So we we train people about what's legal in this country, what does sexual harassment actually mean? What does bullying look like? What does you know, racial? Um, what does the legislation say? Why is reporting important? How does reporting make us all safer? They go through the process of making a report. We ask so it's basically a required part of the onboard process, and 100% of people in every organization have to go through it, so we get unproductive participation data. So that's how we get the prep data. And so we have that data now. We've been in the in the market for about two and a half years, so nearly three years actually. So we've now got that data from the organizations that have been with us from the very beginning. So at you know, that every 12 months we rerun that process and we can say to organizations, this is what your prevalence was last year, this is what your prevalence is this year. A really good example is um we've got a retail client in Melbourne, they've got five retail outlets, they employ around about 90 people. The people that they employ are mainly international students. So if you think about all that vulnerability around English is not first language, um, so their prevalence of the prevalence of um harm in that business was right on the industry average. So 38% of their people had experienced some form of sexual harassment, bullying, discrimination or sexual assault in the last 12 months. When we re-ran their survey, 12 months later, the number had reduced to 6%. Um so that was in one year, and that was in an organization, small organization, but an organization with lots of you know, lots of kind of vulnerable um factors in it. We're just about to, and I I can't I can't share this with you yet, but um in the next two weeks we will we will share the prevalence data um that has come out of all of our university residential colleges. So around about 38, I think about 90% of the independent university colleges in Australia use Respect X. We know that the prevalence of um harm in those colleges last year was 21%. So 10% of people had been sexually harassed or assaulted, 6% of people had been bullied, 5% had experienced discrimination, only 8% had made a report. We're about to release the results 12 months later. Um, and I'll just give you a heads up that it's it's it's gone right down. The other thing that I will say to you is that in those colleges, 98% of students say we trust that our leaders are serious about our safety now that RespectX has been implemented. So if you can if you can actually make people feel that they can trust you, that you are serious about their safety, you are serious about their respect, you can sort of change the conversation. And we just have so many stories and so much evidence from all, you know, we've got we've got all sorts of clients. We've got clients in health, in sport, in technology, in lots of university clients. And we've got so many stories around things like, you know, health. Health is a great example, like lots of power imbalances, senior specialists, junior nurses, you know, all that kind of traditional stuff. So many stories where people say, you know what, um the mere fact that we've got Respect X around, we've got this branding everywhere, it's really making people think twice. It's making them just take a pause and step back and think before they act for two reasons. Number one, it's a constant reminder of how we want them to behave. But number two, it's a constant reminder of how easy it is for someone to make an anonymous report, and that in and of itself is changing behavior. So, you know, we have we have health clients where very soon after we were implemented, a junior trainee doctor made a report about bullying behavior from a senior specialist. And the health service said to us, oh my God, that never happens. That that just never happens. So it's about changing, it's about changing culture, it's about making people understand that it's totally safe to say, you know what, that's not okay. It's also about making other people think, you know what, actually, I'm gonna be held to account. I'm gonna held to be, I better, I better watch myself, I better think about the impact I'm having on other people. You know what, honestly, half the time, if you can just make people stop and take a pause and have a think about what they're about to do and how it's gonna land for someone else, that's half the battle.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Sal, you must feel so proud of the last two, three years that is exceptional.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

We didn't do this for fun, although we're having a lot of fun. We did it that we did it to make a difference, we did it to put an end. The stuff that we've just all kind of accepted is just how things always have always been, and therefore how things will all will always be. And that's you don't have to accept that. And here's the thing, right? If you can actually start to change what is accepted as normal in the workplace of university, you can start to impact what is accepted as okay in the whole of our community, and that's what we want to do. I mean, God almighty, we're living in a country where one woman gets killed every week by a current or former intimate partner. When are we going to actually start to say that's not okay? We need, I mean, we're saying it, but when are we gonna start to see change? If you can start to change it at work, at school at uni, you can start to impact more broadly. And I really believe, Sam, um, because we work with so many um, you know, higher education clients, so we we've got all these users of RespectX who are aged between 18 and 22. And when you kind of ask them, because they all say, you know, my we've got, I think the numbers, 97% of our university clients say, I would completely and totally make a report on RespectX. I'd absolutely make a report on RespectX if something happened to me or I saw something. We say, Why, why, why are you because traditionally only 8% of people have reported, so why are 97% of you doing it? They say, because it's the right thing to do. So I feel unbelievably positive and hopeful and optimistic. And the generation who are coming through now are the generation who want to be the ones to actually change what we have thought was unchangeable. And how amazing is that? If we can play a small part in giving them an instrument or a way to do that, then then I will feel like the 40 years that I've spent in the workforce have not been for nothing.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

And Sal, you're giving a channel for brazen activity. Brazen the next generation.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Yes, because you know, I was just talking to somebody before our call actually this morning about female rage or something.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Oh, it's of the time. I was talking about that with somebody just yesterday.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

And I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure that there's, you know, well, we all know that male rage is a thing, but female rage, and what what is that about? Where does that come from? Well, we all know where it comes from and what it's about. But actually, how can you um none of us want to feel like the wild women shaking the chains and and having no we want to be able to channel our collective rage about the unacceptable into a way that's constructive and into a way that makes a difference? And because I think personally, I'm all for rage. I love a bit of rage. I think rage is fantastic, it's one of my superpowers. I think rage, you know, rage, there's so much energy and adrenaline and force for change that comes with rage. But if you channel it in a way that is impactful and and enabling and constructive, and so that's what we've tried, that's what we're doing with respect to the vehicle to say no, stop, that's not okay. Yeah, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

And so when we use the word rage, sometimes it can conjure up violence or other kind of uh dare I say, negative kind of connotations. But really, I love the way that you say it, it's about channeling it and in constructive ways.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Rage for rage for good, rage for change, rage against the unacceptable and and rage for rage around making um you know, eradicating what is no longer, but what what rage for eradicating what's never been okay. But the, you know, God, there is so much energy that can be harnessed um through rage. And then it's not that far removed from joy, actually, if you think about it, you know, like an unbridled joy and unleashed rage. There's only a little bit of separation there. So I feel like in respect, it's we bring them all together.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Yeah, and uh I was talking with Annie Faulkner recently, and she was saying that with her exec uh coaching out of Berlin, she does a lot in listening for what's on the other side of conflict out of rage or conflict, what is the beauty and what is the joy that can come from it? Hey, I want to do a hat tip to our dear friend Lisa Gamboni, because I in this conversation and listening to you, Sal, I'm so, so grateful that you and her were chatting on LinkedIn so that we can have this conversation because I'm so very impressed. What are the sort of standard or constants that come through regularly that you pass on to others?

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Oh god, look, no one is the queen of the one-liner like Lisa Gamboni, can I say? I mean, she is the queen of the one one liner, and and it it is the thing that I have loved in her, I I love in her the most. And and and I I can say this now that neither of us are at KPMG, but she used to always talk about how when we were at KPMG and we were, you know, bidding for very big chunky pieces of work that we were reassuringly expensive, which used to always let me roar with laughter. Often the concepts that we're dealing with or the challenges that we're trying to resolve are really complicated. They're really complicated. And and I not for a moment do I try and dumb down the complexity of the challenges that contemporary businesses are trying to resolve. But I do think that one of the best leadership traits that you can have is to kind of make the complex simple and then make the simple compelling. You know, if you can do that, you know, we were change management consultants, so it was all around how did you actually get people on board with a completely different way of doing things, which is hard, right? But often if you can actually make the complex challenge or the complex opportunity simple and then make that simplicity a really compelling story, then I think if you can do that as a leader, you will create followership. People will want to be part of that with you, right? But I think that is probably the number one gift. You know, people always talk about being a great communicator. Well, a great communicator is someone who can make the complex simple, make the simple compelling, give people this kind of powerful reason to follow them, believe them, do what it takes to get on board with them. And I see so many people who are unable to, particularly as the world gets more complicated. I mean, if one person writes one more article about AI, I'm gonna drop dead. But so it is we're living in in really complex. Please don't, Sal. Somebody turn your social media off. I won't, I won't read it at all. I'm not reading it now. But you know, um, we are living in complex times, increasingly complex times, and the rate of change is faster and faster. So the people that can kind of hover above that and actually make create some simple but compelling vision of the future and and show people how they've got a how they can contribute to that or where their their piece in in that puzzle be. I think that's a probably the most powerful thing. I mean, I think the other thing that I just get astonished by, I used to be astonished by, and I suppose you know, we're in that that blissful early adopter bubble in RespectX. So, you know, we're we're riding a rocket ship at the moment with with early adopters who want to be part of the Respect X story. Now, at some point, um, you know, we might need to move to the layer below, which is the um, you know, that the people who aren't the early adopters. But with that, with our early adopters, they're all people who care deeply about creating a workplace where people feel safe, feel respected, and they want to do it. It's that it's core to who they are as the leaders. So one of the things that I I'm often surprised by is um not many leaders understand that the job of leadership, most of the job of leadership, is to constantly be in conversation with your people about what are we doing, why are we doing it, and how do we want to do that together. And it's the how do we want to do that together. You know, people talk about culture change. Actually, if your leaders are having that conversation every day, how do we want to do this together? And holding people, holding people to account when they step out of what's okay, and making sure the same rules apply to everyone. And that's the struggle, that's the thing that people struggle with the most, and we can come back to that. Because honestly, if I was to say to you, the number one mistake that I see organizations make in the space of culture, safety, respect is different rules for different players. So if you're a high fee earning partner in a law firm or in a consulting firm, guess what? Often there'll be some different rules for you. Often the rules will be bent a bit for you. And that's not okay. The moment someone sees that a different rule has applied to someone else, you've lost all kind of credibility about what really matters around here. So I think you know, leaders who can make the complex simple, make the simple compelling, very, very clear expectations about this is what we're here for, this is why, and this is how we're going to do it together. And then leaders who can make sure that everyone has the same conditions to do the how, to work in the way that we've promised. And number four, leaders who actually make sure everyone is held to the same, the same, um, the same standards and that uh that there are no special rules, that the same rules apply to everyone. They would be observations around um, you know, the real the job, the job of leadership, really.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

And the tips that you would pass on to others that uh have regularly come up or the things that you've often seen that people could do better.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I think there's a lot to be said for those kind of there's a lot to be said actually for the the the design principles of Respect X, you know, safety, passion, common sense, and compliance. So um I think, you know, I'm I'm not for not for a moment am I saying that the job of leadership or the job that leaders have in Australia at the moment or anywhere at the moment are not super tough, but but what I am saying is if you kind of have a strong sense of the principles that that guide your leadership practice, I've got a really sense of what mine are. If you've got a strong sense of that and if you apply those consistently every day, then um you'll be okay.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

Oh Sal, I wish you the best. I think that what you've designed and what you've felt compelled to create and the principles, the values, the way that you're doing it, and uh that you're getting the outcomes, that you've got metrics being tracked so that you can prove it to the rational uh desirees in the room. It's just may the flow and may the ease be there for you, because it sounds like as much as you're having the joy of early adopters, it to me sounds like a really great uh truth philosophy coming through for many people to gain from.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

We had this really cool thing happen last week, Sam, where um I had a phone call from a a small um uh food and beverage manufacturer in Tasmania. And they rang me up and said, Oh, look, you know, can we have a look at Respective X? And I went, sure. And so I showed them Respectix and I said, Hey, how did you hear about us? And they said, Oh, well, one of our employees who's recently moved from the mainland was working at Nestle, and Nestle have, you know, that you're a client, and we had an issue, something happened in one of our factories, and and she came to us and said, Hey, when I was at Nestle, we had we had this thing called Respect X, and we could just like let you know. And and and it was the thing I loved about that, or it wasn't a leader coming to me saying, you know, I read about this in a journal or I saw it at a conference. It was uh an employee saying, Hey, I had this at my last work and it was great, and we should have it here. Like that's I guess what we're what what we're trying to create is we're not trying to build a business, Sam, we're trying to build a movement, and we want that to be a movement that um is really that that comes from from employees and from students and from people everywhere who say, Hey, we actually want to be able to, this feels really, really like a basic right to us, and you know, it it's really uncool not to have RespectX available.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

And so I want to be respectful of your time. Tell me, is there anything else that you want to say at the close of this?

SPEAKER_00 48:29

No, no, thank you for having me. Um, it's nice to have a chance to just kind of reflect on what we've done and and how we've done it. And um yeah, and it's no nothing.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Sal, I've uh I've said it repetitively through this conversation. I'm ever so impressed. I've I am one of your new cheerleaders and supporters, and it certainly sounds to me like this is going to be, in a way, an easy sell. I know that there's a lot that goes into creating an easy sell and having the solution constantly being what you need it to be and getting in contact with people and spreading the good word and doing the good work. And uh yeah, again, thanks to Lise Camboni for putting us together. What a rock star. Um thank you, Stan. Thanks for listening to the Natural Genius Podcast. Please share this with anyone who came to mind and visit us at naturalgenus.com.au. Thanks so much.