Profile Series
Poppy Griffiths
Director and Founder of UnlimitU
Why do you do what you do? What motivates you to help women achieve their highest potential?
Building exceptional relationships, motivating positive change and supporting people to thrive is where my greatest career satisfaction lies. We all have limitless potential, often held back, hidden or still in the making. This is the ‘why’ behind UnlimitU, a high performance consultancy I launched in 2021. Our vision is to enable human potential everyday, unlimited, so more people can improve their performance with greater happiness and confidence. Women in particular too often fall off the leadership ladder, and in Australia too few women are being afforded the opportunity to propel forwards in their career with only 14% women in pipeline roles into senior executive roles in the ASX300. We need to stop the ‘leaky tap’ and support more courageous and talented women to rise confidently
Having held senior roles at Swisse and Qantas, what led you to where you are now?
I’ve had the fortune to work for some great global businesses over the last 15 years as a senior leader working in marketing and communications, strategic partnerships and workplace wellness. I love people and with a background in psychology I have a passion for human behaviour. I also love the dynamic and fast-paced business environment. I’m a big believer that beyond technical skills, our human skills are the most important assets we each have in life that allows us to achieve not only success, but great wellbeing and great relationships. My career has been built on always investing in people and my human skills, and it’s a privilege for me to package up all this non-linear career pathway, and now have my own high performance consultancy, UnlimitU, which helps many people and organisations achieve greater success with happiness.
What are some of the most common challenges your private clients come to you with? What are the most prevalent barriers to achieving fulfilment and success?
On an individual level, everyone has a different story, and is seeking a unique pathway, but the challenges are often universal. Lack of clarity on career ambitions, lack of confidence to make positive change, lack of strategies and a plan to achieve goals, strong desire for greater personal growth and leadership advancement, improvements in positive mental wellbeing. Some of the barriers that stand in our way are our deeply engrained biases, our unproductive habits, our negative mind talk. Often it's a misalignment to our core values or simply not knowing what are natural strengths are, and how to better use them. We too often do not take the time to invest in our own growth, our goals feel unclear and we don’t clearly plan for what we want, and how we can step by step successfully get there.
How does UnlimitU, your high performance consultancy support businesses?
UnlimitU works in partnership with organisations and their leaders and teams, to support better inclusion, leadership and wellbeing endeavours and outcomes. We deliver coaching, workshops and speaker programs to support the career-life success of working parents, the personal and leadership development of women and the positive mental wellbeing of everyone.
What is the untapped value or greatest opportunity that your clients can unlock through your coaching?
I pride myself on building exceptional trusting relationships with those I work with. Our partnership is always solution and action focused. I support people to gain clarity on what they want, and challenge them to stretch their thinking so they can generate game-changing insights. Always grounded in science, I equip people with simple strategies that improves their performance and wellbeing in their professional and personal lives. I promise energy, motivation and 100% commitment to your results. I’ll always keep it real with warmth and humour.
Why is courage and vulnerability so highly valued in professional settings now? Why should we make these qualities a priority for our own personal development?
Being able to show up when you can’t control the outcome, this is courage. Risking it when it may go wrong, and getting back up bravely when it does, this is courage. So how do we make our first commitment to being more courageous? We be vulnerable. How do we become brave leaders and build courageous cultures. We be vulnerable. Today, businesses, leaders and people face complex, rapidly changing environments, with long lists of challenges and an insatiable demand for innovation. So what gets in the way of organisations succeeding? Top rank things include, avoiding tough conversations, eroding trust due to lack of connection and empathy, not sharing bold new ideas for fear of ridicule, organisation values being measured in aspirations rather than by our human behaviours. What sits under these examples, are deeply human issues. Succeeding in today’s world, as a business, leader, team or individual, requires us to stare down these human issues. This begins with courage, and best of all it’s a learned skill, and begins with vulnerability. Courage and vulnerability are vital for the future of work, and invaluable to leadership & our own human success.