Books
Both written to be used, not just read.

Team culture
The conversations you need to create the team you want.
My first manager told me I was responsible for the culture. Responsible?I wasn’t even sure I knew what it was. This is the book I needed that day: the conversations that build a team’s culture by design, built on a national study of over a thousand people leaders and the teams they lead.
It has five conversations in it. The work since has taught me a sixth, and the model pageis where that lives. The book is still where I’d start.
Organizational culture’s built through words and actions. This book shows you the conversations you need to spark the behaviour you want to create the culture you desire.
In Let’s Talk Culture, Shane manages to do what many culture experts cannot. That is to simplify the complexity that is culture. Full of stories and insights, Shane unpacks the 5 conversations about culture that every leader should have with their team. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to create a culture worth belonging to.
Although leaders intuitively know that culture is key to the success of their organizations and the well-being of their employees, it is a notoriously slippery construct. Shane helps leaders gain traction by distilling a broad set of research findings and ideas into compelling frameworks, providing concrete examples of practices others have followed, and offering practical advice for putting the ideas into action. I would highly recommend this book to any leader embarking on a large-scale program of culture change.
Culture is a tricky beast, but one that’s so critical to get right in any organisation who wants to do best for both their teams and their customers. Shane has done a great job in demystifying and making the case for the role of a people leader in defining, building, changing, and strengthening culture. It’s full of practical questions and actions all leaders should be asking themselves and their teams.
Great stuff from Shane, who not only decodes culture, but also provides the data that senior managers require to fund its investment of time and money and the practical insights necessary to do it well, every time.
It’s true that the best storytelling wins but the leader who knows how to talk about culture helps the entire team win. In this engaging and entertaining book, Shane has crafted the roadmap for exactly how to have those critical conversations that will help you craft the kinds of culture everyone is talking about. I wish I’d had this book when I started my managerial journey 20 years ago. If you’re charged with managing others, this book is the companion you’ve been looking for.
What I love about Shane’s book is he really gets to the heart of what drives culture and, through learning from some of the best places to work in Australia, shares with us some of the key actions leaders can take to influence and shape the culture they aspire to. Most of what I have learnt as a leader has been through trial and error and many years of experience. I wish I had read books like this earlier in my career.
Shane paints a wonderfully vivid narrative of culture as a language we can all learn to speak, even if our dialects are slightly different. As the leader of an integrated health system, this book will aid me in building a more inclusive team to better care for the increasingly diverse communities we serve.
As a leader, any leader, how do you comprehend something you can see, feel and experience everyday, yet struggle to explain to anyone outside of it? You have a conversation. Many conversations. Let’s Talk Culture is the ‘many conversations’ every leader who wants to be intentional about culture must first have with themselves. Shane skilfully weaves hundreds of impressions together and casually, yet pragmatically offers the blueprint to growing a culture that lives, is inclusive, and wins.
Leadership communication
Communicate a message that counts in moments that matter.
In the moments that really matter, people don’t look for something to inform them. They look for someone to lead them. This is about being that person without pretending to be someone you’re not.
It’s my first book, and the origin of a line that still runs through everything I do: intent before content. Work out what you want people to think, feel and do before you work out what to say.

At the heart of great leadership is great communication. In Lead The Room, Shane brings this truth into the spotlight with infectious energy and enthusiasm. Shane’s personal and relatable, story-driven style means you can’t help but enjoy this book. More than that, no matter where you are in your leadership journey, you can’t help but learn from it.
We don’t need more eloquent speakers we need more authentic communicators. We need to give more focus to our character and content than we do our form and delivery. Thank you, Shane, for providing a tool to encourage that.
This is best Australian book on leadership and speaking that I have ever read. Taking a topic that scares most people, Shane creates a model to help people succeed in leading a team, the room, a conference facility and probably even the MCG. It is easy reading if you want to be a great leader then this book is guaranteed to help.
In a noisy world where people are constantly challenged with how to grab attention to deliver important messages to gain essential engagement and positioning, leadership matters more than ever. This book is smart, written by a credible leader, packaged in a way that shows you why, what and how. Don’t delay: study this, action this and lead the room powerfully.
Lead the Room uses easy to understand models and concepts to illustrate the interconnection between leadership and communication. The personalised narrative compels you to want to be a better leader and the practical techniques give you a process to be a better communicator. The book is a wonderful blend of intellect and emotion, both in the way it is told and the content that is covered. Emerging and experienced leaders will benefit from reading this.
Shane’s book is a refreshing and necessary read in a world where many leaders are struggling to connect their messages with the people they lead. This book genuinely connected with me as a CEO leading transformation. This book will be one that I continue to use as a leader and one that I purchase for those that I coach.
For leaders to be seen and heard they don’t just need to know how to build a platform they also need to know how to lead from it. Great leaders speak into the hearts and minds of the people they care for. In Lead the Room Shane shows you how.
Some teams read the book together before an offsite. Some organisations buy a copy for every people leader. Tell me what you’re thinking and I’ll tell you what’s possible.