Her Magazine is New Zealand’s only women’s business lifestyle magazine! Her Magazine highlights the achievements of successful and rising New Zealand businesswomen. Her Magazine encourages a healthy work/life balance.
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/49418
her inspiration Ruler of the board How to position yourself for the top shelf ARE YOU PREPARING FOR a new board or committee role? Chances are you are needed to fill a space someone left empty or vacated due to the long hours or the headaches! Few roles are as demanding in a company as a board position. That said, the opportunity provides an ideal venue to understand a company, its operations and its challenges. For some 'serial board members' an apparent lust for punishment could be confused with an innate duty to serve. This is evident in one such SBM, Sue Sheldon, who believes that leadership is in our DNA, and if nurtured properly can reward dedicated individuals with sought-after headship. Sue is a professional company director – in short, her full time job is to oversee the affairs of five of this country's largest organisations. Sue is the chairman of Freightways Limited and Chorus Limited, and a director of Contact Energy Limited, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and Paymark Limited – positions that she has earned after years of service in accounting and business. "I am often asked to speak to groups about how to become a director on a board and I don't think it's that simple," Sue tells. "One of the key attributes is having strong commercial experience. 24 | December/January 2012 | HER MAGAZINE What I mean by that is involvement in running businesses that have been successful or assisting clients with significant transactions. It's not sufficient to think you can stop a role and automatically become a director, because there are not a lot of roles in New Zealand. People who have come out of a professional practice advising on family law or something relatively narrow in its field would need to take quite a step up to land a commercial directorship, but people who have been in a CEO position for a large company often make good directors because of their breadth and depth." That said, Sue supports, more than most, the gift of a giving someone a chance – experienced or not. Sue's first director's role came in 1997 when she was offered the opportunity to put her name forward for the board of Christchurch International Airport – a position she held for over a decade. "The airport has always been owned 75 percent by Christchurch and 25 percent by the Crown, which makes the chairman's role rather difficult at times. Chairmans in the public sector don't feel like they have much choice – they're often handed their directors on a plate by the people who make such appointments, but this chairman was prepared to have a 'greenfields' director and the