To celebrate International Women’s Day 2024, we sat down with our Founder, Elouise Paul, to find out more about her career, her pathway to leadership, and the challenges she’s faced as a female in recruitment.
Where it all started: ‘falling’ into leadership
Elouise said she’s always been in a leadership role, ever since her first job. In fact, she actively tried to leave it – only to be sucked back in each time.
“I became a team leader when I was about 16, and every time I’ve tried to move away from leadership since then I’ve always fallen back into it,” she laughed. “I thought that was what I wanted.”
She joined the recruitment industry, then into marketing, each time determined to stay out of leadership (“I thought that was the dream”), and each time finding her way back – first as a National Manager, then as a Managing Director!
People loved having Elouise as their leader, and soon the cogs finally aligned.
“I decided that I wanted something that was mine,” she explained, “something that I could build off my own values. That’s how I started three sixty digital.”
So, in Elouise’s eyes, what makes a good leader?
1. Adapting to different relationships
Elouise prides herself on her ability to adapt to different people’s personalities, a trait, she said, is utterly key to great leadership.
“You can’t treat every person the same way,” she explained. “If you take a blanket approach, if you don’t adapt, it’s much harder to be successful.”
For example, Elouise asks clients during onboarding how they’d like to be communicated with. Then she’s able to adapt her style to suit.
2. Losing the ego
“No one can be a successful leader if they lead with ego. It just absolutely does not work.”
It’s important, Elouise noted, that leaders don’t view themselves as better than their people. Everyone is in it together, and a good leader backs their people one hundred percent.
“You don’t have to prove yourself to me,” she explained. “You prove yourself within the interview process.”
3. Leadership training
“If we haven’t trained people in leadership or management skills, and we haven’t trained them on how to communicate and how to take on feedback, then breakdowns happen.”
People get thrown into leadership roles, she added, and that’s where they can make mistakes. People need to be set up with the right tools to ensure success.
Something Elouise said she wants to do differently with three sixty digital is give leadership training to anyone moving into a management position “because it’s not something that you can just ‘do’.”
Managing conflict as a female in business
Of course, challenges always occur. For a woman coming up not just in the Australian business space, but globally, unfortunately these challenges can occur specifically due to gender.
“Cultural challenges are always a big one,” she said. “I’m obviously female and in some of the countries where I’ve led teams, women are the bottom of the hierarchy – not the top.”
Elouise said there have definitely been times where she had to have conversations with people who had no respect for her authority because that’s part of their culture. Ultimately, she said, if you can’t find common ground, then it may just not be a relationship which is ever going to work.
“But I think everyone can find common ground and respect, and it’s how you communicate with people that overcomes those challenges.”
Conflict with clients can come up to
Elouise mentioned she’d also had times where clients hadn’t respected her either, requiring a male colleague to be a part of the conversation instead.
“In one case, I was younger than the person that I was dealing with, and I was female, and he wanted to hear from a man. I used to write notes and give them to a male leader in our business and say, ‘This is what I’m proposing, this is what I need’. He would run the meeting and get it all signed off. If I ran the same meeting, it wouldn’t get signed off.”
So how do you overcome a challenge like that?
Firstly, Elouise said, it requires an open conversation – which is what she did with this case.
Elouise organised a meeting, telling the client, “If you’re not happy with me as your account manager, I’m happy to remove myself. But, if you want me to stay on your account we need to be working on a level of mutual respect. There will be no other involvement from anyone else in our leadership team in these meetings.”
And it worked!
“Sometimes a hard conversation can resolve the issue pretty quickly.”
Elouise’s advice for future female leaders
Get a mentor: “No matter who you are, you need someone you can bounce ideas off – someone to give you feedback. That way you can grow from other people’s experiences.”
Always listen: “Listening is an underrated skill. Take on what other people are saying – that’s what helped me the most.”
Separate the business from the personal: “It’s important to separate what is business from what is personal, especially when receiving feedback. That way you’re less likely to feel attacked, and you can focus on what someone is saying.”
So what’s next for three sixty digital?
Elouise was clearly excited to get to this bit, perking up at the opportunity to gush about what’s next for her business.
“So, we’ve got a couple of different goals. First, we definitely want to scale throughout Australia. And then once we’re settled, we do want to go international too.”
But, three sixty digital’s biggest goal for the coming year, she said, is all about education.
Educating the recruitment industry on the value of marketing
“The recruitment industry sometimes sees marketing as a nice-to-have, not an essential. We believe it’s a critical component for success.”
The numbers agree. Organic search traffic for professional services organisations has a conversion rate almost as high as paid search and referrals combined – 12% (Ruler Analytics). Good content marketing also costs 62% less than traditional marketing methods (Demand Metric).
“We want to educate people on why we’re essential, and how we can benefit their business. That’s a big driver for me personally: helping people achieve what they want is something that will always be a goal for this business.”
Want to see the results for yourself? Book a discovery call with Elouise and the three sixty digital team today.
