Featuring Kathryn House AM
Leadership culture has traditionally rewarded qualities that are easy to see: authority, confidence, decisiveness and individual achievement.
Kathryn House AM asks us to notice some others.
Connection. Humility. Authenticity. The capacity to bring people together.
For Kathryn, Chair of Impact100 South Australia and a prominent contributor to philanthropy and community life, leadership is not about becoming the most important person in a room.
It is often about getting the right people into the room in the first place.
She describes herself as someone who hears an idea and instinctively wonders who else might be brought into it. People, she says, crave connection and generally want to contribute; they may simply be unsure how or where their contribution would be useful.
That instinct underpins her involvement in collective philanthropy.
A single person can give $100. Bring 100 people together and that contribution becomes something larger — not simply financially, but through the network of relationships, skills, advocacy and trust surrounding it.
Kathryn argues that contribution should therefore be understood expansively. People give money, but they also give time, talent, connections, credibility and their willingness to advocate publicly for causes they believe matter.
There is a leadership principle embedded within this model.
Impact does not necessarily increase by accumulating more control.
Sometimes it grows by distributing participation.
Kathryn's own path towards leadership was not without hesitation. She speaks candidly about periods earlier in life when fear of failure caused her to make herself smaller or let opportunities pass. She grew up with expectations about women and careers that narrowed what she imagined was available.
Looking back, the message she would give her younger self is simple: you can do it.
A career need not follow one irreversible path. People can reinvent themselves and begin again.
Her later experience has demonstrated how powerful that permission can become when it is shared.
Kathryn has created spaces that bring women together across occupations and backgrounds, including a network formed around a wonderfully unlikely common denominator: support for the Port Adelaide Football Club. What began as an idea has developed into a community in which women hear each other’s stories, build relationships and see different models of possibility.
She has also helped establish a children's giving circle that has raised more than $100,000 through children pooling proceeds from activities including busking, collecting cans, baking and lemonade stalls.
These examples share a common architecture.
Create a space.
Invite people in.
Give them agency.
Trust that collective energy can produce something larger than any individual contribution.
When Kathryn reflected on leadership, she identified qualities including authenticity and humility — attributes someone observing her work noted were characteristic of many women leaders they knew.
Perhaps these qualities have not always been absent from leadership.
Perhaps they have been undervalued by the way leadership itself has traditionally been defined.
Kathryn House's experience offers another model: leadership not as standing above a group of people, but as connecting them to one another and helping collective possibility emerge.
About the series
Voices of Leadership, Extraordinary Impact is a collaboration between the Order of Australia Association and Menzies Leadership Foundation, bringing to life the stories and insights of Australians recognised for their contribution and service.
Hosted by The Hon Vicki O’Halloran AO CVO FAICD, former President of the Order of Australia Association (2023-2026), the eight-part series explores the lived experiences, values and leadership lessons of Order of Australia recipients and what their stories can teach us about leading in service of others.
