PROFILE
“Leadership does not hold the hand of the status quo” Diana Taylor AM
Diana Taylor AM is a distinguished lawyer, business owner, and community leader from Geelong, Victoria, renowned for her pioneering roles in Australian sports and civic leadership.
Over a career spanning more than 25 years, she has broken new ground for women in Australian Rules Football administration – becoming the first female president of a men’s AFL metropolitan football league, the Western Region Football League, the first woman appointed to the VFL Tribunal, appointed director of the Geelong Football Club in 2010, and in 2019, Diana became the Geelong Football Club’s first female Vice President in its 165-year history.
Diana is also an experienced board chair and director and has served on a number of boards including the Victorian Convention and Event Trust, the Geelong Authority and established Australia’s first community led and fully accredited private hospital to care for people at end-of-life, Anam Cara House Geelong.
Diana is also one of Australia’s leading experts in workplace matters through her experience in undertaking over 1,000 workplace investigations, child safeguarding and reportable conduct matters and cultural health checks for organisations across the corporate, government, not-for-profit and sport sectors and operates her own business, Diana Taylor Legal Consulting.
Diana’s multifaceted contributions to law, sports, and philanthropy earned her the prestigious Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2024 for significant service to Australian rules football and to the community of Geelong. Diana is also a Telstra Business Women’s Award Winner in the corporate & private category.
In recent years, Diana has added ‘author’ to her portfolio, writing her first book, ‘The Playbook – crossing the white line to succeed in life, business and the AFL’, to support people to think strategically, plan smart and execute for success.
SPEAKING TOPICS
Why Heart and Grit are the True Superpowers of Exceptional Leadership
Diana Taylor AM has lived and breathed leadership roles in business and community for over 25 years. It is this experience that has shaped Diana’s leadership philosophy that she now shares with audiences today. Her philosophy is values-driven, tested under pressure, and grounded in accountability and service.
Through the power of her storytelling, Diana makes the case for why the most enduring and effective leaders are defined not by title or authority, but by Heart and Grit. Heart represents values based leadership: empathy, integrity, courage, and the ability to genuinely connect with people. It is the foundation of trust, culture, and influence. Grit is the capacity to endure, adapt, and lead through adversity — to stay the course when pressure is high, outcomes are uncertain, and the path forward is uncomfortable. Together, Heart and Grit form an unstoppable leadership and competitive advantage.
Decades of experience accompanied by organisational and people insight (found in the hardest of places) provide the foundation for Diana’s keynote. It explains why the greatest transformational change, and winning, only comes when leaders lead with their heart and have the necessary amount of grit to go the distance.
Core leadership themes explore:
- Integrity-based leadership and decision-making under pressure
- Navigating conflict and complexity within workplaces and organisations
- Building trust, clarity, and accountability in leadership roles
- Explores the factors for winning in any environment including elite
- Why fear must be faced in leadership
- Using disruption, challenge, and failure as opportunities for reflection and reset
What will your audience learn:
- Practical insight into leadership decision-making and workplace dynamics
- Exposure to a structured ‘playbook’ approach to leadership, planning, execution and winning
- Insight into the critical aspects for leading and managing people conflict
- How to develop a personal grit scale
- Reflection on leadership purpose, responsibility, and long-term impact
The Female Leader: built to lead, last and create legacy
Gender matters, and women in leadership roles or aspiring to leadership should be given every opportunity to succeed. There is a playbook that every current and aspiring female leader needs to understand to build their skills, read the room, develop their talent and character, develop their networks and refine their grit. Diana guides the audience through each of these critical elements by placing no ceiling on what is possible, and on refining the art of never giving up even in the most challenging of circumstances. Leadership does not hold the hand of the status quo. Leadership demands far more, and this presentation goes to the heart of what every female leader, and those who support them, need to know for sustained success.
Audiences will learn:
- Why female leaders and aspiring leaders should be supported and the ways this can be achieved
- How to build talent, character and leadership capability and stand out in crowded marketplaces
- Techniques for leadership presentation, communication and managing the art of perception
- How to build networks and open up multiple portfolio opportunities for advancement
- The key elements of building and sustaining resilience and grit under pressure
Planning for Greatness: mastering the elements of the strategic planning process and leading for organisational and personal greatness
People and organisations have the ability to achieve extraordinary outcomes. But greatness doesn’t happen by chance, and it is never given as an instant reward. Careful planning, a clearly defined purpose, accountability for actions and a controlled response for events inevitably not going to plan are essential. Diana has supported individuals and organisations for over two decades in high performance sport, business, legal and community environments to lead and plan for the best and hold to the course over the long term. This presentation will support the audience to lead in finding competitive advantage in the planning and execution process to achieve the ultimate success.
Audiences will learn:
- How to master strategic planning to achieve elevated and sustained success
- Why the small things and consistency matter in the execution
- Why people and organisations fail at planning and execution and how to avoid the pitfalls
- How to lead people to embrace their greatness and the planning process
- To develop a greater understanding of why the short-, medium- and long-term planning horizons are all critical to achieving greatness
Community leadership: building a better future, one deliberate action at a time
With governments struggling under mounting weight of expectation and the cost-of-living pressures significantly affecting the way we live, there has never been a more important time in our history for strong community leadership. To be successful, community leaders need to be identified and step forward, be given the tools to succeed, to last and then pass their knowledge and skills onto the next generation of leaders. Community leaders have the ability to respond to and direct the power of their communities for good, and to deliver on expectations of community in the areas that make the most difference. As a community leader, Diana acutely understands and guides the audience through what it takes to be a successful community leader, how to prioritise action when there is so much need and how to take key stakeholders, including government, on the journey with the community.
Audiences will learn:
- Why community has become the place where the care for our people is paramount and actions to support this endeavour can succeed
- The difference between the community leader and other types of business and organisational leadership, and the superpower that exists in all community leaders
- What community leaders need to understand about governance, running an organisation and the overlay of integrity and trust in all matters
- The opportunities for community leaders to embrace their purpose, to find their courage and make great decisions and to grow the power of their communities
- Why financial sustainability in community organisations is paramount and how the community leader can achieve this objective
Sport and Leadership: applying lessons from the on field and off field sporting environment to excel in leadership
The competitive brutality of elite level sport, both on and off the field, carries with it daily lessons for leadership and life. Sport is continuously handing out learnings in multiple areas of leadership including the building of resilience, financial priorities, reputation management, working within and for a team and finding the courage to go the distance. With national, state and community sport administration experience spanning over two decades and within some of Australia’s most loved sports, Diana has been up close and personal with what matters and has led in these environments. Diana shares with the audience the factors that make the difference between success and failure, and how leaders can use the lessons of sport to take themselves and their teams to greater heights.
Audiences will learn:
- Why sport is one of Australia’s greatest change agents and why sport captures hearts and minds
- How to use the sporting experience to find the core leadership elements that matter most, and successfully deliver on those elements
- How to use sport and its triumphs to shape the direction of the people in an organisation and what matters to them most
- The real opportunity to use sport to find the good in everything we do and to capitalise on facets of sport that allow us to achieve greatness
- Why sport and its health benefits should be embraced by all leaders to excel in their own arenas
