Okay, maybe you can, but many SME leaders are avoiding it when it comes to hiring.

 

There’s a massive myth floating around among SMEs. It goes something like this:

 

“We don’t hire enough to justify using psychometric assessments. That’s for the big end of town.”

 

The actual truth?

 

Big companies can absorb a bad hire like it’s a rounding error. Your small business? One bad hire destroys momentum, fractures culture, and flushes thousands down the drain.

 

Here’s the reality. A bad hire in Australia costs between 50% and 150% of that person’s annual salary. That’s a figure drawn from industry research cited by AHRI and consistently supported across Australian HR data.

 

For a $75,000 role, that’s $37,500 to $112,500. For a manager or specialist role, the number is worse.

 

And here’s what makes it genuinely uncomfortable. That cost doesn’t show up as a single line in your P&L. It never does. It hides in the productivity your team lost while carrying someone who wasn’t performing. It hides in the morale damage you couldn’t quite measure but absolutely felt. It hides in the hours you and your managers spent having the wrong conversations instead of running the business. And it hides in the full cost of starting the whole recruitment process again from scratch.

 

The money was spent. You just couldn’t see it in black and white.

 

And 65% of Australian HR managers have made exactly that mistake, according to Robert Half research across 300 local hiring managers.

 

The idea that psychometric assessment only makes sense for large organisations with dedicated HR departments is simply outdated. Today, a validated online assessment, built on the same Big Five scientific framework used by industrial psychologists globally, independently certified to international standards, and normed against Australian data, takes your candidate 20 minutes to complete. The report comes back immediately to you in plain language. No jargon. No certification required to understand it. A clear, benchmarked read on whether this person fits this role, and customised interview questions to help you explore any concerns.

 

76% of organisations with more than 100 staff already use pre-employment assessment as standard practice. The gap isn’t knowledge. It’s access and familiarity.

 

So here’s what I’m doing.

 

One free psychometric assessment. Your candidate. Your role. Your call.

 

Not a demo. Not a free trial with a catch or a credit card. A proper, scientifically validated assessment that tells you whether your next hire is the right hire, delivered free, no strings attached.

 

Run it. Read the report. Compare it to your gut feel. See what you’ve been missing.

 

If it doesn’t change how you think about hiring, you owe me nothing, and we part as friends.

 

Send me a direct message, and I will set it up personally.

 

Because the question was never whether you hire enough to justify it.

The question is whether you can afford not to.

 

(Source: AHRI — The cost of hiring a new employee: ahri.com.au/articles/cost-of-hiring-new-employee | Robert Half Australia hiring research 2024)

Nobody Told You It Would Feel Like This.

 

When you started your business, or stepped into that leadership role, you had a plan.

 

You knew your product. You knew your market. You knew what great looked like.

And then 2026 arrived.

 

And the game changed in ways nobody had prepared you for.

 

While “May you live in interesting times” is famously cited as an ancient Chinese curse, it is a modern Western invention. The irony is deliberate. “Interesting” is not a compliment. It is a polite word for upheaval, chaos, and uncertainty.

 

And right now, SME leaders across Australia are living through their own version of interesting times.

 

Here is what the data is telling us.

 

Nearly 80% of SMEs expect rising costs to impact business performance this year.

 

Cash flow remains the number one concern, with 43% of owners saying it keeps them up at night.

 

Labour shortages are affecting 63% of Australian businesses.

 

And only 42% of Australian SMEs grew in 2024, well below the Asia Pacific average of 64%.

 

But here is what the data does not capture.

 

The weight of carrying all of it yourself.

 

Because here is the reality of running an SME that nobody puts in a report. Multinationals have whole departments to shoulder the load. A CFO for the numbers. HR for the people. A strategy team. Legal on speed dial.

 

The SME leader? They have themselves. Maybe a handful of people. And a constant stream of decisions that did not exist five years ago.

 

AI is no longer a conversation for the future.

 

It is on your doorstep right now, and your team is watching to see how you handle it.

 

Cyber threats to small businesses jumped 150% in 2024. Most SMEs spend less on cybersecurity than they do on coffee.

 

Regulatory changes keep coming, and staying compliant is consuming more time than most owners budgeted for.

 

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, you are still trying to do the right thing by your people.

 

Motivate them. Retain them. Develop them. Have the hard conversations when you need to. Create a culture worth staying for. All while watching your margins and chasing your receivables.

 

It is a lot. And most SME leaders are doing it on instinct, drawing on what they already know, figuring it out as they go, and running on empty.

 

That is not a criticism. That is the reality of leading a small business. And to be honest, the resilience it takes deserves a good deal more respect than it gets.

 

But resilience alone is not a strategy.

 

The SME leaders I work with who navigate this well share one thing in common.

 

They know what they do not know. And they are not afraid to get support for it.

 

Whether that is a coach, a mentor, a trusted adviser, or simply someone who asks the right questions at the right time, the willingness to seek perspective from outside the building is often what separates those who are merely surviving from those who are genuinely building something.

 

This is your reminder that you don’t have to.

 

What is the one challenge consuming your energy right now? Drop it in the comments.

 

You might find you are not the only one carrying it

We spend an awful lot of time in organisations talking about culture, engagement, retention, and wellbeing.

These are BIG words. Important words.

But somewhere in the middle of all that conversation, a simpler thing gets lost.

The quality of the dialogue.

Socrates believed that knowledge wasn’t “given.” It was produced through the shared exchange of words. He called it dialogue.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and we have replaced that profound exchange with Slack and Teams messages and target-setting exercises.

We are talking more but genuinely connecting less.

I am not talking about structured one-on-ones where the agenda is set and the week’s hot topics get ticked off.

I am talking about real conversations. The kind where a manager asks a courageous question, leans in, and actually hears what is going on for the person sitting across from them.

 

After 15 years of coaching leaders, one thing has never changed.

 

The quality of the conversation determines almost everything else.

 

That is coaching. And most organisations are desperately short of it.

 

Marshall Goldsmith, the world’s preeminent executive coach, puts it simply.

 

“Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others.”

 

It sounds obvious, yet the execution is still our biggest hurdle.

 

Here is what the data tells us.

 

Australian employers spent an average of just $1,122 per employee on training in 2025.

 

For context, that is less than the cost of one day of lost productivity from a disengaged team member.

 

And yet the International Coaching Federation reports that 87% of organisations that invested in coaching saw a positive return.

 

The median ROI sits at around 7 times the initial investment.

 

And AHRI’s own research confirms that leadership development ranks as one of the most effective strategies available for improving retention.

 

So, the question is not whether coaching delivers a return.

 

The data is clear on that.

 

The question is why more organisations are not making it a priority.

 

Coaching is rarely something people just figure out. It is a skill that must be built.

 

This is where the “Accidental Manager” gap shows up most painfully. These are the people promoted because they were brilliant at their technical job, then left to muddle through the complexities of human leadership without a map.

 

There is a world of difference between a manager who says, “Here is what you need to do,” and one who asks, “What do you think would work here?”

 

The first one gets compliance. The second one builds capability.

 

Two millennia after Socrates, the Socratic method remains the most sophisticated

technology we have for building that capability.

 

It is not a soft skill. It is the highest-returning investment a business can make.

 

So where do you start?

 

The most practical first step is engaging an experienced coach for your managers.

 

Not a one-day workshop. A meaningful relationship built over time that develops the habits and self-awareness to bring out the best in others.

 

As Goldsmith famously said, “What got you here won’t get you there.”

 

The skills that made your managers great individual performers are not the ones that make them great leaders.

 

But those skills can be developed. And when they are, everything changes.

Is coaching something your organisation invests in, or is it still sitting on the nice to have list?

 

Drop your thoughts in the comments. I would love to hear your perspective.

And most organisations never see it coming.

 

AHRI’s latest research is clear. Australian organisations are investing heavily in technical skills but falling short when it comes to developing the human ones.

 

Yet we keep taking our best technical people, giving them a bigger desk and a round of applause, and leaving them to figure the rest out themselves.

 

And the same AHRI research tells us that only 15% of Australian employers plan to invest their training budgets in leadership and management development this year.

 

So there they are. Brand new managers. Responsible for the careers, the performance, and the well-being of the people around them.

 

Given a pat on the back and sent on their way. Sure, it’ll be grand!

 

Sound familiar?

 

Here is what usually happens next.

 

A gun salesperson gets promoted to sales manager.

 

The best engineer becomes head of engineering. The person who could always be relied upon to get the job done is now responsible for making sure everyone else does, too.

 

The person who never put a foot wrong is suddenly in charge of making sure nobody else does either.

 

Everyone waits for the magic to continue.

 

And then it goes pear-shaped.

 

We call it the Promotion Trap.

 

The skills that made them exceptional before, drive, focus, personal accountability, and the ability to just get things done, are often the very skills that work against them as a manager.

 

Because great management is not about focusing on yourself.

 

It is about getting the best out of the people around you.

 

And unless they are naturally gifted people managers, most newly promoted leaders default to doing instead of leading.

 

They struggle to delegate.

 

They take the work back.

 

They micromanage without meaning to.

 

Meanwhile, the team starts to disengage.

 

Good people quietly look elsewhere.

 

And by the time the resignation letters arrive, the damage is already done.

 

This is not a personal failure. It is a systemic one.

 

We set people up to struggle and then wonder why they do.

 

The Peter Principle was written in 1969.

 

Here we are in 2026 and the research suggests we are still living it.

 

The good news? This is entirely avoidable.

 

It starts with genuinely understanding who your people are before the promotion is made.

 

How do they think?

 

How do they influence?

 

How do they handle pressure and ambiguity?

 

Do they understand the difference between being a leader and a manager, and can they be both?

 

The most effective approach starts with benchmarking your best managers to understand what actually makes them successful.

 

Then compare your next potential leader against that benchmark.

 

Identifying the gaps honestly.

 

And providing the right support through experienced coaching.

 

Remember, coaching is not teaching.

 

It helps your people to learn, at their own pace, in the context of their own role.

 

Ideally, a promotion should never come as a surprise.

 

It should be part of a deliberate process of building bench strength so that when the moment arrives, your people step into the role with confidence, not apprehension.

 

A promotion should never be a reward for past performance.

 

It should be a considered decision about future fit.

 

Have you seen this play out in your organisation?

 

Where have promotions worked, and where have they fallen short? Drop your experience in the comments.

 

Link to the AHRI research.

The latest Employee Engagement report from Gallup landed, and what it tells us, I think is quite sobering…

 

Global employee engagement has now fallen for the second consecutive year, sitting at just 20%. In Australia, we are at 21% (down 2 points).

 

That means 4 in every 5 people going to work every day are either switched off or actively miserable ☹

 

Four in five. Let that sit for a moment.

 

Disengagement is not just a number on a report. It has a face.

 

It is the person who used to bounce ideas around in meetings and now sits quietly, avoiding eye contact.

 

The one who used to stay back without being asked, who now watches the clock.

 

The enthusiastic new hire whose energy slowly drains away because nobody noticed what they needed.

 

Disengagement does not arrive loudly. It creeps in.

 

It looks like missed deadlines, it feels like a team that stops celebrating wins, and sounds like silence where there used to be conversation.

 

There is an old saying, “A fish rots from the head.”

 

Culture is not built from the bottom up. It flows from the top down. And the Gallup findings make this impossible to ignore, revealing.

 

The sharpest decline was not among employees. It was among managers, down nine percentage points since 2022.

 

When the people leading the team stop believing, it seeps into the culture until disengagement becomes the new normal.

 

That is not a management failure; it’s a human one.

 

For me, this is where the real work begins. People do not want to be managed; they want to be understood.

 

They want to know that the role they are in was chosen for them thoughtfully, not filled out of urgency. That someone considered:

 

• Who they are and how they think.
• What brings out their best.
• Where they are most likely to thrive.

 

It’s a question that needs to be answered before the role is filled, not after. And answering it well takes a blend of three things:

 

The insider knowledge of the hiring manager, the science of objective assessment, and a genuine curiosity about the human being in front of you. Get that combination right, and everything changes.

 

Engagement is not a programme you roll out. It is a feeling. And it begins at the top.

 

What are you witnessing on the ground? Are you seeing the “manager burnout” Gallup describes in your industry? I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts in the comments.