Five years ago, Woodside Energy recognised that the convergence of company growth, changing workforce expectations and the global energy transition demanded a fundamental rethink of leadership development. The Australian energy giant embarked on an ambitious journey to transform its leadership capabilities across the organisation, partnering with AGSM @ UNSW Business School to create a program that would prepare leaders for an increasingly complex future.

Scott Marshall, Head of Organisational Capability and Talent at Woodside, reflected on the origins of this transformation. “Five years ago, we recognised that changing workforce expectations, global energy transition, and the need for us to look at what it would take to get us where we wanted to go was going to require some careful thought,” he explained in a recent interview with Tracey Flynn, Director, AGSM Executive Education & Short Courses. The company recognised that, although it had competent leaders, the challenges ahead required exposure to global thought leadership and cutting-edge development approaches.

Designing Navigator: A global approach to leadership development

The resulting program, Navigator, represented a departure from traditional corporate leadership development. Rather than prescribing specific competencies or predetermined pathways, Woodside adopted a more organic approach to developing the program. The company deliberately avoided getting into “the nitty gritty of what expectations we wanted them to develop or how they were going to do it specifically at that time, because we didn’t want to influence the overall outcome,” Mr Marshall explained.

The program incorporated six foundational elements, including adaptive leadership. This focus on adaptability proved prescient, given the rapid changes the energy sector would face in the years to come. Experienced coaching formed another crucial component, helping leaders embed their learning through understanding what leadership meant in their specific context.

The impact of Navigator became evident through multiple indicators. Participants took pride in their involvement, with many posting about their credentials on LinkedIn and discussing their experiences publicly. “I think the first indication for me is that our people are proud to take part in the program. You know, they post it on LinkedIn, they brag about their credentials that they get from the phase that they’re participating in,” Mr Marshall observed.

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Jason Limerick assumed the role of Head of Culture, Inclusion, and Leadership at Woodside Energy just over a year ago. “As a relatively new leader at Woodside, I have a fresh set of eyes when it comes to Navigator,” he explained. “I don’t carry the context and intent of its beginning, but I see clearly the impact it has now. What has really impressed me is the scale of the investment that has been made. I’m quite proud to work for an organisation that has been willing to invest not only financially, but through the deep engagement it takes to codesign a program that reflects the unique felt experiences of our employees,” said Mr Limerick, who affirmed that the program represents an intent to be the best and an understanding that facilitating employee development and building capabilities are foundational to this commitment.

Professor Frederik Anseel, Dean of UNSW Business School, was involved in the very early stages of the Woodside-AGSM collaboration and the thinking behind the program design. “We were all very excited about the collaboration, but at the same time, confronted with a conundrum,” he recalled. “We wanted to prepare the Woodside leadership at all levels of the organisation for the future, but we were not entirely sure what that future would look like. Sometimes, organisations have a clear change trajectory in mind with a well-defined endpoint. But because of the global transformation and disruption occurring in the energy sector, it would be foolish to predetermine a clear endpoint, so we instead focused on a set of likely future scenarios.

“So, how do you prepare leaders for a range of possible scenarios?” he asked. “The answer was adaptive leadership, providing leaders with mindsets, capabilities, and tools to constantly adapt and navigate changing circumstances. Part of this is about providing leaders with the confidence to start ‘running in the fog’, knowing that they’ll be able to chart their own path, make progress and redefine what success looks like if the path changes multiple times.”

Measuring impact through data and engagement

Woodside took a sophisticated approach to measuring the program’s effectiveness, leveraging data analytics to track progress on key metrics. Inclusive leadership, one of the program’s foundational elements, showed measurable improvement over time. Employee engagement surveys revealed rising inclusion scores across the organisation. While Mr Marshall acknowledged that multiple factors contributed to these improvements, the correlation with leadership development efforts was notable.

The company collects extensive data throughout the Navigator journey, intended to measure results and continuously improve the program. Before participants entered their phase immersion experiences, they completed capability uplift assessments. These assessments served dual purposes: providing conversation starters between individuals and their line leaders about development opportunities, and offering insights into the overall program’s effectiveness in building capabilities across the organisation.

This data-driven approach extended beyond program evaluation. Woodside began exploring how people data could provide broader insights into organisational performance, examining metrics such as timelines to promotion and performance levels over time. However, Mr Marshall emphasised the importance of careful stewardship of this information. “I think it’s important to not only acknowledge and understand the data you create, but also to be deliberate about how you use it, and to be transparent with individuals about its purpose,” he stated.

The Digital Twin project: Uncovering hidden insights

One of the most innovative outcomes of Woodside’s leadership development efforts was the digital twin project (under which employees refer to themselves as ‘digital Woodsiders’). With the help of the UNSW Business Insights Institute, this initiative involved loading program data into a database and conducting sophisticated analytics to test various hypotheses about leadership effectiveness and organisational dynamics.

The project yielded surprising insights that validated the company’s investment in inclusive leadership. “For the first time, it demonstrated to us that, for example, our most inclusive leaders were generally more likely to be promoted,” Mr Marshall revealed. This finding provided concrete evidence that the company’s stated values aligned with its actual practices and reward systems. For Mr Marshall, this represented “a real-world example of lived values in action”.

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He said there is significant potential for expanding the pilot. As artificial intelligence and data analytics capabilities continue to evolve, he said, the ability to gain deeper insights into organisational dynamics and leadership effectiveness will only become more sophisticated.

Bringing senior leaders together for summit learning

A Senior Leader Summit emerged as a crucial forum for aligning Woodside’s top leadership around strategic priorities and emerging challenges. The first summit, held in 2023, concentrated on bringing together two organisations following a merger. Two years later, the focus shifted to strategy and global context. The second such gathering, held in Perth, focused on helping senior leaders understand and embrace the complex challenges facing the business.

“This time around, it was all around the strategy and the global context. So it was less about the formation of a team and more about the focus of a team on the challenges ahead,” Mr Marshall explained. The timing proved particularly relevant given Woodside’s ambitious growth agenda, with major projects underway in the United States, Mexico, and Australia.

The summit blended strategic alignment with practical upskilling, particularly in emerging technologies. Mr Marshall identified artificial intelligence as “a big focus this year,” alongside building connections and ensuring alignment on priorities. The gathering provided senior leaders with dedicated time and space to address the complexities of managing significant growth initiatives while maintaining operational excellence in their existing business. This dual focus reflected the broader transformation occurring across the energy industry, where established companies must balance current performance with future positioning.

Mr Limerick recalled that the summit was a “great experience”. “I think what I loved most about it was the strategic, high-level discussions we cultivated,” he explained. “It didn’t feel like a bunch of people sitting around listening to consultants and experts. It was a collective of senior leaders discussing, debating, and ideating on the biggest strategic challenges for our organisation and our industry. We rolled up our sleeves and committed to accepting the challenge to thrive through the energy transition. It was a genuinely inspiring moment for me.”

Prof. Anseel was a facilitator at the Senior Leader Summit, and he explained that the event provided a platform to not only energise the whole organisation towards attaining short-term goals, but also to create a shared mental model among the leadership on how to achieve them. “This sounds straightforward, but it is one of the main psychological hurdles to overcome when working with large leadership teams of complex global organisations,” he said.

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Each senior leader has developed their own mental model of cause-and-effect within the organisation, based on what they have found works best, who gets things done, how to coordinate work, and where to initiate projects and other initiatives. “We all develop sophisticated mental maps of how our organisations really work, but surprisingly, our individual maps tend to be quite different, because they have been gradually built in our minds based on our own subjective vantage points and personal experience,” he said.

Importantly, Prof. Anseel explained that the summit was designed to create ‘mental model’ convergence with an eye on execution of goals. “There is no quick way to do this. You can’t put mental maps next to each other and say, ‘This is the right one.’ It requires collective conversations, probing and testing and finding common ground,” he affirmed.

Embracing AI for leadership development

Woodside’s approach to artificial intelligence in leadership development showcased practical innovation. During the summit, the company deployed AI in two distinct ways that enhanced the participant experience and demonstrated the technology’s potential for improving organisational effectiveness.

First, Woodside created an AI leadership coach preloaded with all summit information, including presentations, podcasts and artefacts that provided context on Woodside’s strategic, cultural and leadership landscape (Woodside’s strategic plan, values and leadership capabilities), ensuring the coach was primed to coach with alignment with organisational expectations of leaders before the event. Leaders engaged with the system through six onboarding questions that helped the AI understand their roles, priorities, team contexts, and summit objectives. This personalisation ensured that each leader received tailored support throughout the event.

Second, the company employed what Mr Marshall described as “the data cruncher” to process information from breakout sessions and group activities in real time. “It was a case of 'photograph into AI, result handed back,'” he explained. This immediate processing eliminated the traditional delay between activities and feedback, allowing leaders to receive synthesised insights while discussions remained fresh.

The integration of these two AI systems created a powerful feedback loop. All processed information was fed back into each leader’s personalised AI coach, creating a comprehensive resource that remained available after the summit concluded. Leaders could request customised summaries for their teams or speaking points tailored to their specific contexts. “Those leaders could go in and ask that coach to give me a summary relevant to my team that I can share with them now, and it would prepare a one-page PowerPoint or give them some speaking points,” Mr Marshall noted.

Prof. Ansel said the support of AI was essential in achieving this collective map of the journey ahead at the summit, as AI summaries were able to quickly and comprehensively capture all thoughts, conversations, learnings and conclusions. “AI-capture avoids issues where only a few dominant voices or ideas are heard, but instead it was able to systematically review all viewpoints and identify common ground,” he said.

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“Next, in a series of iterative cycles that happened superfast, these common maps were fed back into the collective leadership group. This instantaneous feedback process happened in real-time while the group was actively discussing their next steps towards goal achievement. There was constant updating, refining and converging of the collective mental model of the leadership group to ensure that, after the summit, they came away with a shared understanding of the path forward because they co-created it in an organic way.”

Aligning AI strategy with organisational capability

Woodside’s experimental use of AI at the leadership summit reflected its broader artificial intelligence strategy. The company initially focused on improving individual productivity by automating routine tasks through agents, creating space for deeper strategic thinking. This approach aligned with the adaptive leadership principles embedded in the Navigator program from its inception.

The careful implementation of AI reflected Woodside’s measured approach to both technology and data governance. “The role around privacy and what data you can access and what for is so important,” said Mr Marshall, who observed that the company recognised AI’s transformative potential while maintaining strict protocols around data usage.

He saw particular promise in AI’s ability to enhance decision-making and reduce bias: “We see the power in the data for removing bias and the potential to really unearth capability beyond what you maybe would have seen in the past,” he said. This perspective positioned AI as a tool for discovering hidden talent and capabilities within the organisation, complementing rather than replacing human judgment in leadership development and talent management.

Mr Marshall acknowledged that Woodside remained in the early stages of its AI journey but was making bold strides forward, with various teams experimenting with different applications across operations and business functions. The emphasis on practical, immediate applications rather than theoretical possibilities characterised the company’s approach to emerging technologies.

Looking ahead: Leadership for an industry in transition

The leadership development journey Woodside embarked upon five years ago proved remarkably prescient. The adaptive leadership capabilities, data-driven insights, and technological fluency developed through programs like Navigator positioned the company’s leaders to navigate the complex challenges of the global energy transition.

Mr Marshall reflected that the thought process from five years ago “was intended for this time,” highlighting how forward-thinking leadership development could prepare organisations for future challenges even when those challenges remained unclear. The combination of foundational leadership capabilities, data-driven decision making, and technological innovation created a leadership cohort equipped to handle the dual demands of maintaining current operations while transforming for the future.

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As Woodside continues to execute major projects across multiple continents while navigating industry transformation, its investments in leadership capability building continue to deliver value. The company’s experience offers lessons for other organisations facing similar transitions: invest in adaptive capabilities rather than rigid competencies, leverage data to understand and improve leadership effectiveness, and embrace emerging technologies as tools for enhancing, rather than replacing, human leadership.

Mr Limerick affirmed that the five-year journey Woodside has been on with Navigator and AGSM has been important for positioning the business for the challenges ahead. “It has ingrained the value of unlocking the curiosity and passion of our leaders, and the need to continue growing. We are excited about the opportunity to keep evolving Navigator to meet the needs of an increasingly dynamic and fast-changing world,” he concluded.