Leaders Don’t Need Another Plan. They Need a Mentor.
Almost ten thousand nurses and care workers left residential aged care in a single quarter.
You read that correctly. Ten thousand. In three months. The people holding reform together are burning out, and the work didn’t pause to catch its breath.
Most days feel like standing at the city’s busiest intersection at 8:10 a.m. Sirens. Buses. Roadworks. You can redraw the city map, or retime the lights so people can move. We keep handing leaders another module (the policy binder gets thicker) while the intersection stays jammed.
In 30 days, you’ll be able to show three numbers to your ELT—decision SLA, meeting “Yes” rate, and median time-to-decision—without launching a new program.
We’re optimising leaders. It isn’t working.
Post–Royal Commission, expectations rebuilt overnight: governance, culture, consumer voice, clinical safety. Providers did what they know (more training, more attestations). But the failure point isn’t content; it’s transfer. In the squeeze between staffing gaps and audits, a tick-box won’t help you navigate a Friday 3:52 p.m. roster hole and a family complaint.
Meanwhile, reform timelines keep shifting. Support at Home starts 1 November 2025, with CHSP transitioning no earlier than 1 July 2027.
Leaders are retiming lights in a moving work zone.
What actually creates a leader
Not a slide deck. A relationship. When pressure spikes, mentoring is the difference between a supervisor freezing and a leader moving. It lowers stress, lifts retention, and (most importantly) shapes identity: how people think, feel, and act when the heat is on.
Modules inform. Mentors transform. A mentor helps a new leader read the room, call the risk, and take the next right step before the 4:00 p.m. med round. That’s identity-level change, not module-level.
You can feel it quickly. Within 30 days, mentored leaders make faster, cleaner decisions, retire one low-value meeting, and carry a hard conversation without fallout. Teams notice. Consumers feel it.
Our proof: in Hyphae cohorts we’ve seen ~90% mentor return, >85% completion, and pairs still meeting months later, because people stay when they feel supported, capable, and connected.
If your leaders don’t have a mentor, you’re asking them to retime peak-hour traffic alone.
Ensure they have a mentoring partnership that clears the intersection today, not next quarter.
Three supports you can use this month
These are scaffolds for mentoring. Not substitutes for it.
The 3-Line Escalation (with mentor review)
What I see · What I fear · What I need approved now.
Share two real escalations with your mentor each week for quick feedback. Aim for a 10-minute decision window so the floor keeps moving.Energy-Aware Calendar (held by your mentor)
Protect one 90-minute deep-work block on your best-energy day; don’t stack two hard conversations back-to-back. If it gets bumped, move it—don’t delete it. Your mentor helps you hold the line.Peer Trio (one call, 20 minutes, fortnightly)
Three supervisors, one prompt: “What jam did you clear this week?” Capture one line you’ll reuse. Tiny circle, big relief.
That’s it. Three supports that make the intersection flow while you put mentoring in place (or are waiting to join our upcoming cohort!)
Why this matters to you
Individuals: less second-guessing at 4 p.m., faster answers, and someone who knows your reality. Consider joining the next intake via the Hyphae Mentoring Program.
Executives: visible throughput (decisions, meetings, flow) without spinning up a new program; better risk posture in a month. Explore organisation-wide options on For Organisations.
Organisations: reasons people stay—support, growth, the ability to do good work—rather than another LMS completion report. See outcomes on our Impact page.
Start where impact compounds: mentoring
Instead of announcing an “engagement plan,” assign mentors to the leaders carrying the heaviest load, and give them one external connection for perspective. Fix the signals, then the map.
Hyphae produces excellent mentoring results for busy leaders and managers. If you are struggling with the effort of finding mentors or supporting mentees or identify how to get started … our program is for you.
Leadership doesn’t wait for permission.
Choose your next step:
Register for the 2026 Public Mentoring Cohort: longitudinal pairs and cross-provider circles for supervisors and emerging managers.
Your Executive Capacity Audit: map the cracks before they cost you your next leaders. Get a tailored review and priority roadmap to support your leadership and mentoring infrastructure.
License the Hyphae Mentoring Infrastructure: mentor training, conversation guides mapped to strengthened Standards, simple reporting for executives.
Sources & Further Reading
Workforce pressure: Australian Ageing Agenda. “Staff leave in their thousands, data shows” (https://www.australianageingagenda.com.au/executive/staff-leave-in-their-thousands-data-shows/).
Quality Indicators context: GEN. Residential Aged Care Quality Indicators Annual Report 2023–24 (https://www.gen-agedcaredata.gov.au/resources/publications/2024/november/residential-aged-care-quality-indicators-annual-report-2023%E2%80%9324).
Reform timing: DoHAC. Support at Home (https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/support-at-home/about).
Mentoring & stress/identity: BMC Nursing. mentorship and role transition (https://bmcnurs.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12912-023-01597-y); BMC Medical Education. mentoring and professional identity formation (https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-024-06357-3).
Internal mobility (retention logic): SHRM (LinkedIn data summary) (https://www.shrm.org/content/dam/en/shrm/shrm-labs/documents/222395-SHRMLabs-_-TechStars-Report-TechnologiesRetention_R3-2.pdf).