5 Leadership Lessons for Tradies from Mindful Career Mentor Stacey Combe

Guest: Stacey Combe

Episode: Season 1, Episode 12

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Stacey Combe brings calm to the chaos of construction, working with everyone from site managers to designers on handling pressure and mental load without losing the plot. Having learned the tools to be more effective in her role and in an intense industry, Stacey is now sharing the tools that help tradies and industry workers achieve mindfulness day-to-day.

Here’s what Stacey’s learned about self-leadership and mindfulness.

Lesson 1: What Self-Leadership Actually Means

When Stacey is asked to define leadership, her answer is immediate and unusually compact.

"Leadership to me is being self-managed mindfully," she says.

In practice, that means being able to genuinely notice how you're feeling and behaving throughout the day, and knowing when to pull back, change direction, or course correct before something goes wrong.

She's careful to add that self-leadership isn't about doing everything alone. Leaning on colleagues and teammates for support is, in her view, just as much a part of leading yourself well as any individual discipline or technique.

Lesson 2: How to Handle Mistakes Onsite Without Shame

In her previous role as a design consultant in residential construction, Stacey managed multiple clients simultaneously under constant time pressure. As her workload grew, small errors started slipping through: the wrong tile sent to site, a door ordered to swing the wrong way.

At the time, she carried real guilt and shame over letting people down, unable to let the mistakes go.

Looking back, she reframes that period as the moment she recognised what she was lacking in self-leadership.

"It doesn't mean that I don't care, or that I'm not taking responsibility," she says now. "I'm looking at that mistake and going: what went wrong, how can I solve this for next time, and how can I let go?"

Lesson 3: Practical Mindfulness Tools for Tradies

Stacey is quick to demystify mindfulness for a trade audience who might associate it with retreats or an hour-long meditation no one has time for. She distinguishes between formal practices, like meditation or a body scan before or after work, and what she calls "on-the-job tools", things you can carry with you like a tool belt, including your breath and how you communicate under pressure.

"It's about doing that one thing at a time: noticing our thoughts, behaviours, feelings, and having the ability to check in and take those moments of pause," she says.

Even thirty seconds before walking into a meeting, she argues, counts as a genuine practice.

Lesson 4: How to Switch Off After a Work Day

Stacey describes a period, while raising twins alongside a demanding career, when she’d come home still wired from the day, her bag still on her back, immediately reaching for the oven rather than actually arriving home.

"I would come home... with my bag on my back and still in that wild work energy," she says. "I never had that understanding that I need to learn to be, and be in each moment."

What's changed since is building a deliberate transition ritual between work and home, something as simple as a cup of tea or time in the garden, doing genuinely nothing, before stepping into the rest of the evening as a circuit breaker for her own energy and self-leadership.

Lesson 5: Taking Productive Breaks to Manage Workload and Stress

Stacey pushes back on the instinct to fill every gap in a calendar with another meeting or task.

"We're very good at going into our day and looking at our calendar... but why can't we insert little mindful breaks as well?" she asks, recommending that even three short resets across a day, rather than pushing through until exhaustion forces a stop, can make a difference.

She pairs this with a strong emphasis on communication, which she doesn't consider a soft skill at all, arguing that clear, present communication is what actually prevents the costly miscommunications that pile pressure onto an already stretched day.

Stacey’s Advice on Everyday Leadership

"When things go wrong, it's not to be harsh on yourself for a start. Look at it from that acceptance, solutions-based lens. Do regular self-check-ins, and be patient."

She's candid that rushing rarely gets you there any faster; it takes the same amount of time whether you rush or not.

Catch the full conversation with Stacey Combe on Tradies Who Lead for more leadership lessons for tradies, out now wherever you listen to podcasts.