5 Leadership Lessons for Tradies from The Tradie Magazine’s Harry Murtough

Guest: Harry Murtough

Episode: Season 1, Episode 14

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Harry Murtough has spent years telling the trade industry's stories as editor of The Tradie Magazine, giving him a front-row seat to the patterns behind good, and overlooked, leadership.

Here’s what he’s learned about leadership in the trades.

Lesson 1: The Difference Between Knowledge and Wisdom in Leadership

Harry opens with a distinction he says took him only seconds to land on once asked: the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Being the smartest technician on site doesn't count for much as a leader, he argues, if that expertise stays locked up rather than being passed on in a way that actually helps other people.

"You could be the smartest employee at your company," he says, "but ultimately a leader needs to be able to employ their wisdom in a way that is an effective way of leadership."

That distinction only became visible to him once he started seeing other people enter the same career stage he'd already moved through.

Lesson 2: Why Sharing Your Story Matters as a Tradie

As editor of The Tradie Magazine, Harry regularly interviews people who've genuinely never stopped to consider their own career as a story worth telling.

"A lot of people don't think of themselves as a character in a story," he says. "You're actually a person; what you do has an impact, whether you know it or not."

He's noticed this especially among male tradies, who'll often shrug off a question about why they got into the trade with something like "my dad was a tradie" in contrast to female and gender-diverse tradies, who he's found tend to be more open about their path into the industry, often because they've had to be.

Harry encourages tradies to share their stories, the wins and the challenges, more often, because that’s where you can lead and role model to the next generation.

Lesson 3: Listening is a Leadership Skill

Listening is quite literally Harry's job as a journalist, and he sees it as one of the more undervalued skills in the trades more broadly.

"There's so many lessons that tradies are willing to impart," he says. "Just being open to listening to those conversations, and to new ideas."

He points to the industry's long-standing skills shortage as partly a symptom of a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach to developing apprentices, an approach he believes is increasingly failing younger tradies, who have more career options than previous generations.

Listening and understanding others better is part of the solution.

Lesson 4: Why Empathy Matters in Leading Tradies

Harry sees a common thread in the challenges he hears about across the industry: knowing when to be empathetic toward someone, rather than defaulting to a standard, stock approach for everyone.

"We're realising we're a lot more complex beings," he says. "You should certainly be able to tailor your leadership approach to that."

He's aware that raising empathy in a traditionally tough, gruff industry can get dismissed as soft, particularly where mental health is concerned. Still, he argues that being wise enough to know when to ease off, rather than push harder, is exactly what separates an effective leader from one who's just following a script.

Lesson 5: Self-Awareness and Great Trade Leadership

After years of interviewing leaders across the trades, Harry's clearest takeaway is a simple, recurring pattern.

"The best leaders in my life are the ones who are self-aware and self-reflective," he says.

He frames his own role, in part, as helping tradies see themselves as characters within a larger story, recognising that what they say and do has an impact on the people around them, whether they've ever consciously registered it or not.

That self-awareness, he argues, doesn't require a title or an official leadership badge to develop.

Harry’s Advice on Everyday Leadership

"You don't have to have an official badge on yourself that says leader; just be able to see yourself in the wider picture. That's so important to being an effective leader," and to getting the most out of the people around you, and yourself, at the same time.

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