5 Leadership Lessons for Tradies from The Shift’s Bardie Somerville

Guest: Bardie Somerville

Episode: Season 1, Episode 3

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Bardie Somerville is a carpenter, site manager, keynote speaker, and founder of The Shift: a platform built to give tradies real tools for mental health and wellbeing. She's lived the struggle she now helps others through.

For Bardie, leadership starts long before anyone hands you a title; it starts with knowing who you are underneath all the roles you play.

Here's what she's learned about leading from that place.

Lesson 1: Claim Your Authenticity in Construction

Bardie describes years of shifting between different versions of herself depending on who was around. One mask as a tradie, another with people she wasn't fully comfortable with, and a truer version only when she was completely alone.

For a long time, that meant only being willing to talk about her own life from the age of 18 onward; anything before that stayed off-limits, even to herself.

"Authenticity is who you are at your core," Bardie says. "It's when we're able to strip away the shame of our story and just really embrace who we are."

Letting go of that mask, piece by piece, became the starting point for everything that followed.

Lesson 2: People-Pleasing Hinders Self-Leadership

Bardie has struggled with people-pleasing for as long as she can remember, and says it's one of the biggest blockers to leading your own life.

"When we're trying to make everyone around us happy, we naturally have to cut off that voice, and cut off the direction that we're pulled to go in," Bardie says.

Ironically, one of her clearest leadership moments came when she had no choice in the matter. Put in a position where she had to lead a group, with no time to overthink it or manage anyone else's comfort, she found out for the first time that she could actually do it.

Lesson 3: Shifting Mental Health in the Trades

Before founding The Shift, Bardie went through years of heavy drinking and depression she didn't speak about, at a point in her life she now describes as genuinely alcoholic.

That period led to a suicide attempt, and even after reaching out to headspace for help, she stayed silent about it at work for years, carrying shame and a fear of appearing "soft" in an industry that seemed to expect everyone to just cope.

The Shift began small and unplanned. She moved to Melbourne and held her first session in a park.

"I really wanted to help, but for so long I wasn't in a space to help," Bardie says.

It's since grown into a platform focused on giving tradies real, practical tools, not corporate wellbeing box-ticking.

Lesson 4: Small Daily Habits Compound For Better Mental Health

When Bardie is asked what someone doing it tough could realistically do tomorrow, she doesn't reach for anything dramatic. Her advice starts with reaching out, reminding people that no matter how isolated they feel, there's always a way to connect with someone.

From there, she suggests picking one small, achievable commitment to hold for a week, rather than trying to overhaul everything at once.

"So often when we want to change our lives, we want to do it all at once, and that can be really overwhelming," Bardie says.

Her third tip is even smaller: find one point in the day, even a drive to work, to slow your breathing and honestly ask how you're really going.

Lesson 5: How to Check In on Your Trade Team’s Wellbeing

For anyone in a supervising or managing position, Bardie's advice is less about formal check-ins and more about simply slowing down enough to notice.

She points to the small, easy-to-miss moments, like packing up at the end of the day or walking to grab a coffee, as the real opportunities to ask someone if they're okay.

She even brings up a stranger she waves to every morning on his way to catch the bus; they don't know each other's names, but the exchange lifts both their days regardless.

"Just finding that space and just being that mate," Bardie says, "does a lot more than what we do realise."

Everyone's number one role, she says, is simply to be human.

Bardie’s Advice on Everyday Leadership

Bardie's advice is to give yourself patience: "Give yourself the time that the things that are hard may take, you know, not five minutes, but a few years to overcome."

She's candid about the fact that she'll be working on herself for the rest of her life, and says that's true for everyone. Showing up as yourself, a little more each day, is enough.

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