5 Leadership Lessons for Tradies from Mechanic and Life Coach Louise Azzopardi

Guest: Louise Azzopardi

Episode: Season 1, Episode 8

Listen here

Louise Azzopardi started her trade at 15, represented Australia at the 2017 WorldSkills competition, and now coaches tradeswomen through the confidence and anxiety challenges she once faced herself.

This is what she’s learned about leadership as a tradeswoman challenging industry norms.

Lesson 1: Becoming a Role Model in the Trades

Louise's first brush with being called a leader came when she was nominated for a Rotary youth leadership camp shortly after finishing her apprenticeship, and her honest reaction was confusion. She didn't feel like she was leading anything; she was, in her words, “just scraping by in life”.

What she hadn't clocked was that by sharing her story and noticing the gap in women in the trade around her, she was already a few steps ahead of other women coming up behind her.

"I was already kind of thinking of ideas and ways that I could support that gap," she says. "And coming to that, then they're like, 'Yeah, you're leading the way.'"

She encourages others to recognise how they can lead by being role models and advocating for change.

Lesson 2: The Impact of Your Words as a Leader

Louise has been on the receiving end of a coach's careless words landing harder than intended, and it's shaped how carefully she now treats her own influence over the women she mentors.

"It's really important to remember how powerful your words can be if you have people following you," she says.

She's especially wary of letting frustration bleed into feedback, aware that people who've been open and receptive to her advice will feel it acutely if something she says suddenly feels out of step with everything that came before.

That awareness, she says, is part of what it means to hold any kind of formal or informal leadership position.

Lesson 3: How to Give Feedback That Works in the Trades

Louise uses a deliberately simple structure for hard conversations: name the specific behaviour, explain how it landed, and offer a replacement.

She gives the example of one of the women she mentors, whose tradesperson kept getting her attention by slapping a stack of paperwork against her backside, clearly not malicious, but not okay either.

Rather than let it fester, the woman named it directly: when you smack me with the paperwork, it bothers me, could you tap my shoulder instead? "He was like, 'Oh, I didn't even realise. Of course I can tap you on the shoulder,'" Louise says.

Breaking a vague discomfort into something specific is what actually gets it fixed.

Lesson 4: Managing Workplace Anxiety as a Tradie

Louise frames workplace anxiety as a genuinely useful, ancient survival response, the same instinct that once kept humans alert to predators now fires when an interaction feels tense, flooding the body with adrenaline that isn't actually needed.

Her go-to reset is deceptively simple.

"One thing I do like to say is, ‘there is no tiger’," she says. "That kind of snaps you out of that spiral, and it allows you to come back to the ground."

Reminding herself she's physically safe is usually enough to bring her back to responding to the actual situation in front of her.

Lesson 5: Self-Talk and Confidence in the Workplace

Louise sees the way people talk to themselves as one of the most overlooked leadership tools going, whether or not they're formally leading anyone else.

She hears the same self-talk constantly from the tradeswomen she coaches: a quiet, background belief that they're not good enough, and pushes people to define exactly what "good enough" would look like, so the feeling becomes something concrete they can work toward.

"Looking at the way that you talk to yourself... it's so powerful," she says. "If we're feeling like we're not good enough, that really affects the way that we show up for ourselves" and for any team relying on you.

Louise’s Advice on Everyday Leadership

"Give your 100% for the day that you're having. It's not about being perfect; it’s about showing up in a way that you’re proud of every day,” even on the days, she admits, when you receive the wrong truck part, or an old engine falls apart the moment you touch it.

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