5 Leadership Lessons for Tradies from Stand-Up Recruitment’s Les Wikiriwhi

Guest: Les Wikiriwhi

Episode: Season 2, Episode 4

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Les Wikiriwhi founded Stand-Up Recruitment, a company helping Kiwi tradies relocate to Australia for a better future. He’s lived the same early starts and pressure most tradies know well, and he’s built his leadership on discipline, honesty about his own struggles, and a refusal to let his team see him falter.

Here’s what he’s learned about leadership in business as a tradie:

Lesson 1: Protect Your Team From Leadership Stress

Les describes watching a team member visibly absorb his own worry during a tough moment in the business, a lesson in exactly what not to do as a leader. Since then, his rule is simple: no matter how heavy things get, that burden of leadership gets processed with a mentor or offloaded elsewhere, never passed down to the people counting on him.

“As a leader, your team is following you and counting on you to lead them into battle,” he says, “and it’s me stepping up, leading by example.”

Lesson 2: Make Decisions as a Leader Without Certainty

When Les moved his young family to Perth, they landed in a rundown house booked unseen from New Zealand, a shaky start with two children under three.

Rather than waiting for full information, Les had to reassure his kids everything would be okay before he actually knew that himself, and make the calls anyway, a habit he repeats as a business owner now.

“I’ve gotta make decisions without complete certainty. But when I make that decision, that’s it. Go for it. If it breaks, fix it quickly and go again,” he says. Being decisive helps him fail fast and learn faster as a business owner.

Lesson 3: Build Discipline Through Daily Routine

Les is direct that he came from a hard background with no early exposure to discipline or structure, and built both from scratch as an adult.

His mornings now start at 4 am with an ice bath, stretching and exercise, deliberately front-loading something difficult before the workday even begins.

“It was a direct correlation that when I built self-discipline, everything opened up for me. I looked at the world differently. I wasn’t so pessimistic anymore,” he says of the shift that’s touched his parenting, relationships and business alike.

Lesson 4: Vulnerability Is a Leadership Strength

Rather than presenting as the leader with everything figured out, Les tells his team openly about the mistakes he’s made, a choice he says has done more for his team’s trust than any polished front could.

When something goes wrong in the business now, the question is simply whether it’s a people problem or a process problem, fixed without blame games.

“A lot of my staff tell me that they haven’t worked for anybody like me,” he says, calling that openness “a bit of a secret sauce.”

Lesson 5: Fixing Toxic Culture in the Trades

Les has worked under supervisors who normalised speaking to apprentices and labourers in ways they’d never use on a stranger in the street, a double standard he refuses to carry into his own business.

He holds that everyone, from the newest apprentice to the most senior person in the room, deserves the same respect regardless of position.

“How have we normalised letting people in positions of power talk to someone starting in a bad way?” he asks, arguing that shifting a toxic culture starts with leaders taking accountability first.

Les’s Advice on Everyday Leadership

Master yourself before you worry about leading anyone else.

“If you cannot lead yourself, you cannot lead anybody else,” he says, pointing to the promises people quietly break with themselves every day, skipping the gym, letting standards slide, as the real starting point for leadership.

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