Be your story: Nicki Mackay on 30 years of leadership and lessons

Be your story: Nicki Mackay on 30 years of leadership and lessons

When Nicki Mackay reflects on her 30-year leadership journey, she doesn’t describe a straight or a perfectly polished pathway. Instead, she speaks of detours, lessons learned (some the hard way), the importance of perspective, and the privilege of turning back to support those coming behind her.

Now Chief People Officer at FMG, Nicki has worked her way through nine different roles over 16 years in the organisation – from frontline sales to leading through crises like Cyclone Gabrielle, and now to the exec table. Hers is a journey that shows careers don’t need to be linear to be meaningful.

“Every role has shaped me,” she says. “Sometimes I went up, sometimes sideways, sometimes back. But I was always developing. What I’ve learned is that when you change your seat at the table, you change what you see. Perspective is everything”.

Leading authentically

Nicki’s leadership mantra is simple, yet powerful: Be your story. Own it. Live it. Love it.

This mantra is a call to authenticity that she discovered during AWDT’s Escalator programme in 2016. Listening to others articulate their leadership “why” left her questioning her own until she realised the answer wasn’t about having all the answers. It was about being true to who she really is.

This important lesson has stayed with her. “Leadership isn’t about being perfect. I make mistakes every day. I have crises of confidence. But if I can be open about that, even something like brain fog in the middle of a presentation, it gives others permission to be real too. That’s important”.

Ten lessons for life and leadership

Over time, Nicki has distilled her own experiences into ten lessons – ones she shares with young leaders and in FMG’s Te Aki programme.

One: Build relationships before you need them

“People won’t necessarily remember what you say, but they’ll remember how you made them feel”.

For Nicki, relationships are the currency of leadership. She makes it a habit to reach out each week to people across FMG, including those she hasn’t yet met; welcoming new team members, congratulating achievements, or simply asking how they are. This makes her accessible as an exec and means that if difficult conversations arise, the foundations of trust and honesty are already established.

Two: Your career won’t be linear

“Careers are not about perfectly mapped out plans. They’re about adaptability and resilience”.

Nicki’s own career is proof of this. Over a decade and a half at FMG she has taken nine roles and says that the real strength comes from breadth – from walking in different shoes, across different parts of an organisation, and understanding the bigger picture.

She encourages young women to embrace her “polystyrene walls” approach to career planning. Polystyrene is light and can be moved easily if the path needs to change. She says if you lay out your career in concrete, you’ll create a rigid barrier that could make setbacks feel like failure. She adds, “If I thought my career was going to follow a linear path, I would have been disappointed!”.

Three: Be courageous

“Celebrate one another’s successes and have the courage to lift each other up. That’s how we create better workplaces and stronger communities”.

Courage isn’t about never feeling fear. For Nicki, it’s about being willing to step into difficult spaces despite it – leading teams through crises, addressing uncomfortable topics in the workplace, or admitting vulnerability in public forums.

But courage is also about personal standards and accountability. “The broken window you walk past is the one you accept,” she says. “It’s so important to fix what’s broken, everywhere you see it. Especially the hard stuff.”

That means setting clear expectations and holding both herself and her teams to high standards. She makes it a priority to ensure that the people around her know what’s expected of them and how they should be showing up.

“When we let things slide, we lower the bar for everyone. Courage is about facing into the tough conversations, not avoiding them.”

Four: Know yourself
“Know your brand. Trust your intuition and be honest about where you need to grow”.

This lesson came to life after Nicki applied for a management role and didn’t get it – a tough blow. Looking back, she reflects that she wasn’t ready and didn’t yet have a full understanding of her biases, blind spots, and development areas.

Today, Nicki sees self-awareness as the cornerstone of leadership. Her advice is to get to know yourself on a deep level because when you do, leadership stops being about you and starts being about the people you are leading.

Five: Know others and your people

“Leadership is about knowing others as deeply as you know yourself.”

This lesson is about connection, care, and balance. Nicki makes sure she takes the time to get to know others; what’s important to them, what motivates them, how they like to communicate and be cared for. Because when you understand this, you can show up for people in a way that resonates.

She says that it’s also about balance within a team. “Great leaders make sure everyone feels seen and heard, but also that the playing field feels fair. When people know they matter, and that the team’s purpose connects them all, you create belonging and alignment at the same time.”

Six: Say ‘I’m sorry’

“Saying sorry doesn’t weaken you; it builds trust. People know you’re human, and they know you care enough to own your missteps.”

Nicki believes that humility is a leadership superpower. She’s not afraid to admit mistakes, big or small, and to apologise. It’s a practice she models daily, reminding others that leadership isn’t about being infallible. It’s about being honest, accountable, and willing to grow.

Seven: Reflect

“If you don’t stop to reflect, you don’t learn.”

Reflection can sometimes feel like a luxury, especially with the pace of the world today. For Nicki, reflection is non-negotiable. Reflection allows her to see silver linings; from navigating the Christchurch earthquakes with young children to recovering from a broken leg during a busy time in her life. For Nicki, reflecting is about asking herself what the situation taught her and what perspective she gained. She adds, “If you reflect, even the hardest times leave you stronger.”

Eight: Be a lifelong learner

“It doesn’t matter what stage you’re at – there’s always more to learn.”

Nicki says she has never stopped learning, both formally and informally. From AWDT’s Escalator in 2016 where she discovered her leadership ‘why’, to books such as ‘Finding True North’, these are the things that have shaped her thinking on perspective. She also embraces curiosity as fuel and says, “The world is changing too fast to stand still. If you stop learning, you stop leading”.

Nine: Find your war team

“Leadership can be lonely. But if you have your people, you’ll never walk it alone.”

Those rare individuals who will both celebrate your wins without agenda and hold up a mirror when you need to grow are who Nicki calls her ‘war team’. They may be in your workplace or outside it or indeed be a mix of both. But, as Nicki says, they are the ones you can absolutely trust. They’ll tell you the truth when you need to hear it, they’ll cheer the loudest when you succeed, and they are essential for resilience.

Ten: Perspective and the value of others

“If you walk around and see the world from someone else’s perspective before deciding what to say or do, you’ll never lead the same way again. You can’t unsee what you’ve seen.”

Perhaps Nicki’s favourite metaphor for leadership is imagining the number three – something she learned from Michael Henderson’s book, Finding True North. Put it in the middle of the table and to one person it looks like a 3, to another an M, to another an E, and to another a W. “The number hasn’t changed, but the perspective has. When you change your seat at the table, you change what you see.” She carries this lesson into every conversation and decision.

Be your story

At the heart of all these lessons is Nicki’s leadership mantra: Be your story. Own it, live it, love it.

“Leadership is about knowing yourself and serving others,” she says. “You don’t have to get it right all the time. You just have to keep learning, keep reflecting, and keep walking forward.”

For the next generation of women leaders, Nicki hopes her journey shows that success doesn’t mean perfection; it means courage, connection, and authenticity.

“At some point, it becomes about turning back and encouraging others forward. You don’t pull the ladder up behind you. You make the pathway smoother.”