Nathan Burke

Through Nathan’s 27 years in the elite world of AFL football, including 18 years as a professional player (5 years as Captain) 2 years as a Coach and 7 years as a Director of the St Kilda Football Club), he has gained great insight into how to extract great performance from individuals and teams.

Since leaving St Kilda he has been applying his expertise in human performance in the fields of education, business and sport.

Initially, Nathan began his career as a primary school teacher until the rigours and demands of AFL football took over. Throughout his career, he maintained touch with the workforce and managed his own retail outlet in the highly competitive sporting goods market.

Since retiring he has been an AFL Assistant Coach, Senior AFLW Coach, Senior Consultant at leading management consultancy, Mettle Group and Chief Operating Officer and People and Cultural Manager at CallActive Pty Ltd (a 1,300 staff contact centre outsourcing business in Australia and New Zealand).

Nathan Burke after football…

His 3-year term as a member of the AFL Match Review Panel recently came to an end and he is now Senior Coach of the Western Bulldogs in the AFLW as well as still providing media commentary to a number of organisations.

Nathan has a Diploma of Teaching and Diploma of Business but most importantly is married to Fiona and has three beautiful daughters, Ruby, Molly and Alice.

Renowned for his healthy lifestyle (Nathan doesn’t drink alcohol at all) he can still be found working out in the gym or down the park as well as going for a run or two.

On 24th August 2021, Nathan was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.

Leadership and High-Performance Training & Coaching

In 2014 Nathan founded his own consultancy business specialising in the fields of personal development, leadership, culture and resilience.

He also partnered with Planet K2 as an Associate Coach where the lessons learnt as St Kilda and Victorian State of Origin Captain can be transferred in order to maximise human performance – namely how to ensure your own performance is of a consistently high standard whilst also concerning yourself with the performance of the team and each individual within it.

Nathan’s work builds heavily on the concepts of personal responsibility, ownership and making the most of your talents; whilst focusing on practical actions that can be employed immediately.

An engaging presenter, Nathan strives to leave a lasting impression on his clients by connecting through relevant stories of his time as an elite athlete, teacher, business owner and executive.

With his substantial background in contact centres, Nathan partners with CX Skills to provide high-performance leadership training for emerging leaders, team leaders and the senior leadership groups.

Customised for your workplace

As well as some standard courses with set agendas, Nathan can fully customise his training courses to hone in on the skills and attributes you need. He has a range of training modules and topics he can improve your workplace on including:

• Understanding what you are leading towards (the starting point for all Leaders)
• Having a clear picture of what leadership success looks like. Includes self-assessment.
• Assessing and designing the culture you need in order to be successful.
• Setting standards, mutual and individual accountability.
• Having difficult conversations – liked vs respect.
• Responsibilities of a leader – to self and team.
• Managing change and controlling what you can control.
• The difference between Performance and Outcomes.
• Characteristics of High Performing Teams.
• Motivating others – 3C’s Confidence, Control, Connectedness.
• Coaching for performance and being ready to perform – personal improvement plans.
• GROW model – coaching methodology.
• Assessing capability.
• Task assignment and delegation.
• Situational leadership.
• Presentation skills.
• Building rapport and trust.
• Listening skills.
• Resilience for leaders, leading through difficult times.