Wayne is a Morris Group original. He’s pretty much been around since day one, starting as an IT support officer when CLG first hotels were acquired.
Before that he’d been working in the IT Infrastructure team at Computershare. As Morris Group expanded, Morris Technology was born and Wayne’s career took a turn towards leadership. He trained new staff, managed the service team, and took on exciting new projects, all leading him to taking on the General Manager position in 2022.
Have you had a leadership role before now? Did you always aspire to be in a leadership position? How did you get there?
I never really aspired to be in a management role, but I was offered the opportunity when I was at Computershare and it just progressed from there. My last role at CPU was Helpdesk Manager, responsible for seven staff and supporting about 1,200 users across Australia. I’ve done various courses along the journey and also learned a lot of valuable lessons from managers I’ve had in the past. Some were great, but others not worthy of the title. You can learn a lot from poor leaders because you learn how not to treat people.
What’s your approach to leadership? How do you motivate your team?
What works for me is still being able to be hands on and be involved with the team on a daily basis. My leadership style is pretty simple. I just try and treat people in my team as I would want to be treated. I also try to jump on any issues as early as possible. I think that helps build an open relationship with the team, and hopefully people can feel comfortable approaching me.
What do you love about being a leader? What motivates you?
“I love the interaction with our team and the day-to-day challenge of trying provide the best IT support we can for the group. My motivation is to ensure the feedback on IT is positive and anyone who seeks our help is not disappointed,”
Wayne Bertoldi, General Manager, Morris Technology
What are some of the challenges that come with being a leader? Are there particular challenges you face because of the industry you work in? How do you overcome them?
One of the challenges of being a leader is that it’s hard to keep everyone happy. You really have to work to find a balance. In our industry, one of the big challenges is that people expect things to be working all the time, with just isn’t always possible when you’re working with technology. Sometimes things go wrong and you have to be able to be cool and calm and troubleshoot, a lot of the time under time pressure. How we overcome this… “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
What other leaders inspire you? Do you have any role models?
No particular people come to mind but any leader that leads by example tends to get my attention.
What advice would you give to aspiring leaders?
Some advice I’d have for anyone wanting to move into a leadership role is to go over and above what is currently expected of you, and always offer to help others around you, especially when someone in the team is under pressure. There’s no need to self-promote. Your hard work will be noticed even if you don’t think it does.
My tips on being a good leader are to listen more than you talk, encourage input from your team, and to delegate a challenging task to someone who you think might not be quite ready. They might just surprise you! And also, the simple stuff. Make sure there’s milk in the fridge, the coffee machine is clean, the biscuit tin is full, and there’s pizza for the team on Fridays.