What should have been an exciting start to a new role was marred by illness, but NAB’s Louise Harvey-Wills has gone on to thrive.
Starting a new job is always daunting and particularly so when it involves moving countries and taking responsibility for a team of 300 people. That challenge quickly paled into insignificance for Louise Harvey-Wills. Five days after relocating from New Zealand to Australia to take a role as NAB’s executive general manager, People, she was struck down with Guillain-Barre syndrome which left her paralysed for several months.
“Five days after I arrived in Australia I got food poisoning from a chicken sandwich which caused Guillain-Barre syndrome,” she explains. “Instead of starting work I ended up in an ambulance. I couldn’t move from the waist down and then a week later I couldn’t move from my face down. I spent four months in hospital and had to learn to speak, write and walk again.”
Prior to this life changing experience, Harvey-Wills began her working life in a graduate marketing role but transitioned into HR a few years in.
“I found my calling at that point. I loved that you could fix the proposition for people coming into an organisation and I saw the difference you could make in an organisation by getting the right people.”
She developed a broad HR skill base and since the late 90s has been working in-house or as a consultant in Africa, the Guernsey Channel Islands and New Zealand.
Before making the move to Melbourne in July 2013, Harvey-Wills had spent four years working with the Bank of New Zealand in an executive general manager role, where she was part of the team that determined the strategic direction for the organisation.
“I absolutely loved the role and love what we achieved culturally,” she reflects.
When she was asked by BNZ’s owner, NAB, to do a similar role in Australia she accepted and expected to hit the ground running. Her intervening illness meant it wasn’t that simple.
“My team had never met me so they had no idea of who I was. I came back to work in a wheelchair and an eye mask and I still had some facial paralysis,” she explains. “I went from being known incredibly well known in New Zealand to being unknown and having a huge barrier.”
It gave her tremendous insight into accessibility.
“Simply because your face doesn’t work and you’re in a wheelchair people assume you don’t have intelligence,” she says. “People were incredibly welcoming and phenomenally supportive in my recovery but outside the environment in which people know you, you have to work incredibly hard to make other people realise there is still a real person underneath.”
Harvey-Wills’ husband had the unenviable task of juggling their life on the home front whilst supporting his wife in hospital.
“My husband has been absolutely phenomenal. He’s always been a wonderful dad but he had to do everything. He had to move us into the new home, get the kids off to their new schools, all without friends or family or a community network and while also working,” she says.
She was also fortunate that NAB enabled a slow transition back to work.
“I worked 20 hours a week for four weeks and then I did 25 hours for two weeks and then I came back full time,” Harvey-Wills says. “For me that worked. Because my role was so large and I was the leader I pushed myself more.”
She considers herself fully recovered now – she can bike ride and run up stairs – but she will always have some facial paralysis because the damage was so bad. Even with the support she received, she says returning to lead a new team in the state she was in was the greatest challenge she has ever faced.
“Getting up on stage after I was sick was biggest struggle I have had in my career,” she says.
It was a time when her confidence, self-belief and resilience – fostered and developed throughout her working life – came to the fore.
“Having the confidence and resilience to back yourself is required whatever your age or experience. When I was approached about a consulting role overseas many years ago another man, who was 15 or 20 years older than me, was also interviewed. He rang me and said, “There’s no point in you applying for this. I have much more experience Louise. I said, ‘Well we have different skillsets and I will be putting myself forward’.”
She was the successful candidate and it taught her the power of self-belief.
“There are times when you can doubt yourself,” Harvey-Wills says. “Women can be inclined to tick every box, but you don’t have to have, or be, everything. Technical skills are important but having the right behaviour, attitude and potential to do a role is far more important. If you are missing gaps you work out a plan to lessen that – to learn from others – or support yourself.”
When Harvey-Wills first met with NAB’s CEO Andrew Thorburn who was then the CEO of BNZ she was upfront about who the person she is.
“I went along in a 1950s style dress and hat and said I’m not a traditional banker. I won’t actually change who I am as a person to fit that mould,” she says. He was happy with that and said he wasn’t after a traditional banker.
“Sometimes we’re not true enough to ourselves. There are times when we need to adjust – to be realistic about our audience – but I don’t think you need to become a male version of a female to be successful.”