Before You Cross Into FY27, Watch This (The EOFY Leadership Audit)

Edge of Possibilities | Liz Murray | Leadership Development

Reading time, 5 minutes

June 30 is almost here. And if you're like most leaders, you're probably heads down right now, finalising budgets, closing out performance reviews, getting through the list.

But before you cross the line into a new financial year, I want to ask you something most leaders never stop long enough to answer. Not did we hit the numbers, but who were you as a leader this year, and are you proud of it. Because your budget resets on 1 July. Your leadership patterns don't.

In this episode I share a personal story about the year I arrived at EOFY carrying the exact same pattern I'd promised myself I would change, and four questions every leader should sit with honestly before crossing into FY27.

In this episode:

00:00 The question most leaders never ask at EOFY

01:00 My own EOFY story, the year nothing had changed

02:30 The patterns that don't reset on 1 July

03:45 The EOFY leadership audit, four questions to sit with

05:00 Why I built the Authority Drift Index for this exact moment The four audit questions: Did you hold your standards consistently, or did you let things slide when the timing felt wrong? Did you make clear decisions and stand by them, or did you second guess yourself and keep revisiting? Did you invest in your people, or did you manage their output? When pressure hit, did you lead from the front, or did you react, withdraw, or become someone your team didn't recognise? Your team deserves the best version of you in

FY27. So do you.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

June 30 is almost here, and if you're like most leaders I know, you're probably heads down right now. Finalising budgets. Closing out performance reviews. Getting through the list. But before you cross the line into a new financial year, I want to ask you something that most leaders never stop long enough to answer. And it's not, did we hit the numbers. But who were you as a leader this year, and are you proud of it. Because your budget resets on July 1st, but your leadership patterns don't. About five years into my leadership career, my team had tripled in size. The spreadsheet lines had grown. The wages and operational costs were pretty significant. And if I'm honest, the figures were starting to scare me a little, even though I'd always been proactive with planning and everything was tracking pretty well. I still felt heavy, and I felt really overwhelmed. I felt a bit out of my depth if I'm honest, in a way that I'd never felt before. When I sat down with my coach to work through it, I was surprised to find that it had nothing to do with the budget at all. The figures were fine. There was no financial reason for what I was feeling. The real culprit was the date. I'd set an intention at the start of the financial year to do extra check in meetings with a team member who was underperforming. Not just the formal performance improvement plan meetings, I genuinely wanted to provide more support. I wanted to ask better questions and help them understand what was expected and give them every opportunity to improve. But the busyness of the day to day had swallowed that intention whole. And now here I was at the end of their PIP, at the end of the financial year, with every end of financial year pressure piling in all at once, realising I hadn't followed through on what I'd told myself I would do. I'd let them down, and my actions had not been congruent with what my intentions were. The heaviest part wasn't the workload. It was this. I had been busy doing exactly the same thing as the year before, and the one small pattern that I had wanted to change and embed, the one thing that could have made a real difference to that person, had slipped again for another six months. This is what it feels like when your leadership drifts and you don't notice it at the end of the year. Here's the truth about the new financial year that nobody says out loud. July 1 feels like a fresh start. New goals, new targets, clean slate. But if your patterns come with you across that line, unless you deliberately choose to leave them behind, the standard you let slide in February, it will still be waiting for you in July the next year. The conversation you kept avoiding, it'll still be there. And the team member that you kept meaning to invest more time in, they'll still be there feeling the gap. A new financial year doesn't reset your leadership. Only you can do that. And the only way to do it is to get honest right now, before you cross that line, about what you actually ran this year. Not what you intended, not what you planned, but what you actually did, consistently, under pressure, when it was inconvenient. Because that is the truth in your leadership financial year 2026, and it's the foundation you're building for your financial year in 2027, whether you examine it or not. The end of financial year leadership audit. I want to give you four questions to sit with before June 30th. Be honest, no one's watching. The first one, did you hold your standards consistently, or did you let things slide when the timing felt wrong? Think about the moments you told yourself it wasn't the right time to have that conversation. Add them up, this is your drift score on standards. The second is, did you make clear decisions and stand by them, or did you second guess yourself and keep revisiting? Your team watches how you decide more than what you decide. Inconsistency here costs you authority faster than almost anything else. And the third, did you invest in your people, or did you manage their output? There's a difference between checking metrics and genuinely understanding what your team members need to grow. Which one did you do more of this year? The fourth, when pressure hit, and it always hits, did you lead from the front, or did you react? Did you withdraw, or did you become someone your team didn't quite recognise? Pressure reveals that pattern. What did your score reveal? Sit with those four questions honestly, because the answers are your leadership audit, and they will tell you more about where you stand than any performance review ever could. You know, I spent years arriving at end of financial year carrying the same patterns I had promised myself I'd change. Not because I didn't care, and not because I wasn't trying, but because I didn't have a clear enough picture exactly of where my authority was, where it was strong and where it was needing some work. I was working on everything generally, instead of focusing on the specific things that would have made me the best leader possible. That's what the Authority Drift Index gives you. If you haven't taken it yet, this is your moment, right now, before the new financial year starts, before you carry on the same patterns across the line for another twelve months. It's free, it takes five minutes to do, and it'll show you exactly where to focus your leadership energy in the 2027 financial year. The link is below, or just type drift in the comments and I'll send it straight to you. Your team deserves the best version of you in the 2027 financial year, and so do you. I'll see you on the other side.

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PUBLISH DATE: Monday 22 June 2026 at 6:00am AEST

EPISODE LENGTH: 6 minutes 37 seconds

THUMBNAIL: Week 4 cover, your budget resets, your patterns don't