Andrew Forrest Leadership

1. Introduction

Andrew Forrest needs little or no introduction to practically anyone who is a student of Australian or global business leadership. Mr Forrest is widely regarded as a very successful, if not one of the most successful, businessmen and leaders both in industry and within the community (Burrell, 2014, p184 - 185).

The aim of this paper is to critically evaluate and analyse the leadership of Mr Forrest.

This paper addresses three issues. Firstly, it will look at what made Andrew Forrest what he is today, his life experiences and how they have shaped him. Secondly, this paper will describe the industries that get Mr Forrest’s attention and his motivations, vision, passion and why this is important in the context of where he is

Andrew Forrest

Andrew Forrest was born John Andrew Henry Forrest, at Perth, in 1961. His great-great uncle was Sir John Forrest, the first premier of Western Australia (Burrell, 2014, p19 - 20). Forrest grew up at Minderoo Station, in the Pilbara, and he worked as a Jackaroo on the property owned by his family until 1998 (Burrell, 2014, p38 - 40). The property was sold due to debt resulting from the unyielding drought, floods and cyclones (Burrell, 2014, p66). A pivotal point in Forrest’s life was the day he bought back Minderoo Station in 2009 (Burrell, 2014, p333 - 334).

Scotty Black, an aboriginal man, became a mentor to Forrest in his formative years (Burrell, 2014, p41) and is attributed to helping the young Forrest, who described himself as a stuttering boy (Burrell, 2014, p54), develop into the confident and accomplished leader that he is today.

Forrest was a student at Onslow Primary School before his family moved back to Perth and he studied at Christ Church Grammar School and then Hale School. Forrest rounded out his education completing a double major in economics and politics at the University of Western Australia (Burrell, 2014, p60 - 66).

3. Mining, Livestock and

Andrew Forrest – Evaluation of His Leadership

The Interactional Framework for Analysing Leadership depicts leadership as a function of three elements – the leader, the followers, and the situation (Hughes, et al., 2015, p15).

It has been held that a leaders experience and history in an organisation is important to his or her effectiveness in addition to how the leader achieved their status (Hughes, et al., 2015, p15-16).

This thinking, when taken into consideration, sheds some light onto the cult status enjoyed by Forrest at FMG as everyone in the company knows about the hardships he endured to ‘make it happen’ and how much he has vested into the ongoing success of the business (Burrell, 2014, p147, p177 - 178).

Figure 1 – An Interactional Framework for Analysing Leadership Source: Adapted from E.P Hollander, Leadership Dynamics: A Practical Guide to Effective Relationships (New York: Free Press, 1978)

When one considers the framework in Figure 1, Forrest ticks the boxes with regard to the leader dimension in most aspects such as personality, position,