Questions leaders ask

Reem Borrows is an author, leadership strategist, executive coach and keynote speaker based in Australia. She is the author of Unfollow the Leader, an Amazon Best Seller in leadership and organisational books and winner of the Literary Titan Book Award, and the founder of Dreem Coaching & Consulting.

Her work helps individuals, leaders and organisations align strategy, behaviour and culture through self-leadership, emotional intelligence and the Health, Head & Heart framework. She works with clients across Australia and the Asia Pacific, including Singapore, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

Reem holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Postgraduate Diploma in Strategic Human Resources and Industrial Relations, and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

She brings more than two decades of senior leadership experience across sales, marketing, organisational development, coaching and facilitation. That background spans corporate, government, community and not-for-profit organisations, which shapes a practical approach grounded in commercial reality rather than theory alone.

Most leadership development focuses on what leaders should do. Reem's work focuses on what actually happens when pressure rises, when ego takes over, when fear narrows perspective, and when stress shortens the gap between stimulus and response.

The approach combines strategic thinking with human behaviour, emotional regulation and self-leadership. The goal is applied change rather than short-term motivation, which means the work stays connected to real decisions, real conversations and real performance outcomes.

Reem is based in Sydney, Australia, and works with organisations nationally including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Darwin and the Gold Coast.

She also delivers keynotes, leadership programs and corporate training across the Asia Pacific region, including Singapore, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Executive coaching is available both in person and online.

Dreem Coaching & Consulting is the practice Reem founded and directs. It delivers executive coaching, leadership development programs, culture and behaviour consulting, sales excellence work, communication training and facilitated workshops for organisations.

This site covers Reem's work as an author, speaker and thought leader. Organisational engagements and program details sit with Dreem Coaching & Consulting.

Unfollow the Leader challenges outdated models of leadership built on control, hierarchy, ego and performance at all costs. It argues that leaders do not fail externally, they break down internally, and that lasting organisational change begins with personal awareness rather than external authority.

The book introduces the Health, Head & Heart framework and the S.T.O.P. tool, and covers self-leadership, emotional intelligence, wellbeing, ego, accountability and culture. The full subtitle is Why the Old Rules Are Failing Us, and What Real Leadership Looks Like Now.

The book is written for four groups:

• Individuals leading themselves, their careers, their confidence or their next chapter
• Business owners and founders building organisations with clarity, culture and purpose
• Executives, managers and emerging leaders wanting to align behaviour with the impact they intend
• Organisations moving beyond performance pressure toward trust, accountability and sustainable growth

Readers do not need a leadership title to find it useful. Much of the material applies to how people lead their own lives, decisions and relationships.

Yes. Unfollow the Leader is an Amazon Best Seller in leadership and organisational books, reaching #1 in Organisational Learning, #1 in Organisational Change and #3 in Business Motivation and Self-Improvement.

The book also received the Literary Titan Book Award and a five-star editorial review from Literary Titan, which described it as a warm, reflective and practical read for people who want to lead with more courage and care.

The book is available in two formats: paperback and Amazon Kindle.

Bulk orders for teams, leadership programs and events can be arranged. Media representatives can request review copies through the media page.

S.T.O.P. separates Strategic, Tactical and Operational Priorities. It came from years of coaching leaders who intellectually knew what to do but struggled to access that knowledge in real moments of pressure.

The tool is designed to interrupt automatic reactions and create enough space between stimulus and response for a conscious choice to emerge. It also works as a practical blueprint connecting strategy, behaviour, culture, communication, accountability and execution, so people manage activity and focus rather than trying to manage time.

Yes. The book is supported by downloadable resources including a communication toolkit, a strategy document and a Coaching for Transformation framework, along with the Dreem GROW Coaching Framework and the Dreem S.T.O.P. Workbook.

These extend the work beyond the book and provide structure for applying the concepts with real teams. They are available on the resources page.

Health, Head & Heart is Reem Borrows' leadership framework for aligning three capacities that have to work together.

Health is energy, vitality, resilience, emotional regulation and the capacity to stay grounded under pressure. Head is clarity, strategy, perspective and decision-making beyond ego. Heart is emotional intelligence, empathy, courage, trust and connection.

When the three are aligned, leaders respond instead of react, teams speak more honestly, accountability becomes less threatening, and strategy becomes more executable.

Leadership development has focused heavily on the Head for decades: strategy, intellect, execution, KPIs and performance. Those things matter, and without Health and Heart the whole system eventually becomes unstable.

The common sequence is that people sacrifice Health first while chasing success, disconnect from Heart while trying to maintain performance, and eventually the Head begins to suffer too. Decision-making becomes reactive, relationships deteriorate and clarity disappears.

Many leadership models describe what good leadership looks like. Health, Head & Heart focuses on the conditions that allow a leader to hold that standard when pressure rises, which is where most models stop being useful.

It is also deliberately simple. In moments of stress, people rarely access complicated frameworks effectively, so the model was built to be recalled and used in the room rather than studied afterwards.

Yes. It is frequently used as a shared language for leadership teams, giving people a common way to name what is happening when a decision stalls, a conversation goes badly or a team is running on empty.

It can anchor a keynote, a leadership development program, a workshop series or a full culture and behaviour consulting engagement. Details are on the work with Reem page.

Practically, it shows up as a set of questions leaders learn to ask themselves. For Health: what drains my leadership presence, and where am I confusing burnout with commitment? For Head: am I trying to be right, or trying to get it right, and what am I not seeing? For Heart: am I leading from trust or fear, and what does this person need to feel safe enough to be honest?

Over time these questions become quick internal checks rather than a formal exercise.

Reem delivers five signature keynotes: Unfollow the Leader, on why the old rules of leadership are failing; Health, Head & Heart, a framework for sustainable leadership; The Ego in the Boardroom; Calm Under Pressure; and Self-Leadership for Women.

Talks are practical and reflective rather than motivational, and each one is adapted to the audience, the event theme and the outcomes the organisers want.

Corporate leadership conferences, women in leadership events, executive retreats, culture and transformation summits, sales leadership events, founder and entrepreneur communities, government and community leadership events, and purpose-led or social impact events.

Formats include keynotes, fireside chats, panels, workshops and full-day facilitated sessions.

Send your event details through the contact page, including the date, location, audience, format and the outcomes you want the session to achieve. Reem's team will respond with availability and a tailored proposal.

Enquiring early helps, particularly for events during peak conference periods.

Yes. Alongside events across Australia, Reem speaks and delivers corporate training across the Asia Pacific region including Singapore, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Virtual keynotes are also available for distributed teams and international audiences.

Yes. Many organisations pair a keynote with a follow-up workshop so the ideas move from insight into applied practice, which is where behaviour actually changes.

Bulk copies of Unfollow the Leader can be arranged for delegates, and the free resources give attendees a structured way to continue the work after the event.

Executive coaching is a personalised development process that helps executives, senior leaders and business owners become more effective in how they think, communicate, make decisions and lead others. It differs from mentoring or consulting by focusing on the insight, confidence and behaviours behind lasting outcomes.

It is particularly valuable for leaders stepping into larger roles, leading organisational change, managing complex stakeholder relationships or wanting an independent sounding board who can challenge their thinking in confidence.

Seven areas of work: executive coaching, leadership development programs, culture and behaviour consulting, workshops and retreats, sales excellence, effective communication, and Insights Discovery.

Engagements are tailored rather than packaged, and are typically built around a live organisational problem rather than a generic curriculum.

Insights Discovery is a behavioural profiling tool built on Jungian psychology that helps individuals and teams understand their communication preferences, strengths and blind spots through four colour energies. It creates a shared language that makes differences easier to discuss constructively.

The value comes from what happens after the profile. Reem uses it as part of a broader development process, connecting self-awareness to real workplace behaviour, communication and performance rather than treating it as a one-off exercise.

It depends on the goal. Executive coaching usually runs over several months to allow behaviour change to take hold and be tested in real conditions. Leadership programs are commonly delivered as a series across a quarter or more. Keynotes and single workshops are one-off, and are most effective when there is a plan for what follows.

Sustainable behaviour change takes repetition. Single sessions raise awareness, and structured follow-up is what turns awareness into practice.

Measures are agreed at the start and vary by engagement. Common indicators include leadership behaviour change observed by others, improvements in team communication and trust, faster and clearer decision-making, healthier accountability, voluntary turnover among high performers, and progress against the strategic priorities the work was designed to support.

Engagement scores and 360 feedback can be useful directionally. Movement over time matters more than any single number.

Self-leadership is the ability to guide your own thoughts, emotions, habits, decisions and behaviour before trying to influence anyone else. It is the foundation of how people lead under pressure.

Before you can lead a team, a business, a conversation or a culture, you have to be able to lead yourself. Your patterns under pressure become the team's patterns, and your tolerance for honesty becomes the team's ceiling for honesty.

More than 70% of organisations struggle to translate strategy into performance. What gets called a strategy failure is often a perception failure: leaders making quick, meaning-based decisions before realising they have moved away from the reality of the situation.

Most leaders already know what good leadership looks like. The challenge is holding that standard when pressure rises, because that is where behaviour shifts, culture is shaped, and performance is either strengthened or lost.

Ego rarely announces itself as arrogance. It shows up as defensiveness when challenged, needing to be right, resistance to feedback, controlling detail, hiding mistakes, or staying attached to a plan long after the evidence has moved.

The cost is quiet and significant. Teams stop offering information to leaders who react badly to it, which means the leader ends up making decisions with a progressively worse picture of reality.

The distinction is whether the consequence is applied to the work or to the person. Naming what happened, its impact, and what changes next is accountability. Cold shoulders, public correction and withdrawal are control presented as standards.

Both approaches have consequences. Only one keeps information flowing, and leaders need that information more than they need compliance.

Prepare your state, not just your script. Get clear on the outcome you want, separate the observation from the story you have built, and consider your own contribution honestly before you walk in.

In the conversation: set the context in one sentence, state the observation rather than a judgment about character, name the impact, ask one open question and let the silence sit, then agree specifically what happens next. There is a full guide in Thoughts.

Yes, and not through a culture program alone. Culture is not what an organisation teaches, it is what an organisation permits. If a values program runs on Monday and a high-performing bully is tolerated on Tuesday, everyone has learned what is real.

Individual behaviour can shift within weeks. A team's sense of what is safe takes months, because it is built on accumulated evidence. Organisational culture takes years and requires consistency from the most senior people, visibly and including the uncomfortable parts.

Yes. Reem is available for interviews, podcasts, panels, expert commentary and features on self-leadership, human-centred leadership, emotional intelligence, burnout and sustainable performance, culture and behaviour change, sales leadership, women in leadership and the themes explored in Unfollow the Leader.

Media enquiries go to Chay Gittany at Precision Communications Group: 0431 286 321 or admin@precisioncommunicationsgroup.com.

Yes. Copies of Unfollow the Leader are available for media representatives on request through the media contact above. Press releases, author bios and suggested interview questions are available on the media page.

The media page holds the full newsroom, including official press releases, the Literary Titan author feature and recent collaborations across podcasts, YouTube interviews and published articles.