We’re excited to feature Charlie Spendlove, CEO of Vinnies Victoria, in our latest Leadership Spotlight.
In this episode, Charlie shares the lessons that have shaped her leadership style, from the power of curiosity and knowing when not to step in, to building high-performing teams around people’s strengths. She also reflects on leading Vinnies Victoria through a period of growing social need, why there is “no mission without margin”, and the importance of compassion, community and connection when supporting people experiencing disadvantage.
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Q. Looking back across your career, what themes feel most central to who you are as a leader today?
I am just a really naturally curious person about the world and about people in general. I'm fascinated by what motivates people. I've got a bit of a heart for the underdog. My mother was a social worker, and so I think there's a lot of value that comes from perspective across all parts of your organisation.
I've made a career out of not being the smartest person in the room, but I am really focused on working with smart people and getting them to work better together.
The greatest satisfaction I get is around solving problems and getting people to be at their best. So as a leader, that really sums up my style.
Q. What's something you've changed your mind about as a leader over the last decade?
This is an easy one to answer, and I never thought I would quote Kenny Rogers in a leadership meeting, but it's the power of doing nothing.
If you know the song The Gambler, he talks about knowing when to hold them, when to fold them, and when to walk away. And that song always reminds me, as somebody who likes to work at pace, that there is actually great power in stillness and doing nothing.
Often, problems will sort themselves out if you just give space and time to pass and let time do its work, and people will generally find a way through a problem before you step in and intervene.
That's quite contradictory to my style because I like getting things done, but I've learned over time that just pacing yourself and leaving that space for nothing is actually really important. So not responding straight away.
Q. When you're making difficult decisions, what values do you come back to?
Difficult decisions come thick and fast every day. And I love Ted Lasso, so one of my favourite quotes is, "Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing."
For me, I'm very conscious of my own personal values around integrity, but being consistent in that, not just paying lip service to it. Having care and courage, but also being really clear about the problem that you're trying to solve and be passionately disconnected in your thinking.
I think being predictable and making sure it's never personal will really help you in your decision-making. Doesn't matter what happens. As long as you know your own values, every decision is easy.
Q. You've recently stepped into the CEO role. What have the first few months been like?
I have really enjoyed the first few months of being the CEO. People keep asking me if I'm really, really busy, and I keep saying to them, "I'm just as busy as I was before. I'm just doing different things."
We have, as an organisation for the last 12 months, faced a social emergency in Victoria like we've never seen before. It is absolutely unprecedented. Need for our services are up by 43% just in the last six months alone.
We have a very, very strong mission which talks around the work that we do being extensive and broad and to provide a hand up for those in need. But the simple fact of the matter right now is we cannot do everything.
My focus for the last three months has been getting really, really clear on our priorities to remove the noise, but also to have a genuine acceptance of the realities of our constraints.
Your constraints actually help you prioritise. They are the banks of the river. If you do not have the banks of the river and you just have need flooding in, then where do you start?
For me, that focus is on really understanding what our constraints are so we can work out where our biggest impact can be made with the skills, talents, and resources that we have that line up with our mission. And it is all about a hand up, not a handout.
Q. How has your commercial background shaped the way you lead a purpose-driven organisation?
My original background was in corporate IT, so I came from a very commercial background. It's often thought to be kind of a foreign place to work in NFP and have commerciality about you.
But for me, there is no mission without margin.
I actually feel we have more of a responsibility to be commercially astute, efficient, effective, innovative, collaborative, because we're not here to make shareholders rich.
We are using usually other people's money that they have sacrificed to us to deliver good works through. And so for me, I think that commerciality has actually helped me cut through in the not-for-profit sector and to build those high-performing teams.
In the business world, business is all about making as much money as you can with the least amount of effort. So in my world that I live day-to-day is, how can we make the most impact with the least amount of effort so the scale of our impact is optimised across time? That's my theory on life.
Q. Vinnies has a strong focus on preventing people from reaching crisis in the first place. Where do you think it's currently going wrong?
I think it does come down to funding. I think it comes down to the fight for funding, and that tends to focus people on the crisis end of the social emergency that's here at the moment.
Obviously, the election cycles don't drive long-term planning around sustainable outcomes for people who are vulnerable or may have experienced intergenerational poverty or trauma along the way.
For us at the Society, for the last 170 years, we've been focused on making sure we can connect with people to keep them in their home, but also to find them a home. Making sure that we are, yes, there in the crisis space, but we're there to provide wraparound support to get people into a place of stability, whatever stability looks like for them.
Our strategic plan is very much focused on the Housing First model, so that pathway to home. Without a stable, secure home, you can't plan a future. You can't choose what school to send your kids to. You don't have the security to feel that you have a place to put down roots and make friends and communities.
Yes, we provide services. Yes, we provide material aid. But at the end of the day, what we provide is companionship and that long-term community connection that allow people to have hope for their future.
Q. If every Victorian understood one thing about poverty, homelessness or disadvantage, what would you want that to be?
It can happen to anyone.
We're really only two, maybe three steps away from living on the streets ourselves, even people in positions of great privilege. I've met people that we've supported who have had successful businesses, successful careers, successful marriages, and one or two bad events have led them into a position of either homelessness or vulnerability.
In the past, particularly in the homelessness space, we have a view of the person who is homeless that is very stereotypical of a time that has passed. These are people who are the invisible homeless. They're couch surfing, rough sleeping, living in cars.
Four out of 10 now in our soup van queues are people who are on low-income families.
It's a common fallacy that people become homeless because they've made bad decisions. The reality of the situation is nine times out of 10, bad decisions have happened to that person, and trauma has happened to that person rather than the other way around.
So I think we need to be a lot more understanding and forgiving and informed around trauma to connect with people.
Q. What does high performance mean in a purpose-driven organisation?
I find it really ironic whenever people ask me about my skill in developing high-performing teams, because it's not one I would have picked for myself, to be honest. In my youth, I could not be in a team. I don't play sport. I never had that skill. I was very much a lone wolf that just ran my own race.
But the further up the ladder I got, the more I realised I couldn't do everything.
Over the last 10 years, it's probably been the most fulfilling part of my career, building those teams. It definitely comes down to creating an environment where people feel safe to be themselves, being able to identify people's core strengths.
The greatest gain that you will ever make in a person is through their strengths, so just do not waste time trying to lift their areas of development up higher than they're ever going to get. Just put them in the right job where they can dare to dream and really play to that core strength.
A high-performing team has to have a clear set of goals, has to have no ego in it. That's one of my major rules. If I see ego in a person, including myself, there's a very quick correction that's going to happen.
High-performing teams as well come from being happy in what you're doing. Productivity only comes when people are happy in what they do, and they can have a laugh and a joke as well as deliver during challenging times.
Q. What have Vinnies' members and volunteers taught you about leadership?
I am so inspired every day by our members and our volunteers. We have 11,000 members and volunteers across Victoria. They give up their time, they give up their heads, their hearts, their hands for each other and also for those in need. What they have always taught me is that kindness and that selflessness.
Servant leadership is something that's talked about a lot, but it is rarely executed well. I think for a single person, a member in Tatura who's going to home visit with a mum who's just had a new baby and she can't pay a bill, and to work through and navigate the system to help her to get to another place, that is servant leadership. There's no personal gain. It's truly kind of that humanitarian heart, and that's what we must all remember, that we are part of humanity. We are part of community.
And loneliness is the worst killer of all.
Q. If we had this conversation again five years from now, what would you hope has changed for Vinnies and Victoria?
In five years' time, I would like to see homelessness halved.
I would like to see community connections growing. I believe loneliness, isolation, and disconnection from each other is one of the greatest killers right now. There's a lot spoken about it, and I don't think we can stop the juggernaut that is Meta or AI, but it is driving people apart. It's driving people apart from each other, but also from their own true self.
So i'm hoping that we can moderate that trend and make sure that those who are the most vulnerable in our community are not the most adversely affected.
I really want to see that gap close, because it's just not fair. It's just not fair.
Q. Ben Spooner, our previous Leadership Spotlight guest, left you this question: If you could mentor your younger self, where would you start?
I would start by slowing myself down and taking a bit more time to reflect on myself as a person, what my values are, what is important to me, and to pay a bit more attention to detail.
Because I'm a big picture thinker, I can sometimes miss really critical details. I've learned now to put people who are really good at that around me.
But I think if I was to go back to my younger self, I would've said, "You're fine just the way you are, and just keep being a little bit kooky, but just don't run ahead too fast."
Q. Charlie's question for our next Leadership Spotlight guest:
"What is the most difficult conversation you have had, and how did it go?"