Finding your niche – the sweet spot

We are all born with the capacity to do things we are naturally good at

In today’s world you need a lot of skills sets I didn’t get a chance to hone in the first 45 years of my life

You are only as good as the people you surround yourself. When I came back to the farm I discovered I wasn’t very good at milking cows and that was OK because we had plenty of people who were.

When I started a charity, I didn’t have a team of people and I had to learn a lot of stuff. Stuff I didn’t enjoy very much.

After 2o years of spending a great deal of time doing stuff that doesn’t come naturally, I am determined to spend the rest of my life doing the stuff that does.

Looking forward to finding that niche

Image source 

Your niche is that absolute sweet spot where what you are fabulous that overlaps with what you love doing, and it is something that other people value and will pay you for.

It is not a simple thing to define…and many professionals fall into the trap of doing what all the other professionals do, and doing it the way they do it, simply because it LOOKS successful and that is “how things are done”.  Too little thought is given to  defining what success is to us personally.  So we spend a lot of time making a living the way other people do, and believe that is “successful”. Source 

Young Environmental Champions – empowering young people to be change makers

In an ideal world we would all be active citizens in our communities . 

How do we set young people up to be active and resilient citizens in their communities?

This is a challenge put to the Action4Agriculture team last year, initially by the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation (VFFF) and also by the Office for Regional Youth.

VFFF commissioned Environmental Leadership Australia and Foundation for Young Australians to understand the issues for young people and make recommendations on how they can best be supported. See research outcomes here

The Office for Regional Youth did similar 

Both organisations have youth advisory bodies and Action4Agriculture has youth representatives on both.

Action4Agriculture has been working with young people in primary, secondary and tertiary education for close to 20 years. We also have extensive insights into this demographic.

Building on our knowledge and insights plus that of our funding partners the Empowering Young Environmental Champions (YEC) program was born.  We are very grateful to insights of Professor Felicity Blackstock and Tanya Jackson Vaughan in developing the model

The YEC are identified young people completing their Australian primary, secondary and tertiary education, who are supported to act on environmental and social issues important to them, their schools and their communities.  Through the YEC project, these young people and their communities are connected with the best minds and ideas in government, education, industry, not for profits and the research sector to sustainably translate complex challenges into concrete problems and feel empowered to solve real world issues at a local, state or national level.

This bespoke program supports young Australians to be agents of change creating a movement to embed sustainability thinking and actions in our way of life.

The program is open to young people in Stage 3 to Stage 5 in primary and secondary schools and TAFE/Uni students  in the following regions in 2023.

You can see how it works here 

What’s involved here 

Support for teachers and students here 

Hierarchy of Intended Outcomes here

What I have learnt is success relies on bringing the right people to the table. I so wish everyone, everywhere had the mindset of the Brotherhood of St Laurence and fostered the communities of practice model  

We believe change can only happen when people work together, which is why partnerships with the broader community and organisations nationally are a cornerstone of BSL. Source

 

 

 

Action4Youth – a vision to create a workforce attraction, support and thrive model that can be scaled and replicated by any industry

Action4Youth is a vision to create a workforce attract, support and thrive model that can be scaled and replicated by any industry

It is the result of 20 years of applied research by many people investigating and trialing frameworks that understand the wants, needs and pain points of the people it aims to serve.

The model has three phases – EXPLORE_CONNECT_SUPPORT

It began with identifying who are the right people to bring to the table to support the vision.

It acknowledges you need place based models with resources for local solutions

The Brotherhood of St Lawrence  Foundational Capability Pathway identified the key components that form the skeleton:

  1. Young people need a breadth of skills
  2. Co-design and co-delivery – the people who directly benefit have ownership
  3. Partnerships and relationships – work with the willing

Research by the Brotherhood of St Laurence has also identified two focus areas post COVID

  1. Building employer capability
  2. Mental Health and Well Being of Young People

What does the current ACTION4YOUTH step by step plan look like

Step One. Bring the Right people to the Table 

Step Two. Follow identified best practice

Step Three. Identify and focus on the Top Three Modes of Influence

Step Four. Co-design a model that is participant ( teachers/career advisors, students, employers) centric

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Step Five. Identify and Engage Vocational Exploration Psychology Organisation to support educators and give them confidence they can support students to identify their values and explore careers

Step 6. EXPLORE . Offer taster opportunities . Awareness becomes Attraction

Step 6. CONNECT students with role models and mentors and employers

Step 7. Provide SUPPORT for students and employers to build their capability

Step 8. Engage Headspace  to support students with mental health, physical health, & managing work and study.

Step 9. Identify great work being done by others we could partner with and leverage

We have pressed the launch button and just when everything was going wonderfully the government in their wisdom moved NAPLAN from May to March 😊The things that you just cant account for in a project risk assessment 😊

Watch this space as we share with you our journey

#Action4Youth

 

 

 

 

 

 

What does real leadership look like

Role models inspire, they motivate and they provide a benchmark you can aspire to achieve.

I have spent the last twenty years searching the agriculture sector for people who define REAL leadership for me.

Cathy McGowan AO is my benchmark and I was equally inspired when I saw 29 year old Ryan McParland in action. 

The leadership journey begins with knowing how to lead yourself, then to lead teams and finally to lead systems. I believe Ryan has the capacity to not only lead systems but to drive meaningful change within Australian agriculture. He has the skills to create a movement and also the skills to gather around him the role models, mentors, champions and funding partners that he needs to be successful,” Source  

At Action4Agriculture we have been supporting young people to go on the leadership journey. Our CULTIVATE program supports them to learn to lead themselves. Our Young Environmental Champions program supports them to lead others. Our Young Farming Champions Leadership Team Innovation Hub supports them to practice forms of leadership.

The world is crying out for more youth led organisations and more youth led projects. Our research has shown us a lot more consideration could be being given to how much a young person’s life can change between the ages of 12 to 30.

They transition from education to work, they fall in love, they make decisions about careers or children and whether they can have both.

This year our youth led leadership team trialed holacracy. The  person who put their hand up to be convenor suddenly found herself with a not to be missed opportunity to study in London and her PhD studies relocating her to Laos for 12 months. Life is full on when you are young

In talking to Ryan, one of my key interests in asking our wonderful journalist Mandy McKeesick to interview him and his “fan” club was the pivotal role his employer BlueScope is playing in nurturing his leadership journey.  If BlueScope see the wisdom in providing Ryan with flexibility, champions and funding through their Community Foundation partnership with WIN4 then surely they too are setting a workplace culture benchmark all organisations can aspire to have.

Watch this space – Ryan has started a conversation in our team and with other people and organisations who want to support young people to be part of the youth leadership  co-design process

 

 

 

The Big Question – what does meaningful change look like

Over the years I have worked with some extra-ordinary people. One of those is Changeologist Les Robinson
My big question “what does it take to drive meaningful change” starts with a lot of reflection on what meaningful change looks like for you and the people/organisations you are working with and successfully defining the joint vision.
At Action4Agriculture we are disciples of Les’ work in this space. Les is a big believer in keeping it simple.
Another brains trust we love working with at Action4Agriculture is Professor Felicity Blackstock who is a learning and development guru.
Felicity and I were recently discussing the evaluation of our Action4Youth Workforce Roadmap Model project and Felicity asked me the BIG Question – what does meaningful change look like?
 When you are trying to drive change you have to be able to clearly identify the problem. The research is in – Secondary School students need universal access to high quality work based learning and industry has been identified as part of the problem
So what would meaningful impact look like for me
  1. agricultural employers can clearly articulate the ROI for providing work-based learning for school students
  2. agricultural employers are confident they have the skills and knowledge and mentoring capacity to ensure students can use their work based learning time effectively
  3. agricultural employers commit the time and energy into learning how to engage with workplace learning providers and young people

The pièce de résistance for me is having a cohort of facilitators who have the capacity to deliver  workshops for all 12 career management competencies for the Australian Blueprint  for students – how rewarding is that

Superstars like Josh Farr

Memories of my Father

RIP John Lawrence Lindsay 18th June 1930- 9th February 2023

My dad, John Lindsay, in his happy place 

Over the years I have written a number of posts featuring my father here and  here and here and here 

I invited him to share with me his journey but I never managed to persuade him. There is a believe in the digital age that if you are not on Google you don’t exist. At this point in time its my memories of my father that document his life. I think that’s sad because my memories are a little tainted by my PhD in judgment

This post will be work in progress – I will use it to document the memories as I reflect

My memories of my father are crisp

He loved his dog Lucy and Lucy was his nickname for me so I will take that as a sign

John and Lucy in October 2013 – with special thanks to Colin Seis for making my dad happy 

We are all products of our life experiences and the decisions we make are often a result of some of the first things our parents say to us.

My father was the first born son of a pioneer Illawarra dairy farming family and he hated milking cows.

A well remembered mantra to his children growing up  was “never learn to milk a cow”

My father convinced his father to sell the dairy farm at Dapto and buy a farm for us at Cowra – my father leading a cow at the sale of the herd in 1958

He was a traditionalist.  Another mantra that is front of mind is “the first born son always inherits the farm”

When you are told from an early age boys are more important than girls and you have a highly competitive nature, you may be very determined to disrupt the status quo. At times I feel it has consumed me

Some things I remember

My father had a great eye for a good show horse. He could spot potential everywhere, driving past a paddock, at the knackery and other people’s cast off’s

My brother, sister and I were all good show riders – but it was the competitive spirit in me that my father tapped into to realise the potential of the “bargains” he picked up

 

My father was very proud of his haymaking skills

Early days on the farm at Cowra in the early 1960s

My father loved raising prime angus steaks for your table.

The look on his face when he topped the sale yard

My father was a disciple of the Ford XR6 and belonged to that special group of octogenarians who drive utes with low profile tyres

He even had a short term career as a brand ambassador

John Lindsay – influencer 😊

and on this day 45 years ago

I imagine over the next few weeks I will locate the photo albums and more memories will surface

We can all spend our lives trying to convince one person we are worthy OR

Please share with me what you are doing to create a movement of change

#movementofchange

and a big shoutout to my dad’s next door neighbours The Jamiesons – they are magnificent humans and the best of the best of neighbours – they took very good care of my dad whilst his family were far away

 

 

Agricultural Shows – a lesson in high level community organisation and volunteer succession planning

Employers are:

82% more likely to choose a candidate with volunteering experience and

85% more likely to overlook resume flaws when volunteer work is present. 

As the Action4Agriculture team recognise two of our own volunteers ( Emily May and Danielle Fordham) by nominating them for the NSW Government Hidden Treasures Honor Role I am finding myself admiring some other organisations manned by volunteers that I have been working with

This post is a celebration of the work of Ryan McParland who comes from a long line of family volunteers with a shared passion for local agricultural shows.

Ryan played a founding role in his local show society’s ‘youth in ag’ group and is working to replicate and scale the Rural Ambassador model for the South Coast and Tablelands, all while working as a mechanical engineer at BlueScope Steel where he is a highly valued member of the team as this quote from his manager reinforces

Ryan is a gifted engineer who continually seeks improvement, not only in himself but in the people and the systems around him. As a genuine leader, he engenders a spirit of cooperation and engages those he works with, seldom taking the credit that is his due.

Ryan is well known to be a youth leader outside of our company, regularly involving us with him in charitable fund raising, promoting the shows and team building activities that lean heavily on his agricultural life experiences.

Ryan is a role model, who is genuine and is an asset to anyone fortunate to work with him.

Harry Murphy  Manager  Energy Services Asset Development, Digital, Services and Manufacturing Excellence

Ryan  was a 2021  RAS of NSW Rural Achiever and his experience inspired him to kickstart a similar initiative at local shows in his region. Ryan recently invited me to judge the Albion Park Rural Ambassador program that he has been instrumental in founding, with the long term view of seeing it replicated at all NSW shows. These young people come from all walks of life, with a dedication to give back to the communities they are proud of.

I first met the Rural Ambassador finalists, Maddi Calloway, Shaylene Mawbey, Jayda Tisma and Ethan Forsyth a week before the show for their interviews. I  was gob smacked. All came well prepared and answered the questions from their hearts with a raw authenticity we don’t see enough of in the 21st century.

Ryan then managed to entice WINNews ( and me to support them) to showcase the ambassadors

Then I got to spend a whole day at the show watching them and their extraordinary volunteer work ethic in action.

I certainly discovered just important volunteers are. Wow so much happens in 12 hours at an agricultural show.

These wonderful pictures from the Wollongong Camera Club share some of the joy and excitement

Its a a family affair with Ryan’s brother Glenn coordinates the animal nursey – bring his farmyard to the show

There are opportunities to milk a cow, real ones and faux ones

There are competitions

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There is sideshow alley and face painting

and show food – chip on a stick. With potatoes in short supply I wasn’t overly surprised to see these sell for $10 each

and those stunt people that thrill the crowds and seem to have no fear. Did I hear correctly this truck cost $400K?

and it all seems to run like clockwork.

There are some important research facts around the value of volunteering for young people.

They bring fresh ideas,  they adjust easily, they are naturally inquisitive, and are more likely to discover creative solutions.

Volunteering can have a positive impact on volunteers as well as the people and organisations they help.

  • From building skills like collaboration and problem solving
  • they get invaluable life experiences.

Volunteers must put their own needs aside to address the needs of others.

Exposure to meaningful volunteer opportunities as children and young people helps foster lasting empathy and a sense of belonging, qualities necessary in cultivating safe, unified communities.

After shadowing the Albion Park Show rural ambassadors for a week I am in awe of what it takes to draw a record crowd to an event and keep them entertained from 8am until 10pm. A reminder of how important it is that young people like Ethan Forsyth, Madi Calloway, Shay Mawbey and Jayda Tisma put their hands up to carry on the proud tradition of community volunteering that it takes to make it all happen

Congratulations to Madi Calloway who is the 2023 Albion Park Show Rural Ambassador – a truly tough decision. Mega shoutout to Ryan McParland doing an extraordinary job of bringing local youth together. 🙏 BlueScope and #WINTV for investing in NextGen #countryshows #community #youthinag #volunteering #action4agriculture

 

See the wonderful photos from the Wollongong Camera Club here 

 

 

#makingadifference #creatingabetterworldtogether

 

 

 

Could empathy and compassionate curiosity be the silver bullet?

Today I am reposting a blog I did for Action4AgricultureChat to allow me to  also repost this wonderful post from The Ethics Centre “I’m sorry *if* I offended you”: How to apologise better in an emotionally avoidant world

I recently signed up for a workshop with Amy Gallo,  an international expert in dealing with difficult people

If we are honest with ourselves we can all be difficult to deal with if some-one touches the wrong buttons at the wrong time.

I manage a capability building program for young people who are “doers” and changemakers

I often find myself fielding calls asking for advice on how to handle people who are resistant to change

The first thing I say is “This is not my area of expertise”

Whilst I have done multiple workshops across the world with world class experts like Amy. Its one thing to learn the theory, its another to put into into practice, another to find safe spaces to practice it and the mega important one finding the role models in the Compassion Curiosity Framework space  that you can surround yourself with, learn from and channel when you need to

What my years of training has allowed me to do is identify the people who do it well and they make my heart sing

I saw an extraordinary example when I watched Series 12 Episode 2 of Call the Midwife recently

This 4 min video collates the scenes that I am referring to. Watch how Sister Julienne role models the Compassionate Curiosity Framework ( hear Kwame Christian talk about the framework here )

1. Acknowledging emotion

2. Getting curious with compassion

3. Engaging in joint problem solving

what an ideal time to extract this from Sarah Wilson The Ethics Centre post 

What *if* we offend or harm unintentionally?

I was presented with the above ethical quandary while writing this. Someone on social media commented that she’d wanted to approach me recently but felt she couldn’t because she had two kids in tow at the time. She figured I’d judge her for being a “procreator” given my climate activism work and anti-consumption stance. It was an unfortunate assumption. I had only last week written about how bringing population growth into the climate crisis blame-fest is wrong, ethically and factually (it’s not how many we are, it’s how we live). 

Of course, her self-conscious pain was real. But did I need to repent if I’d done nothing wrong, and certainly not intentionally (indeed, I’d not acted, in bad faith or otherwise). 

I decided there was still a very good opportunity to switch out an “if” for a “that”. I replied: “I’m sorry that you felt….”. And I was. I didn’t want her to have that impression of judgement from another, nor to feel so self-conscious. I was sorry in the broad sense of feeling bad for her. Feeling sorry can be a sense of tapping into a collective regret for the way things are, even if you are not directly responsible. 

The real opportunity here was to take on responsibility for healing any hurt, and to speed it up. If I’d listed out and justified why this person was mistaken (wrong) in feeling as she did, I’d have also missed an opportunity to be raw and open to the broader pain of the human condition. 

Doing good apology is essentially an act in correctly apportioning the tasks required to get the outcome that we are all after, which, for most adults, is growth, intimacy and expansion. Ruttenberg makes the point that some indigenous cultures work to this (more mature) style of repentance (as opposed to cheap grace), as well as various radical restorative justice movements. I note that the authors and elders who contributed to the Uluru Statement from the Heart often remind us that the document is an invitation to all Australians to grow into our next era.  

and to help us all do it better – the full post from The Ethics Centre

“I’m sorry *if* I offended you”: How to apologise better in an emotionally avoidant world

BY SARAH WILSON 8 DEC 2022

As we gear up for a referendum on a Voice to Parliament next year, I’ve been wondering if we need to have a better look at the way we say sorry.

We live in a highly binary and individualistic world that struggles to repent well. Yet we are increasingly aware of – and flummoxed by – bad faith efforts at the gesture.  

Witness the fallout from former Prime Minister Scott Morrisons’ baffling response speech to being censured last week in which he refused to apologise to the nation. I reckon we ache to do better; we want true healing. 

We could start with looking at the way we so often insist on whacking the Almighty Absolving Qualifier “if” when we issue an “I’m sorry”. I’m sorry if you’re offended/upset/angry. We go and plug one in where a perfectly good “that” would do a far better job.  

But an “if” negates any repentant intent. Actually, worse. It gaslights. It puts up for dispute whether the hurt or offence is actually being felt and whether it is legitimate. Attention switches to the victim’s authenticity and their right to feel injured. Did you actually get hurt? Hmmm…. 

Things get even more disconcerting when the quasi-apologiser thinks they have done something gallant with their qualified “I’m sorry”. And will gaslight you again if you pull them up on the flimsiness of it. What, so you can’t even accept an apology!  

I had a rich, senior businessmen do the if-sorry job on me recently. “I’m sorry if you’re angry,” he said in a really rather small human way. Rather than standing there miffed, I replied, “Great! Yep, you definitely fucked up. And so I’m definitely and rightly angry. Now that’s established, sure, I’ll take on that you’d like to repent.” 

I heard a well-known doctor on the radio the other morning very consciously (it seemed) drop the if from the equation when he had to apologise for making remarks about a minority group (in error) in a previous broadcast. “I’m sorry I said those things. I was wrong. I’m not going to justify myself. There are no excuses. I was in the wrong,” he said. It was a good, textbook apology and he probably wouldn’t land in trouble for it. 

But, and it immediately begs, is that the point of an apology? 

For the wrongdoer to stay out of trouble? For them to neatly right a wrong by going through a small moment of awkward, vulnerable exposure? 

What about the victim? Where do they sit in apologies?

I recall listening to a radio discussion where all this was dissected. The point that grabbed me at the time was this: In our culture, the responsibility of ensuring that an apology is effective in bringing closure to a conflict mostly rests on the victim, the person being apologised to. No matter the calibre of the apology, it’s up to the person who has been wronged to be all “that’s ok, we’re sweet” about things. They are effectively responsible for making the perpetrator feel OK in their awkward vulnerable moment. (And to keep the pain shortlived.) 

And so a successful apology rests in the victim’s readiness to forgive. 

Which is all the wrong way around. At an individual-to-individual level it’s cheap grace. The wrongdoer gets absolved with so little accountability involved. 

At a macro level, say with injuries like racism or sexism, we can see the setup is about a minority class forgiving, or bowing once again, to the powerful. 

I managed to find the expert who’d led the discussion –  Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, a New York-based Rabbi and scholar who’s written a book on the matter, On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, a title that says it all, right? 

Ruttenberg argues we are doing apologies inadequately and in a way that fails to repair the damage done precisely because we privilege forgiveness over repentance. 

So how to apologise like you mean it

Drawing on the 12th Century philosopher Maimonides, Ruttenberg sets out five steps to a proper apology. 

1. Confession

The wrongdoer fully owns that they did something wrong. There’s to be no blabbing of great intentions, or how “circumstances” conspired; no “if” qualifiers. You did harm, own it! Ideally, she says, the confession is done publicly.

2. Start to Change

Next, you the work to educate yourself, get therapy etc. Like, demonstrate you’re in the process of shifting your ways. You’re talk and trousers! 

3. Make amends

But do so with the victim’s needs in mind. What would make them feel like some kind of repair was happening? Cash? Donate to a charity they care about? 

4. OK, now we get to the apology!

The point of having the apology sitting right down at Step 4 is so that by the time the words “I’m sorry” are uttered, we, as the perpetrator, are engaged and own things. The responsibility is firmly with us, not the victim. By this late stage in the repenting process we are alive to how the victim felt and genuinely want them to feel seen. It’s not a ticking of a box kinda thing. Plus, we’ve taken the responsibility for bringing about closure, or healing, out of the victim’s hands. 

 5. Don’t do it again

OK, so this is a critical final step. But there’s a much better chance the injury won’t be repeated if the person who did the harm has complete the preceding four steps, according to Ruttenberg and Maimonides. 

Does forgiveness have to happen?

I went and read some related essays by Rabbi Ruttenberg just now. The other point that she makes is that whether or not the victim forgives the perpetrator is moot. When you apologise like you mean it (as per the five steps), I guestimate that 90 per cent of the healing required for closure has been done by the perpetrator. And it happens regardless of whether the harmed party forgives, because the harm-doer sat in the issue and committed to change. The spiritual or emotional or psychological shift has already occurred. 

I should think that, looking at it from a victim-centric perspective, this opened space allows the harmed party to feel more comfortable to forgive, should they choose to.

It’s a win-win, regardless of whether the aggrieved waves the forgiveness stick. 

(The Rabbi notes that in Judaism, as opposed to Christianity, there is no compulsion for the harmed party to forgive.) 

 

When you dont know what you dont know

 

Few areas are more critical to the security and well-being of young people than decent work. It impacts on every aspect of their lives: independence; mental health and well-being; and social interaction.

 

 

Image source

When I found myself managing a National Careers Institute grant to support young people from all backgrounds and experiences to thrive in a career in agriculture, the first thing I discovered was there was a great deal I did not know about this space and I was going to need a lot of support.

I am very grateful for that support and particularly grateful to the people who introduced me to the knowledge, expertise and support networks I now find myself surrounded by

Best practice principles put young people and employers at the centre of the experience. Source National Youth Employment Body

I have long been a fan of the communities of practice model where people with common goals work together for the greater good. This grant has allowed me to join one and I am grateful to the Brotherhood of St Laurence and Mission Australia  for the opportunity.

I am also very grateful to career education specialists Janine Wood from The Careers Department and Lucy Sattler from StudyWorkGrow for sharing their knowledge 
Image Source 

I am very grateful for the people who have identified best practice and shared their knowledge with me

I am very grateful to the Atlassian Foundation and Atlassian team members helping me master program management software .

I am also very grateful to long term team members Opal Heart Media and Ground Creative who look after our media and web services.

We are all working together to explore a model for agriculture that offers young people an enriching experience of work that sets them on the path to independence and future security.

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Action4Youth has three phases