Community Leadership Archives - Clover Hill Diaries

WTF is agency, and why does the community sector make it so hard to join in?

The Hon. Kate Washington Minister for Families and Communities with students from St Brigid’s Primary School.

Spend an hour in a community sector meeting and you’ll hear about agency, lived experience, co-design, holding space and building capacity. Everyone around the table nods. I’ve nodded along too. Many of the people the sector works for would reach for a dictionary.

The sector’s promise is nothing about us without us. Yet we often talk about people in words they wouldn’t use themselves.

What even is agency?

Agency means having a say in what happens to you, and being able to do something about it.

Some other words we use, in everyday language.

Lived experience: knowing it first-hand
Co-design: designing it with the people who’ll use it
Holding space: giving people room to speak safely
Building capacity: helping people do more themselves
Place-based: suited to this town
Theory of change: our plan for making a difference
Systems change: fixing the rules
Mutual aid: neighbours helping neighbours

What words would you add?

The skills behind the words

Leading a community organisation comes down to four skills: curiosity, creative thinking, collaboration and communication. In my eight decades I’ve met only a few people who have all four. I believe they can be taught.

Where could we start?

School seems the obvious place. Children are curious, and what they learn in the classroom grows the adults they become

Teachers would do the teaching, so training them comes first.

The resources and the training are already here. Action4Agriculture has resources that teach curiosity, creative thinking, collaboration and communication, the same skills I teach the kids I work with. They’re available on request. Josh Farr runs the training. Through Campus Consultancy he has delivered more than 1,600 leadership programs with over 40 universities, reaching more than 100,000 students and staff. He trains teachers too.

I’ve seen Josh in action. In 2023 he led the student workshops for Action4Agriculture’s Young Environmental Champions program, working with students from ten schools across the Hunter and Hawkesbury. The share of students confident they could do something to improve their community rose from 57% to 80%.

And the kids delivered. St Brigid’s Primary School cut its landfill by three quarters.

You can read the full report here and the case study here

Our case study calls it an “Ecosystem of Expertise”. We wrote it for government in the langage government use. In everyday language, a lot of good people helped some kids do something great. Both versions are true. The skill is knowing your audience and speaking their language.

So when we’re talking with our communities, why aren’t we using language everyone understands

What do you think?

What would change if the people we work with chose the words we use?

A ten-year-old with these four skills could explain agency better than any strategy document.

Want to understand Pauline Hanson? Try Leadership 101

I am fascinated by the way political parties respond when voters start deserting them. One of the first principles of leadership is to look at yourself and your own role in what is happening. Political parties, apparently, prefer to investigate the voters.

An article in The Conversation examining how Donald Trump changed the United States made me wonder whether Australia is busy studying the symptom and ignoring the cause. Not because Pauline Hanson is Australia’s Donald Trump. She isn’t. Australia is not America. We have compulsory voting, preferential voting, an independent electoral commission and a parliamentary system that makes it considerably harder for one person to capture the machinery of government. All reassuring. Possibly a little too reassuring.

The more interesting question is whether some of the conditions that made Trump possible are already here. Trump and Hanson have something fundamental in common. Both tell people politics is a contest between ordinary citizens and an establishment that has stopped listening to them. It is an extraordinarily resilient political proposition. When the media attacks you, the media proves your point. When political opponents condemn you, the establishment proves your point. When experts explain why you are wrong, experts prove your point. It is almost magnificently self-sealing.

But Trump and Hanson did not invent all the grievances of the people who support them. They found people who already believed the political system wasn’t listening. That distinction deserves considerably more attention than it gets.

The response of established political parties to populism too often seems to be to study the populists. Who are these people? Why are people voting for them? What are they angry about? How do we win them back? All excellent questions.

There is one rather awkward question missing. What did we do?

Political parties appear endlessly fascinated by voter dissatisfaction and considerably less fascinated by their own contribution to it. There is a certain hubris in treating millions of voters turning away from you as an interesting sociological phenomenon. Perhaps the voters haven’t suddenly become inexplicable. Perhaps they have been explaining themselves for years.

Trump ultimately did something Hanson has never done. He captured one of America’s two major political parties, turning a populist insurgency into institutional power. Hanson doesn’t have to achieve anything remotely similar to change Australian politics.

A minor party doesn’t have to form government to change government. It only has to make a major party nervous enough. Australia has already run that experiment. Once a major party starts borrowing its language, priorities and policies, the influence is already there.

The insurgent doesn’t have to move into the house. Everyone else starts rearranging the furniture.

And Hanson has another advantage. She has been telling essentially the same political story for 30 years. So the resurgence of One Nation isn’t the arrival of some mysterious new force in Australian politics. It is an old message finding people newly prepared to hear it.

That should make the major parties curious about themselves. Instead, the temptation will be to explain Hanson. Perhaps commission some polling. Find the demographic. Identify the grievance. Develop the messaging. Workshop a phrase involving “everyday Australians”. Anything, apparently, except look in the mirror.

The lesson from America isn’t that Australia is destined to produce Donald Trump. Our institutions are different and they provide substantial protection. But institutions can only do so much when people stop trusting the people operating them.

Once enough voters conclude that the political system doesn’t work for people like them, attacking that system stops being a political liability. It becomes a qualification for office.

So I wouldn’t spend too much time asking whether Pauline Hanson could become Australia’s Donald Trump.

The bigger question is not whether Pauline Hanson can win enough seats to govern. It is whether she is already winning the argument. If the major parties are borrowing her language, chasing her voters and shifting the boundaries of what counts as mainstream politics, then the change is already happening.

And if they are doing all of that without asking what they did to make those voters leave in the first place, they are learning exactly the wrong lesson.

That would be quite an achievement. To learn the lesson of Donald Trump while carefully avoiding the bit about yourself.

Sue Eggins receives the Kiama Electorate Woman of the Year award

There are awards that recognise a moment. Then there are awards that recognise a lifetime of turning up.

Sue Eggins has been named Kiama Electorate Woman of the Year for 2026, a well deserved recognition for someone whose dedicated persistence to heritage has shaped this community for decades.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of interviewing Sue for my Stories written so they can be found series, the project where I sit down with women across our district to record their life stories so they are not lost to time.

Sue’s story is highly entertaining.

It begins with insistence on hospital facility sterilisation standards in an ambulance heading toward Camperdown in 1948 when her mother refused a roadside delivery. It moves through science teaching, travelling the world in her twenties, a period Sue cheerfully describes as following a musician boyfriend around the country like “a brazen hussy”, and eventually lands in Kiama where her energy has been poured into protecting the history and heritage of this district.

Along the way she trained as a school counsellor, worked for decades supporting young people through some of the most complicated years of their lives, and became one of the driving forces behind the Kiama Historical Society.

Her younger years also included a stint at boarding school under a strict Catholic regime. Sundays involved Mass, Benediction, Rosary and several other services all in one day. Bread for school lunches arrived once a week and by Friday it was often mouldy. The nuns toasted fresh bread for themselves and tipped the leftovers into a bucket for the chooks, a bucket the permanently hungry girls often raided. Dormitories opened onto verandahs where winter wind snapped the canvas blinds and Sue remembers piling eleven army blankets onto her bed to keep warm.

Boarding school also came with a formidable rule book about modesty. Talcum powder was sprinkled across the bath water so the girls could not see their reflection while bathing. Even school dances were tightly managed. Boys were required to place a handkerchief between their hand and a girl’s back so skin never touched skin. Sue remembers those years as very character forming. A decade travelling overseas and following a boyfriend and his band around the country looked positively wholesome by comparison.

If you have attended a heritage talk, heard the story of Orry-Kelly, visited the museum, or followed one of the long running campaigns to protect historic buildings such as Barroul House or the Pilot’s Cottage, chances are Sue has been somewhere either guiding a tour or behind the scenes reading the documents, asking the questions and turning up to the meetings.

And when Sue turns up, people listen.

They know she has done her homework. She understands the history, the planning rules, the legislation and the process. By the time she walks into a room she is ready to get the best outcomes for the cause.

Her approach to community life is simple. Know your subject. Make your case carefully. And never walk away simply because it looks too difficult.

Great leaders do their homework. They listen carefully. They build a case that stands up to scrutiny. They keep showing up, even when the process is slow or the outcome uncertain. Over time, people learn that when they speak, it is worth paying attention. Sue Eggins has practised that art for decades.

This award recognises exactly that kind of contribution.

And if you want to hear the full story, from ambulance drama to international travel to heritage picket lines, keep an eye out for the full Sue Eggins life story coming soon in the series.

What communities lose when lived experience is ignored.

Psychology shows we feel loss twice as strongly as gain. So when lived experience is not deliberately carried forward, change stalls. Familiar patterns win. Old mistakes return dressed up as new debates.

Communities like to think they are good at remembering. They are not.

They remember dates, names, anniversaries. They remember who was on which committee and who fell out with whom. What they forget is how decisions were made, what it cost to get agreement, and who carried the weight when things went wrong.

My previous post dealt with recognition, the moment people lean forward and see themselves. This one deals with what communities lose when that recognition never makes it into decisions.

Because loss hurts twice as much as gain feels good, change faces a headwind.

When lived experience is not deliberately held and shared, communities lose ground. Quietly at first. Then all at once.

They lose their memory. People leave. Staff retire. Volunteers burn out. Small business owners move on. What walks out the door with them is the why, not the what. New leaders arrive and inherit problems stripped of context. Old decisions are waved away as historic, which often means inconvenient. The same arguments return with fresh language and everyone wonders why nothing changes.

They lose coordination when pressure hits. When stress arrives, and it always does, groups retreat into silos. Councils consult late. Agencies defend their patch. Community organisations scramble beside each other rather than together. Without a shared memory of how cooperation has worked before, decision making turns reactive. Effort duplicates. Public disagreement escalates and trust thins.

They lose credibility with their own people. Residents can smell process a mile off. They know when engagement is theatre. When people are asked to comment after options have already settled, they disengage. Meetings empty. Submissions dry up. Goodwill drains away. Once lost, it is slow and costly to rebuild.

They lose the ability to shape what comes next. When lived experience is absent, others step in. External advisers arrive with neat models that flatten local complexity. Decisions drift away from those who live with the consequences. Communities stop setting the direction and start reacting to it.

They lose time they do not have. Each round of relearning wastes energy. Complexity grows. Resources tighten. Mistakes become more expensive. The risk is not standing still. It is staying busy while falling behind.

They lose people. Capable contributors step back when they see the same conversations replayed with no accumulation of learning. Volunteers burn out. Staff leave. Younger people look elsewhere. Systems that cannot learn from themselves struggle to keep anyone who can.

They lose a closing window. There are still people around who remember when cooperation shifted outcomes and compromise mattered. That knowledge disappears quietly. Once gone, it cannot be rebuilt from reports or minutes.

This pattern has become embedded in corporate culture because modern organisations reward visible movement over accumulated understanding. New leaders arrive under pressure to signal change, legacy knowledge is treated as baggage rather than ballast, and past decisions are reduced to slide headings stripped of context. Speed, novelty, and personal imprint carry more status than continuity.

At the same time, high turnover, restructures, and consultant driven frameworks fracture memory by design, knowledge is modularised, handovers are thin, and learning is assumed to live in systems rather than people. Loss aversion does the rest. Protecting reputation, control, and momentum feels safer than reopening how decisions were made or acknowledging what went wrong. The result is a culture that looks busy and future facing, while quietly discarding the very experience that could prevent repetition and failure.

This is not about nostalgia or heritage.

It is about whether communities choose to keep the knowledge they have already paid for, or keep relearning the same lessons at a higher price each time.

There is still time to hold lived experience where decisions are made, and stop paying twice for forgetting.

Psychology shows we feel loss about twice as strongly as gain. So when lived experience is not deliberately carried forward, change stalls. Familiar patterns win. Old mistakes return dressed up as new debates.

The Woodcraft Group showed leadership when Council did not

I have done more leadership and negotiation courses than I can count. They do not make me a good leader. They do not make me a good negotiator. What they do give me is the ability to recognise leadership when I see it, and to recognise when it is missing.

And looking at this Woodcraft Group mess, leadership has been missing from the very people who should have shown it.

Here is the truth.
There were phone calls.
There were meetings.
There were chances to resolve this early, quietly and respectfully.
None of it made a difference.
Those conversations ended up being a waste of time because the people in the room were not prepared to act.

Leadership is not complicated.
It is not a twenty page report or a confidential motion.
It is not silence dressed as process.

Leadership is the ability to say, I hear you.
It is the courage to face a mistake, even a small one.
It is the strength to stay open when closing ranks feels safer.
It is the discipline to choose honesty over convenience.

The Woodcraft Group did not receive leadership.
They received delays, contradictions and closed doors.

And yet the most powerful leadership in this story came from the people with the least influence.
The people who stayed calm.
The people who kept asking fair questions.
The people who followed their values when they had every reason to give up.

That is leadership.
That is integrity.
That is character.

Leadership is not a title.
It is a behaviour.
And in this case, the only real leadership came from the people who had no authority at all, only a belief in doing the right thing.

#Kiama #KiamaCouncil #Leadership #CommunityLeadership #Transparency #Accountability #LocalGovernment #Jamberoo #KiamaWoodcraftGroup #CommunityAdvocacy #CouncilCulture

Why doesn’t our community deserve Fortune 500 leadership?

In the past week, 17.5% of the adult population in the Kiama local government area has read my blogs. That’s one in five adults in our community who care enough to invest their time and energy. They know something is off in our community. They want transparency. They want honesty. They want leadership from our local council.

And let’s not forget the rest. Many of them are too busy putting food on the table, keeping businesses afloat, raising families, and holding it all together. They don’t have time to read blogs. But they still feel the consequences when leadership fails.

When I interviewed many of our newly elected councillors after the last election, one thing was clear. They were stepping into complex roles with very little support. There was no structured induction. No formal training in governance or local government processes. No shared understanding of Council’s priorities, history, or the issues still bubbling below the surface.

It wasn’t a lack of care or commitment. It was a lack of preparation.

In any organisation, leadership means understanding not just what you want to do, but how things came to be the way they are. That requires context. That requires proper briefings. And that requires those with institutional knowledge to step forward and help new leaders navigate what’s come before.

When that does not happen, people don’t step up. They step over. That’s not leadership. That’s a takeover.

So let’s ask some practical questions:

Do incoming mayors and councillors receive the training they need?
Does Kiama Council currently have any councillors with formal governance or leadership qualifications?
And why isn’t it standard practice for councillors to complete training such as the Australian Institute of Company Directors course or an equivalent local government program?

We expect a lot from our elected representatives. But if we want strong, confident leadership, we need to set people up to succeed, not leave them guessing.

We expect a lot from our elected representatives. If we want strong, confident leadership, we need to set people up to succeed, not leave them guessing.

It’s time to raise the bar and support our councillors to be the role models all councils deserve.

This isn’t a school P&C. This is a multimillion dollar organisation with serious decisions to make. If this were a Fortune 500 company, the CEO would be accountable. The board would be trained. Everyone would know the mission, the risks, the numbers.

So why should we expect anything less for our community?

What sort of community doesn’t expect this kind of training as part of professional development for its councillors? These are people stepping up on top of full-time careers, and that’s true of every one of our current councillors. So why isn’t the system built to support them properly? Why isn’t it fit for purpose?

Here’s what a proper induction should look like for anyone making decisions on behalf of the public:

Clarity of purpose and public value.
Roles and responsibilities, including who’s accountable for what.
Briefings on key financials, risks, and strategic documents.
Agreement on top priorities for the next one, two and three years.
Decision-making frameworks that promote transparency.
Governance training, plain-language briefings, and mentorship.
Ongoing development, not a once-off induction day

Instead, what we get is councillors fed just enough information to feel like they’re part of something while the real power remains hidden in the hands of staff.

Three of our current councillors were part of the previous Council that oversaw significant financial decline. So what lessons have they learned? From where I sit, not many. Councillors who tried to challenge the system were met with code of conduct complaints or ICAC referrals. Both amounted to nothing, except a hefty bill for ratepayers.

And now? There’s still no sign of change. There’s still spin on Council’s website. There’s still a reluctance to tell the full story.

And here’s the real kicker. Any councillor who has the courage to stand up and ask the hard questions is quickly isolated. Dismissed. Gaslit. The process is subtle, but the outcome is clear. Ask too many questions, and you become the problem. Not the broken system. You.

And let’s be honest. It’s a bit frightening.

Most people who run for Council do it for the right reasons. They want better outcomes for the community. But the job they step into is big. It’s complex. It’s political. Without the right training or support, they don’t just struggle. They get swallowed.

This is public money. This is real infrastructure. These are decisions that affect homes, safety, environment and future generations. If you wouldn’t be allowed to walk into the boardroom of a hundred million dollar company without preparation, why is it okay in a local government chamber?

So here’s a question worth asking.

Who do you represent?
Because if it’s not the people, then who is it?
And shouldn’t we all be clear on that?

And here’s the harder question.
Why don’t more people with the right experience and training step up to lead?

That’s the conversation we need to have.
Not just around election time, but all the time.

#KiamaCommunity #LocalLeadership #CouncilAccountability #GoodGovernance #CommunityFirst #PublicTrust #TransparencyMatters #LocalDemocracy #LeadershipMatters #CivicResponsibility

Who Do You Trust When the Stakes Are High?

As I press the publish button, I find myself unsure of what image could best represent my thoughts. What would you choose? I’d love to hear your suggestions.

Trust is a tricky thing. It’s built on shared values, strengthened by actions, and yet, can be so easily shaken by doubt or conflicting perspectives. Recently, I found myself grappling with a question that’s likely familiar to many of us: when someone’s support aligns with your agenda, but their values don’t, do you trust them? Or do you hold out for someone whose principles better align with your own—even if it complicates things?

It’s a scenario that tests both integrity and pragmatism.

When Actions Speak Louder Than Words

In this particular case, someone has stepped forward to support my goals. Their actions—at least on the surface—seem to align with what I want to achieve. But there’s a problem: their broader values and behaviours don’t sit well with me. They’ve made choices that conflict with principles I hold dear, and those choices raise an important question: can I separate their support from their values? Should I?

Here’s the thing about trust: it isn’t built on convenience. It’s built on consistency and integrity. Someone’s ability to advance an agenda isn’t enough on its own. If their motivations or values don’t align with mine, it’s not just my trust that’s at risk—it’s the integrity of the cause itself.

Weighing Short-Term Gains Against Long-Term Values

It’s tempting to prioritise short-term wins. After all, when someone is prepared to champion your agenda, it can feel like progress—like the end justifies the means. But does it really? If their values don’t align with your own, what’s the cost of that alignment? Does it undermine the very principles you’re fighting for?

It’s a question I keep coming back to. In a world where trust can be fragile, how much does it matter that the person advancing your cause reflects your own values? For me, the answer is clear: it matters a lot. Trust isn’t transactional. It’s not something I can compromise on without losing sight of the bigger picture.

Making Hard Choices

I’ve learned that the easy path isn’t always the right one. I’ve also learned that integrity means making decisions that might not always yield immediate results, but ensure you can stand by your choices in the long run. If someone’s actions or values conflict with the principles I believe in, then their support—no matter how appealing—comes with a risk I’m not willing to take.

Ultimately trust isn’t just about the person in front of you. It’s about the community, the cause, and the credibility you bring to it. It’s about making decisions that reflect not just what you want to achieve, but how you want to achieve it.

Final Thoughts

The next time you find yourself in a similar position, ask yourself: is this someone I can trust not just to support my agenda, but to honour the values that matter to me and my community? If the answer is no, maybe it’s time to rethink the alignment—because trust, once lost, isn’t easy to rebuild.

And for me? I’ll choose the harder path if it means staying true to my values. After all, trust and integrity are worth it.

#TrustMatters #IntegrityFirst #SharedValues #LeadershipChallenges #EthicalChoices #ValueAlignment #AuthenticLeadership #PrincipledLiving #LongTermVision #BuildingTrust #CommunityCredibility #ActionsOverWords #IntegrityOverConvenience #TrustAndValues

The Twelve an Insight into the Complexities of Community and Justice

As we all eagerly await Series 2 of The Twelve this blog post explores our interconnected world, where the lines between personal and communal responsibilities often blur. The TV series “The Twelve” offers a compelling exploration of the complexities involved in being a community member tasked with making life-altering decisions about others. As someone deeply invested in fostering community conversations and ensuring fair, informed decision-making, this series resonates profoundly with me.

I invited our resident expert in the world of psychology to give us some insights on the format and below are their reflections

Unravelling the Layers of Human Experience

“The Twelve” doesn’t just present a courtroom drama; it delves into the intricate lives of each juror, including the protagonist and the antagonist. Every episode peels back another layer of their personal histories, revealing how their experiences, biases, and moral dilemmas influence their perspectives on the case. This mirrors the complexity of real-life community interactions, where our backgrounds and personal stories shape our views and decisions.

The Weight of Responsibility

Serving on a jury is a significant responsibility, one that requires individuals to put aside personal prejudices and focus on the facts presented. “The Twelve” brings this to the forefront, highlighting the weight of deciding someone else’s fate. As someone who encourages transparent dialogue and meaningful community conversations, I find this portrayal both compelling and a necessary reminder of the importance of empathy and fairness in our communal roles.

Legal Expertise and Fairness

One aspect of the series that particularly stands out to me is the tension between the jurors’ lay perspectives and the need for legal expertise. In the series, we see how the lack of legal knowledge can complicate decision-making processes. This aligns with my belief that cases involving significant consequences should ideally be reviewed by individuals with legal expertise to ensure informed and just outcomes. It raises an important discussion about how our legal systems can better balance lay participation with expert guidance.

Reflection on Community Dynamics

“The Twelve” also offers a poignant reflection on the dynamics within a community. It shows how each individual’s actions, choices, and even lies contribute to the larger fabric of society. As someone who has worked extensively with community organisations and facilitated events to encourage open dialogue, I appreciate how the series underscores the interconnectedness of our actions and the ripple effects they create within the community.

Encouraging Empathy and Understanding

“The Twelve” reinforces the understanding of the complexities of the human psyche by depicting characters who, despite their flaws and complexities, strive to make just decisions. It’s a powerful reminder that, at the heart of every community, lies the need for compassion and the willingness to understand one another’s perspectives.

“The Twelve” is more than just a TV series; it’s a narrative that resonates deeply with those of us who value community, fairness, and informed decision-making. It challenges us to reflect on our roles within our communities and the importance of empathy in justice. As we watch the jurors navigate their personal and collective dilemmas, we’re reminded of the profound impact our choices have on the lives of others and the necessity of striving for fairness and understanding in all our communal interactions.

For those who, like me, are committed to fostering supportive and transparent communities, “The Twelve” is a must-watch. It’s a compelling exploration of the human experience, justice, and the intricate web of relationships that bind us all.

#TheTwelve #CommunityJustice #EmpathyInAction #LegalExpertise #CommunityConversations #TVSeriesReview #JusticeSystem #CommunityDynamics #EmpathyAndUnderstanding #FairDecisionMaking