Tag: Leadership

What happens after the applause?

This post has been sitting in my drafts for four years. I knew there was something I wanted to say, but every time I returned to it, it sounded like a grievance. So back into drafts it went.

Now I know what I was trying to say.

When Bob Hawke died in 2019, the four of us who had received the Bob Hawke Landcare Award wanted to do something small and heartfelt. We wanted to make a joint statement about what the award had meant to us. Each of us had a story to tell about meeting Bob, the contribution that led to the award and what came afterwards.

Landcare Australia, which managed the award, chose another approach to its public tribute. I was disappointed. At the time, I saw it largely through the lens of that disappointment.

Four years of sitting in drafts, and some completely unrelated conversations, have helped me see the much bigger question.

What happens after we give people awards?

I was the inaugural recipient of the Bob Hawke Landcare Award in 2012. At that time it was an individual award carrying a $50,000 prize. The award has changed considerably since then. It is now worth $30,000 and can be awarded to an individual, community-led group or eligible not-for-profit organisation.

But something in the criteria remains fascinating to me.

Recipients are recognised for qualities that include inspiring others, mentoring people, encouraging action, sharing knowledge and supporting communities.

In other words, the award seeks people who build capacity in other people. But who creates the opportunities for them to build that capacity together?

Australia has hundreds of awards recognising people for their contribution, knowledge, leadership and experience. We find them. We assess them. We celebrate them. We put them on stages, take photographs and tell their stories. Then, quite often, we send them home. The following year, we may come back and ask them to promote the next round of awards.

This is a lost opportunity.

The Bob Hawke Landcare Award records its alumni, with recipients going back to the inaugural award in 2012. That recognition has value, but an alumni list is not an alumni network. If an active network exists that brings Bob Hawke Landcare Award recipients together to learn from each other, I have never been invited to be part of it.

Belltrees Public School showed me what is possible. The small rural school, with around 20 students, organised a regenerative agriculture day that brought former Bob Hawke Landcare Award recipients together. We heard from each other, asked questions and exchanged ideas. I attended, and it was brilliant. A little school had recognised the value of connecting people with different knowledge and experience and created the opportunity for us to learn from each other.

The Banksia Foundation also experimented with this idea. Award recipients were brought together to visit the businesses and organisations of category winners, see what they were doing and learn directly from them. I attended one of those visits and it was brilliant too.

Both experiences showed me the difference between recognising knowledge and connecting knowledge. You can put someone’s name on an alumni page, or you can create opportunities for people with different knowledge and experience to learn from each other.

For years I worked alongside people in agriculture who gave organisations their time, credibility, relationships, lived experience and knowledge. They spoke at events, sat on panels, joined committees, opened their farms, told their stories and helped organisations demonstrate what was possible.

Many of them gave enormously.

Too often, I watched the infrastructure around them benefit from all that human capacity without creating the same opportunities for those people to benefit from one another.

We are very good at identifying individual achievement. We are less good at asking what becomes possible when we connect the knowledge and experience of the people we have recognised.

Interestingly, this was part of what I was talking about when I received the Bob Hawke Landcare Award in 2012. I wanted to “find innovators, early adopters and people doing extraordinary things and help connect and amplify what they knew.”

Two years later, a Landcare publication described me as “a connector” and quoted me saying I was “obsessed with finding and nurturing talent, and supporting it”.

So apparently I have been banging on about this for quite some time.

What I did not have then was the question I have now.

Is the community serving the infrastructure around it, or is the infrastructure serving the community?

Over the past few months I have been conducting a completely different piece of research, interviewing people who have made significant commitments to their communities. Those conversations finally gave me the language for this four-year-old draft.

People bring enormous assets into organisations, programs, campaigns and movements. They bring knowledge, relationships, credibility, experience, energy and trust. Organisations are often very good at mobilising those assets.

The more interesting question is what they build around the people who provided them.

Do those people leave with stronger relationships? Do they have access to the knowledge of others who have travelled similar paths? Can they learn from each other? Are they introduced to people who could extend what they are already doing? Does the organisation ask them what would make the relationship valuable to them? Does the collective capacity become greater because those people were brought together?

That brings me back to awards.

Imagine if part of running an award program was asking recipients a year later: What would be valuable to you now?

Perhaps they want nothing further from it. That’s fine. But perhaps they would value meeting other recipients. Perhaps somebody who won ten years ago has knowledge that could transform what a new recipient is trying to achieve. Perhaps an experienced recipient could mentor somebody emerging in the same field. Perhaps two people working on opposite sides of the country are tackling versions of the same problem.

Perhaps the most valuable thing the organisation could provide is simply the introduction.

This does not require another glossy program. It requires seeing the award differently.

The award ceremony recognises what somebody has already contributed. The alumni community asks what might become possible next.

There is another question here too. We invest considerable resources in finding, judging and celebrating award recipients. Awards can involve substantial events, sponsors, communications, judging processes and hundreds of guests.

What proportion of that investment goes into connecting recipients after the event?

I do not know the economics of the Landcare Awards, and I am not suggesting what that answer should be. But it is a question worth asking across the awards sector, particularly when some of the most valuable connections may require little more than bringing people together.

Belltrees Public School managed it with around 20 students.

And I now understand why my original experience with the Bob Hawke Landcare Award bothered me enough for this post to sit unfinished for four years. It was never simply about a statement after Bob Hawke died. It was about the difference between recognising human capacity and building it.

Landcare itself grew from people connecting knowledge, experience and effort. Farmers, conservationists, neighbours and volunteers discovered they could achieve more together than they could separately.

It moved people from “I to We”.

An award bearing Bob Hawke’s name has an opportunity to continue that tradition. So do thousands of other awards.

We spend considerable time and resources identifying people whose experience and contribution we believe are worth recognising.

Perhaps the next question should be: What are we going to do with all that human capacity now that we have found it?

 

Before we explain One Nation voters, perhaps we should listen to them

 

Yesterday I wrote about the extraordinary enthusiasm political parties have for studying unhappy voters rather than themselves. This morning the Sydney Morning Herald delivered me an article about researchers studying 1,000 One Nation voters. Sometimes the universe is unnecessarily helpful.

In my living history interviews with people in their late 80s and early 90s across my local government area, I often ask what has changed in their lifetime. I am hoping for the broad sweep, social change, physical change, how the place has changed around them.

The most common answer I get is: too many people.

They are talking about people moving into the area from somewhere else in Australia. Sydney gets mentioned a lot. Immigration does not.

So when I read Paul Sakkal’s article in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning on what 1,000 One Nation voters say is driving them, I smiled.

The headline finding is immigration. Of the One Nation supporters who believe Australia is heading in the wrong direction, 39 per cent name immigration as one of the reasons. Fifty-seven per cent fear Australia’s culture and identity are changing too quickly. Forty per cent point to pressure on housing and infrastructure.

Then you read what people actually say.

One supporter says the issue is arithmetic. You cannot bring in that many people without building the houses. Another says the issue is who comes and whether they want to become part of what is already here.

Suddenly “immigration” is being asked to explain quite a lot.

We do love a complicated explanation. Apparently understanding something counts for less if it doesn’t require a consultant.

The research into One Nation voters comes with focus groups, voter segments, demographic differences, loyal supporters, newer supporters and analysis of what might persuade people to change their vote. All useful.

But perhaps people are also saying exactly what they mean.

There are more people than there used to be, and they do not like some of the consequences.

People do not experience population growth as a percentage. They experience another housing development, another traffic jam, another doctor’s books closed to new patients, another paddock covered in houses and another place that takes longer to get to.

Ask someone in their late 80s in my LGA what has changed and I may hear “too many people”.

Ask a One Nation voter what is wrong with Australia and I may hear “too much immigration”.

Before deciding those are entirely different conversations, it might be useful to ask what each person is actually describing.

The Scanlon Foundation’s long-running social cohesion research adds an important clue. In 2024, 49 per cent of Australians thought immigration was too high. Yet 85 per cent said multiculturalism had been good for Australia, 82 per cent said migrants were good for the economy and 83 per cent rejected excluding immigrants on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion.

The 2025 research is equally interesting.

Among Australians who thought immigration was too high, 58 per cent nominated the economy or housing as the country’s biggest problem. Only 9 per cent nominated immigration itself.

That does not make concerns about race, culture or identity disappear. The One Nation research itself shows a difference between newer supporters worried about migration numbers and parts of Hanson’s traditional base who are more concerned about the background of migrants.

But it does suggest that “too much immigration” can sometimes be shorthand for something much broader.

Too many people for the houses.

Too many people for the roads.

Too many people for the services.

Too much change, too quickly.

In my interviews, the people causing all this pressure can be Australians who moved down the highway. Scale the same experience up from a town to a country and suddenly the new arrivals have passports.

This takes us straight back to the leadership question I wrote about yesterday.

Political parties confronted with dissatisfied voters have an extraordinary appetite for studying the voters. Who are they? What do they want? What are they angry about? What message will bring them back?

Now we have research into 1,000 One Nation voters.

To its credit, the research reaches an important conclusion: One Nation’s rise is as much a story of Liberal failure as One Nation success.

That is more interesting than another voter profile.

Because the real question may be what happens when population grows faster than people’s confidence that governments can manage the consequences.

Housing, roads, hospitals, schools and infrastructure are experienced locally. So is change. People notice the paddock disappearing long before they read the population statistics.

Then politics arrives with an answer. Immigration.

That is a powerful word because it can turn a collection of complicated experiences into one problem with one number attached to it.

Politics loves a number. Numbers can be cut. Systems are messier.

So before politicians hear “immigration” and start competing over who can promise the lower migration target, it might be worth listening a little longer.

What are people actually describing? Because sometimes when someone in their late 80s tells me the problem is “too many people”, the people causing all the trouble came from Wollongong.

Pauline Hanson did not invent that feeling.

She may simply have become very good at telling people what to call it.

Agriculture wanted better storytellers. Then we blew up the model that made them

 

I am about to spend World Peace Day talking to a group of 10 to 15 year olds about curiosity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. Which is slightly confronting when you start looking around at how adults behave.

Before the workshop, the students will answer a short survey. They will answer the same questions afterwards. I am interested to see what changes, and I am also realistic enough to know they are unlikely to walk out several hours later transformed into world-class collaborators who calmly interrogate every assumption before breakfast.

That is because people do not change overnight. Oddly, we seem to forget this every time we organise a workshop.

How many times have you spent a day learning some marvellous new way of doing things, walked out thinking, “This is excellent” put the folder somewhere safe and carried on exactly as before? I have.

We have somehow developed a culture where learning is treated as an event. Book the facilitator, find the room, provide lunch, learn collaboration, home by four. Job done.

I learnt the limitations of that model the long way around.

When I came back into agriculture, people decided I did not look like the stereotype of someone they expected to see representing the industry. Apparently that was useful, so I was pushed out the front and into the media.

This was all very new to me, and I was not remotely comfortable with it, so I demanded training. Then more training. Then more training.

It took me about 15 years to feel comfortable.

The other day I gave a presentation and a number of people told me it was the best presentation they had ever seen.

They should have been at my first one.

It had 127 slides.

I wish I were exaggerating.

That experience changed the way I thought about developing other people. When I started the Young Farming Champions program, I wanted people to have what I had eventually learned I needed, time, repetition, feedback and somewhere safe to keep practising.

The Young Farming Champions model was built around ongoing development. Once you joined, you could remain part of the network for as long as you wanted, continuing to build your skills over time. During COVID, we ran workshops every month, so people could say, “I want to feel more comfortable doing this,” and we could focus on exactly that. We brought in outstanding Australian and international experts, then gave people repeated opportunities to practise, get feedback and keep improving.

That is how confidence grows.

Then agricultural bodies looked at what we were doing and decided they wanted something similar. The young people were already there. The Action4Agriculture team was already training them. What changed was the desire to have the program sit inside their own organisation.

This is where I became increasingly frustrated with the way institutions behave. We talk endlessly about collaboration, but the system often rewards the person who can point to something and say, “That was my idea. I built that. That was my result.”

Once that becomes the prize, curiosity becomes inconvenient.

Nobody asks, “Why is this working?” or “What could we add to what is already here?” The question becomes, “How do we create our own version?”

And that is how duplication starts to look like achievement.

The result can be beautifully efficient.

Train them on Saturday.

Face of the industry by Monday.

It is a wonderfully efficient system, provided human beings work like software updates.

Recently I have been spending time with collaboration specialist Stuart Waters, and he has been subtly  dismantling several things I thought I knew. One of them is my GPS model.

I have used it for years. Goal. Problem. Solution. Where are we trying to go? What is getting in the way? What is the solution? Perfectly sensible.

Except Stuart pointed out something rather inconvenient.

If we knew the solution, we probably would not have the problem.

With complex problems, the solution is rarely sitting there politely waiting for someone clever enough to notice it. Stuart talks instead about steps, experiments, things we can try, learn from and adjust.

So perhaps GPS survives. Goal. Problem. Steps.

I rather like that. It removes the requirement to stride into every complicated situation carrying The Answer.

It also exposes another habit we have. We are often in an extraordinary hurry to solve the problem before we have worked out what the problem actually is. Something goes wrong and we deal with the bit we can see.

People are not collaborating. Students are dropping rubbish. A community is not engaging. A candidate loses an election.

Right. Fix that.

Except those things may be symptoms. The interesting questions sit underneath. Why is this happening? What assumptions are we making? Who knows something we don’t? Who sees the situation differently?

And the question I am finding increasingly important in some other work I am doing is this.

Have we actually spoken to the people most affected?

It is astonishing how often the answer appears to be no. Reports get written, programs get designed, conclusions get reached and entire narratives develop. Meanwhile, somebody sitting right in the middle of the experience is thinking, “You could have asked me.”

And then I am preparing to stand in front of children and put this on a screen.

Stay curious. Ask before you assume. Understand the problem before you solve it. Listen to learn. Share the thinking. Try something small. Learn what happens. Keep going.

The children are not the only people who could use the reminder.

I am also going to ask them something I have found unexpectedly difficult myself.

Who do you know who does this? Who stays curious when everyone else has already decided? Who asks another question? Who listens because they genuinely want to know the answer? Who can say, “I don’t know”? Who can discover something new and change their mind without behaving as though they have suffered a humiliating defeat?

I can think of a few people. Stuart is one.

What I notice when I talk to him is that having expertise has not made him less curious. Quite the opposite. He keeps asking questions. What is the actual dilemma? Who else sees this differently? What could we try? What might we learn?

Perhaps that is what expertise should look like.

Knowing enough to know that you probably don’t know everything.

There is another uncomfortable question sitting underneath my student workshop. We spend a great deal of time telling young people they will need curiosity, critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration to navigate the future.

Who are they watching do it now?

Because one workshop will not do it. Not for them. Not for us.

A workshop might introduce an idea. It might give us language for something we had never noticed before. It might even make us uncomfortable enough to rethink something.

Then comes Monday.

That is when the learning starts.

We Keep Arguing About Grace Tame and Ignore the Real Question

I have watched the commentary around Grace Tame spiral into familiar territory. Some defend her. Some attack her. Some wait for any misstep. The arguments become about slogans, tone, delivery.

Meanwhile, the original political decision sits largely untouched.

Reading through the comments on a right-leaning news site, I came across a thoughtful defence of her right to speak. It reminded me that human rights advocacy does not vanish because someone disagrees with the politics of the moment. Courage is not conditional.

I would have preferred that a particular slogan not be used. It distracted from the substance. Yet focusing only on the slogan misses the larger question.

What was the judgement behind inviting the Israeli president at this time?

Leadership is not only about protocol. It is about reading the room. It is about understanding how divided the public mood already is. It is about recognising when symbolism inflames rather than steadies.

We can debate Grace Tame’s language for days. That is easy. The harder and more necessary question concerns political judgement at the top.

If we are serious about social cohesion, that is where attention belongs.

Respect is not selective. Accountability applies to everyone

Every community conversation reveals patterns. Some are constructive. Some are revealing. And sometimes the contrast between past behaviour and present claims becomes impossible to ignore.

Recently, on Facebook, former Kiama mayor Neil Reilly responded to one of my posts in a way that questioned my integrity. His comments were the only personal remarks made in the entire thread. All other community members stayed focused on the issue at hand, which was the impact the Akuna Street development will have on Kiama’s CBD.

What makes this notable is not the comment itself, but the context.
Several readers have reminded me of something important. In 2019, Kiama Council formally censured Councillor Neil Reilly under the Code of Conduct. This is a matter of public record. The investigation substantiated multiple allegations, including social media comments that were disparaging of Councillors and disparaging of Council staff.

The relevant report is found in the Council agenda of 22 October 2019.

It documents:

• social media comments that were disparaging of Council
• comments that were disparaging of other Councillors
• comments that were disrespectful to staff
• conduct that brought Council into disrepute

These findings make his comments to me in 2025 all the more striking.

On one hand, the public record shows he was formally censured for disparaging comments about Councillors and staff. On the other hand, years later, he is telling the community that questioning Council decisions is “disrespectful” and that raising concerns is inappropriate.

The Bugle’s December 2023 article also raised serious concerns about the way Mayor Neil Reilly publicly characterised Councillor Karen Renkema Lang’s comments to ABC Radio. The article shows he initiated the complaint that led to her censure, despite her simply raising community concerns about the Blue Haven reclassification and incomplete or unclear information provided to Councillors. His public statements criticised her personally, yet the ABC audio makes clear she neither blamed staff nor claimed to speak for Council. This pattern of misrepresenting legitimate scrutiny sits uncomfortably beside what happened next, when the Supreme Court found her censure to be invalid and Kiama Council was ordered to pay more than two hundred thousand dollars in legal costs, as reported by the ABC.

and lets not forget As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald

Source  

So a clear pattern emerges.

  • 2016 “inappropriate” text messages
  • In 2019 he was formally censured for disparaging remarks about fellow Councillors and staff.
  • In 2023 he pursued a censure of Councillor Karen Renkema Lang that was later found to be invalid, costing ratepayers more than two hundred thousand dollars in legal fees.
  • And in 2025 he chose to question my integrity rather than answer a straightforward planning question about parking and CBD disruption.

This is not about personalities.
It is not about revisiting old grievances.
It is about consistency and credibility.

When someone with a history of breaching Council’s Code of Conduct for disparaging comments, and someone whose actions have cost the community hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, publicly accuses others of disrespect, it raises a reasonable question.

What standard is being applied, and why does it only seem to apply when the questions are directed at them?

For me, the issue remains the same as it always has been.
The community has the right to ask questions.
The community has the right to expect answers.
And the community has the right to be treated with respect by anyone who has held public office.

Accountability is not a one way street.
Respect is not selective.
And the public record matters.

Please see my blog post responding to former  Mayor Neil Reilly’s Facebook comments here

#KiamaCommunity #Accountability #PublicRecord #LeadershipMatters #CommunityFirst #AkunaStreet #KiamaCBD #RespectInPublicLife

Kiama Is Sleepwalking Into a CBD Meltdown. Here’s How We Could Stop It.

This awesome image was created by Steve Hughes in Photoshop. This is how he did it. He went in search of a 14-storey building and found the perspective he needed for Terralong Street then superimposed the two images  It shows why transparency matters. Our community cannot weigh up the future of Kiama without seeing what that future might become.

If you were handed a magic wand and told to fix Kiama Council’s parking crisis, what would you do?

I pondered that very question after raising concerns in a recent blog post that was debated on Facebook  about what will happen once the Akuna Street construction begins and our main car park disappears. The former mayor jumped into the conversation, not to answer the questions I then asked him, but to challenge me to stand for mayor. Part of the Facebook exchange is below  and you can join the conversation here 

So here is what I think. 
I would look beyond Kiama’s borders and learn from places that have done it properly.

An example we could do what Singapore does. Visit the website – its extraordinary

FYI I’m not suggesting Kiama should look anything like Singapore. Our landscapes, our scale and our community expectations are entirely different. I’ve referred to Singapore because I’ve seen firsthand how they communicate with residents, how they plan years ahead, and how they make complex information accessible. It’s an example of best practice in community engagement, not a blueprint for how Kiama should be built. What matters is the principle: people deserve to understand what is coming, how it will affect them, and how decisions are made in their name.

We would look outward.
We would study cities that have solved the problems we are now facing.
We would bring home the ideas that are proven to work.
And  we would start planning for the Kiama that will exist in twenty years, not the Kiama that existed twenty years ago.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The images in the slideshow in this post were taken at the Singapore City Gallery, located at The URA Centre. See footnote below

Kiama does not need leaders who claim to know everything. Kiama needs leaders who know how to learn. Leaders who read widely, ask questions, answer questions test assumptions and welcome new thinking. Leaders who see beyond the next news cycle and prepare for the people who will live here long after we are gone.

Our community deserves vision.
It deserves honesty.
It deserves leadership that looks forward, not inward.

Kiama is worth that level of care.

Footnote: About the Singapore City Gallery

The images in the slideshow in this post were taken at the Singapore City Gallery, located at The URA Centre at 45 Maxwell Road. The Gallery is created and run by Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the national planning agency responsible for the long term physical development of the country.

The Gallery is one of the world’s most sophisticated urban planning exhibitions. It explains how Singapore plans for its future in a clear, structured and community focused way. Displays walk visitors through fifty years of transformation and map out the next decades of planning, covering housing, transport, green space, industrial development, heritage conservation and coastal resilience.


#KiamaFuture #LeadershipMatters #CommunityFirst #SingaporeModel #PlanningAhead #PublicTrust #CivicCourage #SmartCities #AkunaStreet #KiamaLeadership

When leadership fails, culture tells the truth

As I’ve said before, you can do all the leadership training in the world. It doesn’t always make you a leader. But what it does do, importantly, is help you recognise the difference. It helps you identify real leaders when you see them. More importantly, it sharpens your ability to spot toxic cultures. It teaches you to recognise when someone has enough self-awareness to grow, and when someone doesn’t. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Leadership is hard. Public leadership is harder. But when harm is done, whether through action or silence, real leadership requires something more than defensiveness. It requires self-reflection.

If a CEO were to pause and look inward, here is what genuine self-awareness might sound like.

How did I get here?
I have spent my career navigating complicated political environments. I have seen corruption up close. I have worked in organisations where things went very wrong. I was not charged, but I was part of that system. I saw what unchecked power does. I know what it costs communities. I know what it costs people.

Did I bring that culture with me, even unknowingly?
Did I carry forward habits shaped by survival in a dysfunctional system? Did I seek control where I should have encouraged transparency? Have I mistaken compliance for leadership?

Have I confused being right with being in charge?
Leadership is not about managing perception. It is about creating space for accountability and trust. When people around me challenged decisions or asked difficult questions, did I see that as threat instead of engagement?

What role have I played in the harm others say they’ve experienced?
When people say they felt targeted, silenced, or undermined during my leadership, do I hear that as a personal attack or as something to sit with? Have I considered that harm does not require intention, that impact matters more than defence?

What am I afraid will happen if I admit I got it wrong?
Is it fear of looking weak? Fear of being held to account? Or is it fear of stepping into the unknown, into a space where control is replaced by vulnerability?

What would it look like to lead differently, now?
It would mean opening space for truth. It would mean commissioning an independent review. It would mean picking up the phone to those who were hurt and saying, “I want to understand.” It would mean listening, not defending. Owning, not spinning. Rebuilding, not retreating.

Because surviving a broken system is not the same as transforming one.

And if we do not break the cycle, we become it.

#LeadershipMatters #ToxicCulture #CouncilAccountability #TrueLeadership #CommunityWellbeing #EthicalGovernance #PublicTrust

Why I wouldn’t hire myself as CEO and why that matters

New here? Welcome.
This blog unpacks the inner workings of local democracy in the Kiama local government area. I am not a councillor or council staffer. I am a long-time community member, former civics writer for the local newspaper, and someone who has spent decades in leadership, founding a national charity, completing world-class leadership programs, and training hundreds of emerging changemakers.

What that experience gave me was not just confidence in my own skill set. It taught me something far more valuable. Great leadership is knowing what you bring to the table and then surrounding yourself with people who fill the gaps. It is building a team of “we” people, not “I” people. People who understand that progress is collaborative, that community outcomes are shared, and that leadership is not about being the smartest person in the room, but about listening to the smartest people in the room.

That is the standard we should expect from anyone who puts their hand up to lead.

This blog exists to ask hard questions, share hard truths, and shine a light where it is most needed.

Why I wouldn’t hire myself as CEO and why that matters

For 20 years, I led a charity that offered leadership training to hundreds of emerging voices across rural and regional Australia. I have completed extraordinary programs from the Melbourne Business School to global executive intensives and yet I still would not hire myself as the CEO of a major organisation.

Why? Because those courses taught me something uncomfortable and essential. Great leadership is not about confidence. It is about having the capacity to recognise the people who can deliver the outcomes our community deserves, and, most importantly, to identify the “I” people. The ones who have not done the work and do not understand what shared leadership truly means.

This matters because communities pay the price when leadership becomes about ego.

“I” people focus on self-preservation, not solutions. They stall progress, weaken trust, and erode the culture of shared responsibility. Real leadership ensures the right people are empowered, the community’s needs are prioritised, and decisions are guided by collaboration rather than personal ambition.

What I find deeply troubling is this. In all my observations of Kiama Municipal Council, I am not seeing anyone who has put themselves forward for any form of recognised leadership training. Not one. And we are expected to trust them to lead a one hundred million dollar organisation.

That is not brave. That is not capable. That is reckless.

So what should we look for in a 21st century leader, especially one applying to run a council?

Here is the skill set I believe should be non-negotiable.

  • Emotional intelligence and self-awareness

  • Systems thinking

  • Stakeholder engagement

  • Adaptive leadership

  • Transparency and accountability

  • Public value mindset

  • Commitment to lifelong learning

Let us stop accepting untrained leadership as good enough.

If you were hiring a surgeon, you would check their qualifications. If you were hiring a pilot, you would want to know they had done the flight hours. But with leadership, qualifications alone are not enough. The real test is capacity, the ability to bring people together, set a clear direction, and deliver outcomes with integrity.

Why should the CEO of a local government, responsible for planning, services, staff culture, finances, and infrastructure, be held to a lower standard? Communities need leaders who can demonstrate both the knowledge and the skill to lead, not simply hold a credential or a title. Anything less puts the community at risk.

It is time we asked for more. And it starts by asking one simple question.
Is the leadership we have what our community needs and deserves?

#LeadershipMatters #PublicLeadership #LocalGovernment #KiamaCouncil #CivicAccountability #CommunityFirst #EthicalLeadership