Layers of Leadership
My involvement with Running for Resilience (R4R) is my proudest achievement, behind my family.
My role has been to empower others to make R4R their own, and lead from the front in their own way.
I believe this is the most impactful, scalable, and underused style of leadership that can improve our community sector, and create even more change.
Why am I doing this?
If not you, then who… if not now, then when.
I’ve been hesitant to share my perspective on leadership with R4R because in many ways, I’ve just been lucky.
So much of my leadership style is enabling others to take ownership of R4R and because of that, we’ve seen our community grow into something I could never have done or imagined.
I think people can learn from this style of leadership, in both the community and commercial world… inspiring others to contribute towards a common goal.
Can I help?
R4R has worked because people feel like they belong to it, and they feel like they can contribute to it.
It has been created by countless contributions from countless people… not me.
This is the form of leadership I aspire towards… inspiring others to contribute towards a common goal.
I’d love to help your organisation aspire towards the same type of leadership.
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I’ve presented to thousands of people in my time with R4R, as a keynote speaker and as par of expert panels
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in a half-day or full-day workshop, we can co-create a strategy that leverages the lessons learned from and applied at R4R.
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Combining the workshop offering with a full review of your operations, underpinned by conversations with you and your key stakeholders, I’ll deliver you a strategy review and practical implementation document
Get in touch
Give your enemies the option you want them to take
This is a lesson from the Art of War… and while we don’t have enemies… that we know of… when R4R started, we knew that effort was most important.
We thought that if we took donations, people would give them, but could only give so much. On the flip side, we thought that if people gave effort by turning up, they’d get a return and want to give again…
So for our first 5 years, we didn’t take donations… we gave our community, the option we wanted them to take….
The Golden Bridge
Magic happens in silence
When you leave space for something to emerge, something usually does.
I received a scholarship to the Crusaders Leadership Program. They are the most successful rugby franchise and their former coach Robbie Deans spoke about the magic that would happen in silence…
With R4R, we took it beyond conversation… leaving silence or space, in opportunities for leadership.
When you leave space for something to emerge, something usually does. You need to be ready to embrace the good, and respond when it’s not appropriate, but almost always… what emerges is worth it’s weight in gold.
The best ideas are rarely yours
All my highlights with R4R have been because of someone else.
We’ve always tried to give people the opportunity to lead and contribute to our mission… and when they do… they bring a unique perspective I could never bring.
Leadership is about inspiring others to contribute towards a common goal… and when people do this in their own way… the outcome is incredible.
So, much of leadership is about strategically bringing forward these perspectives… sometimes this can be straightforward… but other times you need to be sneaky.
Unseen work
Planning for worst case, planning for best case, and planning for the unforeseen.
Often because of how rare these things are, planning for these things in the open can distract from the core behaviours and more pressing issues.
As a result, these things rest with the leader or leadership group to prepare for behind closed doors… so that if something does happen, a response can happen quickly.
The amount of trust that’s built, when a leader has a response ready for a crisis, is intangible… and while many of your plans go unused, the process of planning becomes immensely valuable.
Letting the game come to you
Having three kids taught me that I’m almost never in control
Every time I had a plan, it would fall to pieces… so rather than trying to over-engineer my days with the kids… I just got to a spot and played zone defence… defending the fatal scenarios.
If you’re a soccer fan, you’d recognise this in Lionel Messi who’d walk around the field… reading the game and allowing it to develop around him… sprinting when the opportunity arose.
It’s a skill… knowing when to slow down, look around, and focus on being ready and in the right spot.
So much doesn’t go to plan… but if you have all the context and the ability to adapt, that’s okay.
Over-engineered strategies can fall apart quickly, but strong principles and response protocols build resilience and adaptability.
So prepare as much as practical, looking at all the different possibilities… but distil your strategy into a mission, it’s goals, and the principles you’ll make every decision in line with.
Prepare, prepare, prepare…
wing it.
Sometimes being ahead of the curve can put you behind it.
There’s often ideals we can aim for… best practice, perfect systems… you name it. But sometimes, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it… and if it isn’t obvious to the team that a change is required… don’t change it.
As much as it might feel chaotic or slow at times, the best thing to do is to prepare for the evolution in the background while allowing the team to continue playing catch-up… until they tell you they need to evolve.
Lazy leadership
Figuring out your personal values and your organisational values helps you make decisions in line with your goal.
Over time, consistency compounds and this creates an environment where people feel comfortable contributing to the mission.
R4R believes no one is destined for suicide. We want to save one life from suicide, as many times as possible, and we think a suicide-free Canberra is possible.
Our principles are effort, empathy, community, self-care, and better… so if someone comes along and wants to contribute to our mission… we say as long as your in line with these things… the floor is yours.
Principles
Mistakes happen… and if you have a systematic way of learning from them, they play a key role in refining the path towards the goal.
You have to be okay with looking stupid… you have to help others feel okay with making mistakes… and you have to have good systems for capturing the lessons from those mistakes.
After Action Reviews are the simplest most effective way of doing this… as often as you can, ask yourself what happened, what went well, what could have gone better, and what change will we make moving forward.
Not everything will be gold… but over time the improvements will emerge.