Leadership in Australia - Interview with Robyn Gaspari

"Our leadership in Australia is not good and we have a lot of work to do in building up the standard of leadership. It is not anybody's fault we just haven't focused on training leaders." Robyn Gaspari.

This is an extract from the report Community Leadership Programs in NSW, prepared by Lisa Andersen, Pauline O'Loughlin and Anette Salt, UTS Shopfront, for the Strengthening Communities Unit, NSW Premier's Department. December 2001.

Robyn Gaspari is a part of the Conflict Resolution Network and runs Gaspari Consultants Pty Ltd operating as Conflict Resolution Network Community Based Projects and Conflict Resolution Management and Training Services. She has worked as a program developer and trainer on community leadership programs throughout NSW and Australia for more than 13 years. She is highly regarded by her colleagues and alumni.

This is part of the transcript from an interview on December 18, 2001.

Our leadership in Australia is not good and we have a lot of work to do in building up the standard of leadership. It is not anybody's fault we just haven't focused on training leaders.

My experience of training for business and the community is that we don't put enough emphasis on leadership skills and that this is an enormous need.

We have moved away from paternalistic leadership model and are heading towards a more autonomous decision-making model. Currently we are somewhere along this pathway; more people are taking more responsibility and having to accept the consequences of their actions.

But, as often happens, we move into new methodologies without teaching people how to manage them; and it can be a really painful process. So you get people who want to revert to the old way of doing things because the change process wasn't managed effectively.

Leadership training needs to be a staged program with a multi-faceted approach. You do need skills development and a residential program can do that. But how do you build on that? You can do it in a variety of ways including mentoring, coaching, even advocacy if it is appropriate. My experience has taught me that the learning is so much better if it is grounded in post-course work or projects. You can have face-to-face training but you do need to have some consolidation of that training afterwards, especially through action research projects.

Training for voluntary boards

There is a great need for better training access for voluntary boards of community organisations. Boards are often made up of well-meaning people who have a strong commitment to their community but they may not have extensive experience of managing large amounts of delegated money with the responsibility of accountability.

This is causing tensions and there is a lot of anxiety because the laws have changed around Boards' responsibilities. Now many organisations are having difficulties recruiting board members.

How do we take away the fear by giving people knowledge? This is challenge for leadership programs; to include the training needs of voluntary boards, especially in the areas of risk management, financial management, accountability and governance.

Women

Another area we need to be seriously working on is building up the expertise of women by encouraging them to sit on community boards. They begin as volunteers for community organisations, having those skills and experiences, and then later on, as they want to, they will be prepared, experienced and be ready to be considered as board members for corporate organisations.

One of the things which differentiates women from men in leadership programs is that women recognise that they need things and will often ask for help. Women also look to develop support networks after the program to share information.

Emerging young leaders

My thoughts on training emerging young leaders are, firstly, don't have these groups on their own. They get far more out of the training if they are doing the training with other more experienced people.

Mentoring is a very appropriate method to use with young people. Please, let's train our mentors first! Often they are not given any indication of what is appropriate behaviour and when intervention is appropriate. Mentoring is all about knowing "when do I let go?" and when does the mentoree start to be equal and then start to take the lead role. Some people are a natural but many people confuse mentoring with guidance and handholding.

It is important for the mentor to know is that the mentoree will grow past the experience, which is a good thing. In a sense, the sooner the relationship ends the better the job that the mentor has done.

Coaching is one of the things I have been doing a lot more of in the last couple of years; which is a different thing again.

This is about succession planning. We need to understand the significant and different roles of someone who mentors and someone who coaches and someone who counsels. These methods can be used in partnership to ensure that the person who is the potential leader gets the kind of support they need.

Community leadership vs business leadership

Sometimes there are no differences between the content of leadership training programs run for business or community leaders. But sometimes there are local issues, and specific skills or tools are needed to enable people to lead the community towards a better way of handling those situations.

As they are dealing more directly with the day by day existence of people, the pressures on people working in the community are quite different than the pressures on people in business.

Information sharing is very important for community workers. Without it they can get a strong sense of isolation by working on their own projects.

Because we are all so time short it is hard to get people involved in community activities. Often when someone new comes along they very quickly have a lot of new roles and responsibilities thrust upon them; "I only went along to a couple of meetings because I was interested and now they have made me President!". But the person hasn't been involved for long enough to really understand what the organisation is doing. They have this greatness thrust upon them without understanding the roles and responsibilities and can quickly start to feel overwhelmed.

I was involved in an organisation last year where exactly that happened. A very well meaning President took over a committee and had walked into a minefield. Luckily she handled it particularly well because she called for outside help. It was very difficult for a long time. Of course you can't isolate the organisation from the local community. The whole community becomes involved.

And that is one of the huge differences between corporate and community; once the corporate person goes home the organisation is left behind. A community worker is a member of the community so everybody is aware, everybody puts pressure on and everybody has their own ideas. With most local issues there are a lot of emotions and very strong ideas and the poor person can find it very hard because no matter where they go someone bails them up. You can't go and buy your groceries, you can't go to the pub and have a beer, because there is always someone there who wants to buttonhole you and tell you why they think things are wrong and "why aren't you doing anything about it?".

With community leadership training we need to be able to teach people ways to handle this pressure. To accept that, because they have taken on a community activity, this is going to be part of the role. But also that they must take time out for themselves. They can't get away from it; they can't close the boardroom door or the office door, they are actually living in it and part of it. They need to learn to set limits, to be realistic.

In the case of someone who gets involved in advocacy because of their life circumstance, for example a mother with a child with a disability, they may have no clear picture of the demands of advocacy. These people can very quickly get to the stage of burnout; often from the unrealistic expectations they place on themselves. So one of the challenges of community leadership programs is how can we assist people to use their skills and expertise but avoid being overwhelmed.

The word "leadership"

The word "leadership" is neutral, but it is our experiences of leadership that cause us to be resistant to the term.

The term is one that is not used a great deal with community organisations; I find the term "team building" is more acceptable. People have an emotional response to the word because of poor examples of leadership they have encountered.

I guess we need to get people to understand that they are a part of creating a new leadership model. Sometimes I turn it around by saying: "OK the model we have now is something that doesn't sit comfortably; what don't we like about it and what would we create instead?".

People want to be involved in the decision making and they need to have defined for them what their role in the decision making process is going to be. They also need to know what the reporting mechanisms are and understand how they will operate.

The leadership attributes that most people favour are consultation, feedback and delegation.

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