Leadership for sustainable and positive futures

Canberra, Ngunnawal Country: Leaders bring people together and catalyse positive change within families, communities, corporations and society. With that process in mind, in May 2020 Kerrie Tim and 2 others founded the Leadership Institute for Positive Futures Indigenous Corporation. The corporation aims to inspire leadership for social change, positive societies, improved professional performance, and strengthened identity. And they’ve been working to those ends—without any funding—for nearly 2 years.

Backing leadership journeys

Kerrie spent 20 years working in the public service, an experience that she says highlighted a need for support networks to develop leadership:

The public service was very focused on management and that was fine, but I really wanted to focus on leaders and leadership. The corporation was set up to ensure more positive futures are unfolding out there for people. I wanted to build a corporation that backed people on their leadership journey, whether they are leading a family or a space program. I wanted to inspire leadership for social change.

A small corporation thinking big picture

The Leadership Institute is a small corporation. Kerrie is one of 3 directors who 4 four times a year set priorities and review progress on existing initiatives. Five volunteers take on the regular work with clients. Some people come to them for professional mentoring while others are interested in exploring their identity and inspiring a stronger sense of themselves.

To manage the separation between governing body and management functions, Kerrie says the Leadership Institute runs their directors meeting and corporation meeting one after the other:

We work out our priorities in the directors meeting and then when the group comes together afterwards we work out who is going to take which priority forward. Then each person reports back at the next meeting.

Sustainable approaches to funding

The Leadership Institute was incorporated just as the Covid pandemic was fundamentally changing the way people work together. That parallel helped sharpen the directors’ focus on sustainability with Kerrie recalling lessons learned during the global financial crisis of 2007–09:

That experience taught me the importance of sustainability. So, I started thinking about how a corporation could be sustained without funding. Rather than despairing, we focused on how to get things going in a sustainable way.

The corporation has employed various strategies to ensure long-term success and viability without funding:

• Develop partnerships—when you work with partners you can explore options for sharing resources.
• Involve key stakeholders—find stakeholders with similar goals and challenges. This has helped drive more volunteering.
• Stick to the founding vision—remain true to your purpose.
• Embrace technology—invest in continuous IT learning. There are many cost-effective ways technology can help us connect and stay in touch.

Different approaches to leadership

The corporation’s members are currently working one-on-one with 10 individuals around the country. They also coordinate support groups that get together 3 or 4 times a year. Everyone has come to the Leadership Institute through the extensive networks of the corporation’s members, and the ripple effects of their work are beginning to spread:

We have found that people who participate go away and want to start doing sessions with other people they know. Individuals have begun setting up their own peer support groups. It can be as simple as organising a coffee and passing on knowledge, teaching people to teach other.

Positive Futures recognise the importance of developing leadership in a way that is sensitive to cultural and gender issues.

We always encourage people to bring someone along who is backing them. Women have brought in their sisters or their mum. Our cultural roles often make it hard for blokes to bring someone with them. They’re used to leading from out front while women often lead from the back. We get blokes to focus on how they can use leadership skills to build stronger families and communities and we encourage women to get out front and lead from there.

Relationships, relationships, relationships

While the pandemic continues to present planning challenges for Kerrie and her colleagues, they are planning for 2022 workshops. Whatever the future holds, the Leadership Institute will continue to find ways to bring people together.

Relationships are the key to leadership. Relationships, relationships, relationships. Whether in person or virtually, it is inspiring to see what happens when you bring people together and they collaborate. There is an exchange of ideas and suddenly new things become possible when people connect and work together.