The greatest leaders create more leaders.
Tasmanian Leaders have been creating renewable leadership for twenty years. Supporting people who, in turn, create conditions for more leadership to emerge. Each year the flagship Tasmanian Leaders Program, despite having a graduation, in fact has a commencement. This is a commencement of people who have through a year of action learning and self-reflection built their skills to lead and grow.
From there comes the moment in every leader’s journey where their identity shifts from being a leader, to being a source of leadership for others to seek out and share. Leadership moves at this point from being a finite source to a renewable one because it is relational. The more it is shared, evolved, expended, the more it exists in richness and complexity.
Sometimes that happens formally through leadership programs, mentoring relationships or organisational development. More often it happens in everyday moments like a conversation that builds confidence enough to step into a new opportunity. TLP graduates begin creating opportunities for others in much the same way someone once created opportunities for them.
Our alumni community is teeming with examples of leaders who have transitioned to teachers in their communities and organisations. Lucy Byrne TLP5, Steve Wiggers TLP9, Sherri Ring TLP3, Michelle Swallow TLP1, Kelly Walker TLP13, Dr Tom Remenyi TLP13, Steve Willing TLP3 and Rikki Mawad TLP7 are just some of the names that consult widely, taking their expertise and thought leadership from here to the world. Their careers span diverse industries and different forms of leadership, yet they share something important. They know leadership isn’t something to accumulate, it is something to pass on.
One of the most visible examples of this is close to home for Tasmanian Leaders: CEO Angela Driver. Coming through one of the first cohorts to graduate in 2009, Angela has evolved from her graduation commencement year to launch the annual and still immensely popular Junction Arts Festival; receive a Churchill Fellowship; and be accepted into a prestigious Harvard Business School intensive course in 2018.
As CEO, Angela is also leading her team, supporting the Tasmanian Leaders Board, innovating with program design, advocating for leadership development in Tasmania across industry and sectors, contributing to local, national and international leadership research projects, designing and delivering significant portions of content for the various open courses Tasmanian Leaders runs as well as facilitating the flagship program annually alongside the residential facilitators. Each of these actions is innately relational, the distinction between learner and teacher blurring as everyone is both.
Leadership renewably compounds through relationships, in ways that can only be fully measured over time. People return to the programs and events, because they understand that leadership is both receiving and giving. Alumni become facilitators. Participants become coaches and contributors to the program. Graduates become donors, all of them creating the conditions for someone else’s growth.
Twenty years after the first Tasmanian Leaders program, that is one of its greatest achievements: growing the network of people investing in one another’s potential as they elevate their own individual and collective impact. All of which exemplify the underlying principles of the program – to strengthen leadership in community, sectorally and individually.
One of the core principles of Tasmanian Leaders is that leadership is a behaviour not a title It is a skill that can be developed through awareness, practice and reflection, allowing leadership to rather than be constrained by scarcity of supply. This is the renewable and sustainable intention seeded twenty years ago to create a uniquely place based program, to build the leadership capability needed in Tasmania now and into the future.
Our leaders don’t stand at the front, they lead from everywhere, helping others to feel ready and supported to step forward and give back.
