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Reflections of past Emerging Leaders
participants
2015 Emerging Leader Chad Creighton, a Bardi and
Nyul Nyul man now working as a regional manager
at the Kimberley Land Council, says his supervisor
at the Kimberley Land Council, Nolan Hunter, saw
the opportunity as a vital chance for his
exposure to
Indigenous people driving change beyond
the region
:
When I joined Emerging Leaders I was just doing
my job, ‘head down, bum up’. What Nolan wanted
me to get out of it was to see there’s so much
more going on in the country.
It opened up my eyes. I wasn’t aware before.
It let me see, ok, these are the people moving all
these things, and to hear from them personally
why they’re doing these things, and what they
want from them. Important well-known things
like the cashless debit card in East Kimberley.
You rarely meet the people involved in these
things otherwise.
Participants refer to the impact of meeting
established leaders as a critical part of the program’s
value. They
see what change initiatives look like
from the inside, and how leaders have practically
driven them
. This is important learning for
participants who are looked to as the next leaders,
but often feel short of the experience or confidence
required to step into visible leadership roles.
In a baseline survey completed by the 2017
Emerging Leaders at the start of the program, only
33% felt confident or very confident in leadership
situations; and only 22% felt they had adequate
understanding of what it takes to drive change
. 172013 Emerging Leader from Cape York James
Fa’Aoso, now Head of Leadership at Cape York
Institute, remembers Jawun patron Noel Pearson
advising the group on challenging the status quo:
Noel told us a good analogy. He says the most
important person on the rugby team is not the
person with the ball, it’s the person running onto
the ball, and their decision whether they run
outside or run inside, and the important time to
call for it.
He was referring to us. For myself, and the
Emerging Leaders, we are ready to run on the
field and run those angles and to call for it, and I’ll
believe we’ll catch it.
James Fa’Aoso
10 JAWUN
2017 LEARNINGS AND INSIGHTS