2011: An exciting year of growth for SLA

More than 630 people discovered a new approach to leadership as SLA expanded its work with new programs and customised approaches for diverse new clients in business, government and the community in 2011. This represents a 20% increase on last year’s numbers, in a total of 27 programs in Queensland, NSW and Victoria and the Northern Territory.

Many more attended one of our compelling new series of hands-on workshops and leadership ‘hot topic' seminars in Sydney and Brisbane, with issues and themes including:

* The leadership risks and opportunities when authority is under scrutiny
* Social leadership’s role in growing capability and innovation
* Leadership in a time of crisis and change and
* Exercising leadership and staying ‘on purpose’ while working with the media.

2011 speakers included former WA Premier Geoff Gallop, media experts and alumni Jane Caro, Christopher Zinn and Simon Sheikh, and NAB’s Leadership & Talent Academy Dean, Carl Harman, together with senior program directors from SLA.

For our alumni we hosted a number of reunions and launched a new SLA Community Online in 2011. We also held a special cross-cultural leadership exchange with senior local government leaders in the UK Top Leaders Program in March, including a tour of social housing estates in Sydney led by Sydney Leadership alumnus, Dominic Grenot. (Pictures from this event have been posted on the SLA facebook page.)  

Feedback from our inaugural six-day masterclass for senior OD, leadership development and change practitioners in Sydney—Leading Learning: The Purpose, Role & Practice of Leadership Development—was overwhelmingly positive. Graduates reported “a different kind of learning—unexpected and powerful” and described the program as providing “an extremely important space for leadership development practitioners to reflect and learn.” Leading Learning will be extended to Brisbane in 2012.

Also in 2011, we launched a new 'in-house' adaptive leadership teaching and consulting service, offering a way to engage SLA’s skills to focus on challenges within a specific organisational context. We will continue to develop this work in 2012.

Over 120 people attended the launch by political journalist, Fran Kelly, of the new book by the centre’s senior teacher, Geoff Aigner in Sydney in June, with many more in attendance at the launch at AIM in Brisbane in July. Leadership Beyond Good Intentions: What it Takes to Really Make a Difference is a practical handbook on the 'inner work' of leadership and provides a fascinating look at some rarely-examined areas around leadership. Preview and/or purchase the book from SLA or any good bookshop.

Lastly, winding up in 2011 were our Headland initiative for emerging Indigenous leaders, and the ground-breaking cross-cultural Alice Springs Desert Leadership program, delivered in partnership with Desert Knowledge Australia, which brought together black and white leaders to create a blueprint for change in the NT town.

In 2012 promises to be a year of new growth and development at SLA as we build on our new capability as a centre—and as a community of alumni—to work towards of our ambition to shift leadership thinking and practice in Australia.

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