Simon Sheikh, Sydney Leadership 2009
The Executive Director of the grass-roots community advocacy campaign, GetUp!, Simon Sheikh, credits what he learnt on the year-long Sydney Leadership program with much of what he has been able to achieve in his role since he completed the program in November 2009.
With a high profile win in the High Court against the Australian Electoral Commission resulting in 98,000 more voters on the roll in time for the last federal election; a number of big campaigns on television and in the major Australian dailies on issues such as marriage equality, banking, the environment, Wikileaks and refugees—including putting the heat on Tony Abbott to make good his promise to go surfing with refugee, Riz Wakil on Meet The Press earlier this year—and with its membership now running to over 500,000, there can be no doubt GetUp! has successfully established a place for itself in the Australian political landscape over the past two years.
When we caught up with Simon to reflect on his experience almost exactly a year on since he completed the Sydney Leadership program, he told us that much of this success was attributable to the lessons he learnt on the program.
Lessons Learnt from Sydney Leadership
‘Challenging yourself’, ‘working on the edge of your competence’, ‘taking risks at the same time as being personally resilient’ (‘staying in the game’), ‘exercising leadership with authority’ and ‘working with clarity of purpose’, as well as ‘making time for reflection’ all came up in our conversation.
“I think I never quite understood what I would get out of the program," Simon said. "It’s only a year on, looking back over my notes, that I realised I really have been able to inject so many lessons into my life. You go to different programs and you expect around 10% to stick. A year later I look back and I discover that all of Sydney Leadership is part of my life in some way…
“At the end of the program we write ourselves a letter which gets sent in twelve months time. I just got it in the mail the other day (having forgotten all about it.) I set myself a goal of ‘jumping off a cliff’ this year—to challenge myself to take risks and at the same time be as comfortable as I can in an uncomfortable space. The idea of being on the edge of your competence and being comfortable on that edge—that’s the point of really challenging yourself.”
Taking Risks
GetUp!’s action against the Australian Electoral Commission in the lead up to the federal election in 2010 was certainly such a challenge. “There are not really any better examples than going to the High Court and taking on the Commonwealth Government as a non-lawyer,” said Simon. “Bringing together a group of twenty lawyers to take on the Commonwealth as the nation’s media is focussed on one thing – that’s a very uncomfortable space, and one that I think I was able to get through with those personal sustainability lessons [from the Sydney Leadership program.] “It was a big risk but it paid off because I knew where the adaptive challenges were, how to stay in the game, how to stay focused. I learnt to experiment a lot with personal resilience.”
Authority
In addition to this very public risk-taking, however, is another side to the lessons that Simon brought to his role from Sydney Leadership. “So much of what the program has taught me is about exercising authority from within my own team,” he said. “GetUp! has more power than ever because we’re taking risks. But it’s so much about a well-functioning team on either side. The challenge for me as someone in a new leadership position was to ensure that I was exercising leadership within my own staff, to ensure I was providing what an authority role needs to provide. “Sydney Leadership gives you an understanding of the demands and responsibilities of an authority position—to provide protection, direction and order —while also supporting people in the uncomfortable exercise of taking risks as a team. Authority, but also, clarity of purpose: “We’ve been very purposeful in our election work … articulating purpose and acting with purpose is part of Sydney Leadership.
Reflection
GetUp!’s purpose and role in the nation has certainly been entrenched, and part of that is the work we’ve done to further develop our understanding of purpose.” But perhaps the most important aspect of the Sydney Leadership program—particularly for someone new to a leadership role like Simon—was the opportunity it provided for reflection. Simon was encouraged to undertake the program with the support of the Chairman of the Board of GetUp!, David Madden. “He had the view that it was almost necessary entering into a new leadership space to also have regular check-in and time of personal development built into the calendar. Because it’s ‘calendarised’ you know when you’re going to get it …. and I was particularly keen on building reflective space into my diary. “Sydney Leadership allows so much time for reflection in a space where few people take time to reflect. Political engagement, community engagement is usually done at such a pace you don’t have time to reflect on what drives you. And therein lies the success of Sydney Leadership. It creates a space to reflect on your own purpose and the purpose of the work you’re doing.”
