We love just about everything that Malcolm Gladwell has written but during this, the week of International Women’s Day his recollection of the story of Ms Abbie Conant, American musician being selected and then unselected as the lead trombonist in the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra strikes us as pertinent (Blink Penguin Books 2005).

Mum seldom comes to the footy (“I can’t read the stupid scoreboard!”) but when she does, her love of being a part of something is palpable. She feels connected and included.

I recently supported Christopher Brown and Faith Halliday of the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue, in the delivery of their five-day ‘Collaborative Leadership Program (CLP) 2022’. This extraordinary program immersed 35 existing and emerging leaders from organisations with an interest in Greater Western Sydney (GWS), embracing a once-in-a-century, city-shaping experience in Sydney’s West. Having now been immersed in it myself, I know that one of the key attributes of GWS is the richness of the various cultures, combining and collaborating to produce a brighter future. There is obvious trust and respect between them all largely, I believe, because diversity is so naturally strong, but it is the inclusivity that is really significant. I recently heard Carolyne French (Head of Leadership Excellence at Thinka) on a Gallup CliftonStrengths© podcast describe diversity as ‘having a seat at the table’ but inclusivity as ‘having a voice at the table’. I like this very much and it sums up exactly what’s going on in GWS. Most importantly, it is the combination of this with a powerfully aligned vision and sense of purpose that is creating so much energy in the West.

In a recent bit of sport commentary, I heard a broadcaster say of a player “from up here in the box I always thought him to be a humble man, but his teammates tell me he’s actually very confident”. This made me reflect on how frequently I hear people mix up the complex relationship between humility and confidence.

I remember a line in an old war movie. A wise old Colonel is telling a young officer “on the battlefield you represent me and the way you represent me, reflects on me”.

Some years ago I was in charge of a small section of Navy people. There was me, a couple of other slightly more junior officers and a handful of non-commissioned sailors one of which was an indigenous Australian. As was often the case in those days he’d be ‘given’ a nick-name Sooty, probably on the day he joined the Navy. He didn’t seem to mind being called Sooty but I refrained from doing so as it seemed disrespectful in some way. That might sound like positive leadership behaviour but its not the case. You see I called the other sailors by their nicknames: Smouch, Jacko, Dusty etc but I addressed Sooty as ‘Leader’ which was the abbreviated, slightly formal version based on his rank, Leading Seaman. In trying to be respectful I was in fact excluding him in the way I addressed him.