Exploring the Future of Leadership

If you're trying to predict the future, who better to turn to for counsel than Australia's young people?

The power of youth is clear: their unique open-mindedness and energy for change means that nothing is off the table in their pursuit of innovation.

Yet this power is often ignored. Young people are left to shout from the sidelines, with social media and protests their only way of being heard. In the workplace, rigid hierarchies constrain young people from challenging the status quo.

Learn from Gen Z writer and speaker Yasmin Poole, the youngest person recognised in the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence 2019 list, about how we can collectively bridge the generational divide.

Yasmin will explore why young people are necessary to future-proof the world, how to transition young people from apathy to agency, and how institutions can meaningfully include youth in decision-making.

The average human lifespan is absurdly, outrageously, insultingly brief: if you live to 80, you have about 4000 weeks on earth. How should we use them best?

Of course, nobody needs telling that there isn't enough time. We're obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Yet we rarely make the conscious connection that these problems only trouble us in the first place thanks to the ultimate time-management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

In this keynote, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - – and in doing so, to liberate us from its grasp.

All leaders, in every sector and every workplace, face challenges big and small as they lead their teams, their organisations and their communities. These challenges are increasingly adaptive in nature, meaning they’re hard to define and can’t simply be met head-on with a simple solution. Solving them requires exploring the unknown.

Leaders need to rid themselves (and their teams) of outdated ideas of what high performance looks like. The world is changing, and more rapidly every day! The organisations that are prepared for change, well before it comes, will be the ones that continue to perform to the highest standards.

Today’s leaders are faced with two simultaneous pressures: the need to innovate in the face of an uncertain future, and the need to maintain the wellbeing of their staff.

Fostering a culture of innovation means requiring your staff to work in a high-energy and sometimes pressured environment, so how can you be sure they also have time and space to relax and care for themselves?

Creativity expert Aden Date says these two imperatives don’t need to be mutually exclusive. In this presentation, he’ll explore how a radical, person-centred vision for innovation can not only ease the burden on staff but also leave your organisation in the best position to shape its future.

Community sector workers are passionate about the work they do, and they understand every aspect of the issues they’re trying to address, inside and out.

Knowing an issue like the back of your hand is one thing, but are you able to effectively communicate that issue to the wider public, who you may need to win over to help your fight?

Shifting conversations from closed communities into the public arena is paramount if you want to make widespread change. How do you communicate in a way that maximises engagement and impact?

Dr Michelle Dickinson MNZM has years of experience communicating scientific research outside the academic community. At Communities in Control, Dr Dickinson will discuss the importance of inspiring and fostering curiosity to cut through the noise and demonstrate why the work you do is so important.