The Keynote speaker during the 2018 Innovation Generation Conference held in Wagga Wagga through the auspices of GrainGrowers, Corporal Mark Donaldson, VC has firsthand experience in taking responsibility for his person and for his team.
Serving in Afghanistan during 2008 as a Trooper with the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR), Mark was awarded the Victoria Cross for an extraordinary display of bravery saving a wounded colleague under heavy enemy gun fire.
“If there is a step you have to take, something you have to do to get change and its seems so hard … well, so what?” was Mark’s response to meeting challenges to achieve a positive outcome.
“Go and do it, fix it and make it easy or better for the people coming through behind you.”
Serving with military, Corporal Donaldson spelled out for the audience the essential experience of being an effective person contributing to a better society.
“What I did learn, whether you a leader or a team member, you have a responsibility to be an enabler,” he said.
“If you have taken a leadership position and stepped up to take the role, it is about enabling the person to the left of you and to your right … that to me is what a leader does.”
Good leadership enables those around you to do their job, it is not about taking command and issuing orders, nor about managing.
“It is about pulling levers so things can happen in the right way,” Corporal Donaldson said.
“Your service is to everyone else so they can get things done.”
Arguably, the good leader should have more time available than any other member of the team: time to make sure the operation is running smoothly, time to enable new team members.
“Do you have what it takes to do what you say you can do?” he asked.
“You have to be a manager and a mate, you have to be a bit of both but not for too long if you want effective leadership.”
Corporal Donaldson also pointed out leaders don’t expect others to perform a duty they themselves do not have the skills to implement.
“One day someone is not going to be there and it is only going to be you and people will be looking to you,” he said.
“Do whatever you expect of your employees or those you work with.”
