The journey to The Leader's Beacon

The Leader’s Beacon is a very useful, thoughtful and practical contribution to the field of leadership. Geoff has clearly learned a great deal from his own leadership journey and the diverse array of people from all walks of life he has met along the way. I am pleased that our shared experiences examining the tragic deaths of Indigenous Australians in custody started Geoff on the road to creating this sensible and realistic guide.Professor Mick Dodson AM, Director - Australian National University (ANU) National Centre for Indigenous Studies and Australian of the Year 2009

The Leader's Beacon: The 55-minute Guide to Leadership Communication is based on many experiences, research, reading, study and a lot of listening to people as I have journeyed through my life and career. There was a moment in my life when a major event changed my direction. The connection between Professor Mick Dodson and I is the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in Australia. Mick was one of the counsel assisting the commission, I was the instructing solicitor for the Northern Territory.

There were many life-changing moments for me during the Royal Commission, including developing a friendship with Professor Dodson. What follows is an account of another life-changing moment, which may help to explain the foundation for The Leader's Beacon. It first appeared as part of a guest blog on CommScrum, a site dedicated to rethinking internal communication, on the topic "if you think like a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail" (original blog here) with a new opening and closing.

Leadership comes in many guises, and is not just a matter of authority and power.

I had this smashed into my brain, through my arrogance, lack of self-awareness and immaturity, by people who, as a group, are often labelled as the most disadvantaged people in Australia.

In the late 1980s, I was lucky enough to help the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The members of our Indigenous Communities were (and still are) dying in police and prison custody at much faster rates than any other people and this became a major issue as the 200th anniversary of the "settlement" of Australia approached.

I felt proud to be part of this, to be able to help the people who I felt were being discrimated against, who needed to be given our help, including education, decent housing and health assistance, as well as protection from police and prison guards who didn't understand them.

I was thinking like a hammer. I was thinking like a blunt object of force and power with the only answer that would work. The hammer has no capacity to listen, to feel, to be human and it is damned difficult to make it change direction or do anything other than hit things.

As I stood in the red dirt of Yuendumu in Central Australia, looking at what most would describe as a shanty town, the wrecked cars, the decrepit houses, the people in their dirty clothes, I listened to the members of the community who came to speak to the Royal Commissioner.

Suddenly I knew what it was like to be a nail. Here were proud and passionate people, with strong views and incredible stories. As each person spoke, I felt the sledgehammer demolishing everything I had ever believed and failed to question.

The houses were decrepit because they were inappropriate for their lifestyles and the geography of Central Australia, the clothes dirty because the red dust surrounds Yuendumu for hundreds of miles. These people were treated as unintelligent and uneducated, yet they all spoke at least six languages (where I have been a failure at learning a second) and were putting together brilliant, passionate arguments and innovative solutions. There were disagreements and disputes about methods, but respect for each member of the community and the culture they shared.

There was one thing that I kept hearing over and over again. Get out of our way. Everything that had ever been done to help had in fact tried to change them, to limit their choices, to make them something they weren't, to help them with assimilation and integration. And despite a couple of hundred years of pressure, here was their culture, surviving and strengthening, and here we were being told to remove the barriers, to remove the patronisation and allow Aboriginal people around Australia the same opportunities for self-determination that everyone else has.

This was a new type of leadership to me, one without power and followers, one based in a different type of communication framework. This was the launching pad for my decision to research, create and publish a leadership communication framework that suits every style of leadership.

The Leader's Beacon: The 55-minute guide to Leadership Communication can now be ordered on Amazon. It is published by Verb Publishing (UK).