Leadership Training

The Commonwealth Government has recently invested funding to develop a targeted program to build capacity of current and emerging biosecurity staff and stakeholders across northern Australia. The aim is to build skills and knowledge, while also enhancing attraction and retention of staff and stakeholders, supporting succession planning and a broader base of leadership capability.

The training is focused on building awareness of self, awareness of others, and translating this knowledge to ensure we manage ourselves for the best possible outcomes while building authentic relationships and others.

The research suggests that the better we understand ourselves, we are more confident, innovative, compassionate and collaborative. We make sounder decisions, build stronger relationships, and communicate more effectively.

Moreover, self-awareness leads to greater effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction and work and greater retention.

Biosecurity practitioners are required to make decisions on a daily basis. Some of these decisions can have significant social, economic, legal or environmental implications. Other decisions may affect the management of particular crops into the future.

Given the potential implications decisions can have on other people, it is important to understand some of the processes involved in decision making, the psychology of decision making, the social context in which decisions are made, and the inherent biases we all have in decision making. It is also important that we balance our decisions and not only consider our organisation’s strategic goals, but also the goals of our industry and other stakeholders. Understanding these factors can improve our understanding of others and ourselves and the decisions we make.

The program focuses on providing insight into the decision-making process and the psychology of decision making, with a focus on helping participants understand how they and those around them, make decisions. Since many decisions are strongly influenced by our perceptions of risk, the program will take time to explore different approaches to understanding risk.

The program provides participants with negotiation skills to develop plans and implement influence/persuasion strategies to achieve win-win outcomes.

Participants learn and apply techniques and tools to identify high-priority issues, trade-offs, aspirations and walk-away points in negotiations, and evaluate the appropriate negotiation tactics to develop a negotiation plan and strategy.

In order to execute these techniques and tactics, participants will also develop the knowledge on how to build rapport and trust to enhance negotiation outcomes.

Effective governance is a key component of a healthy biosecurity system. Governance enables authority to be exercised appropriately and for the people who exercise it to be held to account. Effective governance is about the way decisions are made and power is exercised within an organisation. Ultimately, effective governance provides the framework that ensures the biosecurity system can operate efficiently and harmoniously.

There are a number of committees and working groups that oversee efficient and effective decision making within the national biosecurity system. Stakeholders from industry, government and from other organisations may be required to represent their organisation effectively. This training will prepare individuals to be an effective and successful member of a committee.


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