Sydney Leadership 2011 Program Opens

Social Leadership Australia is offering scholarships for its award winning Sydney Leadership 2011 program.

Last year Sydney Leadership offered a total of nine scholarships, with the help of Johnson & Johnson Medical, AMP Foundation, City of Sydney, NAB, Vivente Australia, Sydney Leadership Alumni, Allen Harroothunian and the Human Services Department of NSW Government.

In 2011, the organisation hopes to offer a similar number of part and full scholarships for people from the Not for Profit and community sector.

Applications close on 12th November; an information session for applicants being held on the 18th October.

The Sydney Leadership program takes its participants into prisons, schools, housing commission estates, detention centres and other marginalised communities to develop their leadership skills.

An initiative of The Benevolent Society – Australia’s first charity, with a strong track record in social innovation – Sydney Leadership was established in 1999 as part of a vision to develop a network of people with the skills and determination to create lasting change on some of the toughest social and environmental challenges being faced in Australia today.

The year-long program is targeted at both senior and emerging leaders from across the business, government and Not for Profit sectors. Each year it attracts a diverse group of talented, big-thinking participants, including senior decision-makers from business and government – typically in roles with responsibility for leading change, managing projects with diverse stakeholders or partners, or working in areas with social and environmental impacts.

Sydney Leadership combines the Adaptive Leadership model from Harvard University – with its emphasis on creating change on seemingly intractable problems – with robust community engagement.

Robbie Macpherson, Head of Social Leadership Australia says Sydney leadership uses no textbooks or classrooms – it teaches leadership for the ‘real world.’

He says the concepts of leadership have become tired, unhelpful and profoundly problematic and to face the new challenges of this century leadership needs to be thought about in a new way.

Macpherson says there needs to be a move beyond the traditional paradigm of leadership being about certain specially gifted individuals achieving positioning power and then using their greater wisdom to solve problems on behalf of the remaining mere mortals.

He says this way of thinking about leadership has become increasingly redundant with increasingly complex challenges and an uncertain future, environmentally, economically, socially, technologically and politically.

Last year alone, over 500 leaders from government, NGOs and Top 500 companies took part in a Social Leadership Australia program, and there are now nearly 400 graduates of Sydney Leadership which, in 2011, will be in its thirteenth year.

Up to 30 people will be selected to participate in the 2011 Sydney Leadership program.

SYDNEY LEADERSHIP 2011 INFORMATION SESSION
6.30pm – 8.00pm
Monday 18th October
The Benevolent Society
Level 1, 188 Oxford Street, Paddington

Bookings phone (02) 9339 8089 or visit www.benevolent.org.au/leadership