“I have a close friend at the moment who is palliative. He has prostate cancer. So I've been thinking a lot about death.”
So began the address of Dr. Debbie Bower, a Senior Lecturer in Zoology and Ecology at the University of New England, at a recent evening with an Armidale community group on the topic “Finding your superpower to increase diversity in leadership”.
Debbie says her friend’s prognosis has prompted her to consider how we look back on our lives. “What am I going to look back on, as a measure of whether I did life well?” She has a couple of theories on what makes up the marking rubric to determine whether she is heading for “a credit, a distinction or an HD at life”.
Debbie believes that the secret could lie in the answers to some fundamental questions: What are your values, what are your superpowers, and what do you enjoy?
In her search for answers, she reflected on her training in leadership through three very different programs.
The Homeward Bound Women in Science Program
The first, the Homeward Bound Women in Science Program, saw her spend a year preparing for a three-week voyage to Antarctica, along with 80 other women in science. Part of the preparation involved each person evaluating their behavioural traits and a selection of colleagues evaluating them on the same traits. “You can imagine that for some people, those two surveys did not match up,” says Debbie.
The results became interesting when the 80 women compared their evaluations of what they thought an ideal leader should look like. Despite surveying women from 60 countries, with different backgrounds, ages, and careers, each woman’s “ideal leader” was remarkably similar.
“That’s because they are not skills-based criteria,” Debbie says. “They’re value-based. What we look for in a leader is someone humanistic, who cares about other people; someone who is open, has integrity, is transparent and is also achieving.”
The Peter Cullen Trust Women in Water Program
Debbie went on to complete the Peter Cullen Trust Women in Water Program. This program educates women in the water sector to become leaders and give them the skills to advocate for improved water policy. Small teams of 15 women learned to bond and trust one another through a series of challenging tasks. These tasks enabled the team to practice a critical skill in leadership– giving and receiving constructive feedback and having difficult conversations.
“For those conversations to work, we had to establish a high level of trust. And then we had to be able to be in the right mind frame to receive that criticism,” says Debbie. “It was very intense and very confronting.”
Her feedback was specific and tailored to her behaviours:
- Know the difference between a good idea and a distraction.
- Don't use humour and fun to hide behind because it undermines your strength.
- Read the room, and switch on your filter.
Through an evaluation of what lay behind this feedback, and an examination of the behaviour that had prompted it, Debbie could see and honestly acknowledge some of her shortcomings. It also led her to recognise some of her secret superpowers, or hidden strengths and talents.
She learned that intelligence comes in all different forms. She is creative and sometimes her wacky ideas did have value. And she is sensitive which has both benefits and disadvantages.
Superstars of STEM
The last program she enrolled in was Superstars of STEM, whose mission is to break down persistent gender gaps by helping to increase visibility of Australian female scientists. Debbie learned the skills to be seen and heard in mainstream media, learning how media works, developing techniques including “engaging public speaking, talking on the radio, and presenting on television.”
This allowed Debbie to discover which media platforms she was good at and which ones she enjoyed. “I'm much more comfortable writing a document, which I can then edit, seek feedback, and reflect on before it’s published,” she says.
She recognised that for her to enjoy her media experiences, she needed to balance the benefits of each opportunity, rather than engaging in every possible task. “and that is applicable to life, if we can create change through activities that we are good at and we enjoy, we are more likely to feel good about those experiences at the end”.
The ‘deathbed test’
By combining the lessons learned from the three leadership programs, Debbie may have discovered the secret to passing the “deathbed test”.
“Leadership isn't about being famous, having a large following and making grand decisions that affect the nation,” she says. “Leadership is about each of us using our individual superpowers to influence things that we care about that affect our values.
“Once we acknowledge that, and we recognise that we need all types of different people influencing in their different ways, we can all contribute towards achieving our values and being leaders.”
