2024 Summit Welcome and Keynote: The critical challenge of being a student leader in the 2020’s.

uh thank you good morning folks my name is Charles Madden but known around the inner city of Sydney as chick now that's a nickname I got many many years ago going to Red bur public school which is now NCI the national Center of indigenous Excellence folks I'm from gadal Land Aboriginal land that's the land we're on at the moment for many many years lived and worked around the city of Sydney I've been involved with quite a few Aboriginal organizations over the years I've been a director with the Aboriginal medical service at Redfern for over 40 years also a director with the red fern Aboriginal housing company Aboriginal ostel Australia and the Metropolitan local Aboriginal land Council got to mention it folks all Al a life member of the red bur All Blacks Rugby League Football Club folks for many many years I've lived and worked around the city of Sydney I'd like to take this opportunity this morning to extend a warm and sere welcome to all my Aboriginal brothers and sisters non-aboriginal brothers and sisters we have any brothers and sisters here from the Tor Street or further AP far across the seas what welcome welcome to gadal land the gadal clan is one of 29 that makes up the aor nation the Aur nation is bordered by three distinctive landmarks we have the oxbury river to the north napen to the west and the Georgia River to the South those three rivers form the boundaries of the eor nation folks if you've traveled across this great city of ours today the state of this great country or from afar welcome welcome to gadal land enjoy your stay have a safe and trouble fre tripo once again welcome welcome welcome enjoy the day folks thank you um thank you very much Uncle Cher for that welcome to country that was fantastic thank you um my name is Bryson constable and I'm the president of the University of Sydney's Student Union um and it's my pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the University of Sydney to the student voice Summit for 2024 um thank you for making the trip to the University of Sydney whether you've driven uh 20 minutes solled out of bed or flown for many hours um it's incredibly exciting to have this level of intellectual diversity in the room um not only will our conversations today be enhanced by the level of expertise um contained amongst all of you but I'm sure we will each be able to take something something back to our student unions to our student bodies to our representative councils um something that we haven't considered before um I don't think we need to um reinvent the wheel when we've got several takes on it right before us but you might just find today that you come up with something you've never considered before and that is the beauty of gathering so many students um dedicated to student leadership in one room um I'd like to personally thank the office of student life here at usid and um student voice austral Asia for their role in organizing The Summit this year in particular I would also like to note the work um that Anna has done uh in her role as the coordinator this year it's a fantastic um job that you've done to get everyone in the room today so thank you very much Anna um we'd also like to thank uh noticing we've got Susanna scaparo and Lydia duer here from student life and would' like to thank all of the work they do for for students at you said um an opportunity like today is is very unique this year's theme agents of transformation is about centering student voices and everything that you universities do and you'll note that in the spirit of today um much of the program has been co-designed to reflect important issues facing student bodies around austral Asia to the many student panelists and facilitators here today ready to lead the conversations for the next nine or so hours I say sincerely sincerely thank you um the breadth of conversations from a discussion of the juggling act between life and Leadership to empowering students in decision-making to thinking about student well-being and safety is impressive it is only with buying from students and staff like we have today that successful codesign can be undertaken uh it is certainly one of my goals here as the USU president to engage constructively with our partners in co-designing to center student voices and decisions I think indeed by by taking the initiative on a number of items such as our inaugural student safety conference that we ran here uh and a complete uh placemaking and strategy refresh I hope that the USU um is doing their bit to demonstrate that sometimes uh with the support of our universities students can also be the adults in the room uh and it is our drive for better outcomes that can set up Monumental change uh in our institutions so on behalf of the University of Sydney I'd like to thank each and every one of you for attending today and wish each and every one of you well in your deliberations thank you thank you so much Bryson this was fantastic welcome Jimmy is um someone I really wanted to bring to a student event and I as a CO at SVA I really feel really really privileged to um be in the position to even suggest a speaker for this event and it was really important for me to um explain why to the Steering group with students and staff who were planning the program to really um translate what I know about Jimmy because Jimmy is my mentor he's my first Mentor when I was at University of um quenson university of technology um he was my um first Mentor uh and uh participated in a lot of just inspired my student Journey as a leader and then um my further Journey as a professional in student affairs um he was my first boss who believed in me I was you know simple just doing like simple admin tasks as a student never worked in office before but with his mentorship I was able to build leadership programs trainings deliver trainings deliver conference for students and then take it away and take it into what I know and build build things and now I'm at SVA so I feel feel really privileged and I feel like Jimmy has direct impact to my journey and um something to know about Jimmy he he really wants to do that for everyone he crossed paths with with any students he works with students a lot and now he is a manager of of student advocacy and support at um university of Queensland union he came uh today from Brisbane and um he's you I'm not going to tell much about what sort of you know what to expect because it's all wonderful it's really exciting uh for today but um Jimmy has a lot of puts a lot of intention into any training any speeches he delivers to make sure you walk away with something really tangible but also you walk away challenged and really help you feel challenged by some of the questions that he brings up today and um we we really needed to um kind of concise the session for today for him but I'm sure there will be a lot of great content um that you will enjoy um Jimmy is coming to us from Canada originally and he's been in Australia for about over 10 years uh maybe more but um he's been working in in Canada he's been working in Australia and has is bringing all of that context to you um a lot of that student leadership um experience and experience and bringing uh amazing programs on campus and empowering students so I really hope you feel uh inspired by his speech today challenged by his speech today as well as uh engaged by what he is here um to just go through so without any further Ado Jimmy Jimmy B that's a lot of pressure thanks Hi how are you that good huh all right um before we get started uh just to tell you a little bit about who I am I'm a white nearly middle-aged man in a suit that means I'm very important and almost everything I say is in fact authoritative Truth uh so let's get rid of that then yeah um uh that is who I am and it's not at all who I am so um if you don't mind uh I started my student leadership Journey um back in Canada I was lucky to go to university I actually have multiple learning difficulties um so school was a horror show for me um but I grew up in a really remote town and I really wanted to uh experience something bigger and I thought that my ticket to that was University I did not have the grades to get into University so I snuck in on a performance degree wooo and then I was like can't catch me now I'm in yo uh and I did all right uh surprisingly the first time I realized I was smart was at the end of my first year after I had dropped out of the program that I got into thought I was going to get kicked out um and then uh started taking courses that I just took everything I wanted to take before they kicked me out kind of thing because I didn't understand how universities worked back then and uh they didn't kick me out they didn't catch me which was amazing and at the end of the first year all of a sudden my grades were going up and I didn't know what was going on and it was because I was doing the things that I loved and that was an incredible opportunity I realized I was smart for the first time in my life at University I'd always thought I was stupid U and that was very meaningful and so you can imagine for me the opportunity that University presented um it was not a place that I thought I'd get into it was not a place that I ne necessarily knew I could afford to stay at um and then we did all right um since then I was really lucky I got really involved in campus life um I got to reform our Student Government um actually there are two student governments at my University I got to reform both of them um which was very lucky um and I built my passion there and then of course once you're at University you realize all these potential careers that you just didn't know existed before that and so um it had been so meaningful for me I thought I need to give that back somehow and so years later I am uh have been lucky enough to build a career for myself in higher education I've been um lecturer done a bit of research um and I bounced sort of between those types of roles and professional roles uh looking at really exceptional education and also education in non-traditional spaces of which the tertiary space is one of them how do we educate beyond the classroom how do we educate in the classroom better things like that um so I've been really lucky to do a bunch of things um and so I'm really lucky to be here um so before we jump in I want to so say now what right this is us um I want to recognize um the I want to I want to first of all thank uh Uncle chica for coming in today and welcoming us to the country I want to acknowledge the um the indigenous uh traditional owners here I want to welcome them into the room in I think it's very very important that we see um and when I say see I mean take a moment to appreciate the fact that these territories were always places of of Learning and Development and growth far far far before Colonial Powers came here and that's really really critical and important so I want to acknowledge that and in the words of my cousins that would say we would ask our take a moment to welcome the spirits into the room to help us have good discussions today um I also want to say that I see you so one of the um I come from treaty 4 Grand River territory in Canada before that my family was from the treaty 3 S nation and um I think that it's really important to teach you a word that was taught to me by my cousins and they've given me permission to use which is a word is unin unin it's a greeting it's sometimes informal sometimes formal this is in aju language but it means I see your light and that's a very powerful word to me Alin and so I want to say I see your light and thank you for coming I'm going to um read something to you which is terrifying as a dyslexic person um but it's something that I want to read to you uh some of you may have heard it before it's called a wish for leaders how may have heard that before I think it's important for setting the stage for today and what we're going to talk about today so this is by Dr Earl Rome I did not write this I wish I sincerely wish you all have the experience of thinking up a new idea planning it organizing it and following it through to completion and then having it be magnificently successful I sincerely wish you had the experience of thinking up a new idea planning it organizing it following it through to completion and having it utterly fail I wish you know how it feels to run with all of your heart and to lose horribly I wish that you can achieve some great good for mankind and have nobody know about it except you I wish you could find something worthwhile so worthwhile that you deem it worth investing your very important life in I hope you become frustrated and challenged enough to begin to push back against the very barriers of your own personal limitations I hope you make a stupid unethical mistake and you get caught red-handed and are big enough to use those magic words I was wrong I hope you give so much of yourself that some days you wonder if it's worth it all I wish for you a Magnificent Obsession that will give you reason for living and purpose and Direction and energy and life I wish for you the worst kind of criticism and the best kind of criticism in everything that you do because those things sometimes the worst especially make us fight to Achieve Beyond what we normally would I wish for you the experience of leadership how does that make you feel what a bummer good all right inspired thanks Earl there's a whole lot of stuff coming yeah in life and in and maybe in the talk we'll see right that's how I'm starting all right thank you um I love that the first time I heard it I was very challenged I was young when I first heard it and I was very challenged by it and it gave me a lot to think about um and I wanted to share that today because that's kind of what we're talking about today um when I heard about this I was very very very excited about the potential of coming and thank you to everybody who is giving me this opportunity to be here today it means a lot it is a rare privilege and I have been very privileged in my life to spend it with student leaders whether I'm teaching in a classroom working on a policy doing whatever it is at at whatever University I'm working at and um and it's something I insist in all of my work because what are we doing it for if we're not listening right what are we doing it for if we're not learning from the people that we're trying to help discover who they are and what they're about who we're trying to provide education for um what are we doing for not listening to that so this is core to me and so I'm very excited to be here um and I get the impression that everybody here there's a real wide range of experiences in the room how many people here have been a student leader for a matter of weeks congratulations welcome how about a matter of months welcome matter maybe about a year the student leader awesome coule two years three years too many to put up your hand years nice um great so I want to ask um to begin with I so just to preface all of this I have very very high expectations of all of you congratulations this strange guy has high expectations of you um so I want to I don't want to just do one1 stuff today right this isn't just the sort of like motivational student leader right we can do that but I actually think when I knew who's in the room and when I hear about what we're here to do I got I was like no no no let's just do something a bit more right so some of the stuff we're going to talk about today you're going to is kind of going to be like I don't who I am not signing up for this and some of the stuff we're going to do today you're like yes and some of the times you're going be like oh that's me oh uh but hopefully there's something here that you're excited about all right so I want to ask a question who got you here who got you here I don't mean like literally the Uber driver um I want you to think of two people I want you to tell this story to at least one or two people at your table are you sitting with people that you've don't know great awesome so I want you to find two people from your life one who encouraged you in like intentionally encouraged you to do something you didn't think that you could do or were the right person to do the person who tapped you on the shoulder and believed in you in a way that you may have had not originally believed in yourself I want you to think about that person and the other person I want you to think about is somebody who constructively challenged you that dyslexia by the M way means that I will probably have spelling errors so please forgive me it's better than my handwriting though uh and also the formatting I think shifted when we moved it so apologize for that so two people one who encouraged one who constructively challenged I'd like you to share at least one of those people with somebody next to you online I think you're going into breakout rooms great spe Wonder not it was if than for spe for let's do about a minute and a half and then we'll come back way all right thank thank you for sharing I hope everybody got a chance to um share at least one person hear about one person so really really important people and I think it's very important to take a minute to remember them and to appreciate that moment because without that you you wouldn't be here so we're talking about where have you come from these are really important people and figures and moments um someone chose you someone believed in you enough to do that it's such a rare thing isn't it it's such a strange that it's a rare thing sad that it's a rare thing I think that's something we have to hang on to as student leaders we need to recognize that and and appreciate those people who believed in you enough to say hey you should try this or you should do this or you need to or whatever they did to encourage us um it's also really important to recognize the people who are trying to give us feedback I have a philosophy but your hands up like this say after me feedback is love feedback is love feedback is yes feedback is love the people who take the time to give you feedback especially constructive feedback that is that is a minute small exercise in love and I think that's really important and it's something that we really need to practice in our culture it's something that is not a cultural EIC that means it is not common across cultures right but it's something that where I see it where I see it strong in the cultures that have that strong um tradition of feedback um I see a kind of community and a kind of relationship building that cultures without it lack and so I think we should encourage that um and we need to work out on here in Australia don't we we do we do I've worked at universities I've worked at six universities in three countries in Canada us and Australia and um and all of them are different all of the uh way that they approach education is a little bit different all the cultures are a little bit different I've worked at some other universities overseas as well um briefly like for like short stints um and yeah it's amazing and I think this is one of those things that we need to work on here in our educational institutions so let's talk about student leadership yes that's what we're here for right awesome so my question for you you is what does a great student leader do and I'm going to give you like three or four minutes to talk to the person next to you or maybe like if you're at an odd numbered table the two people next to you don't do the whole table as diplomatic as that is just because of time all right so what does a good student leader do go all right let's come on back okay I've been thinking about this for a really long time like an unfortunately long time no actually it's unfortunate a long time um and so I've come up with a few things that I think great student leaders do let's see how you went and let's see how I went and afterwards if there's things that I've missed you can let me know um all right I've divided this up into themselves and with others all right so here's some of the things that they do they take initiative they act and they do do it's very important this is going to be a an emphasis of the day the due part right they reflect well they reflect well I can't tell you how important this is they know their why if you're familiar with Simon sinx Golden Circle knowing your why and this really important they know their why and they're also because they reflect well they're able to fail well which is means learning from our mistakes not allowing them taking that in taking that personal owning what they need to so they can do something about it next time right reflection is a core skill and if you haven't exercise it start exercising it it takes a while get somebody who's good at self-reflection to teach you if you need it right they have a vision that vision is based on values that's really really important this also comes out of that reflection piece right they have a vision are they able to create a vision whether they can articulate that Vision or not don't know the best ones can they have a vision and that vision is based on values that's really important not just a vision for the sake of vision but a vision for a reason a reason they can articulate they lead by example and they're not afraid to get their hands dirty that's also really important and that is especially true in Australian culture one of the biggest differences I see in um workplace culture versus in in like Canada versus um US versus Australia is the importance of this one as a as a professional manager in Canada as a professional manager I'm given a certain degree of of credit and credibility B in my position and and just the way that we talk about things and do things but in Australia if my staff don't see me in the trenches with them I have zero credibility and that's the cultural thing here it's powerful and there's some real value to that but I think it's important that we keep that in mind that's true universally this piece is true universally but it's especially true here in Australia I find not afraid to get our hands dirty not just the high-end decision maker but actually the person is not afraid if somebody's absent to get on on the ground and set up that thing for that event or hand out that bit of food at the food hamper or whatever dirty job needs to be done with others listen deeply and by the way if I could that would have been the first one that shows up but I couldn't figure out in PowerPoint how to get like that one and then these ones and then that one it's like 20 minutes of my life I'll never get back um listen deeply deeply that's a whole Workshop or two that's a old day that's that's a lifetime all right appreciate those around them the best leaders appreciate those around them and practice appreciating those around them practice seeing the value in the people whose opinions are radically different from yourself leaning in where you're like okay wait hang on clearly you're an intelligent human being so why are all the things that you say so dumb getting past that and leaning in and figuring out what is is it that I'm missing about this message what do I need to understand but also taking the moment to appreciate all the people who've bothered to show up for them right and understand and see their value and appreciate that a great leader invests in others invest in others a great leader delegates well that's a hard skill to learn to delegate well you need to build trust to build trust what do you need to do invest in others in order to invest in others you have to appreciate those around you order to appreciate people you need to see it's all it's all kicking together here's my list this is my list how'd you go what did I sorry advocacy advocate for others love it great say again an objective mindset that's hard we are going to get to that that is excellent you're you're right balancing mindsets is really tricky we're going to talk about that a little bit later the net value of all of this is a signature that great student leaders have and actually all great leaders have have but especially great student leaders have and I want you to think about the people you've encountered who are great student leaders and I bet you're going to find some of the signature there the net value of the signature is this great leaders build right a great leader builds communities everywhere they go they build community they make people feel welcome right great leaders build opportunities for others and not just themselves if you watched the best student leaders they are doing this stuff all the time it's just like they walk across the ground and like flowers Sprout up it's magic and they make more leaders remember those people who encouraged you remember those people who gave you that feedback feedback is come on feedback is yes the signature of great leaders and great student leaders is that they build communities everywhere they go they build opportunities for others everywhere they go and they build more leaders everywhere they go and how do they do that through all those things all those things result in this net result so I was told once that every great PowerPoint has statistics and a chart so I have meaningless statistics and an almost meaningless chart for you here we go here we go all right how do you score I want you to think about yourself you've talked about where you're coming from how are you doing with these this is by the way not one of these things that you're born with these things have to be practiced these are not simple skills these are complex these are not skills that are taught in your lecture theaters how ironic is that there's no lecture or maybe I There's No Chorus on having difficult conversations with a peer right and yet it's one of the things that employers are looking for all the time the course for that is student leadership the education outside the classroom that I was talking about that's what we're here for that's why we're here these are the things that we're doing these are the opportunities that the university presents right so I want you to think about this for yourself how are you scoring which of those do you think you're doing all right with which would you like to move further down the line which do you want to practice identify at least two that you want to get better at write that down if you have something to write with write that down maybe you don't know how that's okay you'll be able to find somebody as you start to practice your appreciation of others you'll find people who are good at it you can ask them and allow them to educate you right so which of those I want you to find at least two that you want to move you want to get better at write that down okay couple of core truths are you okay yes are we doing all right I had the chart right I got to be winning at least to a degree right okay so couple core truths about student leadership you must act not just ideate there is a giant ideation trap at universities especially now because we have really cool things like incubators and entrepreneurialism where we love to even more id8 right so um here's a a crazy has anybody ever seen an old movie called Zoolander this this it's about this male model and In This Moment he's like he's like talking to his manager he's like I want to do something better with my life more than just being ridiculously good-looking I was just thinking the other day about trying to help people who need help even just thinking but was the most rewarding experience of my entire life so university has this really crazy scenario where the whole thing is built around ideas and exploring ideas and Notions one of the drawbacks to that which is even worse in a social media age where we can like send thoughts and prayers and like our causes um but actually not actually manage to do anything about our causes other than like and sign a digital protest or whatever um one of the things about universities is that we have this idea trap and when you spend years at University and you're exploring your ideas which by the way feels great it feels great to explore idea that's why we're here right but the trap part of that is that we start to think that talking about stuff and thinking about stuff is doing stuff and it's not we get this trap of ideation I was actually working with a bunch of of innovation spaces in Queensland and we were looking at student Innovation and student entrepreneurialism and all that stuff and there's this crazy the normal entrepreneurial funnel looks something like this it's really wide lots of ideas and very few of them get to the little bit there and the students is like I can't bend my arms as wide as it is when it comes to students right because the whole system is set up to for us to think that our ideas equate to action and we have to be very careful about that there's this other thing called The False consultant the false consultant is that like and if you're one of these it's okay just breathe it'll be all right the false consultant is is like a university student who's like a professional committee member I know you know them and if you're involved in unionism and all you absolutely know them and you probably are one and by intention or not they're like on every single committee right and then the line is like how's it going I'm so busy I have very many important committies to be and attend to but what are you doing other than just like talking right and it's really important because this is the criticism of the Ivory Tower right what good is the talking if it's not grounded in something in in real right this is why if I spend time as a lecturer doing research or something like that I'm always bouncing out of that into something grounded something in the professional space because good theory is grounded in practice and good practice is grounded in theory so never lose track it's an easy trap to fall into because it feels good and people start recognizing you our universities love to pick up some sort of like emerging student leader who fits all the mold of what they think a student leader should be especially and put them in front of everybody and then have them talk and then they ask them to go over here and talk and then be on this committee and on that committee and like why wouldn't you say yes that feels so good to be valued like that and maybe your message is really important it does need to get out there just don't lose sight of the doing because it's a trap and it's very easy to fall into right you must build something you've got to try to make something it's one of the most valuable things that you can do for yourself at University it's very hard to do once you go beyond that I'm saying University but maybe people are not from universities are people who are not from universities have I been ignorant this whole time let's say institutions I'll try to remember to say that instead you must build something and the irony is that it's never yours how many people are familiar with the word Steward or stewardship what does that mean what does it mean to be a steward caretaking yeah it's holding in place for others as student leaders we are everything that we do even if it was our idea that we built I want to do this club and I want to bring my friends who love this club and we're going to build this club it's going to be the best club and we do it and all of a sudden we got 200 people there it's actually not your Club it's your club but it's not your Club as student leaders we are always holding things in protection for others build something and know that it's not yours and that's very important to keep in mind very important it will help you think in terms of sustainability it will help you think in terms of who you're going to hand this over to it'll help you keep purpose it'll help it be friendly for people to join and to continue on and that might mean that you might lose control of it at some point in time and that is a hard moment a very hard moment but it's an important one so two truths you have to act you cannot just ideate you cannot just talk and you need to build something and that's never going to actually belong to you and that's a weird thing that's a weird phenomenon and while it's true in other spaces it's part it's mostly it's really condensed in student leadership so now let's talk institutions did I spell that right okay we did a report card for ourselves right we scored ourselves let's score our institutions all right what a great institutions do here's what great institutions do they encourage student leaders that's like level one stuff right they Embrace emerging student leaders that's level one stuff is your institution doing that think about it they intentionally and intentionally you heard Anna say it intentionally develop student leaders not haphazardly not like you're a student leader cool way to go they're actually intentionally developing student leaders that's level two stuff they allow students to influence Community also level two stuff right they're letting students influence Community now we get to level three they're allowing students to influence teaching and learning allowing students to influence teaching and learning oh now we're getting into level three stuff allowing students to influence policy this is a big dividing line in the sand in terms of students that are doing this or are not right or institutions that are doing this or not they fund student leadership development now we're into level four stuff here right level four stuff they're letting students influence policy they letting them they're funding student leadership development okay now we're going to get into level five and I'm going to present a whole R version of this list for level five and I want you to pay attention to what's different between level four institutions and level five institutions you ready here we go it's very nuanced so take a really good look at those words oh yeah right that wasn't it sorry they intentionally build platforms for all those above okay here we go the next big one right that's all level four here we go what are the differences has anybody found the word that changed in a bunch of them anybody found it yet there's a couple of extras but there's one word that changed in a bunch of those yes we went from allow students to influence to ensure students influence that is a very big difference the absolute best level five institutions are doing this and importantly that last bit they're doing all of this for students that they do not handpick that is a big one it's a that's one of the big differences in my experiences in universities in Canada the US and Australia how many student leader leadership positions at your institution are shoulder tapped here's a great student getting great grades who's in my research center come be on our committee how often are saying how about that dude who failed we should find them and we should bring them on this committee and ask why they're failing I was shocked about a year and a half sorry two years ago I started a project at ukq when I was working for the University before I moved over to work for the union and it was called the fail project and I asked around and apparently at the time nobody could remember anybody who actually built a student staff partnership about failure with student Staff Partners who had failed talking to other students who had failed what nobody has done that at least as far as anybody could know that's scary right so let's talk about the student leaders that the institution chooses and so and and many of you will be them don't feel bad if you were chosen right but are they doing this for the ones that they don't choose are they ensuring that they are in the room are they listening as much to them have they built a platform for student leaders that they don't select that's an interesting question if you are coming from an institution that does not have a student union you should be asking why you should it's a very important question and it probably relates to that right it could relate to all sorts of things Student Union histories are very complicated but that's a really important power question as a student leader yeah I can't read is it contemplation or bored contemplation I'll take your word for it you're very generous all right so I want you to score your institution how are they doing you're gon to have a chance to talk about this later you're going to have a chance to share about your institutions and some of the upcoming activities and learn about it and it's very important to have a chance to learn about these other those institutions not just the bad things but also the great things what are they doing well what have you seen them intentionally working on what are some people trying to do that the institutions just slow to uptake and what are the things that really need to have some change and this is where it becomes a challenge for you as a student leader to decide should I be taking up one of those challenges should I be pushing back in those barriers should I be demanding more of my university in this space student leadership and student partnership in Australia is Young when I compare it to Canada and the US when we think about it Canada the US New Zealand and Australia right the four Multicultural settler Nations right English speaking um Australia's engagement with student Voice is pretty young on that Spectrum right and so there's a lot of work to be done and that's exciting but the institutions don't move on themselves right my daughter um who's four when she was born we got her this great little onesie as a baby had like all these amazing female figures and it said the patriarchy isn't going to smash itself I love it we bought her one for every single size as she's grown up it's like a staple of her wardrobe we are totally politicizing our four-year-old daughter I am Unapologetic about that um some of these institutions will not move on them on their own right and that's where the importance of student voice is so critical even if we have staff Champions who want to do this they come to a committee and they say we should do this thing we need students in this room doing this thing and then somebody on the committee says cool what do the students think and there's an empty chair where the student rep should be and that's where that motion dies that's where that motion dies or maybe there isn't even a chair right so without student voice those things do not move along because the institution has too many machines in the way of the internal Champions and sometimes you get a couple of Champions funing each other and doing it from the inside and working really hard to do it but as they leave things start to crumble right and that's where student voice is so vital so vital so this is a challenge for you to think about how is my institution doing you'll have a chance to talk about it later today but think about it so what does this all mean to you woo that's a meaningful picture you're going to have moments like that you probably have experienced student leaders in the room have you had moments like that thinking about the student leadership landscape yes you have this is good I'm G to come back to that picture later we've taken a look at where you've come from as a leader who brought you here you've taken a chance to look at where you want to go as a leader and now we've taken a look at the context in which you sit as a leader and I want you to think about what are you going to do thanks for the burden ji what are you going to do what is the work to be done at your Institution for student leaders and where do you start as a student leader okay hang on this is a big one I could give you probably 40 minutes now in silence to try to plan that out and write a goal around it we just don't have that time I'm probably already over time oh I'm not oh my God that's remarkable um so what's the work to be done how do we get to he and we talked about Vision this these are the seeds of vision understanding where you've come from understanding where you want to get to as a student leader and understanding the context in which you are and what that means for what your next steps need to be so you need to plan how to get to there even if you don't know where there is yet I want to give you a couple of quick tools that I think are really really powerful for you how many of you are student Representatives hands up awesome how many of you are in student Partnerships student staff Partnerships how many of you run clubs or are part of running a club how many of you are campus volunteers yep how many of you are ah mentors yep cool am I missing any other major populations cool so couple things for you to pack on your journey as you go we need a measuring stick and we need hats that's what we need for every Journey right I know you thought about that I know you packed those in your bag I packed those in my carry-on right measuring stick and hats let's talk about the measuring stick oh we just we just asked that question about hat if you have a moment grab your phone QR code quick question about what are the hats that you're wearing what are the hats that you're wearing as a student leader take a moment we just kind of we just kind of talked about them some of those but there's gon to be other hats that you're wearing I like not sure right next to student as a change agent that's awesome the nice thing about this is that we're all on a spectrum right we're all have things that we want to push forward things we want to do so don't worry about that that's messy I'll show you in a second all right cool so I want to share with you the partnership Crucible I also call the heater test so this is gonna have no context for you at all but as a kid in Canada growing up in 19 I was had a car and and in our car we had like this heater and then and it didn't say airon it just said cool CU like it's Canada right and back then airon was like only for really rich people apparently or people who because it's Canada so you just roll down the window um so that heater like at one end it's like hot and then at the other end it's cool then if it's sort of in between you know if you have one of those growing up or ever saw that in an old car so when we were I was working with uh with University of Queensland trying to work on training student Partners uh student staff Partnerships and I came up with this and for a while they call it the Jimmy heater test um so this is not just about student staff Partnerships this is actually for any kind of partnership another really good context for you to think about this in is if you run an organization or a club and you have volunteers volunteer members this is also a really really important piece for that so let's take those two contexts in any partnership you need to examine two things decision- making and action-taking so when I developed this training for student staff Partnerships at the University of Queensland what I did is we had on the very first time that all of the student staff Partnerships met they come around a table and they're there all the staff who were involved all the students were involved and they've spent about 20 or 30 minutes talking about the project talking about what they want to do and things like that and then I snuck them all a piece of paper and I had this test on it and I said okay without showing anybody at the table without having talked about it yet where on that Spectrum with this project do you imagine keep it to yourself don't tell anybody else decisions sit decision- making sits and the labor sits the labor of actually carrying out the project sits and I want you to think about what you think based on what you've talked about now where those sit and then because I love a little bit of chaos I force them to share it with everybody without having looked at it yet to see where the staff think it is and where the students think it is and that is an amazing exercise and it is the best possible beginning to a conversation around expectations and partnership sometimes it's the same especially when you have experienced staff and experienced students in the room but often it can be radically different and everybody goes oh crap right especially the staff by the way so this is a really powerful test it's a powerful Crucible and you can think about it in terms of student clubs as well when you think about what we're asking people to do where does the decision making sit is it in the executive portfolio over here or is it in the volunteer portfolio over there right and this is import a particularly important where we have a power Dynamic at play anytime you have a power Dynamic at play this is a very good test to use and there's a couple of key pieces to come out of this it's a great Catalyst for a discussion right who calls the shots and who does the work and how Equitable is it it's also really important lesson because as you decision making decisions is a really important rule you need to remember there's a what and there's a how and there's a who to everything that we want to do what do we want to do how do we want to do it and who does it never ever completely detach the what and especially the how from the who this is really important if you in a highly structured environment student unions are a good example of that where students are making the decisions but maybe staff have to carry out the orders so the how is the magic solution to this right because to be honest nobody likes to be a minion no one signed up to be a minion just doing stuff that you're told is the fastest way to job dissatisfaction possible it is the fastest way for your Club volunteers to never come back how is the answer yes you can decide what but have a joint conversation about how because if you divorce divorce the people who are doing the actual work from having any say on how it gets done you will alienate them and they will not come back and your relationship will be forever jaded but if you are in the person who is deciding on the what make sure you're engaging in a how or even delegating the how to the people that you trust to carry it out and who have to carry it out so it's really important to think about that never divorce the what in the how from the who has to do it never do that right this is a powerful powerful tool for looking at any kind of relationship let's say you're building a memorandum of understanding with between your organization and another organization pull this out take a look at it what sits in your bench what sits in our bench where do we come together is it realistic that we're all in the middle because it's not always realistic that we're all in the middle and that's okay it is okay for decision- making to be on lopsided and the work to be lopsided but only so long as everybody's okay with it and that's in the spirit of what we're there to do but the more extreme it gets the less of a partnership it is right so it's also a tool to say actually is this a partnership that we're talking about right and that also goes when you get called into a committee if you're called into a committee and all you have to do is tell them what to do and they have to go and do it don't think that you're a student partner you're not right because they're doing all the work right are they exercising student voice sure but there's something deeper to be done you know and you can use that opportunity to say cool this is what I think has to be done great and that feels good right and like great we'll take all that and then we'll think about how to do it right well hey can I help I would love to help with the how to do it that's what's actually going to make sure that the thing you say becomes actually a good policy and not just a tokenistic comment that's acknowledged in the acknowledgments but doesn't show up in the actual policy right so this is a very very useful tool I'm almost done I promise nobody's bobblehead yet nobody's like okay all right two hats philosophy this is around student representation and as a student leader this is you are going to be a student representative whether you like it or not so if you are a student leader congratulations you're also a student rep because somebody at some point in time is going to like pluck you out it's like the machine from Toy Story like take me to your leader right I have been chosen and like pluck you out because you're you're shining in what you're doing right you wouldn't be here if you don't and somebody's going to see that shine and G like yep come over here let's talk to you so and they're going to ask you why do students not show up to my lecture theater or something like that right so there's two philosophies here right you as a sample as a representative and you as the voice of others and they're very different we need to understand them and we need to keep those in mind these perspectives in mind sometimes you are there to speak only about your experience and that is fine that is okay to be on a committee or be on a counsel or be whatever there to speak about your own experience but you have to control that because people around you are going to misinterpret that and think that you're the voice of all students right and if you also come from any kind of marginalized background that's going to be Amplified tenfold congratulations you're the voice for your people as well right so it's important that we think about that and understand when when can we be a sample when are we asked to be a sample know what you're going into when somebody invites you to be a representative or to um join a committee or hey you want to come and it feels so good to get that invitation you need to think about okay what are the expectations are you asking me as a student just to be me or are you asking me actually to be the voice of others because there's a very different set of work that goes with both those things collecting the voice of other people is hard work reflecting yourself is a different um sorry being a sample is a different kind of hard work I'll talk about really quickly about what those are right so both of these have advantages and have their own kind of hard work if you are a sample you need to be really good at that reflection thing right because at some point in time they're going to say why and you're going need to know the answer to why so they say how come you don't show up to my lecture now it's all on you because you're the sample and it's actually about your experience and you better know why right and you might have to face up to say couldn't get out of bed but then that doesn't look good so you're like am I gonna get kicked off the committee so how do you transform that into a useful answer that's where reflection is important why didn't you get out of bed why was the bed offer better than the committee meeting offer and what's happening for you and that's important being able to articulate that in a professional way is important so the hard work well it feels easier to be a sample the hard work is being reflective enough to be able to articulate those answers really well and to make sure that you're drawing those boundaries I can't speak to why people are showing up to your aren't showing up to your lecture but I can tell you why I wouldn't show up to your lecture you got to be able to do that you can't hide when you're a sample right when you're representing as a sample now representing as a voice of others that's hard work because the funniest thing is the very first voice that disappears is yours the exact opposite if you are elected to represent other people the very first voice that has to disappear is your own and that is important as a leader to check and it's hard and we use this excuse in Australia we use it in federal politics which makes me cry we were elected therefore Everybody Must Believe in everything about our campaign oh please don't ever say that voice of others is tricky right it's a lot of hard work it's hard nobody has found the answer to getting broad student voice it's a really it's a perennial challenge right it's an annual challenge it's an everyday challenge so so that's hard you have to build a diverse constituency you have to go out and find ways to tap into people especially those that you're not familiar with to ask them and you have to be able to listen really deeply you have to be able to do something with it there's a whole another workshop on how do you do that some other time um but student voice of others is a different kind of hard work right in some ways extroverts excel at one and introverts excel at the other but both can be great at both right so understand that and more importantly being able to switch those hats that's what really good student leaders and student representatives are good at doing they're good at switching those hats and telling people when they're switching those hats actually we did a poll about why students aren't going up to class and here's what it found it found this and this and this and here's how I interpret that as a student right or I can't answer that but I can tell you why I am and what I've just done there is I've shown the people that I'm talking to that I'm switching hats right now I can't tell you as a student as a voice of students this because I don't know or I can say I can tell you exactly why I love this class but there's a whole population of students who aren't doing as academically well as I am and they'll have a different story and that's the limit of my student student representative voice right of others so naming your limitations naming the lenses with which you come which is by the way very important to research if you're doing research right um and that's a really really critical thing in terms of how do you balance both those roles right telling people when you're wearing the Hat as a sample I can tell you what I do and here's the limitations of that perspective or actually I've asked people and here's what I found out and here's a bit about that population of people that I asked so and here are the people that weren't asked in that moment right so you have yeah did all that stuff I want to give you one quote about awareness this is my last bit this is a quote from Robert K Greenleaf who is the parent of servant leadership and it's one of my favorite quotes of all that moment where you've had that moment where you're sitting on the couch like that that is about this moment it's about awareness as you are a student leader as you are tackling tough things you become more and more aware the more you listen the more you becomeing aware awareness is not a giver of soless it is just the opposite it is a disturber it is an awakener able leaders are sharply awake and reasonably Disturbed they are not Seekers after soulless they have their own inner Serenity love that it's hilarious and true able leaders are usually sharply awake and reasonably Disturbed so I hope today you've had a chance to think about where you've come from where you want to go where you sit in your context and what work there is to be done I hope that you feel a little bit more awake and a little bit more Disturbed that's leadership now you get going thank you yeah everyone another round of applause for thanks very much enjoy the rest of your day did