Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

We have a tradition of greeting guests to Government House in the beautiful language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of the lands on which we gather.

Bujari gamarruwa

Diyn Babana Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

In doing so, I acknowledge the millennia-long and ongoing connection to land, water, and sky that First Nations’ custodianship of this continent embodies. I pay my respects to Gadigal Elders past, present, and future, as well as to the Elders of all parts of NSW from which you travel.

I am guessing that when you graduated from university with your hired gowns and caps, you would not have anticipated being at Government House tonight as graduates of the 2024 AmCham Global Leadership Academy. Indeed, I would take a bet on 99.99% of you not knowing about the Leadership Academy, and we know for certain that there are a lot of people who don’t know that Government House even exists.

Which makes your being here tonight especially significant, as you join the more than 1,000 alumni of the Academy since its inaugural year in 2019.

I know that you have been exposed to various insights into leadership from experts across the spectrum of business, education, and industry. As that exposure will have made apparent to you, much in good leadership comes from experience.

I’m also assuming that you have been introduced to many of the books on leadership and leadership models—all with takeaways such as Harvard Business Review’s 5 principles of purposeful leadership into your leadership lexicon: be clear about your purpose, your role, and whom you serve; be driven by values; and be authentic.

Tonight, I would particularly like to stress the importance of reading widely and away from the ‘course focussed’ literature, important although that is.

I recently read Henry Kissinger’s Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy published in 2022, when Kissinger was aged 99. First, I was struck by his beautiful flow of language—making me think he had a very good editor—but I was subsequently told that that was how he spoke—giving at least one clue as to why he was so influential… he was worth listening to. The ability to use language in this way comes, significantly, from reading—and reading widely.

But let me come back to Kissinger’s book on leadership. As a former United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger had a unique perspective on international diplomacy. His six case studies analyse the strategic statecraft of six important political leaders of the 20^th century, from Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, who oversaw the rebuilding of his nation following the Second World War, to Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of the modern Singaporean state.

However, his observations about the nature of leadership, have broader relevance. As he himself writes in one of the early chapters,

Within human institutions—states, religions, armies, companies, schools—leadership is needed to help people reach from where they are to where they have never been and, sometimes, can scarcely imagine going^[1]

Kissinger also emphasised the importance of communication, which is the point of my emphasis tonight on the ability to communicate. In his own words,

reliance on coercion is a symptom of inadequate leadership; good leaders elicit in their people a wish to walk alongside them.^[2]

Hence, in his characterisation, leadership—as opposed to what he describes as “management of the status quo”^[3] —is always grounded in the transformational. Having said that, good management is a necessary integer of a successful organisation. Indeed, without good management, so called transformational leadership may not be much more than an ego trip—or it may simply fail.

Kissinger also focusses on decision-making. In many ways, decision-making is the core business of leadership “This” said Kissinger “is when a leader’s instinct and judgment are essential.”^[4]

This is why leadership is as much as it is a science.

You may gather, I would highly recommend Kissinger’s book—if only for a good read—but I’m sure you will absorb much from this. 

In conclusion, I just want to add this brief observation of my own on two interrelated topics —ethics and conflicts of interest. Again, I know that ethics is a strong aspect of the ethos that the Academy brings to its Leadership course.

It is harder to ‘teach’ how to recognise and deal with conflicts of interest because they arise in a multitude of quite specific and often unpredictable situations.

My only point of advice—if I may—on both topics is: be conservative in your assessment and judgment call on any ethical issue and any potential conflict of interest. And I stress the word potential. If you miss the mark, the result is invariably calamitous.

 So, to sum up: good management always; bold decision-making when needed; and conservative responses to ethical dilemmas and conflicts of interest.

Congratulations, and the very best for your futures.

[1] Henry Kissinger, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, Penguin, 2002, p.9 [eBook version]

[2] Kissinger, op. cit., p.10 [eBook version]

[3] Kissinger, op. cit., p.18 [eBook version]

[4] Kissinger, op. cit., p.12 [eBook version]