February 2025 Newsletter

Its been three weeks since our leadership training at HydroTerra. We’ve been asked to embrace the “constructive conflict” and to “immunise” our staff from repercussions of raising important issues. Of course it has been a nightmare, constant requests for unreasonable things, and I have had to grin and bear it! Just kidding, it has been quite transformative. There’s so much untapped wisdom within our team that we simply have not harvested well enough… until now.

One thing we learnt was “When it comes to relationships – in business and in life – it can be hard to keep things on track. It is very easy to not deal with little things such as misunderstandings, slights, and miscommunications, resulting in relationships drifting from where you would like them to be. If these little things are addressed, the difficulty in raising them can be small, along with the repercussions. If these misunderstandings are allowed to fester, as well as be added to through further conflict, these issues can become much bigger – and the consequences can be harder to address.”  www.developingleaders.com.au

All this leadership wisdom has had me thinking about our broader industry, our industry of environmental management and environmental compliance. How many important conversations are we holding back on? How often do we avoid asking the tough questions because we fear upsetting a regulator, a site operator, or even losing a project?

Real change doesn’t happen without challenging the status quo and sharing ideas. After all, this is where the gold is. If we can embrace constructive conflict, we can drive better operational efficiency and reduce environmental impacts in our important industry. If we don’t start having these more difficult conversations: issues can become much bigger – and the consequences can be harder to address. Don’t agree with me? then let’s have a constructive conflict!