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The personal impact on me was
enormous—and it had a knock-on effect
for my professional development.
NATHAN KRIEGER,
EX-WESTPAC, CAPE YORK 2002
In the 2014 Jawun Alumni Survey, 92% of the
respondents reported enhanced personal and
professional effectiveness due to their secondment,
‘You had to be flexible in how you spoke to people,’
he said. ‘You had to be flexible in how you engaged
them.’ Bonnie Carter also identified flexibility as key
to engaging stakeholders. ‘I quickly learnt on my
secondment that if I wanted to talk to people I had
to go out and make an extra effort, and be flexible
in how I went about that.’ Tom Hughes, formerly of
Qantas, found that he needed to exercise flexibility
to cope with a tight budget: ‘You learn how to
do things on an absolute shoestring—you learn
another level of flexibility and adaptability.’ Melissa
Griggs, formerly of Westpac, now at Suncorp,
Jawun’s 1,000th secondee Sarah Pohlen (Westpac), Ian Trust (Executive Chair, Wunan) and Karyn Baylis (CEO, Jawun),
East Kimberley, 2012.
Photo: Louise Law
with growth reported in key capability areas
such as
flexibility and adaptability, tolerance of
ambiguity, self-awareness and interpersonal skills
(see Figure 6).
In our interviews with former secondees,
flexibility
and adaptability
were consistently identified as
significant areas of growth. Secondees on the
Jawun program are taken out of their corporate
or government ‘comfort zones’ and placed in
environments that are often very challenging for
an extended period (typically six–12 weeks). Many
work on projects in a different field to their day
jobs, or find they need to apply their professional
skills in new ways.
Jaimes Adlington found that his communication
style and the way he interacted with people
became more flexible on secondment.
believes the lessons she learnt about flexibility
and adaptability have been invaluable to her
throughout her career:
[The secondment] helps you to realise there’s
something greater than you. So if your feelings
get hurt or you don’t understand why things are
changing direction, you just put your head down
and keep moving forward to achieve. That’s a skill
that’s fantastic to have as you move forward in
your career because sometimes that’s just
the way it is.
16 JAWUN
2015 LEARNINGS AND INSIGHTS