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Laura Hamilton-O’Hara, Image by Pete Dowson
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you found the MBE?
I'm Laura Hamilton-O’Hara. I'm the CEO of the Living Future Institute of Australia, and we work in regenerative design in the built environment. I love my role. But I also find that being in a position of responsibility, particularly during the pandemic, was lonely and scary. I really wanted to find a community of people who could understand and offer insight. People who were going through similar things and try and kind of grapple with this weird situation together and learn from each other's flows.
I was really looking for that. I did a leadership program with the Center for Sustainability Leadership in 2013 and I actually ran that program for a couple of years afterwards. So, I had this experience with longer format programs that bring together people with different backgrounds that may have similar values, or are searching for something similar. And what it gave me was fellowship.
I was hoping this would be a similar thing, which it was in a time of both global crisis, and also personal searching. What does it mean to lead in this time and how people are doing it? When this program came up, I just saw it and I thought, obviously I'm going to do that.
That’s so beautiful to hear, we are always blown away by the deep connections our participants create. Did you find the fellowship you were hoping for in your MBE cohort?
Yeah, I think I we did. But the challenges of the moment were not being able to be in person more. And so, in some ways, the richness of that is actually happening after the program because we are getting to see people in person. Weirdly, I ran into Danny [Almagor, Small Giants Co-Founder] for the very first time last week in person and we both nearly collapsed in shock and excitement. He was coming out of an elevator and I was going in, and he was wearing a face mask. And we were both like, ‘Oh my God, you exist’.
So, some of those rich moments are happening post MBE just by virtue of the fact of the format that we had to run it in [during the pandemic].
Can you tell us a little bit about what the MBE experience was like for you?
I love running and I guess the thing that it gives me is just a touchpoint every day or every second day where I know what to expect, and it kind of anchors you in the day. And in some ways to me, MBE on Thursday nights was like that.
It kind of gives you a bit of grounding, you know what to expect. But it’s also always wonderful and exciting and surprising. It was almost like a ritual, I suppose. For a whole year you're going to get to hang out with some great people who have new ideas and it's going well. It was really just nourishing in a time when nourishment was so needed, when we were just sort of starving of hope and worried, you know.
How did it differ from other leadership courses that you've previously done?
I'd say that overall structure was similar in some ways. I suppose some of the big things was there was unbelievable speakers and part of the faculty. There were just like absolute superstars and you can't quite believe that, you know, they're on the phone.
Who was your highlight?
Different people for different reasons. I mean, Jane [Goodall]...I come from a conservation background and I have met her before, but it was kind of like, whoa, you know, this is really quite something. I love the Flow Hive guys because they've just got so much passion and excitement for what they do. But also they were pretty honest saying ‘we did all this stuff and then we had no idea how to do it.’ Just this real honesty. They could have just told us very straightforward linear story of how it works. But they told a messy story which is super fun and gave us a lot to sort of land and chew over.
Gayle Hardie was great as well, but it was just like one after the other. Just epic people that, you know, you listen to on your favourite podcast and then suddenly they're like having a chat with you. And that felt kind of surreal.
The other thing was the level of people in the cohort, they're great as experts. There are experts everywhere and you could access them just not in that same intimate way. But you could have found a video.
But then to explore ideas with a whole bunch of other people who are extremely smart and lovely and kind, and unpack those things. I think that was a real highlight for me.
Were there any parts of the curriculum that you enjoyed more than others, or were delivered differently?
I definitely looked at the like the whole curriculum was like, Oh God, we're not going through a dry spell of governance and finance. What is that going to be about? And actually, they were some of my favorites.
They were delivered really well and they weren't dry at all and they were so practical and useful that like, I immediately put stuff into practice the next day and I think that's super helpful and you can see the relevance as well. I don't know if you'd consider the retreat that we did in March part of it, but just the power of being in person, and the power of community and eating together. Online can get us so far, but there's something really powerful in eating meals together.
How has it impacted you professionally?
I think the biggest thing was, again, people's generosity and sharing of just quite simple things. Like this is what a board pack looks like. This is this is the things that we sent to the board or this is how we do a skills matrix, or this is how we do chaos. Like quite simple, things. But I've never seen anybody else do them.
I very rarely get to look under the hood and see what other organizations do and get different ideas, and also just normalize that actually, you're doing fine. You're fine. Calm down. You know, you're doing a good job. And I think I think that was really helpful, just that sharing because no one does that.
Was there anything that was unexpected that you got out of it?
I think it both showed and demonstrated the limits and also how far you can go with being online. That you can really love people that you've never hugged before. That was quite surprising. I think I was really skeptical about it and it still has its limitations, but you can do a hell of a lot with it if you do some beautiful facilitating. I think the I really love the base camp groups, they just felt like we're sitting around that little fire together and just hanging out, which is super valuable.
I'd love to say that all the best things were the high profile bits that everyone probably put a lot of effort into. But actually, my favourite things were those incidental moments where people just cared about each other.
Applications for the 2023 Mastery of Business and Empathy close Monday 26 September.
