• Sonny Neale

    Collaborative Leadership & Strategic Futures

    Facilitator | Trainer | Coach

  • Collaborative Leadership in Public Agencies

    Learn how to set up and lead collaborations to achieve concrete, practical results... and not burn out doing it!
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    In my experience, though we are increasingly being asked to collaborate, we’re not often told what that actually means or how to do it…

     

    Unlike most collaboration training, we don’t assume success or failure all comes down to you. Leadership is obviously a critical part but there is a lot more to it than that. It’s a bit like cooking: having quality ingredients is obviously essential but knowing how to put them together (and what to leave out) makes a huge difference to the final product!

     

    For us, bureaucracy also brings a unique set of challenges and opportunities to the game of collaboration and this context underpins all the work we’ll do.

    Some questions we’ll answer include:

    • When should you collaborate and when shouldn’t you?

    • How do you start right?

    • How should you organise teams for different kinds of collaboration?

    • What’s required of you and of others (especially in engineering or hierarchy-heavy sectors)

    • Who’s in and who’s out, and how to tell them?

    • What are the different levels of collaborative engagement and how should you plan, prepare, structure, and lead each one?

    In this program you will learn:

    • the essential (universal) principles that underpin effective collaboration

    • how to identify the right level of engagement for your project

    • different models for organising and structuring engagement

    • what you need to bring and who you need to be

    • the resources you need to maximise your chance of success

  • “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

    ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

    “There was an awakening in my team in your last session, now there’s a hunger and a thirst for more… in my career, the leadership model you use is the best I’ve ever seen.”

    Deborah Ganderton

    CEO, Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust

     

    "Even after the passage of [ten years] … the visceral experience of watching the group work through [Sonny’s] scenarios and the outcome that played out is so clear that I can, to this day, explain the process stage by stage. I have never forgotten the impact on me or the group at the time…"

    Rowena Morrow

    Principal, Prospective Services Consulting

     

    “I promised the team a session like no other, Sonny, you have delivered in spades… really appreciate and value the sessions we did... and sometimes, it blew my mind!"

    Damian Wells

    Managing Director, Coliban Water

     

    "You’ve woken some deep truth in me, thankyou..."

    Gerardine O'Sullivan

    Principal Digital Strategist, Boroondara City Council

     

    "The best facilitator I've seen in my 35-year career...."

    Leigh Funston

    Government Relations Manager, Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust

     

     

    "Powerful Sonny... your engagement is first class. We need a lot more of this in the Public sector!"

    Aaron von Egmond

    CEO, Hepburn Shire Council

     

    "In my very first session with Sonny, I went from being unclear to clear in 20 minutes. Amazing!"

    Linda Duffy

    Manager, Commonwealth Department of Environment and Energy

     

    "Made the whole conference worthwhile..."

    Ken Kua

    Executive, Australian Taxation Office
     

    "Exceptional outcomes. He is simply amazing."

    Shane Power

    CEO, Georgetown Council

     

    “Brilliant. I’m finding the support needed in this period of life is like sifting 10 tonnes of dirt for an ounce of gold. Thank you.”

    David Bridgfoot,

    Clean Energy Program Manager (commercial)

     

    "Thank goodness I met you, meeting you has given me a new paradigm to work with I desperately needed."

    Heather Crawley

    Manager, National Center for Emergency Management Studies, NSW TAFE

     

    “Our planning day was everything I’d dreamt of! Why I asked you to lead it was because I knew you would go wherever my team needed you to go, no matter what they needed, and you did… you helped us come together as a community that would have each other’s backs, and that’s what we really needed!”

    Pam Dawkins,

    CEO Sportzrulz

  • Schedule a free insights session with me

    Pick a time that works in your busy schedule

  • Program and Results Videos

    Have a look at what we do.....

    Related vs. Relationship

    The single most important distinction for creating and maintaining high-performing teams

    Transform a will turn a group into a team with this one distinction: the difference between being related and being in a relationship.

     

    Get clear on who-is-who in the game you are playing and see your teams back each other; your results sky-rocket, and; your behaviours transform.

    Integrity: the foundation of success

    There is simply no distinction more important to understand than this

    We all have a fraught relationship with integrity - whether you are someone how thinks they have lots or someone who doesn't.

     

    This video breaks integrity down using distinctions I learnt at Landmark Education: what it is, what it isn't and how to use it.

     

    The Visionary Leadership Program

    A short marketing video on what people got from a program with me

    I got a camera-crew into a program recently and this is what we saw: all ages, all roles; men and women and people from different directorates, all pulling together towards a common outcome.

    Visionary Leadership CEO Interview

    An interview with Deb Ganderton, CEO, on what SHE got having her team go through my program

     

    This is what you want to see after a training program!

     

    An interview with the responsible executive after a series of retreats where the staff brought courage and authenticity to the work.

     

    Discover your Life Purpose

    The four levels of the human condition and how to discover your Purpose

    The low-down on how we ALL relate to and journey through our lives in NINE SHORT MINUTES!

     

    Does it make life easier knowing this stuff? Nope, sorry. Life still has to be lived ...

     

    However, IT DOES help you distinguish your life's purpose and that's gotta be worth something, right?!

    Midlife Creation

    Take charge of the second half of your life and career

    2/3 of people are unhappy with their lives and their work. This is especially true in middle age.

     

    If you say you are in a midlife crisis, then that's what you've got. The difference between a midlife crisis is the locus of control.

     

    If you are living into a default future, change occurs threatening and disruptive. If you are consciously living into a magnificent future for yourself and your loved one, change occurs like progress.

  • Programs

    Collaborative Leadership: It's not all up to you! Continuously being told to collaborate more, no one seems to know what that actually means! In this program, you'll discover levers and dials that make collaboration a joy and ensures it results in positive and practical outcomes.

     

    Strategic Foresight: Think beyond three years. Public agencies have a duty to think longer-term but we need the tools to do it. Developed by governments and academics, foresight tools help you think deeply about the possible and probable futures, not just the preferred ones.

     

    Midlife Creation: A coaching program for people at a crossroads. Discover your Leitmotif (your life's purpose). Transform your experience of life, your ability to support your own growth and consciously create a future that brings joy, satisfaction and fulfilment.

  • Clients and Resume

    I am obsessed with collaboration in the public sector.

     

    Starting in adult education and the theatre, I've now spent twenty years in roles including CEO, consultant, and local officer…. I have experienced almost every function public sector collaborations have to offer!

     

    Completely sector-agnostic and working both in and outside government and cross S/E Asia, I’ve helped set up iconic national initiatives like the Forest Stewardship Council of Australia (FSC), the southern Offices of the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) plus a host of other crazy/ambitious collaborations in fields as diverse as Emergency Management, Municipal Planning, Energy, Academia and especially, Water.

     

    I hold 1st class honors in Ethics, Politics and Law and a Masters of Strategic Foresight.

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  • Contact details

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    sonny@sonnyneale.com

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    @sonnyjneale

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    Linkedin.com/in/sonnyneale

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    +61 490 348 306

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    www.facebook.com/midlifecreation/