Rising to the challenge of positive change

Watching festive season fireworks on the beach with my family was not only a great Australian combination but a good opportunity to think about the year ahead.

Like me, I reckon you would like to see more positive and lasting change in our community in 2025.

With that in mind, here are three ways we can each have a bigger impact as leaders that I have been thinking about. And the good news is, what we need to do to achieve these things are accessible to all of us.

Pursuing purpose with passion

The best definition I have heard of purpose is that it is the sweet spot between our talent, passion and the needs of the world.

Acting purposefully is available to all leaders, and it can help us mobilise more people to create a bigger impact. In my experience the leaders who do this most effectively are the ones that harness the power of story so they can connect with people’s core values and purpose.

It reminds me of the age-old story where somebody walks past three people and asks what they are doing. One says, ‘I’m breaking some rocks.’ The other says ‘I’m making some money.’ The last one says, ‘I’m building a cathedral.’

We want all people to feel like their work is contributing to a larger story and the leaders who can tap into this will have a bigger impact.

Shifting our thinking on leadership

I’ve always been taken with the quote that “managing is doing things right and leadership is doing the right thing.”

The point is that good managers matter - a lot - but leadership is different and is ultimately about bringing people together to address the right challenge or opportunity.

The beauty of this is that leadership can be done by anyone and the key for those of us in formal management roles is to empower people in our organisations to find the leader in themselves.

Our organisations won’t change themselves, people will, and leaders always go first. Ultimately, the mark of a great leader is not how many followers they have but how many other leaders they support.

So often we feel like we don’t have all the answers and so can’t lead others.

I know that feeling and I’ve had the opportunity to see up close, here and abroad, people who are leading significant change and they are pretty much making things up as they go!

This goes to the heart of the final aspect of our leadership mindset – good leaders don’t have to have all the answers, they just need to build teams who find answers together.

Making the most of time

Finally, and the thing we need the most to make a bigger impact is time.

The difference with the leaders I see making an impact is that they appreciate that while time is available, it is also precious and can be taken at any moment. And so, they choose to use their time intentionally.

They understand what the Stoic Epictetus meant when he talked about memento mori, which is the practice of reminding yourself every night that you make not wake up tomorrow.

While it all sounds a little morbid and over the top it’s one way of being intentional with time and not taking it for granted. In other words, shifting from thinking about how to spend your time to how to invest your time.

We’ve all had experiences, me included, where the precious nature of time comes into sharp focus. The trick is to make these epiphanies into regular practices in a way that make sense to each of us.

So, there’s a few of my thoughts on how to make a bigger impact this year.

Have a great 2025 and here's to all of those working to make positive and lasting change in the year ahead.

Doug Smith is CEO of The Smith Family.