the vincent fairfax fellowship
ethics in leadership program:
an overview
table of contents:
> applications now closed ...
The links below take you to the information about the thirteenth program:
> introduction ...
> articles about the fellowship ...
> program structure ...
> dates for the next round ...
> background & history ...
> the nature of good leadership ...
> what we look for in applicants ...
> program aims ...
> other links in this section ...
> > >
introduction
keen to make a difference? need others to join you?
You’re making a contribution to the world around you and want to increase your impact. The need to influence others is becoming more important for you. Does this sound like you?
Then consider applying for the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship, the ethics in leadership program of St James Ethics Centre (and if it is a description of someone you know and want to encourage, then encourage them to apply).
The Vincent Fairfax Fellowship program will enhance your skills, judgement and capacity for good decision-making in all your areas of responsibility. As those areas grow, so will the quality of leadership in Australia.
It takes thought, guts, commitment and integrity. Are you up for it? Then apply now.
applications now closed
Applications for the thirteenth round of the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship closed on 22 August 2006. The next round opens in May 2007.
However, in preparation for next year, you can download the 2006 application package as a sample*. Note that to apply for the Fellowship next year you will need to download the new application package which will be available from May 2007.
*The
files contained in this zipped package include both PDFs and Word documents.
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read articles about the fellowship
We have two key articles to help you learn more about the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship:
> Ethical
Leadership: the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship ...
> What
happens on the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship ...
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program structure
The program comprises five phases. A more detailed examination of the aims, objectives and processes of each part of the program are sent to successful candidates at appropriate times throughout the program. What follows is a brief overview with some examples listed for your further information.
phase 1 – ethics in leadership – the australian context
Phase 1 takes place in the January following selection. It begins with an outdoor training and learning program, where participants explore aspects of their own personalities and leadership styles. This is followed by an introduction to aboriginal culture at Jabiru in the Northern Territory. Participants are then divided into groups of three or four to travel to remote Australian locations such as Gove, Groote Eylandt, Kununurra, Newman, Port Headland and Weipa. There they gain insights into issues of isolation, harsh climate and environment, through spending time with local mining operators and aboriginal communities. The phase finishes in Canberra with a series of briefings on major policy issues and the workings of government.
Outdoor Program
In the recent past, the Fellows have participated in a six-day trek in Nitmiluk National Park NT. The Katherine Gorge in January, the wet season, is a tough place to be. Fellows are challenged in various ways both by the environment and the new group that they are forming themselves into.
Cultural Awareness
Fellows engage over two days, both in classroom and outdoors, with indigenous leaders with an interest in sharing their culture and forming a combined Australian culture for all.
Remote Sites
Over the years Fellows have been hosted by: Dominions’ Mt Morgan; BHP Billiton’s Newman, Port Headland, Groote Eylandt; Rio Tinto’s Argyle Diamond Mines in WA and Comalco Aluminium in QLD; Alcan Gove; Energy Resources of Australia (ERA); Otter Exploration in the Tanami Desert; and the Ngaanyatjarra People in Warburton.
The host organisation sets the topic of the report. A sample of the topics are as follow: “In what ways can the presence of … be seen as good for Australia?”; “Prepare an independent analysis of corporate citizenship for …”; “Report on …’s role in the development of the local community”; “What responsibility does … have to improve outcomes in the communities in which it operates?”
Canberra
A number of key figures have met with the Fellows over the years and provided information about their role and responsibilities as well as their own thoughts and reflections – among them:
High Court Judges Justice Michael Kirby & Justice Mary Gaudron; Federal Ministers Tony Abbott MP, Ian Macfarlane MP & Dr Brendan Nelson; Federal Senators Bob McMullen & Margaret Reid; public servants Dr Peter Shergold, Harry Evans Clerk of the Senate, Barbara Belcher, 1st Assistant Secretary Government Division, Dept Prime Minister & Cabinet, Bill Farmer (then) Secretary, Dept of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs; and a host of decision makers and advisers such as Hugh White, Professor Strategic Studies & Head of Strategic & Defence Studies ANU, Jack Waterford Editor in Chief, Canberra Times, Graeme Samuel, Chairman ACCC, Dr Jim Peackock, CSIRO, Ted Evans AC, Barbara Hocking, first barrister to be briefed for Mabo land rights case and Lt. General Des Mueller AO former Vice Chief of the Australian Defence Force.
phase 2 – ethics in leadership - personal growth and development
Phase 2 takes place throughout the program with Fellows completing their learning contracts in the areas of personal growth, leadership, ethics and community service. Additionally, each Vincent Fairfax Fellow identifies a person in Australia whom they would like to have as a Mentor, a sounding board for the experiences they are encountering. Choices regarding needs, and/or alternatives in these areas are negotiated with each Fellow at the beginning of the program and revisited regularly during the program.
The Integrity Workshop is considered part of the Learning Contract. It is the last formal element of the program and takes place some months after Graduation.
phase 3 – ethics in leadership - good decision making
Phase 3 takes place in the middle of the first year when participants gather in Sydney for a five-day retreat. The retreat is designed to give Fellows a number of structured opportunities to look at the world from perspectives other than the one with which they are most familiar and consequently make better decisions. Fellows engage with and explore issues around the self and personal identity; family; the private life; community and organisations; the nation state and notions of ‘good society’. They also do a specially designed adaptation of
St James Ethics Centre’s Business Ethics for Leaders and Managers which incorporates
St James Ethics Centre’s Ethical Intelligence and Good Decision Making.
phase 4 – ethics in leadership - a regional context
Phase 4 takes place in January/February the second year of the program. The focus of this element is regional ethics – Australia does not sit alone in the world – the way we are seen by our close neighbours, and how we see them has a critical impact on our future.
The Fellows undertake individual projects, of their own design, in a country of their choice in the South East Asian region. In addition, Fellows are given an opportunity to be delegates at a regional conference. Discussions at the conference focus on current ethical issues facing the region as a whole.
Regional Projects
Examples of issues explored by Fellows:
- What happens to the local traditional fishing communities when globalisation arrives in town? (Thailand)
- How does Lao society deal with people at the edges of society – the intellectually disabled and the financially successful?
- What are the ethical implications for pharmaceutical companies undertaking clinical drug trials in developing counties? (India)
- Leadership within indigenous cultures and communities – how is leadership affected by oppression? (Malaysia)
- What will be the environmental and social effects of the construction of hydo-electric dams on the Mekong River and its tributaries by Australian companies?
- To what extent were concessions and sacrifices made by the East Timorese people worth the prize of independence from Indonesia?
- Changing the world – social movements and grass roots activism in India.
- The ethics of immigration. (Malaysia)
- What is an appropriate society response to post-conflict reconciliation? How can it be made lasting? (Philippines)
- How do the countries with these natural resources decide weather to allow logging or not? What is an acceptable standard (logging method/volume etc)? What role should the purchaser (foreign countries) play in ensuring that what they are purchasing is not causing significant social and environmental damage? (PNG)
- To what extent, if it all, can the citizens of Burma share responsibility for permitting the military to monopolise political power in Burma?
- Do organisations with different motivating service philosophies (Religious/Government-national and donor/major NGO/etc.) deliver aid/development in different ways? What effect, if any, does this have on the way such aid/development is received? (India)
Regional Conference
The regional ethics in leadership conferences bring together emerging leaders drawn from a broad cross section of business, professional and community groups, from around the wider South East Asian Region and Australia to discuss issues of common concern.
Click here to download a PDF document about the Regional Ethics Conference.
phase 5 – ethics in leadership - celebrated
Phase 5 comprises a symposium for all Vincent Fairfax Fellows to come together for a long weekend where ties are renewed and further issues explored. Features of the weekend include the presentation of the regional research projects and the graduation which marks the completion of the program and a celebration of the beginning of what is to come.
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dates for the next round – applications now open
Applications close 22 August 2006. Download an application package (zipped file).
Interviews take place in October 2006.
Program begins in January 2007.
Applicants are required to commit themselves to full participation in all activities of the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship program:
Phase 1:
- Friday 5 January to Friday 2 February 2007 (inclusive)
Phase 2:
- Learning Contract is ongoing (approx nine hours per month)
- Integrity Weekend: Friday 31 October to Sunday 2 November. 2008 dates TBC
Phase 3:
- nine consecutive days mid-late July. 2007 dates TBC
Phase 4:
- four consecutive weeks over January/February. 2008 dates TBC
Phase 5:
- three consecutive days mid-late July. 2008 dates TBC
background and history of the vincent fairfax fellowship
In 1992, Geoffrey White, Executive Director of the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, had discussions with Dr Simon Longstaff, Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre, about leadership programs to accord with Sir Vincent Fairfax’s wish to see good leaders in Australia. St James Ethics Centre was one of a number of organisations consulted in an effort to identify an appropriate route to follow.
Following discussions as to the type of program envisaged, Dr Longstaff offered a number of options, one of which was the nucleus for an ethics in leadership program. The Centre's broad framework was submitted to the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation and after consultation was accepted. In making their decision the Trustees of the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation were conscious that St James Ethics Centre itself had emerged from the St James Church in King Street Sydney.
On 15 July 1994, some fifteen months after the death of Sir Vincent the Vincent Fairfax Ethics in Leadership Awards program was officially launched by Rear Admiral Peter Sinclair, AC, the then Governor of New South Wales. In 1997, following the regular review, the Foundation and the Centre agreed to change the name of the program to The Vincent Fairfax Fellowship.
On Saturday 31 July 2004, the tenth anniversary of the Fellowship, and the graduation of the ninth group of Fellows was celebrated at a dinner in Manly. During the course of the evening Mrs Sally White, daughter of Sir Vincent and Trustee of the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, announced the establishment of a new Foundation whose specific purpose is to fund this program and other initiatives like it into the future.
The new Foundation, known as the Vincent Fairfax Ethics in Leadership Foundation, is a Prescribed Private Fund and is able to receive tax deductible donations from Australian residents. At establishment the funding for the Foundation was provided by the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation and members of Sir Vincent’s family.
The Fellowship is a natural pro-active extension of the work of St James Ethics Centre. The program is not merely about the promotion of values for their own sake or for the benefit of the participants, worthwhile though those aims are. More fundamentally, this enterprise is about deepening the ethical sense of young leaders in their present roles and especially because some of them may be expected to rise to positions of significant influence. It is about cultivating a consciousness of ethics as a kind of practical wisdom - a wisdom that has its roots in a perception of human life which extends beyond the material and involves the formation of an inner character. It is in this profound sense that the Fellowship represents the vision of a program which will contribute substantially to the conduct of Australian affairs.
Learn more about the activities of St James Ethics Centre.
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the nature of good leadership
Good leaders have a presence, which attracts others to follow and participate in a common cause. This is not merely ‘charisma’ but an infectious goal to help bring about positive things for the good of their community and country.
To achieve this leaders need energy, drive, commonsense, wit and courage. They are motivated by a sense of duty and responsibility. Through their humour, integrity, capacity for hard work, self-restraint, openness, humility and sense of direction they generate enthusiasm. Good leaders are clear-minded and decisive. They are at ease with themselves and others, displaying confidence without the need for self-aggrandisement. They foster a team environment, which brings out the best in others, generates action and inspires a shared sense of confidence.
To be a good leader also requires a capacity for ethical reflection. This reflection does not mean entry into a world of esoteric theory. The ethics of leadership is a practical wisdom; it is about answering well a very old and persistent question, “what ought one to do?” This wisdom has roots both in a perception of human life which extends beyond the material, and in the formation of an inner character. If a leader is to be truly responsible in making choices, many of which can present difficult dilemmas, then it is necessary to draw on such an inner orientation in weighing the issues that arise when determining a good course of action.
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what we look for in applicants
Up to fifteen Fellowships are granted each year. Successful applicants can come from any background, any occupation, any level and are usually aged between their late twenties and late thirties. They will demonstrate the potential to grow as mature leaders and will:
- possess and exhibit moral courage
- have a capacity for ethical reflection
- recognise the inherent dignity of every person
- see leadership as an opportunity to serve
- appreciate the richness and diversity of Australian society and the societies of our region
We look for applicants who are already well rounded individuals, with some feel for the balance of material and non-material dimensions of human life and whose growth in leadership would benefit significantly by taking part in the Fellowship program.
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program aims
In the short term we aim to:
- select participants who have the potential to grow substantially as leaders within their fields and who will exercise that leadership with a view towards the good of all within our society
- develop the participants' understanding of domestic Australian issues and the ethical questions involved
- develop the participants' leadership skills and awareness of the ethical challenges of leadership
- expose the participants to some of the ethical issues which arise for Australians dealing with the distinctive cultures of our region
- provide the participants with a reference set of experiences which will enable them to make contact with a wide range of people within Australia and the region as well as to develop and strengthen those contacts in their roles as leaders
- develop the participants' practical capacity for ethical reflection using all these experiences and contacts as the source material.
In the long term we aim to:
- contribute to the development of a core group of Australian leaders who are committed to factoring the ethical dimension into their decision-making processes
- improve the overall quality of Australian leadership
- foster contact and understanding between Australian and regional leaders, which will encourage and support ethical leadership throughout the region.
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> > >
> about leadership development ...
> the vincent fairfax fellowship - an overview ...
> frequently asked questions ...
> about ethical leadership (article) ...
> what happens during the vincent fairfax fellowship? (article) ...
> download a sample application package* ...
> sir vincent fairfax ...
> fellows' corner** ...
* Zipped file. This package is to provide an example of the application package. A new version will be available from May 2007.
** Fellows' Corner is for use by Vincent Fairfax Fellows only and requires a
username and password to access.
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