Having been a head of mission a couple of times in Taipei and in Beijing, of course
I'd recommend it to any colleague who's reaching that stage of their career, whether male or
female.
But as secretary of the department, I've got a real interest in encouraging women, particularly
those women who might feel that they perhaps haven't got everything it takes or lacking
in confidence about being willing to apply or not, I really want to make you think about
this and that's why I asked MaryEllen Miller, who's been one of our SES WIL advocates and
now of course on her first posting as Head of Mission in Copenhagen.
I asked her to talk to some of our other colleagues, many of whom have only recently become heads
of mission about their experience, who supported them, how they're finding it, how they're
managing children, how they're managing having a partner who might no longer be working,
all of those things.
Most of all though, I want to let these women speak for themselves and then ask you please
to think about it.
Susan thanks for joining us to talk about your role as Head of Mission in Harare.
I'm wondering if you can talk to us a little bit about your pathway to being a HOM?
By being a deputy head of mission in East Timor, and that was a tremendous experience,
but I was actually on maternity leave when the position of Harare Head of Mission came
up and to be perfectly honest I thought well I'd love to do that job, I'll throw in an
application but I didn't actually expect to get the role.
Didn't have a traditional pathway to becoming a head of mission.
I joined AusAID as a graduate many years ago and have worked in development all of my career.
I've also worked outside of the public sector so I've had some experience with the private
sector and the UN.
But it's, I think, given me lots of really good perspectives and experiences that I can
draw on in this role.
So I joined as a graduate trainee and have had a sort of traditional progression, I think,
in many ways, being third secretary at one post, first secretary at another, deputy head
of mission at another.
But what is unusual about me, I think, is that I've also served twice in DFAT's regional
offices.
I was the Director of the NT office for about four years and I think that experience showed
me I could manage an office and the variety of things that crosses your desk when you're
in a regional office is a bit similar to what happens in an embassy.
So I think that probably gave me the confidence to think I could run a show, I could manage
an embassy overseas and that helped.
I'm not the typical head of mission in DFAT.
I'm not a career diplomat and this is my first posting.
I've spent about half of my career outside of DFAT.
So while I started off my career in the Department of Foreign Affairs, after a few years I left
and went to work in a number of public service agencies before returning to DFAT.
That experience that I had outside DFAT, seeing the department from the outside, has helped
inform me how I go about my HOM role.
Pathways to being a HOM aren't all the same for everybody and you can come off a part
time job or you can come off maternity leave or you can come off study leave and you don't
have to have had, you know, been working your way up traditional pathway the whole time.
So what were those considerations?
You had to consider a few things, no doubt, so before you threw your hat into the ring,
what did you think about?
The first thing I thought about was really me and was I ready?
Did I have the skills that I needed to do the job?
Did I have the experience that I could draw on to do the job?
And to answer that question, I really reached out to other people as well and tested that
with them.
Firstly professionally, I had been working on the ASEAN agenda as the branch head and
I'd done a previous posting to Malaysia as deputy high commissioner, so I felt professionally
it was the right time to take the next step.
What about family considerations?
Were there things there you needed to think through?
Yeah I've got a family, a husband and two kids, my eldest son had already left home,
so that wasn't such a big consideration but my daughter is in her latter years of high
school and for her, it was a big decision.
We involved her in the decision.
We let her choose whether she wanted to come to Manila or stay here and board.
She chose to stay here and board, which has its challenges at times, I have to admit.
So family considerations around schooling, around my husband's time out from the workforce,
again this would be our third time where he has accompanied me on a posting.
My husband's a businessman and stepping back from that to join me on posting is a very
big decision and I have to make it work for him.
So we really needed to talk through that in quite a bit of detail to work out how we could
make that work for us as a couple.
We would have in hindsight, done a lot more exploring about his employment options before
we went over there.
So navigating issues around impact on career, impact on schooling, and also safety and security
and health issues that arise in a place like Jakarta really need to be fully considered
and worked through.
So we've discussed it as a family.
I actually wasn't convinced to apply until my son said that he'd be fine going on another
posting.
So that was very important.
When you go somewhere as a head of post, there's a long period where you know but you can't
tell anyone.
My daughter tells a story about finding out that she was going to Chengdu when my friend
asked her how she felt about it and she tells the story that she was absolutely devastated
and went into her room and cried and cried.
It did take the family a little while, the children at least, a little while to get used
to it.
What's been fabulous is the opportunity to be a role model, for both my son and my daughter
and to be able to see that women can work in a leadership role.
And I hope that they've - on balance they've taken positive things out of their experience.
Supervisor and friend said to me have you thought about applying for a HOM post and
at that point I had this light bulb moment, like actually no.
But then I think the hesitation and the feeling of am I ready, would I be confident enough
to do that but happily speaking to this woman, she said well I think you're ready.
And that gave me the confidence that I needed to throw my hat in the ring.
While nobody had previously come to me and said this is what we think you can do, and
I think that's a challenge for women in DFAT because that helps you get the confidence.
When I reached out, I got really, really positive feedback.
People were very generous with their time and their advice and these are very senior
people.
So a head of mission job is quite different to what I expected I think and I did try to
do a lot of preparation here and I spoke to a lot of people before I left but I think
that that increased profile, particularly in the beginning of a posting was a real kind
of a shock to me.
And it really forced me to step up in my professional career to be much more, I guess, in the public
eye than I'd been used to, getting used to public speaking at the drop of a hat, which
was something fairly new for me.
Managing a team, of course, in a cross cultural environment and I think I've learned a lot
professionally about that.
I don't think I've done everything perfectly but I've certainly tried to, whenever I haven't
done things as well as I might have hoped, always tried to learn from those lessons.
Firstly you're leading a small organisation and it is like running a small business.
You are the head of the organisation.
You have a number of aspects to that role, including the staffing, the corporate management,
the property.
If you're running an aid program, then you have a significant investment there to manage
as well.
I think the skillset is a very- I would not say it's a particularly unique skillset but
I would say if you break it down into what is a little bit plus networking definitely
is one of those.
That ability to have many, many balls in the air and to prioritise.
Flexibility so that you can, as necessary, drop absolutely everything if there's some
kind of consular emergency, or some other emergency and …
You have enormous autonomy and enormous licence to do what you wish and what that means is
you can craft the job around what you think you can manage.
You have the power to delegate things to various people and being able to do that I would be
surprised if more women don't take on the job.
What are the sort of challenges and the rewards that you've experienced in the time you've
been in the role?
I think that they're sort of two sides of the same coin.
So it's challenging because when you are the head of mission, there's a whole lot of things
that you don't experience in other jobs.
So the visibility level is extraordinary.
I think I was prepared, somewhat, for that, but not to the extent that I am visible in
my current role.
It's possibly the best job I've ever had.
No, I won't qualify that.
It is the best job I've ever had.
I absolutely love my job.
The things that I thought would be challenging are not necessarily the things that I have
found challenging.
It has drawn on all of the skills that I have learnt throughout my professional career and
I have been very conscious of the fact that I represent Australia overseas and I'm very
proud to do that.
It's a great privilege to do that.
But it takes some adjustment in the way you think about yourself and how you engage.
And I was really worried about that but actually it's one of the aspects of the job I'm enjoying
the most.
The reality is as a head of mission though, you are put in situations where it is very
much up to you to make the judgment on how to go forward and that's an empowering thing
and something that I have really enjoyed and appreciated as well.
Something happens, you make the decision and there's nobody else to tell you whether it's
a right decision or a wrong decision; you just have to back yourself.
And I think that that's been very empowering for me.
I know I'll come out of this HOM role much stronger and more confident person than I
was going in.
It's actually the making of me, I think.
I can remember going to quite a few functions with my husband and the assumption being that
he was the consul general and I was the spouse.
I guess those views on traditional roles still exist in China.
Though I never felt that as a professional woman in China I never felt that I was not
accepted as a consul general.
The privilege and honour of representing Australia in an international context in a leadership
role, I think having the opportunity to be a role model, for example with women, entrepreneurs,
school girls, other diplomats, more junior diplomats.
Oh it's hugely rewarding.
I often say this is the best job I have ever had.
The joy of being able to work on something that is your own doing, to see a project progress
to its conclusion and to feel that you've just made things a little bit better, you've
made a difference.
I think that's been the most rewarding part of the job.
Tell us a little bit about some of the support that's there for heads of mission and how
you've found that.
Well big plug for DFAT: they have a mentoring program, a first time HOMs mentoring program
and I have a fabulous mentor.
So I've been really lucky and I've drawn on that a lot.
I'm never too proud to say that I don't know something.
Seek out a mentor who's had a head of mission posting and it needn't be a woman, necessarily.
I think male HOMs obviously have an enormous amount of experience and expertise to share
as well.
One of the things that I really benefitted from was having a mentor as a first-time head
of mission.
So Penny Williams was my head of mission, and she was in Geneva at the time on leave,
and she was really helpful with her time and her wisdom, and that was really terrific.
And I've also found the cohort of African heads of mission to be a really terrific group
and really supportive.
There was a lot of conversation in Canberra before I left, where folk, particularly in
the corporate area, but also in the line area, were saying to me: reach out if you need to
have someone to talk to to bounce things off.
And it took me a little while to realise that, yes, I could do that, and that they were genuinely
open to that, because I think our inclination as women often is not to trouble anybody,
and I don't want to bother anyone, so I'm going to just soldier on on my own.
To have a sounding board; it's a tremendous source of support and I don't ever feel that
I'm alone in prosecuting this job.
I've got a whole bunch of people around me who are helping me do it.
I also spoke about the challenges of the job, and what it meant from a career and family
perspective, with the then-occupant of the job, my predecessor, and answered a lot of
my questions about how to live and have family, and manage the two.
So that was very important.
I must say, DFAT prepares us very well for posting.
So, a lot of the preparatory work we did in terms of consultations and training was very
helpful to me, especially as a first-time head of mission.
Of course, once you're a head of mission, you get to go around all the state capitals
and talk to anybody relevant to your post.
It might be, in my case, Maltese community, it could be business interests.
That is a big asset, because before you get there, you're already pretty well informed.
Men have to be also part of their spouses taking on a stronger, heavier workload, and
them taking, possibly, time out of their career for a few years.
For it to be acceptable for men to support their spouses might make it a little bit easier
for women in taking heads of mission roles overseas.
One of the things that we found very encouraging is the advances in technology and how you
can use different types of social media to keep in touch with family, including family
dinners and group Skyping for birthdays and things like that, so we've actually started
to do a lot of that.
It's still early days for us.
And also keeping in touch with elderly parents, because while you can speak to them on the
phone if they can't see where you're living, for reasons I don't quite understand, mothers
always feel more comfortable when they can see what the house looks like.
So I've walked around with the iPad [laughs], shown my mum, and that's really reassuring
for them, and it's the perfect way for us to connect on a regular basis.
When you're a head of mission, the entire system is built to support you, really, because
the success of your function as head of mission, the success of your post is very important
to DFAT's success and to the Government's success.
If you could give women in DFAT one piece of advice about applying for head of mission
and head of post positions, what would it be?
Well, my piece of advice would be: be confident, and also be aware that it's an amazingly enriching
experience.
It's a great privilege, but it is very, very enriching.
It's so rewarding.
It's like any posting, plus some.
To make sure you talk it through fully with your family and think about the implications.
The implications of a spouse not working is significant over the course of a longer-term
career.
It does have an impact.
Making sure that all the issues are as fully considered as they could be, and it's a joint
decision.
Really talk through with the family, but I think talking a bit more and maybe getting
together with some other families who've had that head of mission experience, just to know
what's it really like on the ground.
Make sure that you've got a really good support network and that you're prepared to reach
back into that, whether it's within your family, within your friends, within your peers.
Any new job is a leap in a different direction, but believe in yourselves.
Think about all the things you can do.
And we're told and the studies show that men think about the 90 per cent they can do; the
women worry about the 10 per cent they can't do.
Forget the 10 per cent.
You'll learn it on the job, you'll have a wonderful time doing it, and you'll grow into
the role.
It sounds trite to say, but I would say go for it.
Sometimes I think others see more in you than you see in yourself, so have confidence in
your own abilities and put your name forward and you never know what might happen.
Have a go.
You don't lose anything by expressing your interest, and indeed, you get your name known
as somebody who's prepared to go on posting.
You have to trust yourself and be confident in yourself, and don't wait too long.
You're probably ready far before you know it.
She said hesitating.
Don't hesitate.
Step up.
You can do the job.
I would say go for it.
You might feel a little bit nervous and anxious at first, as I did, but I can honestly say
now it's the best thing I've ever done.