We must challenge and advocate against all discrimination across all sectors of our community and communities beyond. We must ask the hard questions and are willing to work toward solutions to solve those questions that appear unanswerable. We must recognise that ‘care’ services are often the very reason people remain dependant all of their #life. Offering assistance in one area of someone’s #life such as cooking and cleaning for a person who is physically able to do so themselves and never assisting a person to do these tasks themselves is to deny that person a #life of their own. We must not believe that helping someone to stir a pot is going to lead to independence either. Helping people move forward requires a belief that they can eventually do the whole process themselves, unassisted. The independence of meal preparation may vary from preparing, cooking and serving a whole meal to lifting the lid from a prepared meal and putting into a microwave- if done alone, this is independence! The road to independence no matter how small, requires transformational leadership. Leadership from every area of FSG Australia. Recognition that hand outs must become hand ups; recognition that supporting must become coaching; recognition that everyone has potential and that we must have a willingness to search for ways for them to reach that potential. Everyone thinking about what opportunities and options can be offered will result in an abundance of both. Everyone just doing their own little part without recognising they are only a cog in a wheel will result in the wheel ceasing to turn. Transformational leadership calls for deep engagement with many different partners. What many organisations/enterprises often forget is that these partnerships MUST come from within your own organisation before they will ever become successful externally. If managers are at odds with the operational staff or at odds with each other, then there is no synchronicity of purpose. Ego’s get in the way and the wheel looses a cog. Everyone believes that what they are doing is vitally important without aligning their hard work to the whole purpose. Transformational leadership is leadership that works for the greater good and encourages everyone else to do so! Transformational Leadership requires Transformational thinking. This is a willingness to open up with honesty to the possibility that things could be done differently. We need to open up our vulnerabilities to explore what we do that may adversely affect people, rather than holding fast to the belief that we ’do good’. When we do that, we may be surprised at how some practices do not faithfully align with the purpose of the organisation.