Leadership Lens: Why leadership demands a new story |
Leadership that can draw from hopeful narrative is vital, writes South Australian leadership educator Joanna Giannes.
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?”
—Rabbi Hillel
Marshall Ganz, Senior Lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School, begins his course Public Narrative: Leadership, Storytelling, and Action with these ancient questions. Their power lies not in offering answers, but in opening us to uncertainty. To lead, he teaches, is to stand in the unpredictable . The real question is not whether we can control what happens, but whether we can learn to embrace it. In such moments, ‘our hands must learn new skills, our heads must discover fresh strategies, and our hearts must summon the courage, hopefulness, and forbearance to act’.
These three faculties—head, heart and hands are not just poetic metaphors. They form the backbone of Ganz’s Public Narrative framework. The Story of Self asks who we are and what calls us to lead. The Story of Us builds a shared identity and reminds us we are not alone. The Story of Now invites urgent, collective action grounded in meaning, not fear.
In South Australia, we are witnessing this need unfold through the ongoing coastal algal bloom. What first seemed an environmental concern is now emerging as a multilayered crisis—ecological, economic, emotional, communal. People are grieving, there is anxiety, uncertainty, and loss. Complex adaptive issues like these do not stay confined to policies or departments, they ripple through lives, livelihoods and our identities.
In such moments, leadership that can draw from hopeful narrative is vital. Public Narrative........