I attended the Byron Shire Council planning meeting last Thursday and listened to Chris Hanley OAM – well-known Byron citizen of the year, Byron Writers Festival curator, and local realtor – speak about the Special Entertainment Precinct (SEP) for Byron.
He used a metaphor that resonated. Chris said the SEP process was taking the community ‘straight to the operation before triage.’ He suggested the process should have ‘started with consultation.’
Chris acknowledged that ‘the councillors and staff’s intentions were good’ but argued that ‘they were not doing it in the right way’ and not ‘listening to what people want.’ When one councillor responded, ‘if it doesn’t work for the community we won’t vote for it,’ Chris replied, ‘we have no trust that our submission will not be ignored.’
This exchange sparked my thinking about integrity and trust in leadership – concepts that seem increasingly rare in our public discourse.
Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most successful investors, considers integrity such a non-negotiable aspect of business practice that he associates only with people who possess it. He once said: ‘If you’re going to get someone without integrity, you want them lazy and dumb.’
A person who’s smart and driven but lacks integrity can do real damage, using their talents to manipulate situations for personal gain rather than working for the community’s benefit.
There’s a dangerous myth in leadership that results alone define success. But if those results are achieved by cutting corners, betraying trust, or dismissing community concerns, that ‘success’ won’t last – and neither will public confidence. Success and integrity are inseparable.
Consider leaders like Satya Nadella at Microsoft, who transformed a cutthroat culture into a collaborative powerhouse, proving that trust and empathy can drive innovation. Or Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo, who made ‘Performance with Purpose’ a core strategy, aligning growth with social responsibility.
These leaders played the long game, knowing that when people trust you, they’ll follow you further and work harder for shared goals.
Chris Hanley’s metaphor about going ‘straight to the operation before triage’ perfectly captures what happens when process and consultation are treated as inconveniences rather than essential foundations for good governance.
Protecting a culture of integrity requires concrete actions: screening for character, not just competence; promoting trust as a performance metric; acting quickly when integrity is breached; and most importantly, modelling what you expect. As leaders, our decisions – even in small moments – tell people whether honesty is truly valued or just a slogan on the wall.
In leadership, as in life, character isn’t just important – it’s everything. Our community deserves leaders who understand that true success comes not from the speed of implementation, but from the strength of trust built through honest, transparent processes.
The question remains: does integrity matter to our elected representatives? The answer will be found not in their words, but in their actions regarding the SEP and future community consultations.
I am inspired by what I consider to be a profound truth, that ‘cooperation, mutual aid and reciprocity are essential characteristics in the unified body of the world of being.’
Council decisions shape not just our physical infrastructure, but the very fabric of our individual and community life.
Dale Emerson
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