Holding Space for Deep Listening

Article by Colette McEntee, Business Advisory Executive Lead

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This year the Business Advisory team at IPS is working with several Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations across multiple states to develop Strategic Plans.

Our team engages on Country to help bring the vision and values of Aboriginal Organisations to life in a document that speaks to their organisation, their Community, their stakeholders and to Government.

A strategic plan defines the direction an organisation must travel to achieve its big thinking goals. For ACCOs, that big thinking is universal: to improve the lives of their people. And a formal document also goes one step further than simply outlining future goals; it creates a sense of collaboration and collective responsibility – an intangible and unmeasurable outcome but so important to the long-term sustainability of any community organisation.

IPS engages with Aboriginal Corporations on Country, in person. Our unique ways of working ignite true collaboration; our experienced consultants enter the project with a blank canvas, so that members can create a future-focused document that they truly own.

When you walk into any room, there is often a voice that hasn’t felt heard, or a conversation that has not been explored. Holding space for that dialogue to emerge, for that voice to thrive, can empower an entire organisation.

It’s important to continue to hold that space - for deep listening. For it is in the silence that a united vision starts to grow, and glow.

Professionally, I have a background in business, innovation and the Arts. But it is the personal growth in my journey as an ally that has been the biggest gift, from the moment I set foot in the Pilbara as a backpacker in my 20s, to becoming an Executive Lead at Australia’s leading First Nations-owned management consultants - IPS.

Today, my work gives me the opportunity to visit communities across regional and remote Australia - every engagement teaches me a little more about gratitude and humility, and the staggering power of First Nations culture.

​Would you like to know more about deep listening in Australian First Nations Culture? You might be interested in this video: 

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