When I first moved into senior leadership roles, I thought people would expect me to have all the answers and to appear confident at all times.

I understand why. Senior public servants advise governments, lead large organisations, manage public resources, and make decisions that affect communities across the country. People rightly expect us to decide. They should also expect us to be honest about complexity and uncertainty.

I soon came to understand that seniority can make people less willing to challenge you. A passing comment can be heard as a decision; a personal preference can become a direction. I have had to remain conscious of the weight my words carry.

Over time, I learnt that good leadership requires both self-belief and humility. Self-belief gives you the confidence to decide when the decision is yours. Humility keeps you listening, testing your assumptions, and changing course when the evidence says you should.

Building informed judgment

I began my public service career as a primary school teacher in a regional Queensland school of about 50 students. A classroom is a practical place to learn leadership. Children notice when you are unclear and let you know when a lesson is not working. I learnt to watch, listen, adjust and try again. The plan mattered, but so did the five-, six- and seven-year-olds in front of me. It was an early lesson in making a call, watching its effect and being willing to adjust.

I have carried that lesson through senior roles in the Queensland, Victorian, and Commonwealth public services. As my responsibilities grew, I became less concerned with being the person who knew the most. What mattered was bringing the right knowledge and experience into the room. I still need to understand the portfolio, the evidence, and what it will take to put a decision into practice. My job is to grasp the issues, ask useful questions, and test the advice before forming a view.

My self-belief did not arrive all at once. I needed it most at the points when I stepped into a role before I felt entirely ready for it. It grew through preparation, hard conversations, listening to people who knew more than I did, and learning when things went wrong. It also grew because others trusted me with responsibility. I learnt that self-belief comes from doing the work, seeking honest feedback and testing your judgment — not from pretending to be certain.

I was also fortunate to have colleagues who gave me frank advice, challenged me constructively, and opened doors. At important points, others saw something in me before I saw it myself. I have not forgotten that. It shapes how I listen to, develop and place trust in others.

Those experiences changed how I understood confidence. Self-belief and humility are not opposites. The first allows you to form and express a view; the second reminds you that your view may be incomplete. In senior leadership, you need both.

That balance matters because the issues that reach a departmental secretary are rarely straightforward. They may involve policy goals, implementation risks, legal duties, financial limits, stakeholder interests and the government’s priorities. Specialist advice is essential, but I cannot form a view simply by adding up the advice before me. I have to weigh the trade-offs, provide frank advice, and exercise my responsibilities in support of the government’s lawful objectives and the public interest.

Humility when the decision is yours

Humility is practical. Before an important decision, I pause and ask: What are we missing? Who might experience this differently? Have we heard from the people who will implement the decision and those affected by it? What evidence would make us reconsider? Experience matters, but instinct must still be tested.

To answer those questions well, people need to feel able to disagree respectfully. If I signal a settled position too early, I can close down the discussion that might improve the decision.

Listening does not lessen accountability. When the decision is mine, I must make it clearly, explain the reasoning, and take responsibility for what follows. I must also create room for challenge before the decision, and review afterwards whether it is working as intended. If the evidence demands an adjustment, changing course is not an avoidance of responsibility; it is part of exercising it.

That is why I want colleagues to tell me what I need to hear, not what they think I want to hear. I have to show by my response that frank advice is welcome — even when it is uncomfortable.

Listening to opposing views

I have experienced this in policy design and service delivery. I have gone into discussions with a clear view about a reform, then heard from those responsible for delivering it that our proposed approach would create real problems for a provider, community, or frontline team. Their perspective did not necessarily change the objective, but it changed my understanding of what successful delivery required. We adjusted the design, timing or implementation. Their advice was evidence, not resistance. Sometimes an opposing view changes the decision; often it improves the approach and gives us greater confidence that the decision will work in practice.

Vulnerability and trust

Being open to challenge also means being honest about uncertainty. Difficult issues rarely come with certainty. I can acknowledge what remains unclear, explain how we will work through it and still be prepared to decide. That is humility in practice: being clear about the limits of my knowledge without stepping away from responsibility.

For me, vulnerability is not the absence of confidence, and it does not mean handing responsibility to someone else. It means being candid about what I know and what I do not yet know; admitting and fixing a mistake; or asking for help while remaining accountable. Leaders sustain trust when that openness is matched by competence, a clear process for reaching a decision, and follow-through once it is made.

Leading by serving

These lessons have shaped how I understand public service leadership. The longer I have worked in government, the more I have come to see it as service: having the confidence to exercise authority, the humility to recognise its limits, and a clear duty to the government of the day, parliament, the Australian public, and the institution we are entrusted to lead.

An excellent public servant understands that leading and serving are not competing ideas. For a departmental secretary, they are part of the same job. I must exercise judgment, set direction, provide frank and timely advice, implement lawful decisions, and remain accountable for results. That also means stewarding public resources carefully, investing in our people and leaving the institution stronger than we found it.

For me, the test of leadership is not whether I appear to have all the answers. It is whether my advice and decisions serve the public interest, can be explained honestly and work in the real world.

That takes confidence to act and humility to listen and improve. Across the Australian Public Service, these qualities help us give frank advice, exercise sound judgment and deliver for the Australian people — while remaining worthy of their trust.

‘Making a Better Public Servant’ is a collaboration between The Mandarin and IPAA ACT. You can find all of the articles in the series here.