The National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia

Outstanding not-for-profit institute providing world-renowned leadership and management education, research, coaching and consultancy in organisation dynamics for the improvement of organisations, community and society.

World Leader

Actively involved in the local, national and global fields of systems psychodynamic education and work.

Academic

Delivering high-quality academic programs, research, scholarship,  executive coaching & organisational consultancy.

Exemplary

Clear organsational processes, financial stability, creativity, vitality and professionalism.

Education in Organisation Dynamics

Z

Impacts Positively

The ability to positively impact on an organisation’s culture, structure and decision making.

Unconscious Phenomena

Working with conscious & unconscious phenomena in organisational life and its effect on the organisational functioning.

Complexity

Supports individuals and groups to stay with, rather than defend against, organisational complexity.

Conscious Choices

Understanding the effects of the multiple levels of organisational dynamics allows people to make more conscious choices about how and where to work and contribute positively.

Increased Creativity

Affords the possibility of increased productivity, creativity and sustainability in organisations.

Thinking through Turbulance

Complexity in organisations can be thought about and worked with to enhance capacity to manage work-related anxiety and keep thinking in the face of turbulence.

NIODA’s History Timeline

N

2021

Approval to offer a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). An important milestone for systems psychodynamic work in Australia.

Live interactive online classes enabled global student access.

2017

NIODA’s first Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) Graduation Ceremony.

N

2016

Approval of registration as an Institute of Higher Education and accreditation of Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) course.  This is testament to the value of systems psychodynamic work and the begining of another exciting journey.

Dr Susan Long launched NIODA Research & Scholarship.

2015

Establishment of NIODA Consulting, led by Dr Brigid Nossal.
l

2014

The very successful three year professional development program ‘Leadership, Management and Organisation Dynamics’ began.

2011

NIODA delivered a range of organisation dynamics workshops and seminars.

Hosted the Annual ISPSO Symposium in Melbourne.

2010

Established NIODA to ensure continuity of systems psychodynamic education in Australia into the forseable future, including program development, research and discipline growth.

RMIT shifted the organisation dynamics programs to the School of Management which favoured a more generic Master of Management course.  The programs at the time were fully enrolled and their reputations high amongst students, alumni and their organisations.

2008

Dr Wendy Harding became Director of the RMIT organisation dynamics master course.

2000

Swinburne shifted focus to entrepreneurial business education and the programs moved to RMIT. The Creative Organisational Systems Group was founded at RMIT. This group included the organisation dynamics masters, led by Associate Professor John Newton, the Professional Doctorate program, led by Professor Susan Long, and the Innovation and Service Management program led by Associate Professor Mike Faris.

Links with the global community of systems psychodynamic educators and practitioners developed.  International program visitors, and strong representation in internal bodies culminating in Susan Long’s presidency of the International Society for the Psychoanalytical Study of Organisations (ISPSO).

1981

Formal education in systems psychodynamics was founded in Australia at Swinburne University, Melbourne by Associate Professor John Newton. Over the next 20 years John, and from 1990, Professor Susan Long developed a suite of organisation dynamics postgraduate degrees ranging from a Graduate Certificate through to Professional Doctorate and PhD level.

Vision

NIODA is the centre of excellence in Australia and a global contributor in academic programs, research and consultancy in applied systems psychodynamics recognised and utilised to improve leadership and management capability and grow resilience in individuals, groups and organisations.

Values

NIODA’s values shape and inform all that is done at the Institute.

They are of particular importance in informing planning and are reflected and lived in implementation.

Openness

We challenge ourselves to be open and transparent in all our relationships.

Collaboration

We aim to work towards collaborative relations and relationships in all our endeavours. We understand that this takes thought and effort.

Respect

We understand that all constructive work relations rely upon mutual respect. This includes respect for differences.

Dialogue

‘Dialogue involves working with others collaboratively on problems for which the best solutions are not yet known’.* This presumes a commitment to working things through to a point where differences (of ideas, opinions and beliefs) can not only be tolerated, but can usefully co-exist to produce new ways of thinking and doing.

Reflection

We value reflection as a process of making space and time to consider, thoughtfully and with curiosity, the current realities of the organisation, its context and the people most affected by it. It is a sense-making process that can bring new insights and maintain our focus on the purpose of the organisation.

Creativity

We value creativity and curiosity as a powerful resource in everything that we do.

Rigour

We seek to be thorough, diligent and rigorous in our efforts both to fulfill the purpose of the organisation and in striving for academic excellence. This is reflected in the high standards that we set.

NIODA's Policies

If you would like to read NIODA’s policies.

Organisation Links

NIODA has formal inter-organisational links with:

GRA logo

Group Relations Australia

Group Relations Australia (GRA) is a not-for-profit professional association whose members seek to develop the field of group relations and systems psycho dynamics. GRA members apply its methods to working with groups, organisations and communities. Find out about GRA News and Events by following the link.

International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations

The International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations (ISPSO) provides a forum for academics, clinicians, consultants and others interested in working in and with organisations utilising psychoanalytic concepts and insights.  Click here for more…

IHEA logo

Independent Higher Education Australia

NIODA is a member of Independent Higher Education Australia which is the peak body representing independent higher education providers in Australia.  Click here for more…

Tavistock and Portman logo

Tavistock and Portman

NIODA and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust (Tavistock and Portman) in the United Kingdom, have a collaborative reciprocal arrangement to support the research and scholarship development to foster an environment of research activity, inquiry and scholarship.  Click here for more…

Australian Chiropractic College logo

Australian Chiropractic College

NIODA benchmark with the Australian Chiropractic College to compare and contrast institutional practices and delivery of academic courses, research and scholarship to world best practice as a basis for development, improvement and innovation.  Click here for more…

University of Chile logo

University of Chile

Peer to peer course benchmarking with systems psychodynamic focussed content in the Universidad de Chile’s Master in Personnel Management and Organizational Dynamics, and NIODA’s Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics). Comparative strengths and weaknesses are identified as a basis for developing improvements in the academic quality of both institutes. Click here for more…

Roskilde University logo

Roskilde University

Course benchmarking is undertaken between Roskilde University’s Master of Psychology of Organisations, and NIODA’s Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics). Both programs offer focussed systems psychodynamics content. The purpose is to identify comparative strengths and weaknesses as a basis for developing improvements in the academic quality of both institutes. Click here for more…

NIODA's Constitution

If you would like to read NIODA’s Constitution.

Accreditation & Qualification

Institute of Higher Education

The National Institute of Organisation Dynamics is an accredited tertiary education provider under the Tertiary Education Act, with accreditation and registration conferred in 2016, by TEQSA.

The National Institute of Organisation Dynamics works conscientiously to ensure that all of its courses and graduation processes are in compliance with the Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2021 and the Australian Qualification Framework (AQF), its Levels Criteria and Qualification Type Learning Outcomes Descriptors and its Qualifications Issuance Policy.

Institute of Higher Education no. 14039.

Financial reports

If you would like to read NIODA’s annual financial statements

Get In Touch

Emerging Leadership: cometh the moment, cometh the leader.

Popular literature and human dependence promote the idea of The Leader, someone who can be relied on to show us the way. As if The Leader is always a leader. Some individuals are able to manipulate this wish and convince others that they have some special quality which makes them a person to follow in all circumstances. However, the evidence of history is that successful leadership is always circumstantial, regardless of whether history judges the outcomes to be good or bad. Such circumstances are a combination of the social forces that originate outside the person and the unique capacities that emerge from within the person at the right time.

At this time in Australia, we have a pending referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. We have official ‘leaders’ seeking followership, The Prime Minister (Yes) and the Leader of the Opposition (No). Both the individuals occupying these roles are currently regarded as uninspiring, just playing politics, not really mobilising others to identify with the possibilities of change.

Formally they are regarded as ‘leaders’ but on this issue, they are just politicians. The historical moment, which neither of them can claim to have shaped, is searching for a person or group who/which can connect the historically determined circumstance to the lived experience of those who will decide Yes or No through their vote.

The vacuum of leadership on this issue is not surprising because neither formal ‘leader’ can point to any convincing personal appreciation of what is at stake. Nothing is emerging at the top level; it is all about fixed arguments, ‘righting historical wrongs’ versus ‘threats to the constitution that has served us so well’.

Navigating Ambiguity: The Essence of Emerging Leadership

The notion of ‘emerging leadership’ is that it is a dynamically contingent relationship between what capacity an individual or group can find within themselves and how this speaks to the challenges others experience about which path to follow. We don’t need a leader if the choice is clear; then we only need an administrator or manager who decides the way forward based on some established criterion; a way that is tried and true, efficient, technically feasible, politically correct, evidence-based etc.

The emergent leader actually embraces an ambivalent situation and can look inward to discern an aspect of their being that connects to the deliberation about possibilities; and on the basis of that reflection argues for this way rather than that way, regardless of the formal position they hold, whilst mindful of the values of those they seek to influence.

Emergent leadership can be an everyday occurrence, not necessarily one of national and historical importance.

Discovering Leadership Through Personal Experience

Some years ago, working as an organisational consultant, I was persuaded by an acquaintance to offer assistance to her sister’s small business. Having started a fashion design business from her parent’s garage, this young woman had, with the unpaid help of her husband, achieved enough sales to employ another sister with marketing expertise and then, following further business growth, was needing to hire the first employee from outside the family. She wanted help in conducting the selection process such that this critical decision would enhance her growing enterprise whilst not threatening its family values. She had never used a consultant before, was appropriately dubious about the cost, and asked me if I knew anything about small business. I replied in the negative since all my consulting had been with larger entities.

We negotiated a sliding scale contract that would limit her risk depending upon the value she determined I was providing. She was really trusting her sister’s recommendation that I would be worth the expenditure. And I was impressed by her practical common sense.

It took two meetings between the sisters and me before I emerged as a leader in this circumstance.

As I reflected on my experience with the two sisters, of what was being said and not said and how this made me feel, I suddenly could not believe that I had told the client and myself that I did not know much about small business. When my conscious mind relaxed enough, I recalled that I had actually grown up in a small business. My father and his brother had started a small business after WWII and run it for 40 years. My whole young life had been shaped by the vicissitudes of a small business but the ‘professional’, adult me had left that all behind. When I got back in touch with my early experience, including memories of all the financial precariousness that my parents had tried to shield us from, of interfamily dynamics, and the direct satisfaction that I saw my father gain from being valued by his customers, I was in a changed state of mind when talking to my small business client.

Navigating Complex Leadership Dynamics: Balancing Intuition and Expertise

I began listening and speaking from a different space. I became a quiet leader whose thoughts and suggestions were amplified by my intuitive understanding of the risks and excitements my client was trying to estimate and choose. She was a talented and ambitious designer, a start-up entrepreneur in a notoriously risky sector and she had young children. Whose needs would prevail? Could it be both/and?

When I undertook that assignment I was already a ‘senior’ in the world of leadership development but obviously still very humanly vulnerable to putting conscious ‘knowing’ ahead of ‘coming to know’ within a particular circumstance. The case revealed that my most relevant resources were in my lived experience rather than my formal knowledge. I had to ‘emerge’ as a leader in the particular circumstance so could I lead my client to articulate what she felt about bringing an outsider into her business; a business that was outgrowing the family.

My sudden remembering of a past I had ‘forgotten’ is what Freud meant by getting in touch with the unconscious. In the consultation I did not need to explore why I had repressed my early experience, it was enough to embrace the creative lead it gave me into the current circumstance. It gave me a voice that was missing up until that point. A voice that was sufficiently authentic for my client to take it seriously.

Cultivating Emerging Leadership: Unveiling Personal Experience for Future Possibilities

Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.

So I now argue that a critical aspect of leadership development is a process of helping individuals to recover the resources that exist within their own experience. This is different from developing an administrator, manager or executive who is rightly expected to have requisite knowledge and skills for the job they are employed to do. Leadership is not a fixed position. The need for leadership emerges and it can be offered by those who have some insight into future possibilities; possibilities that can connect the known to the unknown. We cannot be trained to do that but we can be primed to do it, if we learn to reflect in an intentional way to recall, to recognise and to harvest our past experiences as a resource for the future.*

It is quite possible that neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition have the internal resources to inspire a future for the Indigenous Voice but that does not mean such leadership will not emerge. Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.

*My colleagues at NIODA are offering a leadership development workshop to encourage just this,  ‘Embracing your personal history for impactful leadership’, Learn more here.

PO Box 287, Collins Street West,
Melbourne  8007  Australia
+61 (0) 414 529 867
info@nioda.org.au

This Get In Touch form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Emerging Leadership: cometh the moment, cometh the leader.

Popular literature and human dependence promote the idea of The Leader, someone who can be relied on to show us the way. As if The Leader is always a leader. Some individuals are able to manipulate this wish and convince others that they have some special quality which makes them a person to follow in all circumstances. However, the evidence of history is that successful leadership is always circumstantial, regardless of whether history judges the outcomes to be good or bad. Such circumstances are a combination of the social forces that originate outside the person and the unique capacities that emerge from within the person at the right time.

At this time in Australia, we have a pending referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. We have official ‘leaders’ seeking followership, The Prime Minister (Yes) and the Leader of the Opposition (No). Both the individuals occupying these roles are currently regarded as uninspiring, just playing politics, not really mobilising others to identify with the possibilities of change.

Formally they are regarded as ‘leaders’ but on this issue, they are just politicians. The historical moment, which neither of them can claim to have shaped, is searching for a person or group who/which can connect the historically determined circumstance to the lived experience of those who will decide Yes or No through their vote.

The vacuum of leadership on this issue is not surprising because neither formal ‘leader’ can point to any convincing personal appreciation of what is at stake. Nothing is emerging at the top level; it is all about fixed arguments, ‘righting historical wrongs’ versus ‘threats to the constitution that has served us so well’.

Navigating Ambiguity: The Essence of Emerging Leadership

The notion of ‘emerging leadership’ is that it is a dynamically contingent relationship between what capacity an individual or group can find within themselves and how this speaks to the challenges others experience about which path to follow. We don’t need a leader if the choice is clear; then we only need an administrator or manager who decides the way forward based on some established criterion; a way that is tried and true, efficient, technically feasible, politically correct, evidence-based etc.

The emergent leader actually embraces an ambivalent situation and can look inward to discern an aspect of their being that connects to the deliberation about possibilities; and on the basis of that reflection argues for this way rather than that way, regardless of the formal position they hold, whilst mindful of the values of those they seek to influence.

Emergent leadership can be an everyday occurrence, not necessarily one of national and historical importance.

Discovering Leadership Through Personal Experience

Some years ago, working as an organisational consultant, I was persuaded by an acquaintance to offer assistance to her sister’s small business. Having started a fashion design business from her parent’s garage, this young woman had, with the unpaid help of her husband, achieved enough sales to employ another sister with marketing expertise and then, following further business growth, was needing to hire the first employee from outside the family. She wanted help in conducting the selection process such that this critical decision would enhance her growing enterprise whilst not threatening its family values. She had never used a consultant before, was appropriately dubious about the cost, and asked me if I knew anything about small business. I replied in the negative since all my consulting had been with larger entities.

We negotiated a sliding scale contract that would limit her risk depending upon the value she determined I was providing. She was really trusting her sister’s recommendation that I would be worth the expenditure. And I was impressed by her practical common sense.

It took two meetings between the sisters and me before I emerged as a leader in this circumstance.

As I reflected on my experience with the two sisters, of what was being said and not said and how this made me feel, I suddenly could not believe that I had told the client and myself that I did not know much about small business. When my conscious mind relaxed enough, I recalled that I had actually grown up in a small business. My father and his brother had started a small business after WWII and run it for 40 years. My whole young life had been shaped by the vicissitudes of a small business but the ‘professional’, adult me had left that all behind. When I got back in touch with my early experience, including memories of all the financial precariousness that my parents had tried to shield us from, of interfamily dynamics, and the direct satisfaction that I saw my father gain from being valued by his customers, I was in a changed state of mind when talking to my small business client.

Navigating Complex Leadership Dynamics: Balancing Intuition and Expertise

I began listening and speaking from a different space. I became a quiet leader whose thoughts and suggestions were amplified by my intuitive understanding of the risks and excitements my client was trying to estimate and choose. She was a talented and ambitious designer, a start-up entrepreneur in a notoriously risky sector and she had young children. Whose needs would prevail? Could it be both/and?

When I undertook that assignment I was already a ‘senior’ in the world of leadership development but obviously still very humanly vulnerable to putting conscious ‘knowing’ ahead of ‘coming to know’ within a particular circumstance. The case revealed that my most relevant resources were in my lived experience rather than my formal knowledge. I had to ‘emerge’ as a leader in the particular circumstance so could I lead my client to articulate what she felt about bringing an outsider into her business; a business that was outgrowing the family.

My sudden remembering of a past I had ‘forgotten’ is what Freud meant by getting in touch with the unconscious. In the consultation I did not need to explore why I had repressed my early experience, it was enough to embrace the creative lead it gave me into the current circumstance. It gave me a voice that was missing up until that point. A voice that was sufficiently authentic for my client to take it seriously.

Cultivating Emerging Leadership: Unveiling Personal Experience for Future Possibilities

Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.

So I now argue that a critical aspect of leadership development is a process of helping individuals to recover the resources that exist within their own experience. This is different from developing an administrator, manager or executive who is rightly expected to have requisite knowledge and skills for the job they are employed to do. Leadership is not a fixed position. The need for leadership emerges and it can be offered by those who have some insight into future possibilities; possibilities that can connect the known to the unknown. We cannot be trained to do that but we can be primed to do it, if we learn to reflect in an intentional way to recall, to recognise and to harvest our past experiences as a resource for the future.*

It is quite possible that neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition have the internal resources to inspire a future for the Indigenous Voice but that does not mean such leadership will not emerge. Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.

*My colleagues at NIODA are offering a leadership development workshop to encourage just this,  ‘Embracing your personal history for impactful leadership’. Learn more here.

Professor Emeritis John Newton 

August 2023

Pin It on Pinterest