Alumni Profile: Dr Brigid Nossal

Degree: Arts 1982, Education (Graduate Diploma) 1985 Current Position: Senior Associate, Innovative Practice Consulting, Melbourne As a teacher of 'difficult' students, Brigid Nossal learned the fundamentals of people management at an early stage in her career. She is now a consultant helping organisations deal with complex issues such as the intergenerational differences between the Baby Boomers and Generations X and Y.

After completing my Dip Ed in 1985, I spent four years teaching in alternative government schools and working with students from extreme circumstances of disadvantage. From 1989 to 1991 I completed a Master of Educational Policy and Administration. This led me into a management role at the Royal Children’s Hospital where I had responsibility for eight staff and a state-wide education and resource centre in childhood injury prevention.

Through my experience as a teacher of very difficult students, I learned some fundamental things about management practice. My teaching, my Masters study and my management role at RCH all served to ignite an interest in and passion for the complexity and challenge of organisational management. Each of these early experiences proved foundational in preparing me for the work that I have been doing over the past 15 years as a consultant to organisations.

About ten years ago, I encountered the field of systems psychodynamics. This is an interdisciplinary field that has grown out of the innovative work of the Tavistock Institute in London over the past 50 years. It combines insights from open systems theory, group relations and psychoanalysis. What I have discovered through the study and application of systems psychodynamics in my consulting practice is that I am much better able to work with senior managers to help them make sense and meaning of their unique organisational challenges in ways that lead to lasting and sometimes transformational change for the better in both the organisation and the individual.

My passion for this work led me to successfully complete a PhD. I am a founding member of Group Relations Australia and I am currently serving my second term on the committee of management and am the assistant editor of the journal Socio-Analysis. This organisation was founded with the intention of growing a centre of excellence in the fields of group relations and systems psychodynamics in Australia. It has links with the Tavistock Institute and the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations. This year, a paper I presented to the 2006 ISPSO Symposium on my PhD research was chosen as an ‘ISPSO Treasure – Influential Past Papers’.

I have recently become a Senior Associate of Innovative Practice Consulting. In addition to my consulting work, I am involved with the planning of an International Group Relations conference exploring intergenerational dynamics in organisations, to be held in Lorne in October 2008. The challenge of managing across Generations X, Y and the Baby Boomers is puzzling and troubling many managers. This conference will provide a unique opportunity to learn from experience about these important dynamics.

While the focus here has been my work role, I am also the mother of three beautiful boys, Dom (16), Sam (14) and Rudi (12). To the extent that is possible, I try to work during school hours and at night and to take many of the school holidays off to spend with my boys. The juggle to balance my work role with my parenting role provides an endless challenge!