Relationships, humility, service and swimming – The Public Trustee on the Couch
On Monday 5th June 2023, IPAA Queensland was privileged to host another ‘Stewards on the Couch’ event featuring The Public Trustee, Samay Zhouand. Zhouand took to the couch with valued IPAA Queensland partner, Russell Fairbanks from Luminary, to find out more about Samay’s journey – both in work and in life.
We invite you to read more about what Samay shared in responding to questions from the audience at this inspiring event.
IPAA Queensland President, Deidre Mulkerin, kicked off the questions:
Deidre: Samay, you’ve talked a little bit about the reform journey that your organisation has been on, and it’s always both a privilege and an opportunity and always difficult. What have you learned the most about yourself through those times of change? What did you not know about yourself that you know now?
Samay: What a tough question, Deidre.
Deidre: You’re welcome, Samay.
Samay: The insight I’ve gained on a personal level is that it’s so important to really show care and care about those around you because even though things are changing rapidly and people are all coming together and doing what they can to change things, you don’t know everyone’s story.
And quite often, people are going through some really difficult personal circumstances and their family has been affected.
The thing I gleaned was really that you have to be quite genuinely conscious of others and what they may be going through because quite often, people have got their own personal trauma that they’re going through in some shape or form.
And it just really made me aware of that because you could see as you were working with people closely, you would ask how things are going and then they’d mention that their mother was in emergency because of COVID or things like that, but they were still showing up for work.
Those type of things really provided me a key perspective during the situation.
Audience Member: How hard was it to raise the public profile? How hard was it to raise the public profile perception and limitation of the Public Trustee with the challenges in processes?
That’s the first question. The second question is are you planning on staying with the Public Trustee or move out and you take those skills?
Samay: One of my mottos is do the difficult task first. The answer to the second question is I’m always at the service of the Attorney-General.
The answer to the first one is it is challenging to get the message of the public trustee to stakeholders and to the community because the work we do is so complex.
It’s not an easily explainable subject matter that we deal with.
But I think that what we have really done, and really focused on, is working with our stakeholders. We’ve really sought in particular to engage with the human services sector, advocacy groups, our customers, as well as broader government.
I think that over the last four years, our relationship has become overall quite strong. It’s not uncommon for me to get a call from someone, from a CEO in the human services sector or another government agency or from an advocacy group, giving me some honest feedback or giving me some really useful suggestions and vice versa.
I think we’ve been able to develop that relationship over time. That relationship was not there before. And for us, really viewing it in terms of –“you have to win the battle on the ground”, so we’re doing that.
And then in terms of the battle in the airwaves, that continues to evolve. But for us, the critical thing from that perspective is I don’t want, and we don’t want, the public trustee to be out there saying, “We do great things. Look at us. Come do business with us”. What we’re about is service, and what we’re about as part of that service is to really empower and support the community with information and advice.
Our strategy has really been about community education and working with the community and trying to find out where their needs are or where the policy risks from a community perspective are and really target our external communications on those areas.
Audience Member: Your humility has really stood out to me tonight and how you talk about others and genuinely care for others and you have a real sense of clarity on your purpose. I’m keen to understand what your individual approach is in getting a sense of what others’ purposes are so that you can empower and lead them in the way that you need to.
Samay: A good question. I think you really have to know your people by knowing, at least in terms of the team, what their values are and knowing what their strengths are, and really encouraging them to have an environment or feel, I should say, to create an environment on my part where no one is fearful about expressing their views or their disagreements.
I think that’s one of the things we’ve really sought to do.
I think that secondly, knowing that even where somebody makes a mistake, that we approach things from a learning and improving exercise. So that’s a motto that I keep hammering to everyone.
I think for me, those are the core ways that I try to do it. And really encouraging, and this might be the lawyer part of me where I do encourage a bit of debate in the team. I think that some of that is healthy from a professional point of view, but you always got to ensure that underlying that is an environment where it is about learning.
It is about everyone being allowed to express a view and ensuring there’s an element of kindness and compassion underlying all of that as well, which gives that psychological safety that people need. And when they are themselves, that’s when they blossom and really make a great difference.
Audience Member: What’s your strategy for your own wellbeing? How do you self-care and how do you cope with stress?
Samay: I discovered swimming about 12 years ago, and I think I enjoyed it so much! I put it down to coming from a landlocked country and making up for centuries of deprivation from water. I swim about six times a week, an hour each session with a couple of swimming squads.
And for me, when I swim, I just switch off and it’s a great mental release.
Also, I really am focused on making sure that I’ve got some of those foundations in my life because it’s all about building up your energy levels.
My family gives me energy.
My swimming and my health exercises give me energy.
My friends and social connections give me energy.
And I like to read and spend time with some of my broader family. So for me, I just make sure that those things are in order, and when they are, I’m able to function. And I also meditate so I find that quite useful as well.
Audience Member: Really interesting to hear the journey the organisation has been through, and I think you said you were about halfway through the transformation, so I’m curious what’s next and does anything need to change to deliver the what’s next?
Samay: Really good question. Our reform plans have three phases.
Phase one was the foundations.
Phase two was embedding the foundations, and we’re towards the end of that.
Phase three for us is really the enhance and uplift.
For us, as part of phase three, we just don’t want to be a human service agency that delivers really quality professional customer-centric services. We want to be as part of that vision going into the future (and we’re developing a 10-year blueprint) real leaders in the field in terms of inclusivity, contemporary systems and processes and in terms of being people inspired.
That means doing a lot more with technology and really being at the forefront of that. That means doing and being at the forefront of being inclusive. That’s not only in terms of our fees, but it’s also ensuring that we are inclusive with our First Nations customers and stakeholders, with our culturally and linguistically diverse customers, and especially our customers who have a disability.
And it also means for us that we are an organisation that is an employer of choice in every way. That is the exciting future, and we’re doing that blueprint planning now, and we’ll be making an announcement in relation to that in due course.
But I think for us, it’s that ongoing journey of the foundations, and you got to embed foundations because otherwise, things slip if you don’t make sure they just become part of the organisational DNA.
The exciting part now is the uplift where we will see some real exciting stuff.
Read our Stewards on the Couch with Samay Zhouand event page to learn more about the Public Trustee.
IPAA Queensland members can watch the entire event recording on the members portal.
This event was proudly supported by Luminary
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About Stewards on the Couch
Stewards on the Couch is a regular and highly popular feature of IPAA Queensland’s annual event program, where one or more chief executives is joined by a respected journalist or facilitator ‘on the couch’ for an informal, conversation-style interview. These events provide the IPAA community an opportunity to learn more about the influences, priorities, and core values of stewards leading public purpose work along with the key challenges and opportunities facing their organisation and/or sector.
Guests are invited to stay for networking and refreshments after the interview.