For my presentation, I decided to interview my dad, Greg Doyle. Reflecting on the whole process of this assignment, I really enjoyed it. I learnt a lot about my dad I didn’t know, and enjoyed presenting and receiving feedback from my peers.

Throughout his career, my Dad has had lots of experience in different jobs, industries and volunteer positions. This has always been really inspiring for me, as I still don’t know what I want to do when I finish uni. Dad also liked to remind me throughout our conversation that he still “doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up”, so I can definitely see a similarity between us there.

Dad is currently the General Manager of Wollongong City Council. He is also a co-founder of The Public House Collective and Australia’s Oyster Coast. When I asked him about his journey up to current role as General Manager, he told me:

“I don’t think it’s actually about education. It’s about life experience. It’s about exposure to a variety of different professional and personal experiences”.

Greg Doyle

In his case, he obtained a Bachelor of Science (Geography) in 1993 and a Master of Policy (Social/Public Policy) in 1997 from UOW. However, in his words, he credits the experiences he gained as a disability accomodation support officer with House with No Steps whilst completing his first degree, and the volunteer roles he has had in areas such as childcare, arts, tourism, sport, research and disability services, as major contributors to him achieving the role of General Manager last year.

Looking back on our whole conversation, the thing that stuck out the most to me was definitely Dad speaking on his most important values. The values he highlighted were:

1. Having courage. “The courage to speak up when something isn’t right or the courage to raise a new idea to people”.
2. That having integrity is everything and he strives to be a genuine leader. He expanded on this saying that he “would never ask someone to do something I wouldn’t be comfortable doing”. 
3. Delivering on promises. He explained that if he said he’ll do it, he’ll do it. or he will not make the promise and explain why he isn’t able to. 

After I presented, a question came up from Nhi that made me reflect on these values. I realised that these values were something my Dad also practised in his personal life, and they had also influenced me in my personal and professional life.

I also noticed this with a few of the other presentation’s in the class. Other people had also interviewed one of their parent’s or another family member. The way they spoke about their relatives really highlighted to me how the people who are closest to us can have a strong influence on our personal and professional values, as well as inspire our future careers.

Overall, I was really happy with the feedback and questions I received from my peers and tutor, Nhi, and was happy to expand on what I had learnt from speaking with Dad. A comment about my own storytelling ability and how I was able to clearly relay my conversation with Dad and his stories to my peers was also really nice to receive and I really appreciated it.

Throughout our conversation, aspects of what we have learnt in BCM313 came up, which was completely unplanned on my behalf, but was cool to see what we learn in this subject in real life situations.

Dad brought up that “yarning” or “storytelling” are really important in the workplace. He has met so many people from different walks of life in all his experiences and has gained so much knowledge and understanding by simply talking to people and getting to know them.

He also brought up what COVID-19 has done within his workplace and how it will impact the future. COVID-19 has meant that a lot of Dad’s work has had to become more flexible and adapt to the use of more online platforms to connect the workplace. As Dad explained this has actually made Wollongong City Council, and himself, “more accessible than ever” to people who may have not been able to reach him before due to geographical or physical inaccessibility.

I came away from the conversation with my Dad, and the assignment as a whole, really happy. I was able to catch up with Dad and learn more about him, and then reflect on this experience and how it impacted me. It also made me feel a lot better about my own indecision about my future, as well as the future of work.