If you had asked me at the beginning of this term what leadership lessons I expected to learn, I might have suggested something about strategic thinking, difficult conversations, or perhaps the art of smiling politely while opening the seventeenth email chain of the morning. What I did not expect was that my greatest leadership masterclass would come courtesy of roadworks, a gorge, and a ferry timetable.
For years my commute has been, frankly, a dream. A blissful 22-minute drive through Galston Gorge. No traffic lights. No tolls. No chaos. Just a winding road, a little greenery, and enough time to mentally prepare for the day ahead or decompress on the way home. In the world of Sydney commuting, this is practically mythical.
Then the Gorge closed. For just over a month, my previously idyllic commute turned into a daily leadership case study in patience, adaptability, and decision-making under imperfect circumstances. The alternatives were not exactly enticing.
Option one: the Berowra Waters ferry route. This journey maintained the peaceful aesthetic of the original drive, quiet roads, scenic surroundings, and a certain sense of calm. However, it came with one crucial caveat: timing. Arrive just in time to watch the ferry pull away and you are gifted an additional 15 minutes to contemplate your life choices while waiting for its return. Add to this the charming feature of almost complete mobile reception blackout and you have a commute that is tranquil, reflective, and entirely disconnected from the modern world.
Option two: the Pacific Highway-New Line Road-Cherrybrook-Dural route. A route that can only be described as the polar opposite experience. Loud, congested, and punctuated by an impressive collection of traffic bottlenecks, chaotic roundabouts, and seemingly endless stretches of single-lane traffic. Peaceful reflection is replaced by strategic lane changes and a heightened awareness of brake lights.
Both options added roughly 30 minutes to what had once been a seamless trip. Neither option was good. They were simply different versions of inconvenient.
And therein lies the first leadership lesson: sometimes there is no perfect option. Leadership is often about choosing between two imperfect paths and committing to the one that best fits the moment. Some mornings I chose calm and unpredictability (the ferry). Other mornings I chose certainty and chaos (Cherrybrook). Neither choice eliminated the inconvenience, but each choice required acceptance that the conditions had changed. But the longer the closure continued, the more the commute began to reveal other truths about leadership.
The first is the discipline of perspective. In leadership roles it is very easy to become frustrated by obstacles that slow us down. Yet every day, somewhere in Sydney, thousands of people were also stuck in traffic, dealing with road closures, detours and delays. The inconvenience felt personal, but it wasn’t. Leadership often requires us to zoom out and remember that the challenges we face are rarely unique to us. Perspective tempers frustration and restores clarity.
The second lesson was the power of reframing time. An extra 30 minutes in the car initially felt like a daily inconvenience. But over time it became something else entirely, a pocket of space. Space to think. Space to plan. Space to reflect on the day ahead or unpack the day that had just happened. Leaders rarely gift themselves thinking time, yet thinking time is where clarity, creativity and good decisions often emerge.
Three weeks ago, however, the story evolved again. The Gorge reopened, but only partially.
It now operates on a single-lane alternating system. Traffic from one direction is allowed through the entire gorge before stopping and allowing traffic from the other side to pass. This system works brilliantly… provided you arrive at precisely the right moment.
Arrive just after your side has been waved through and you can enjoy up to 35 minutes sitting quietly in your car contemplating the passage of time. Suddenly the commute could stretch to an impressive one hour and five minutes.
At this point, every day begins with a small strategic calculation: do I risk the Gorge and potentially sit there indefinitely? Do I gamble on the ferry timetable? Or do I brace myself for the Cherrybrook roundabout gauntlet?
And here another leadership insight emerges: leadership is rarely about certainty, it is about judgement. We make decisions based on incomplete information, probabilities, instinct and experience. Sometimes we time the lights perfectly and glide through the gorge. Sometimes we arrive seconds too late and wait… and wait… and wait.
Leadership requires comfort with that uncertainty.
There was also a lesson in patience and emotional control. Sitting in traffic does not reward impatience. Pressing the accelerator harder does not make the queue move faster. Frustration changes nothing. Leadership can feel much the same. The ability to remain calm when progress is slow, when systems move slowly, when people need time, when outcomes take longer than expected, is an underrated but critical leadership skill.
Perhaps the most powerful lesson, however, is about adaptability.
Every morning this term has required a new micro-decision. The route that worked yesterday might not work today. The timing that seemed perfect last week may suddenly fail. The conditions change, and the response must change with them.
Leadership is much the same. The strategies that worked last year may not work this year. The approaches that suit one cohort may not suit the next. Great leaders do not rigidly stick to one route, they read the conditions and adjust accordingly.
And finally, there is the lesson of destination over disruption.
While the journey has changed dramatically, the destination has not. School still begins. Students still arrive. Conversations still matter. The work that we do together continues regardless of the route taken to get there.
Leadership journeys, much like commutes, are rarely straight lines. The road closes. The plan changes. The route becomes longer, slower, or unexpectedly complicated.
What matters is not that the road is perfect.
What matters is that we keep moving forward.
The good news, I’m told, is that in two weeks’ time the Gorge should reopen fully and my mythical 22-minute commute will return.
But I suspect I may miss the leadership lessons of the long way around.
Just perhaps not the Dural roundabouts and Cherrybrook bottlenecks.
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