Josie Dawber is the Plant Varieties Intellectual Property Manager at Plant & Food Research, and an Effective Leadership Programme alumni.
This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 29 June 2023, and all figures quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here.
Tell us about your role?
Plant & Food Research is a Crown Research organisation that employs around 900-1000 staff across 14 sites in New Zealand, as well as Australia and the USA.
I'm based in Christchurch at our Lincoln office. I work in the plant varieties team as the Plant Varieties Intellectual Property (IP) Manager and our team contributes to the revenue through securing and commercialising plant variety IP.
We’re a team of two, and my role is about developing IP strategies and implementing them for the varieties that come out of the breeding programme. We have quite a wide influence across the company, and I really want to do that well.
What does a day look like?
There’s always something different to do each day. We have arable, ornamental and fruit breeding programmes, and each one operates ever so slightly differently – so there’s definitely a variety in there. I really enjoy working with the people in my team, as well. That goes quite a long way to enjoying the job and having that motivation to work together to achieve a common goal.
How did you hear about the Effective Leadership Programme?
Two others in our [wider] team had already done ELP. They found it valuable and really enjoyed it. I was promoted about a year ago, and [that meant] we had to replace me in my job. I would then be a line manager to someone, which was new to me. So, I really wanted to do a course that would give me the foundation for setting myself up well for some framework on how to manage another person.
How was your programme experience?
There’s one other guy on our team and we both did the course together. I went into it thinking, ‘okay, I need to talk to people, I need to put myself out there.’ I think going in with that mindset really helped a lot. But interestingly, after the cohort all did their team management profiles, we found out that we were all very similar – our introvert level and the way that we interact with people. Even Michaela [Vodanovich, programme Co-director and facilitator] commented that she’d never had a group so similar in the way that they like to apply themselves to work. So, I was with a bunch of people that were actually quite a lot like me!
What was the big takeaway?
I knew more than I thought I did! I should back myself and be more confident. It was really good to have those frameworks there and have them better explained. When you hear something, you think to yourself, ‘Oh yeah, that kind of makes sense’. But when you actually have to apply it, you have to have that step one, two, three and step four in place. I went from hearing it to actually being able to use it, which was definitely really valuable. Also, Michaela gave me lots of ideas and different things to think about, which was really helpful – little antidotes off to the side.
Was it a benefit having multiple staff on the programme?
We've all done the programme on our team, as I say. It was really interesting to see all of our team management profiles, which look at the way that you prefer to work and then you can apply that to your job.
The four of us who have done it are all quite different in that we’re all opposite sides of the quadrant. It's great to see how we can use that to our advantage. And I also think it'd be really good if more people from our team did it – to be able to say, ‘we’ve all developed and learned from this’. It's like a sales pitch. More people should do it. It's so great!