The BlunderBus

Yes folks, this is quite literally the ultimate Blunder Bus journey. After travelling thousands of kilometres around Australia, talking to some of the finest leaders in the land, the time has come to park the bus.So this episode is a bit special. I've invited Leigh Hatcher, one of Australia's most respected experienced journalists (he even has his own Wikipedia entry!) to chat to me about the whole Blunder Bus journey. Leigh asks me about why I started doing this podcast in the first pl...

Kylie Butler was previously the Managing Director of Christian Coaching Institute (CCI) prior to CCI combining with Arrow in 2022. She is now the Executive Leaders Program Director and Coaching Director for Arrow Australia. And she is an Enneagram Three! For those who are unfamiliar with Enneagram, it's a tool with an ancient background that helps you understand your core motivations in life and leadership. 'Threes' make great leaders! They love achievement, loving being seen as successf...

What do Christian leaders do when the church goes wrong? Megan Powell du Toit is a pastor, editor, writer, preacher, teacher, speaker, podcaster, poet, perhaps best known for co-hosting the podcast With All Due Respect (one of the finest podcasts in the southern hemisphere not specifically about leadership failure and not recorded on a bus!)Megan reflects on how we can create Christian community in which power is safe, and how we can deal with the issues of systemic and cultural power. We als...

Peter Mayrick is Director of Partners in Ministry and the Centre for Ministry Development. Previously he was involved in the leadership of (a now very famous!) pharmaceutical company. Peter's passion is leadership development, and he is a great advocate for excellence in delegation.And yet, here he is on The Blunder Bus! Peter shares how he thought what he was doing was developing a coaching mindset, and a coaching culture in his organisation, only to find that his key report hadn't not...

Tim O'Neill is Director of Exponential Australia and also heads up A2A (the Acts 2 Alliance) network of churches. With his wife Sharon, he also leads Tailrace Community Church, a church that they planted 27 years ago.In this episode, Tim brings his 'prophetic gift of hindsight' onto The Blunder Bus, to talk about a great episode of leadership failure. Tim talks about the critical issue of developing culture (in this case, in a church planting situation). Totally without realising it, Ti...

Liam Glover has been the Executive Director of the Arrow Australia Leadership Program for ten years. He is passionate about raising up leaders for churches and Christian organisations. And Liam has a 'busy brain'! Or to be more precise, he has ADHD.Liam shares what this has meant for him in leadership and the impact that it has in the way he leads. He talks about the challenges of focusing on just one thing, and how hard it can be to regulate that. And the time when he realised his ADHD was c...

Karina Kreminski is Co-Director of Neighbourhood Matters, based in Sydney's Surry Hills, and proudly claims to be a leaf-blower hater and flâneuse. On this episode she shares her reflections on her role as pastor, and on how she became 'program-based' as opposed to being people focused. It's a wide ranging conversation; we talk about the importance of building trust, the issues of the mega-church model and the potential for the pastor's role to be de-humanising for those who are in it.A...

Cath Tallack has been the Emerging Leaders Program Director with Arrow Australia since 2017. She began pastoral ministry at Gateway Baptist Church as the Children’s Pastor in 2009 and moved into the role as Generations Pastor (overseeing kids, youth and young adults as well as leadership development of the church).In 'Doing It All' Cath shares very vulnerably about a recent experience of burn-out, which she describes as coming from her (understandable!) desire to do excellently in all the rol...

Why does failure make us feel so anxious? Often it's because we can remember experiences in the past which scarred us, and even now as adults, continue to have an impact. Today the Blunder Bus travels to Sydney's inner west, where Dr Silvia Fragiacomo shares an experience from primary school that left a mark for decades to come.You've probably worked out by now that the magic secret when it comes to failure is the ability to reflect on mistakes and learn. And that’s what I do in my work...

Marbz Dias is the National Church Relations Manager for Baptist World Aid. Coming from a Filipino background, Marbz knows personally what it's like to live in a society that is deeply scarred by the impact of a culturally insensitive colonial past.So settle back and listen as Marbz shares with us how he made exactly that same mistake, in his dealings with an Indigenous church leader here in Australia. Marbz shares how he realised that he was bringing his own agenda into a conversation with an...