Risk-Based Leadership™ Development Program

Built from an operational risk management perspective, not HR theory

Training Calendar

Good leaders react to problems. Great leaders recognise risk before problems occur

25 Years' Developing Leaders | 500+ Leaders Trained by Orana Skills Centre

Designed for Leaders Responsible for Real Decisions

Most leadership programs teach communication, motivation and management theory. That's useful, but it's not enough for leaders operating in environments where the wrong decision can result in a serious incident, a project failure or an organisational crisis.

Many supervisors and operational leaders are promoted because they are technically strong. Few receive formal development in leadership, decision-making and risk-based thinking - the capabilities that matter most when things get complex.

That's the gap this program was built to close.

The Risk-Based Leadership™ Development Program was developed by risk and incident investigation professionals with experience across mining, infrastructure, government and other high-risk industries. It is built around a practical leadership framework drawn directly from the factors that repeatedly appear in incident investigations, operational failures and organisational breakdowns.

Through practical workshops, real-world scenarios and applied leadership tools, participants develop the capability to:

Recognise the early warning signs of operational risk - before incidents occur
Make confident, defensible decisions under pressure
Lead teams effectively through uncertainty and change
Understand how their everyday decisions influence safety, performance and organisational outcomes
Manage contractors, critical risks and governance responsibilities with clarity

The program is built around four leadership capabilities that together form the Risk-Based Leadership™ Model:

Testimonials

Delivered to leaders across mining, construction, government and high-risk industries

Highly relevant to real-world leadership and decision-making.

Brendan, Supervisor

Engaging, practical and directly applicable to my role.

Jason, Operator (2IC)

Exceeded expectations - strong focus on real operational challenges.

George, Supervisor

Clear, practical and easy to apply in the workplace.

Greg, Superintendent

Program Overview

The Risk-Based Leadership™ Development Program runs over six months and is structured around six modules, each tackling the leadership and organisational factors that most commonly contribute to operational incidents and failures.

What the program looks like in practice:

Six months, 12 training days - two days per module, designed to fit around operational work schedules without requiring extended time away from the job
Small cohort sizes deliberately limited to maximise participation, peer discussion and real-world application of leadership tools
Face-to-face delivery plus an option for leaders who can't attend in person
Built around real operational scenarios - not classroom theory. Every module draws on the kinds of leadership decisions and failures that appear in actual incident investigations

What the program covers:

Risk-based decision-making - recognising emerging risks before they become incidents
Operational supervision and high-performing team leadership
Contractor management and project risk oversight
Managing change and emerging operational technology
Critical risk governance and control assurance
Crisis leadership, incident response and organisational recovery

Aligned with ISO 31000, ISO 45001 and ICMM leadership and governance principles.

Who it's designed for:

Supervisors, team leaders, superintendents and operational managers responsible for real decisions in complex, high-risk environments.

Six Leadership Modules

The program is structured across six modules, each addressing the leadership and organisational factors that most commonly appear in operational incidents, failures and breakdowns. Every module combines practical workshops, real-world scenarios and leadership tools that participants can apply immediately in their own operational environment.

Module 1 - Leadership Foundations & Psychosocial Risk

Strong operational leadership starts with understanding accountability and the organisational factors that quietly undermine it. This module examines how psychosocial hazards, unclear responsibilities and cultural pressures shape the decisions leaders make and the safety and wellbeing outcomes that follow. Directly relevant to employer obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act regarding psychosocial hazards.

Module 2 - Operational Decision-Making, Supervision & High-Performing Teams

Most incidents don't happen because people don't care. They happen because leaders lack the tools to supervise effectively under pressure, make sound decisions in complex situations and build teams that catch problems before they escalate. This module develops exactly those capabilities.

Module 3 - Contractor Management & Project Risk

Contractor interfaces are one of the most consistent contributors to serious operational incidents. This module equips leaders to understand how their decisions, and their gaps in oversight, directly influence contractor safety, project risk and operational outcomes.

Module 4 - Management of Change & Emerging Operational Technology

Change is where control breaks down. New processes, organisational restructures and emerging technologies all introduce risk that established controls weren't designed for. This module develops the capability to identify, assess and manage that risk before it becomes a problem.

Module 5 - Critical Risk Leadership & Governance

Critical risks demand more than awareness. They require clear accountability, rigorous governance and leaders who understand what it means for a critical control to fail. This module examines the leadership responsibilities at the centre of critical risk management and what effective governance looks like in practice. Reflects the critical control management and governance principles of the ICMM Mining Principles and ISO 31000.

Module 6 - Crisis Leadership & Organisational Resilience

When an incident occurs, the quality of leadership in the first hours shapes everything that follows. The response, the recovery and the organisation's ability to learn and adapt. This module prepares leaders to perform under pressure, manage crisis situations with clarity and build the organisational resilience that prevents history from repeating.

Why the Leadership Gap Is Costing Organisations

Investigations into serious workplace incidents and operational failures consistently identify the same contributing factors: unclear accountabilities, weak risk recognition, poor supervision, ineffective contractor management and failure to manage organisational change.

These aren't technical failures. They're leadership failures and they're preventable.

The Risk-Based Leadership™ Development Program was built specifically to address these gaps, equipping operational leaders with the capabilities that matter most when the pressure is on and the decisions are real.

What You'll Be Able to Do Differently

Leaders who complete the program develop the capability to:

Spot risk before it becomes an incident - recognise early warning signs in their team, their systems and their operational environment
Make decisions that hold up under scrutiny - lead with confidence in high-pressure situations and make choices that are both sound and defensible when they're examined later
Lead through complexity and change - guide teams through uncertainty, organisational restructures and the introduction of new technology without losing control of risk
Own their contractor and project risk - understand how their oversight decisions directly influence safety and outcomes on complex projects
Govern critical risks with clarity - know what their accountability actually means when critical controls are in place, and what to do when they're not
Perform when it matters most - respond to incidents and crisis events with the clarity, structure and leadership presence that determines how well an organisation recovers

Why This Program is Different

Most leadership programs are built in boardrooms by organisational development consultants. They draw on management theory, behavioural frameworks and leadership research and they produce capable communicators and motivated managers.

But they don't produce leaders who can read an operational environment, spot the conditions that precede a serious incident or make sound decisions when the pressure is real and the consequences matter.

This program was built differently. It was developed by professionals who investigate what goes wrong after serious workplace incidents. People who have spent years examining the decisions, the supervision failures, the governance gaps and the missed warning signs that sit behind operational breakdowns across mining, infrastructure, government and other high-risk industries.

That experience produced a different kind of leadership program. One built not from theory about what good leadership looks like, but from evidence about what its absence actually costs.

What that means for participants:

Every topic in the program connects directly to a pattern that appears in real incident investigations. The module on contractor management reflects how contractor interfaces consistently feature in serious incidents. The module on psychosocial risk reflects how organisational and cultural pressures shape the decisions leaders make under pressure. The module on critical risk governance reflects what happens when accountability for critical controls is unclear.

This isn't leadership development for its own sake. It's leadership development built around the specific gaps that cause things to go wrong and what capable leaders do instead.

The program's approach to risk-based leadership draws on and aligns with internationally recognised frameworks including ISO 31000 (Risk Management) and ISO 45001 (Occupational Health and Safety Management) and reflects the leadership and governance principles underpinning the ICMM Mining Principles. For Australian organisations, the program directly supports leaders in understanding and meeting their obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act, including the management of psychosocial hazards, which is addressed as a core leadership responsibility in Module 1.

About Orana Skills Centre

Orana Skills Centre is a specialist safety, risk, audit and training organisation working with organisations across mining, infrastructure, government, health and construction. Over more than 25 years we have delivered risk management, incident investigation and workplace safety programs to hundreds of leaders across Australia and internationally.

The Risk-Based Leadership™ Model emerged from that work. After years of investigating serious workplace incidents and examining the leadership decisions, supervision failures and organisational factors that contributed to them, a clear pattern emerged - the same leadership gaps appeared again and again across industries, organisations and geographies.

That insight became the foundation of the Risk-Based Leadership™ Model, developed by Jessica Urquhart with 26 years of experience in risk management and incident investigation across high-risk industries in Australia and internationally. The model was then built into the Risk-Based Leadership™ Development Program, a structured six-month program designed to develop exactly the capabilities that investigations repeatedly show are missing.

This is not a leadership program built from management theory or a human resources perspective. It is a leadership program built from an operational risk management perspective, developed by people who understand what happens when leadership fails in high-risk environments and what capable leadership looks like when it doesn't.

Who Should Attend

This program is designed for the leaders who operate in the space where decisions have immediate, real-world consequences, where a gap in supervision, a missed warning sign or an unclear accountability doesn't show up in a quarterly report, it shows up as an incident.

If you are responsible for a team, a site, a project or an operational function in a high-risk environment, this program was built for you.

Participants typically include:

Frontline supervisors and team leaders managing day-to-day operational risk
Superintendents and operational managers overseeing teams, contractors or complex projects
Newly appointed managers who have been promoted from technical or trade roles and are building their leadership capability for the first time
Safety and risk professionals who are moving into or supporting, operational leadership roles
Government and public sector leaders responsible for managing operational risk and organisational outcomes in high-pressure environments

This program is particularly valuable if:

You've been promoted because of your technical expertise but haven't had formal leadership development
You manage contractors or complex projects where the risk sits partly outside your direct control
You work in an environment where the consequences of poor decisions, or missed warning signs are serious
Your organisation has experienced incidents or near-misses where leadership and supervision factors were identified as contributing causes

This program is not designed for senior executives or strategic leaders whose primary role is organisational governance at board or C-suite level. It is built for operational leaders who are close to the work, close to the risk and responsible for the decisions that happen before something goes wrong.

Particularly relevant for safety professionals, engineers, health practitioners and government leaders with mandatory CPD requirements.

How the Program is Delivered

The Risk-Based Leadership™ Development Program is delivered in two formats, structured face-to-face and online for leaders who prefer remote participation.

Both formats deliver the same program, the same curriculum and the same cohort experience.

In-House Delivery

Organisations can request dedicated in-house delivery of the full program for their leadership team. This option is particularly suited to organisations wanting to develop a consistent leadership approach across multiple teams, sites or operational areas at the same time.

Contact Orana Skills Centre to discuss your Leadership Development needs.

1800 231 173