 The film you're about to see explores the role of leadership in international disasters and conflicts. Leading Together aims to guide and assist those who might be placed in leadership positions in response to international disasters and conflicts. Leading Together provides insights into the principles that will help you prepare to deal as leaders with the multitude of agencies and issues that you'll face in the field. This film examines the issues encountered first-hand by former mission leaders, non-government organization executives, military officers, police commissioners, diplomats and others. It draws practical lessons from their hard-earned and often hard-earned experiences. Much of what you see in this film will be familiar to you, but as you will see, our leaders, prepared as they were, had to contend with competing priorities from the outset of their deployments. Vision, clear intent, strategic decision-making, collaboration and partnership, diplomacy and communication, empathy and influence, these are traits leaders must possess and display. These are huge demands and are a burden that needs to be shared. Even the best leaders are only human. This film provides inspiring examples of leaders who are willing to share honestly what they have learned and where we all need to improve. As you view this film, I encourage you to reflect on your own strengths and limitations. Take time now to identify possible self-development opportunities for your role as a leader in difficult circumstances. From my own roles in a number of crises from Vietnam in 1975 to Bali in 2002 and my involvement in Afghanistan in more recent times, I learned a lot of lessons. One of the key lessons I learned was when my son and I were both working on Afghanistan. I was working in Brussels, London, New York, Washington and Canberra on the complex problems of Afghanistan and my son was a diplomat on the ground in the province of Aruzgan in Afghanistan. As I strived to establish a clear strategic perspective, he was able to keep me in close touch with what was happening on the ground. It was a real life experience about the importance of ensuring that the strategic vision remained grounded in reality. This film has been structured into chapters that allow you either to watch it in its entirety or to view specific topics in sections. It's a resource which can support your professional development or simply provide an aid memoir. This film is about developing leadership ability but not all of you will be the leader. That's not the point of this film. Everyone needs to understand how leaders think and what pressures they face. Everyone needs to be prepared to step into leadership shoes and everyone needs to be ready to provide advice to leaders. This film is about developing the common appreciation of the demands of adaptive leadership in situations in which everyone within a mission is called on to deal with the unexpected and the confronting. Leadership is more than simple management. That's the critical theme of this film. Leadership is about developing the relationships that mean that the result of everyone's efforts will be more than the sum of their individual parts. We need to understand that in a real crisis there has to be a leader but that at the same time we can all lead together.