In The Game Podcast
Each week, Master Connector Sarah Maxwell sits down with incredible people and extracts the stories of their lives. Using her Neuro-psychology background, she delves into the DREAMS they had as a child and then weaves them back to the present moment. Who have they become? How have the dreams they had for their life realised themselves? How have they overcome challenges? What matters to them most NOW?These conversations are gripping and transformative, for both host and listener. Sit back, relax and enjoy!
In The Game Podcast
From Teacher to High-Stakes Missions in the Middle East, meet Australia's 007 Trudy McGowan
Trudy McGowan, Australia's 007, shares her incredible journey from a classroom teacher to a pivotal figure in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Her career trajectory is nothing short of extraordinary, with high-stakes consular missions that have tested her courage and resilience. From appearing on Channel 9's "The Embassy" to managing crisis evacuations during global emergencies like the Lebanon blast and the fall of Afghan national security forces, Trudy's story is an inspiring testament to dedication and adaptability.
Listeners will gain a fresh perspective on what's required to thrive in foreign affairs, as Trudy discusses the unpredictable yet rewarding nature of her 14-year career. Transitioning from human resources to consular affairs, she highlights the importance of flexibility and being a generalist, while also reflecting on her personal growth and achievements, such as climbing Mount Saunders at 46 years of age. Trudy's story emphasizes how authenticity and self-confidence can lead to incredible opportunities and personal fulfillment.
Tune in as we deep dive into the art of navigating high-stress environments with trust and empathy. Trudy shares valuable insights on overcoming imposter syndrome and the significance of trusting one's abilities when navigating complex situations. This is an episode not to be missed!
The Podcast's 7th Season
Welcome to In the Game, a podcast where we aim to touch, move and inspire you to what's possible in life. My name is Sarah Maxwell and I am a self-proclaimed relationship engineer. Ever since I was a little girl, I was curious about how people work and how they interact with one another. With a degree in biopsychology representing my country of Canada in beach volleyball. With a degree in biopsychology representing my country of Canada in beach volleyball, retiring from sport into mindset and purpose coaching, I now spend my days running Chatta-box Media, where we aim to story-tell for brands through the medium of podcasting, all while raising an eight-year-old daughter with my partner of 24 years. We are now in season seven of this podcast, featuring a special series on women called who Knew that Was Work aimed at young women who want to broaden their horizon when it comes to career choosing.
Go deeper into the pod and discover incredible stories of changemakers who manifest their dream lives. Gain tangible tools to apply to your own life by scrolling back to that initial season where we were more workbook focused. Have a laugh when we initially were coined the Nat and Sarah show, when my five-time Olympian partner, natalie Cook, and I bantered and had loads of fun interviewing and discovering our common passion individuals who rise to the occasion in life. Okay, now it's time to dive on in to this episode.
Ge...
Welcome to In the Game, a podcast where we aim to touch, move and inspire you to what's possible in life. My name is Sarah Maxwell and I am a self-proclaimed relationship engineer. Ever since I was a little girl, I was curious about how people work and how they interact with one another. With a degree in biopsychology representing my country of Canada in beach volleyball. With a degree in biopsychology representing my country of Canada in beach volleyball, retiring from sport into mindset and purpose coaching, I now spend my days running Chattabox Media, where we aim to storytell for brands through the medium of podcasting, all while raising an eight-year-old daughter with my partner of 24 years. We are now in season seven of this podcast, featuring a special series on women called who Knew that Was Work aimed at young women who want to broaden their horizon when it comes to career choosing. Go deeper into the pod and discover incredible stories of changemakers who manifest their dream lives. Gain tangible tools to apply to your own life by scrolling back to that initial season where we were more workbook focused. Have a laugh when we initially were coined the Nat and Sarah show, when my five-time Olympian partner, Natalie Cook, and I bantered and had loads of fun interviewing and discovering our common passion individuals who rise to the occasion in life. Okay, now it's time to dive on in to this episode.
Sarah Maxwell:Today I sit down with a superstar in the Department of Foreign Affairs, oam Trudy McGowan. She is currently Assistant Secretary at DFAT and has previously had roles across the department, one of which recently saw her organizing the Gender Equities Symposium in Brisbane alongside the FIFA World Cup, where even the US Secretary of State made an appearance. But it's her specialized roles in various areas of the consular division that saw her starring in Channel 9's reality show the Embassy, highlighting stories from her posting at the Australian embassy in Bangkok. Viewers love Trudy because they saw the heart of what she does truly helping people. She has also held overseas roles in the Middle East, where she has been called up for many sensitive missions with Australians in trouble. Whether it's the Lebanon blast in 2020, the fall of Afghan national security forces, the Taliban rule once more in 2021, the crisis in Israel and Palestine and other high-profile cases out of the Middle East, trudy has been there to do good work and for that she's been awarded the OAM and an Australian Operational Service Medal. For her service to Australia, she is seriously the closest thing we or myself anyway might get to a female 007. And yet she started her career as a teacher Not to dull the life of those who teach our children, but it is a far cry from the missions she is now called on to do.
Sarah Maxwell:I'm so eager to hear more exciting stories from 007 Trudy McGowan on our unique series named who Knew that Was Work, highlighting intriguing careers lived by awesome women. You ready for this, trudy? I'm ready, totally ready. Oh, I wrote in brackets next to are you ready? You were born ready, but I didn't know how to make that a question, so I just said are you ready? Oh, my gosh. So I think it's important that we let people know that we've just been on an epic adventure together, hiking the Larapinta trail in the Northern territory, and it culminated on you reaching the top of Mount Saunders on your 46th birthday. Why was that moment special for you? I will tell people there was a tear. So what did it mean for your life?
Trudy McGowan:Well funny you mentioned rescue missions, because I thought someone was going to have to rescue me.
Trudy McGowan:I didn't know I was going to be able to make it up the mountain, so I guess that's part of the story.
Trudy McGowan:I spent most of my adult life overweight, so I'd lost quite a bit of weight about five years ago and that kind of came with a newfound fitness.
Trudy McGowan:But still I had a bit of doubt in my own kind of body and what it could do. And even though on paper I thought, yeah, I can definitely do the distance, still there was a huge mental thing of climbing up that mountain. And even the fact we had to get up at 1.30 in the morning, you know that was scary as well. I just didn't really know if I could do it. And so when I got to the top and it was my birthday and I had you there and lots of other great people and the sunrise was so beautiful, it just kind of meant a lot to me that I was able to do it and that I'd come so far from where I thought I probably would have been when I was turning 46. My life has turned out ridiculously different to what I'd kind of ever imagined, so that's why I cried, and also the thought of walking down again, I guess.
Sarah Maxwell:Interesting that you note that physical uncertainty because your body had changed so much. Did you ever have uncertainties? I'm kind of jumping ahead because now I'm too curious, but did you have uncertain uncertainties about some of these rescue missions in the same way, or are they totally different?
Trudy McGowan:um, there's a little bit of uncertainty, of course, but it's it's almost like the I guess what what I imagine you get if you're, you know, a boxer going into a fight or whatever. You know you can do it, but you just don't know how much it's going to hurt on the way. So, like I know, I can get the person out, but I just don't know, like what is it that I'm gonna? What obstacle am I gonna have to face? And it's mostly mental ones. It's not often physical ones, but but sometimes it is physically confronting. More often than not, I have security with me, so it's not my physical issue to worry about and I really trust them. But, no, definitely, but in a professional capacity. I think the more I've done it, the more I got sure that I was going to be able to do it.
Sarah Maxwell:Got it. Well, good, well, I'm glad you didn't think I was like the security forces and I had to get you up this mountain somehow. So you did it all on your own and it was truly staggering to watch you hike up that mountain behind a 23-year-old like right with that lead group too, and I just really made that connection Like wow, this girl is half her age, she was super fit and you were just right up there with her. So you should have shed a tear and you should be proud. It was very cool.
Trudy McGowan:She was skipping. I wasn't quite skipping.
Sarah Maxwell:I don't believe that. For my own sake, for my own pride, I can't accept that. Okay, so you grew up in picturesque Blue Mountains outside of Sydney. For those who are more international, take us back to your life, growing up with your family. Like what would we need to know about you, trudy? That was kind of predictive of the adventurous, risky and exciting life you now lead.
Trudy McGowan:Well, it's probably the opposite, Like there's nothing really that predicted that. I mean, my family is about service. Like my mum and dad were both teachers. My dad's been in the fire brigade the volunteer fire brigade for 40 years. He's really senior in that and you know, every time I turn around my parents will be helping someone or doing something for the community. That's really important to them. So we kind of were brought up with this. You know service mentality. My grandfather lived with us. We cared for him. It was just. It was just kind of a thing, but it was nothing dramatic.
Trudy McGowan:I didn't even know there was such a job that I do now. I didn't. It was a bit of a small town existence but we were happy and you know we, our first overseas holiday wasn't until I was maybe 12 and we went to you know, the typical stereotypical Disneyland to America trip. But yeah, I didn't have a clue what the world kind of held or what opportunities were there. I'm really glad that I thought there was no opportunity apart from to go to university. That's the only option I thought there was. So I chose something that I wanted to do. I thought I was going to be a journalist. I thought I'm going to be the person who's on a current affair and I'm going to wear those really cool blazers and everyone's going to listen to me. And then I got to university and there was about 500 of us in the lecture and I realized there was probably one job at the end, so journalism got on pretty quick.
Sarah Maxwell:So you started in journalism and then shifted to teaching.
Trudy McGowan:Yeah. So when I went to university I started working in after school care as a part-time job, mostly because I was working at McDonald's and it was too embarrassing. It was right near where I lived on campus and all my friends would come in. So I really needed to stop that pretty quickly. So got a job at after school care and I'd really resisted being a teacher. As much as I loved working with the kids and it seemed rewarding. I never wanted to be a teacher because my parents were teachers. Where I grew up, Everybody else's parents were teachers. When I was at school the teachers were my parents' friends. It just seemed like really, really predictable to do that and I wanted to do something a bit more unpredictable. But after a while it just fit and I'd moved away to Canberra and I was really enjoying my independence of being away from my family, so it was an easy swap. It was another degree that was at my uni, so I just moved over and I actually really did love it?
Sarah Maxwell:Did you feel, even though you loved it? Did you feel a sense of not settling, but that sense of like wait a second. I was determined not to do this, not to do what everyone else did, and is that why you left.
Trudy McGowan:At first I did, but then I settled into it. But what I saw was it felt like everyone could do it, like, and you know, you're at a dinner party and people are like, oh, what do you do? And you'll be like I'm a teacher. Oh, I was going to be a teacher but I became a brain surgeon. I was going to be a teacher, but you know, it just felt like, even though now I know teachers are the hardest working people ever and no matter what job I do even going to get hostages in the middle east I never feel as tired as I did in week nine and a half of teaching grade one. You know like teachers work harder than anyone in the world and they earn not enough money for how much responsibility they have.
Trudy McGowan:But I always kind of wanted a job where people would say, oh, if you want to know about xyz, she's the person you need to ask, and if she's away sick you can't ask anyone else, you need to wait till the next day. And I had spent a lot of time. Um, because my husband was in the navy, we moved around a bit. When I was a teacher I was doing a lot of like substitute relief teaching, so you just go in, teach someone's class, leave at the end of the day no one even remembers your name. So that I guess that kind of cemented for me the fact that this wasn't really what I wanted in terms of being an expert in something. So I did it for five years and I think I was good at it, but I did. I wanted to try something else.
Sarah Maxwell:So you're thinking more like you're saying I want to be an expert or I want to really specialize in something. What then led you to DFAT, the Defence Force. So DFAT, for those who are not Australian, is just the way that people refer to the Defence Force. I guess what led you there?
Trudy McGowan:It's kind of. It's more like the State Department but, yes, similar to the Defence Force. Nothing really, to be honest, I didn't even know that was a thing I was teaching. I lived in Canberra, which is our government town. Everybody works for the government down there. I wanted to try something else. I went on maternity leave to have a baby. I thought I'll just look for something else. I did go into the Defence defense force, but in the civilian side, really briefly. For about a year um just worked on adult education, which is kind of an easy segue from being a teacher um. And then a contract came up in foreign affairs which I still didn't know anything about. It it was, the office was in a nicer place than defense. I thought I'd try it out. Um went in there and then kind of started to learn about what the organisation was about and it just became more and more interesting, kind of, the longer I was in there.
Sarah Maxwell:I see. So there's two different things here. So Foreign Affairs is where you're at now, like you're still at that laneway, okay. So DFAT, what does it stand for?
Trudy McGowan:Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Okay, I had that wrong the DF is not the defense force, no, no, no, it's like. Mfat is the Canadian one Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Sarah Maxwell:Oh, see, that's why you're here, 007. Okay, okay. So all the fun stuff is happening at Foreign Affairs okay, I'm back, I'm back. Yeah, so tell me a little bit about your trajectory in the roles in foreign affairs over the past 14 years, because, yeah, 14 years, it's a long time so I, when I first started there, I was in a hr systems role.
Trudy McGowan:You know like, sitting there typing away on the computer, people would ring in and say I can't submit my time sheet, or my pay is wrong, or which was cool and it was good. But I really missed, you know, the face-to-face kind of making a difference to people which teaching had given me, even though it wasn't, you know, specializing in any particular area of, except for, like you know, grade one time stables, um, but I, I was kind of, I was good, I was getting there, I was learning more about the organization and I knew that there was heaps more fun, interesting work there. So then I learnt about this kind of subject area, consular affairs. Every country in the world does it. It's where our government helps Australians who are in other countries, who get into trouble. So it can be anything from being arrested to dying, to having some paperwork, like for a marriage that doesn't work out, or they need their passport renewed, every kind of issue that a travelling or an expat would have that's not employment related, that they need some assistance for. So the assistance can just be helping with the language, or it could be really, really technical, like you know, evacuating people out of somewhere which is having a huge crisis, and we'll do lots of things for people in those kind of situations. So I heard about that work. Foreign affairs is really big on people moving within the organization. They like you to to be a generalist and try lots of things. So I moved into that area pretty much as soon as I could and essentially I've been there ever since, so that that's been quite a long time.
Sarah Maxwell:Was it competitive to get those roles?
Trudy McGowan:Yeah, it was a little bit competitive, but I was going for a role in that area in Canberra. So you know, I started my role in the headquarters and then, once I'd learned about the trade, I wanted to do it overseas. So the overseas parts are very competitive. Everybody wants to go overseas.
Sarah Maxwell:And did you have a vision of, like you say, going overseas, or do you even have one now of the different, the exact spot you want to be within the organization?
Trudy McGowan:It's funny, no, and I find long-term planning really difficult. My sister will say what are you doing at Christmas time next year? And I'll say I don't even know. I've been three weeks because it's the nature of the work, it's responsive. Um, you know, I'll think I'm.
Trudy McGowan:I mean, I thought maybe at one point I was going to miss out on the Larapinta track because stuff that was going on in the time, but, um, no, I and I never had in my mind Bangkok or Dubai.
Trudy McGowan:To be honest, I, I just I knew I wanted to do the work overseas, but I didn't know where. And it's not easy to predict the roles that are going to come up, because obviously someone's in the role, they have it for four years, then they come home and that role is up to for someone to replace them. But then in the meantime, you know, sometimes people don't like it, so they come home early or they get sick or something happens. So then the timing that you thought that you were going for is not the same, or someone else has been promised that job or you know something's happened. So it's it's really quite hard to predict and I, in a way, I kind of love that I don't know. Oh, I, with my team the other day, I did some personality um testing and we did some some branch planning and my personality type, I realized, is someone that doesn't really like to have a plan which I was just going to ask you about this quality in you.
Sarah Maxwell:When you said it's very responsive, I felt that that, by what you're sharing with us, really would appeal to your personality trait. So what else would you say in your skill set has ended up being really useful in your 007 life.
Trudy McGowan:It might sound silly, but just being a normal person, being human, being authentic, having real emotions, being able to tap into those when you need to and control them when you have to.
Trudy McGowan:But at the end of the day, the job is and and it's not very, it's not dissimilar to being a teacher. In that sense it's all about people and getting on with people, whether that person is the, the, you know, the family member of someone who's died that you're looking after, or the funeral director that you're trying to convince to, you know, let you have, um, you know, some special treatment for your, for your australian family, because you want them to have the least trauma possible. Or you know any, a bureaucrat in another country, a prison guard everyone you're dealing with in your life is, is another person, and, and when you as even dealing overseas you, you realize really quickly we people are more the same than they are different. So being able to be a real, true, authentic person and and use your personality for good, I guess, is probably what the biggest skill that I have and I definitely refined that and developed that a lot as a teacher it's interesting to me because I always think about like a CV.
Sarah Maxwell:When you have to, you know, find all the fancy words to say your qualities, how do you I mean, I think now you know people know about you, so you get referred, and things like that but how does a person even put that on their CVs? What would you say, trudy?
Trudy McGowan:Well, there's there's a lot of. There's a lot of ways that you can. You can use professional kind of lingo, things like I've got a wide and deep network of contacts which I leverage to benefit the Commonwealth things. That that's something that I would definitely put on there, and all that means is I know heaps of people and I know how to make them do what I want in terms of to get good things for Aussies, you know yeah great.
Trudy McGowan:And, yeah, ability to talk to all levels of stakeholders, you know, from junior to senior, and disparate stakeholders, ones that don't necessarily agree. That's a good word, disparate stakeholders, ones that don't necessarily agree um, that's a good word disparate, exactly. Um leadership. Now a lot of people talk about authentic leadership and being yourself, and so you can really kind of tap into that language. Um all this? Every single time I read something about authentic human leadership, it's just describing people who are not assholes, I guess. Are you allowed to swear?
Sarah Maxwell:Yes, because that's what makes you real and why people can relate to you, and I think all of the you make a good point. Actually, it's almost like the world is catching up with your skill set and starting to value it. I'm sure there's been people who have done your role in the past who maybe didn't have your ability to gain trust in the way that you seem capable of in such a short amount of time. I don't know. I'm trying to see if this question's the same around trust, but what did you become aware about yourself? That and maybe you weren't holding anything back, but that you might have been holding back from the person that you wanted to become in your career? Did you ever have that moment Like wait, I know I could be doing more, I know I could be a little bit better at this. Was there anything within you?
Trudy McGowan:that was holding you back.
Trudy McGowan:I think the older I've gotten and the more experienced I've gotten in the role, the more I've learned to trust myself.
Trudy McGowan:So I think when I was younger maybe I was trying to pretend to be a professional or pretend to be someone who had good relationships, or pretend to be what I thought a grown-up person at work would be. And honestly I see that in junior managers that I manage all the time and I will say to them don't try to pretend to be what you think a manager is. Just be you and you'll be a great manager. And so the more that I've kind of come to terms with that, the better I've gotten and the more I've trusted myself and even the ability to like I'm good at what I do. I know I'm good at what I do. The government's given me medals, but it takes a long time to be able to say that I think maybe that's a woman thing, maybe that's an imposter syndrome thing, but I think it's only been in the last two or three years I've actually been able to like look at you straight down this camera and say I am good at what I do.
Sarah Maxwell:Yeah, well said. That's a good point actually, because I think age is really helpful, like, like experience.
Trudy McGowan:But you're right, it's like even being able to hear your bio or hear an intro and breathe it in, instead of make a joke about it or or try to dismiss it well and I don't always have it like and especially now because I'm starting to let people asking me to speak and, um you know, share, which which is a whole new facet of this career that I'm really starting to enjoy um, teaching other people and sharing the knowledge and, um you know making I need to make other people believe in themselves, so when I'm not doing this job anymore, other people can do it too. I never thought that was something that I would like and I avoided being promoted for a long time because I wanted to stay hands-on and I knew that being promoted would mean that I would be telling someone else how to do it. But I'm learning a lot through that, and if you're going to mentor someone or tell someone how to do it, they really need to see that you trust, that you're good at it yourself. People don't want to learn from someone who's not confident.
Trudy McGowan:And then the same thing if I'm sitting next to someone who's been arrested overseas and they're terrified and I say, yeah, I'm not really good at this job, I don't really know what I'm doing. That's not what they need, and so I was doing the fake it till you make it for a little while, you know and I would sit in a situation like that. Sometimes I'd be scared too, but I would pretend that I had it all under control. Yep, I know what's going to happen here. This is where how that path is going to go. Next, we're going to see this person and that person, and this is what you know. Actually, I'm telling the truth, I do know what I'm doing and I do know what I'm talking about, and that's how I've managed to get to the point where I can make clients and stakeholders disparate ones even trust me.
Sarah Maxwell:Well said, actually, and I think, because what you do is so unpredictable, it's amazing to watch how your own ability to trust yourself matters. Yeah, because then they're looking to you like, can I trust you, can I trust us? Um, which sounds pretty crucial. So, look, you get to. You know, like you said, being asked to share some of the stories, we love a little glimpse of some of the rescue missions you've been on. You know, taking into consideration, you know not well, we like, we want you to say all of it, but you know, we understand, but 2020 alone was a huge year for you, and can you share what you were even tasked on in that year alone? Yeah, sure.
Trudy McGowan:So 2020 was was huge. I mean, I was living in Dubai with my family and we were in the middle of COVID, like everyone else was. So we were locked down. My kids were doing school from home, my husband was working from home, we were working out of the consulate in Dubai and we were doing I was doing repatriation. So we were helping families in the UAE who needed to get home, working with airlines who I'd been working with for a long time and putting on charter flights and things like that and getting them back.
Trudy McGowan:Then in August there was that big port blast that happened in Lebanon and typically we have a lot of Australians in Lebanon so we thought we would have a lot of people to help. So I went into that situation about six hours after the blast happened to go and help our crew at the embassy there. About six hours after the blast happened, to go and help our crew at the embassy there. We spent four weeks there helping Australians get home. Also, in the middle of COVID was tricky, like you can't get home unless there's a place for you in quarantine, and we were. I don't know, probably no one remembers now, but we had some really tight flight caps. Some days we had an Emirates flight which could seat 300 people, but Australia would only let seven or eight people on that flight come into the country. So we were really working hard in a in a city that had been, you know, destroyed. There was already things going on lebanon, electricity shortages, you know a lot of stuff happening all the time bit of civil unrest and some really unsafe parts of of that, as well as people who'd been really badly affected by covid. And then now this blast where a lot of who had been really badly affected by COVID and then now this blast where a lot of people had been killed, and so I worked in there for four weeks getting people home and then from there we got to a really good kind of rhythm with the airline.
Trudy McGowan:So I ended up managing a triage of all of the Australians from all over the world which at that time was about 10,000, who were stuck overseas and not able to get home through COVID. So you know people would contact us in all of our different embassies around the world to say things that you know they were sick or their families were sick. So we were trying to put those people on flight. So all working from home because the consulate was closed because of COVID. I would, you know, get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and work all day through this huge spreadsheet and talk to the airlines and talk to my colleagues in other embassies, and often I'd work till midnight or so.
Trudy McGowan:When you're working from home, there's kind of no barrier between the work and home. So, you know, and especially when you're helping people with something that's so tough, wanting to be desperately home to see a sick relative or a dying one or something it's then called to go to another mission in the Middle East to go and pick someone up who'd been released from a pretty bad situation they were in. And then I so I went and looked after this person and then went back, took them back home to Australia, which was dangerous and stressful, and that person was, of course, very grateful to be home and then, because it was COVID, ended up doing quarantine with the person and, oh my gosh.
Sarah Maxwell:Then I'm sure not many people could say that, because that's such a unique situation to have to quarantine, not have to, but to get to quarantine. I don't know how we say that yeah, yeah, 100%, wow, okay.
Trudy McGowan:And then came back to uh, came back to Dubai and then continued with, with doing the list and that list of people getting home went well into the next year. So that was a long, long, long piece of work. We did get 10,000 Australians home through that kind of avenue of using the airlines and, like I said, some days the airlines would get three seats and we would feel lucky because the day before we only got two. So that was hard, hard work and a very different experience of COVID than some of my friends and counterparts in Australia, like even you have had a pretty different experience of COVID to what I had. So that was, that was an intense she's bitter at me.
Sarah Maxwell:She's bitter at me for my experience of COVID, so we won't talk about that one. But good, it's a good point. Actually were again in the rescuing portion of it, whereas other people were saying things like, wow, it's so great not to have to go to work every day and I can go on my walks. I mean, this is not what you're talking about.
Trudy McGowan:This was not Well yeah, I mean it would have been, I guess, nice not to have to go to work every day, but we still had to travel and do those kind of things in the middle of COVID, which was tricky, you know, having COVID often. We were having COVID tests every single day and sometimes having COVID tests by people who I really don't think we're experts in that. I, when we flew into the Lebanon blast, I had a team of people with me and they had they realized they needed to COVID test us on arrival, I think they just grabbed baggage handlers and gave them those little nose buds and that was a very violent COVID test we had that day. But even, yeah, just travelling all through that when the world was really uncertain about what was happening. I was in Israel on a different trip, like a planning trip, way before this Israel situation, right at the beginning of COVID, and we ended up having to leave early because they were about to shut the international borders. So a different experience to people who are in Australia, that's for sure.
Sarah Maxwell:You got me thinking about how you go into these uncertain environments, like when you're thinking, like you were discussing that, picking someone up in the Middle East. So things are so uncertain, how do or COVID even the uncertainties around? How do you create a level of certainty through your presence that has someone feel quote unquote safe enough to travel back with you? What do you think in you? What do you do?
Trudy McGowan:So a lot of it is about that trust and about confidence and about being genuine. So a big part of it is is being Australian. Right, I'm Australian diplomat, I'm coming to get an Australian person, so you know I always say g'day when I first meet them, like that's one of the most important things. Um, and sometimes I'm doing this job alongside Americans, or British or Canadians, whatever. So that makes it even more important to be Australian, and it comes across quite quickly the way that I'm able to bond with, with my uh citizens in a different way to you know, especially Americans. Sometimes they take it really. You know they're very, very serious and you know they're there to represent the president and blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, oh, hey, mate, let's go home, let's take you back to your mom and dad. You know, it's just I.
Trudy McGowan:I think, while it doesn't seem like what you were saying before, things, things you would write on your CV just being a good person, trying to empathise with how people would feel, having dealt with other people in these situations before, and just trying to do the right thing by people and do what you say you're going to do. So I don't ever promise. Yeah, absolutely, we can get on the next flight back if I know there's not flights for three days. Or look, no, no, you don't have to have seven really painful vaccinations. I'll say, yeah, you do, and, but I'm going to sit here with you and we're going to do them one at a time and if you get tired halfway through we'll stop.
Sarah Maxwell:You know I just I want to be a trusted person, so I make sure that I'm trustworthy and the things that I say come true yeah, that's, you know, in that visual, when you're comparing different nations, I was thinking about how you know that example of someone coming in really stiff, you know trying to impress versus someone coming in human and, and I think about even how it feels like at school we're taught that the stiff one is the way to go, when really what I'm hearing from you is actually it goes a long way to human to human, that actually is very successful.
Trudy McGowan:It also comes with experience and confidence as well. So I think when I was younger and less experienced, I was doing that thing where I was pretending and I thought that being serious and stiff was the way to pretend to be a professional. And I think you see this in management in big corporations and when you get to meet the CEO, they're normally like just a normal person. It's the people in the middle who can be those you know hard to get along with, very painful. It's the same with dealing with ministers. Normally the minister themselves is great, it's just the staffers who work for them who can be pains.
Trudy McGowan:So yeah, americans sometimes tend to not ever lose their stiffness, but I mean that that's also kind of the way that they're expected to work in that in their country and obviously they've got a lot more levels of hierarchy. That's another advantage to being australian. The path from me to the prime minister is, you know, only about 10 people. I mean obviously 10 levels, not just 10 people, but but because we're a small country and we're able to, you know it gives us the ability to be kind of agile and do really good work, and part of my job is being able to make decisions on the ground, and I know, because I'm backed up by good, confident people, that if I make a decision that's the wrong one. If I did it with the right information that I had at hand at the time, then they'll back me up too. If I did it with the right information that I had at hand at the time, then they'll back me up too.
Sarah Maxwell:Good point about interesting. It's like a trust conversation because you're trusted, so you're trusting, so you trust like it's all elements. It's like an active word, isn't it?
Trudy McGowan:And then what? You see? That when you're managing people, if you don't trust them, then they're not trustworthy. It's just like a really bad circle.
Sarah Maxwell:Yeah, it's so interesting. Well, you mentioned, like if you make a mistake or something goes wrong, describe a moment or some moments where you felt challenged in your career.
Trudy McGowan:I think when you're dealing in high-threat environments where the security situation is unpredictable, it's often that you plan as much as you possibly can and you have security people and advisors to tell you how it's going to be. But it's often the thing that you didn't plan for that goes wrong. So that can be a moment where you're thinking, okay, I had X, y, z covered, but I didn't expect M to come and get me. So you know, that's like totally from the side. So that can be challenging and and even just dealing with your own like sense of internal failure like oh gosh, why didn't I see that coming? So I think psychologically I found that a bit challenging and but but in the experience, getting older, having done it more, you kind of learn to go okay, well, that something is going to go wrong. I'm just, I just need to be prepared for it. Um, and I think it's kind of learn to go okay, well, something is going to go wrong, I just need to be prepared for it.
Trudy McGowan:And I think it's kind of like what I think about in raising my kids. I can't teach them the answer to every single question, but if I teach them the right tools and the right ways to make decisions, then I hopefully can be confident that, when I'm not there, that they're making the right ones. And I think you just have to back yourself up and I'm a real statistical person Like I I I like to think about you know, if I've made one wrong decision, I try and think. Well, up until my career now I probably made 2000 right decisions. So one decision as long as no one died, we should be all right.
Sarah Maxwell:Good barometer, yeah, and I mean you work really hard, like even you described 2020, but I mean you're like flying in, flying out these days. You, you're working out of state on the regular, so there has to be something really fulfilling for you in what you do. What is it?
Trudy McGowan:I, I love it, I absolutely love it. A part of it is that thing that I always wanted to have, which is being the specialist. I love it that I get asked. When someone rings up and says, I just want your advice on this question, that is like makes my fingers tingle. I love that question, so I love that, but I love the human. It's everything I kind of was seeking. I love the human side of it. It's so rewarding, it's. It's important enough that often the things I'm working on are in the news. I mean not what I'm doing, necessarily, but the issues that we're working on. It's it feels like it's at the pointy end of government and we're making a real difference and I genuinely believe that my organization is good and we do things for the right reasons. So I mean, sometimes I think getting paid is the bonus. You know like, oh, I got paid again this week. I probably would have done this job for free.
Sarah Maxwell:I know we won't tell them that, but yeah, please don't, we won't air it to them. You have a 17 year old daughter and I know that you see firsthand the challenges. You know that they're facing mental, emotionally, about what they want to do with their life. So you have a lot of lived experience now. So if you were talking to young women so even like 17 year olds, like your daughter, but even 25 year old women, you know they're wondering how to navigate their careers what would you say to them?
Trudy McGowan:Don't say no to opportunities and don't box yourself in by thinking that everything has to be the way you expected it to be. Embrace ambiguity. Embrace unpredictability. Look at lots of different things. If something doesn't feel right, don't stay there for too long. Have the courage to try something else and then don't worry if the new thing you try turns out to be crappy or not what you want it to be. But I just think it's.
Trudy McGowan:I never could have predicted that this I didn't know this was a job. I didn't even know that foreign affairs was an organisation. I certainly didn't know that I fit in there. And even now sometimes I look at myself and I'm not like most of the other people who work in my organisation. They're all doing different jobs to me. They're experts in writing, foreign policy or trade negotiations.
Trudy McGowan:It's very, very different to the kind of human side, but I think you have to have a belief that good, human, good kind of soft skills can take you anywhere. So if you have a really good basis of that and then you work on whatever specialty it is that you need to have that, and then you work on whatever specialty it is that you need have um, I have, I have some specialist skills that are not human ones, but it's mostly just about processes and things that that I've done a lot of times before and knowing how things work. Um, but if, if you want to do something special, just don't close your mind off to the way that that something special might come, because it might be in a way that you're not expecting.
Sarah Maxwell:Boom. I love how you talk about soft skills. Like that I think we almost need to change the name because, as we can see through your career, how valuable they were. And I even love how you mentioned in foreign affairs you didn't even know about foreign affairs but then, once you were in there, this idea of, like consular affairs, like you didn't even realise the extent of what was possible once you got in there. So I love that message of embracing the ambiguity and the uncertainty and I mean you're a testament to that. So, trudy, I really want to thank you for your generosity, because I quickly mentioned how busy you are, but yeah, you're flying back and forth, you're about to step on a plane to Bangkok. Life is full and I really appreciate your willingness to inspire the next generation of women to what's possible in a career. I really appreciate your time today.
Trudy McGowan:Thank you, it's been awesome. I loved it.
Sarah Maxwell:Thank you for joining us on another episode of In the Game Podcast. We hope we have inspired you with these real lived experiences of incredible women navigating their careers their way. We are all about sharing around here, so if you know someone who would benefit from listening to this podcast or this show in general, do it now and share the love. Pressing follow on the pod makes a massive difference. Taking two minutes to rate us for season seven means that more people will get to hear these stories, which will widen the impact. Join us next time for more captivating stories of female trailblazers who are leaving behind clues for that next generation of women and girls.