INSPIRATIONAL LEADERS – LEADING BY GIVING
Catherine and Hayden Bell provide leadership training and coaching in Australia through their company, Inspiration Leaders. They also support B1G1 through their online, onsite, and international training programs, where a portion of their fee goes to education projects for communities in need, in Australia and overseas.
Catherine recalls a training session at a large logistics and warehousing company with a room full of senior leaders – all men, all tough-looking and all quite reserved in the training.“As usual, at the end of the day I thanked them for their business and told them that because we’re business partners with B1G1, it meant that an Indigenous Trainer in a remote region of Australia would be supported in their work for a month, thanks to them. After a stunned silence, they burst into a round of spontaneous applause and several came up after the session to shake my hand and say thank you and find out more!”
It's amazing that the impact that giving can have, even for the customers who you would least expect to care. It really showed me - if you give people the chance, everyone cares about helping others.
The company was looking for a way to build a more effective giving program into their new business model when Catherine heard B1G1 Chairman Paul Dunn speak at an event in Melbourne. Hayden Bell said it was a turning point for them: “Instantly we knew that B1G1 was the answer we were looking for. Giving is a central part of our business and we’ve seen how B1G1 makes it so easy and accessible for us to participate.”
At Inspiration Leaders they use B1G1 transaction-based giving to support a number of children around the world. “The giving we do through our training products is impact-based,” Catherine told us, “And that’s our favourite part of the business month – sitting down and choosing the worthwhile causes to support through our Global Giving Partner, B1G1.”
They’re helping local trainers to teach information technology and English in remote Australian communities, buying school supplies for children in South East Asia and Tibet, supporting a school in Pakistan, and providing adult education and business training for women in India.
On their website, Hayden and Catherine posted an inspirational quote from the great Scottish novelist John Buchan:
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
It occurred to us that Sir John might have had an inkling into the B1G1 philosophy as well.