By Kema Rajandran, APSM Journalist
According to Marnie Tisot, Transport Security Inspector at the Department of Infrastructure and Transport, relationships make or break ideas, projects and even businesses.
With an academic background in behavioural analysis, psycholinguistic analysis, micro expressions and human skills, she attributes success to understanding people and building and maintaining effective relationships.
Her interest and professional development in human skills has helped in many situations over the course of her career such as getting to the heart of stakeholder issues.
“The key things I’ve learned from human skills training are that firstly there is a hard science behind it that everyone can use to improve, secondly that if you practice you really will see a difference, and thirdly that you need to be ethical in your motivations,” she said.
She alludes that people will eventually see through manipulation and recommends that people should understand human interaction to help achieve the end goal.
“I’ve seen so many people with brilliant technical abilities work twice as hard to get things done because they struggle to understand other people, and I’ve seen people with more limited technical skills have enormous influence because of their people skills.”
Tisot’s career took a turning point in 2006 when she was faced with the challenge of influencing a diverse industry, spanning road, rail, sea and air.
She realised that as a government representative she would not achieve much by trying to tell industry what to do. So she developed an initiative called Industry Leading Industry that empowered businesses to be best practice leaders in workforce management.
“This piece of work will always stand out for me as it taught me the value of positioning my work and demonstrating its value within the broader business context. It also taught me that if you simply tell people what to do you will only ever achieve the minimum; lead and motivate them and you will see the exceptional.”
In 2010, Tisot received the award for the Young Professional of the Year CILTA (Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport) Queensland in recognition of her work with the Queensland Government to build workforce capability in the transport, logistics and supply chain industry in Queensland.
Given the opportunity to partner with industry to develop innovative and sustainable solutions to the skills and labour shortages that it was facing, the initiative she was involved in was so successful that in 2008 the model for industry engagement was adopted nationally by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).
“This role taught me the value of partnerships and the difference that true collaboration can make, and I received the award in recognition of my enthusiasm and willingness to go above and beyond to achieve results for both government and industry.”
Speaking against the stereotype of being ‘big and strong’ to be in the security industry, Tisot puts value on good judgement and interpersonal skills and encourages more women to join the security industry.
“Research shows that organisations with good gender diversity are actually more productive and profitable. I always remember Maureen Frank, one of Australia’s pre-eminent experts in gender diversity describing it as ‘the magic of the mix’.”
A fairly new entrant to the security industry, Tisot views her background in human resource management as positive, giving her a unique perspective on her current pathway.
“Understanding people and organisations is a very transferrable skill, for instance you can have the best systems and processes in place but if you are experiencing things like high turnover and poor workplace culture then you will find it very difficult to achieve robust security outcomes.”
However she does not take this for granted and is a big believer in life long education. With the security industry interfacing with so many other industries that are sensitive to change Tisot believes that we can never afford to stop educating ourselves.
“For me this can take on many forms such as coaching, mentoring, job rotation and project work. I’m never satisfied with just one type of learning!
“As women we can sometimes suffer from a lack of confidence and hold ourselves back from pursuing what it is we really want. In my experience you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by trying – the times I’ve been successful have far overshadowed the times I haven’t been, and in every case I’ve been glad that I went for it.”
