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Using the guiding lens of the Stronger Smarter Approach, Masterclasses provide the deeper learning to work with the complex challenges you may find in your schools and organisations.
From Principles to Practice: Designing strengths-based policy that acutally works
Overview
Designing Policy that Strengthens Humanity, Capability and Hope.
Well intentioned policy can still fail when it overlooks the lived realities, identities and agency of the people it is meant to serve.
This workshop will introduce you to the concept of the Concrete Universal – a way of understanding how shared human dignity and individual lived experience interact in shaping policy outcomes.
Through reflection, discussion, and practical exercises, you will explore how policy can either undermine or strengthen the humanity of the people it targets. Moving from theory to practice, you will explore a framework for designing strengths-based policy grounded in High-Expectations Relationships.
Course Outcomes
By the end of this workshop you will be able to:
- Explain the concept of the Concrete Universal and its relevance to public policy design.
- Recognise how assumptions about identity, culture, and difference influence policy choices and outcomes.
- Identify policy approaches that undermine the humanity and agency of the people they are intended to serve.
- Distinguish clearly between deficit-based policy design and strengths-based policy design.
- Analyse real policy examples using the First Nations Policy Matrix and identify underlying leadership postures.
- Apply practical principles that support High-Expectations Relationships in policy and program design.
- Return to your workplace with a practical lens for designing policy that builds capability, hope, and shared accountability.
Who Should Attend
These Intensives are designed for public servants and practitioners working across government, not‑for‑profit organisations, land councils and community‑based organisations who are shaping policy, programs and services.
This course is ideal for leaders, managers and practitioners working in complex, high‑stakes environments where relationships matter most. If your work focuses on, or directly affects, First Nations peoples, multicultural communities, people with disability, or communities facing systemic and structural inequity, this course will support you to work with greater confidence and impact.
Facilitator
Dr Chris Sarra is a nationally respected Indigenous education leader, public sector executive and the Founder of the Stronger Smarter Institute. A former Director General in the Queensland Government, Dr Sarra brings over three decades of experience working across community leadership, education reform and government policy.
His work demonstrates how strengths-based leadership and High-Expectations Relationships can transform outcomes in complex systems. This workshop is grounded not only in scholarship, but in Dr Sarra’s lived experience navigating and challenging policy from inside government and alongside communities.
Topics Covered
Topics covered include:
- Why well-intentioned policy often fails to create meaningful change.
- Understanding identity, culture and context in policy design.
- The Concrete Universal: shared humanity and lived experience.
- Deficit based vs strengths-based policy frameworks.
- How policy can undermine or strengthen human agency.
- Leadership postures embedded in policy decisions.
- Applying the First Nations Policy Matrix to real policy examples.
- Designing policy that builds capability, accountability and hope.
- Translating theory into practical, actionable policy decisions.