i can’t believe it. semester is over, i’ve submitted my second assignment. it was due yesterday and i got it in at 12.45 this morning. less than an hour late, that’s pretty incredible for me. i was given less than two weeks for it, right after putting in another one in exactly two weeks. did he think the problem had disappeared because i came through once? well i guess this makes it nearly-twice, though it’s pretty substandard for an essay. i’m hoping he accepts it as an experiment, project or case study, especially since i’ve included my draft objects and rules as… what, supporting evidence? writing that was the reason i couldn’t spend time on this, oh, apart from formwork being laid for a concrete path outside my window on my last day to work on it, with no warning… so i hope he appreciates it even though i’ve given him a big rant with not nearly the referencing i expect of myself. or the coherence, and i know i’ve often put in work that just didn’t have time to be put together. oh, and it’s totally unedited. i think a majority of the text was actually written between about 10pm and 12.45am, and i’m not one of those people who can rely on that kind of thing. and i had an 8am meeting in the city this morning. so i’m very glad i’m generally pretty literate. it shouldn’t be massacred too much as i did employ my usual colour coding system to mark paragraphs which have some kind of start, finish and idea. by the time i clicked send, all i had was blue text so i’m hoping my running categorisation was at least slightly accurate. i doubt i’ll be able to read it again to find out, but it’s here just in case. as for the actual content… it’s been a very interesting exercise, but i’m not actually going to stand by what i’ve said too heavily. at least not unless i’m forced to actually read the thing and find out what i’ve said! i’m doing that nice turn where one writes in a blog things that should probably remain private – there are two people mentioned specifically and i’ve edited out the name of the one who isn’t me, but it’s not hard to tell who i’m talking about if you know the organisation. in painting the situation with a broad brush i suspect i’ve been overly harsh or at least rude to him, and in examining the situation from the perspective of what i personally can contribute i suspect i’ve exagerated my own competence. whatever my misgivings, this is my archive of essays so i’m posting it, in the assumption that nothing bad will come of it, as why would anyone want to read it if i can’t even manage to? but hah! turns out it’s within 10% of word count and i didn’t even check. had to do something right, somewhere…

Leadership in Sydney Atheists Incorporated

Sydney Atheist Action Group was formed a year and a half ago in April 2008, by members of a non-political discussion group, the Atheist Meetup, who wanted to do something beyond the scope of that group. Initially the Action Group consisted of a collective structure along with eight collective working groups which dealt with various projects and functions identified by the members in the first meeting.

Soon one member, A., was proposing structures, setting agendas, chairing collective meetings and doing a large proportion of the talking, while putting a particular viewpoint, “Positive Atheism”; encouraging working groups to set targets and report to the main collective.

In July 2008 came the group’s first big challenge and chance for exposure, responding to a papal visit and the NSW government’s corresponding financial and planning indiscretions. Priority was focused heavily on the world youth day and tshirts working groups, to the exclusion of most others. The plan was ambitious for a fledgling group, now rebranded as Sydney Atheists, including poll posters, a picnic, a small ‘greeting’ protest, and involvement in the large No To Pope protest, with a big banner and several people wearing Sydney Atheists tshirts. Overall people were very pleased with the events and the response, which supported a much grander view of the small organisation, in line with the new name and A.’s vision. A. was solidified as a leader due to guiding the planning process, much work, and being listed as the contact person and therefore being interviewed several times.

In September 2008, in line with this vision, Sydney Atheists incorporated. The organisation gained a committee structure, a legal status, a post box, restructured subcommittees run by officebearers, A. as president, and tensions over transparency, control and purpose. A. and a few others took care of the paperwork and legal aspects, a few points were hashed out in big acrimonious meetings and others were glossed over in order to meet deadlines. An executive was formed, with many office bearer positions tailored to specific candidates. Elections therefore went smoothly despite opposition to the previous process.

In the next year there were many achievements, from a stall at the Newtown Festival, a Mardi Gras float and progress on getting philosophy classes into NSW schools, to regular social events and podcasts and maintaining a functional website. Yet division was solidifying within the committee, as it began to appear that four people were running the organisation without the support of the rest of the active membership. Several members were concerned about accessibility and transparency issues, ranging from loss of membership forms and lack of minutes to closed meetings, and an assortment of questions regarding purpose and direction. A member was castigated for being aggressive while wearing a Sydney Atheists tshirt, and the president tried to install a manifesto which not only took an unpopular position, but was seen by many as inappropriate for an atheist organisation, regardless of popularity. Suspicion grew and people were attacked on all sides; in part, A.’s style was simply incompatible with the activists. His initiating of structure was seen as far too directive for a voluntary organisation full of people who wish to lead change themselves and not just follow. There were many attempts to resolve misunderstandings and come to compromises, but suspicion only increased and aggression became more vocal online, while both committee and subcommittee attendance decreased.

Currently, Sydney Atheists runs mainly through an email list, a website, monthly meetings and irregular subcommittee meetings, and unofficially through Meetup events. Most productive work is at a halt, with the latest people doing work on the education subcommittee dropping out without handovers, and the IT subcommittee overloaded and underattended. Most members of the structured committee have resigned or dropped out of communication, and while people are still confused about that structure, monthly committee meetings, scheduled two hours prior to Meetup events, are now running with acceptable attendance under the assumption that any interested person is equally entitled to attend, participate and vote. The current participants are heavily drawn from those who were involved in subgroup work and the discussions dissenting to the structure. Meetings and email discussion are now both largely calm and productive, though not all tasks required are committed to, or enforced.

The organisation seems to be cohering due to a more ideologically homogenous group remaining motivated to be active at the present time, in the wake of several resignations. In September 2009 A. announced his intention to resign as president, followed rapidly by the other office bearers. Online argument died down and meetings began to be held and attended. The first AGM was set for November, and productive discussion began on how to change the structure beforehand, to make the organisation more workable. The period between the resignations and the annual general meeting was acknowledged as important for the next stage of the organisation. After two well-attended, calm and productive committee meetings in September and October, there seemed to be a sense among attendees that there was a chance to make changes which could be ratified properly at the AGM, leading into a stable new year. People volunteered to make changes to the Objects and Rules of the organisation, and to give notice of the AGM. However lapses still existed in allocating and monitoring tasks, and after a while all discussion stopped. The pre-AGM meetings were not organised and a draft revised Objects and Rules was not written by the deadline for posting notice of AGM business.

In November 2009, the AGM was rescheduled for December and the conditions were finally met correctly, including a final draft revision being submitted for ratification. Several trenchant problems appear to have been resolved since one group ceded control to the other, though the effects of the latter’s leadership have not yet been well tested. Considering what can be anticipated from the organisation’s entire history, however, there is still much to do. If they are accepted, the revised Objects and Rules should take significant steps to providing an acceptable sense of purpose that is concrete enough for everyone to grasp, and address all identified transparency and accessibility issues.

Beyond that, the group needs to articulate whether it leans towards educating non-atheists or creating atheist community internally; in a group so similar to a social movement, these distinctions are not obvious (West 2008). It will need to examine motivations for involvement and ensure enough people see benefits which are high enough to cancel out their costs of involvement, despite having just abolished yet another personal benefit – the power and status of gaining an office bearer position. As we cut the position of President, the lack of an hierarchical leader becomes even clearer. The group must become open to emergent leadership and shared leadership (Carte, Chidambaram & Becker 2006), and it has some access to common forms of leadership substitutes; subcommittees can work like teams in some respects, members are commonly highly educated and interested in self education, and a strong use of technology allows information to be shared and decisions made over a broader base (Howell et al. 1990).

My involvement in Sydney Atheists has been varied. I started the Action Group by cultivating members and setting up email groups, putting opinions and sharing visions, calling meetings, chairing them and setting their agendas. I stepped away when A. took over, I had no expertise in the style of organisation he was establishing and, as Oliver (Oliver 1984) would suggest, the benefits no longer balanced out the costs since my work was no longer essential. I stopped attending committee meetings in pubs unless I had been specifically requested to, and concentrated instead on the working groups in which I had a particular interest; the survey group was working on a project I’ve had in mind for many years and the education group concerns issues I work with and study. I also initiated the 2009 Sydney Atheists Mardi Gras Bus Campaign float, and found a partner to help me run it. Throughout, I kept in touch with other members who shared my views, waiting for an opportunity to make changes without tearing down any good things that the current leaders were doing.

I was overseas when internal conflict started getting severe, but I was in contact with several people about the situation and when I returned I resumed active involvement. I participated in email discussions, between attempting to mediate the conflict a little and more encouraging the dissenters to align and take action. I attended all committee meetings, the first of which dealt with the resignations. I had plenty to say and supported others but didn’t take on any specific tasks. A week before the AGM was set, I realised that the legal notice had not gone out and it was too late to call the meeting for the date we had agreed on, much less nominate for positions or give notice for an agenda item. There had been no word from the people who took responsibility for policy or notices, so I alerted the email list with all the details I could find, and sat down with the Objects and Rules to make my own draft revision, which I made available as soon as possible. While absolutely no discussion of the document appeared online, I kept prompting the correspondence until the timeslot that we planned to have the AGM became a committee meeting primarily for review of the document, and the AGM was bumped back to the first date that I understood would be legal if the notice went out on the day we met.

I consider revising the Objects and Rules to be an important instance of leadership as people have been trying hard to follow them, but their density was a barrier (Oliver 1984) to involvement for many people unfamiliar with legal documents. Doing the actual work of writing of the revision was also important, as it appears the job was a sticking point, preventing progress.

The new version is written in plain English in many important places, though not everywhere. I intend to adjust even more, and offer a third version if necessary, at next year’s AGM. I have changed the vision statement to something more directed to what I believe the current active members want, including references to atheism and activism, both of which were specifically omitted from the original. I have abolished all office bearer positions except for Secretary and Treasurer, leaving leadership of different projects in the hands of the relevant subcommittee. I have made it easier to join the organisation, and based committee membership on meeting attendance, like a collective. In short, I have made the organisation’s purpose more specific, and opened up the structure so people can participate more easily while discouraging those who seek to control power or gain personal prestige.

At the pre-AGM committee meeting on November 22, I chaired the meeting. Over four hours, about ten people went through the document step by step and ended up with a draft revision we were all pleased with. Thanks to wireless internet, we put also put out acceptable official notices immediately. When we were done I took the document home to check, edit, format and make non-substantive changes that no one had wanted to linger over. It is posted on the website with three weeks before the AGM for members to read it and suggest small amendments. One has already been made. Considering that ten people were happy with the revision, which is well above our quorum requirements, I expect the revision to be ratified on November 14.

Other than working with documents, I believe I can show leadership in discussing direction, cultivating ties and ensuring I am informed enough to be able to step in as needed. I expect to continue keeping in touch with active members so that I am in a position to check up on undertakings being kept; also with the people who have moved away from the organisation over its troubles, to try to encourage them back now there is more room for them, while monitoring the membership to ensure that the cohesion we have recently achieved is not actually reliant on exclusivity. I also wish to educate myself about association rules and the incorporation act so we do not need to rely on A.’s expertise as much as we did, while still taking him up on his offer to explain the formalities. I intend to encourage making ties to other communities and demographics, not just through cooperation with established groups, but starting UTS Atheists and a Queeredge movement, supporting the fledgling Australian University Atheists, establishing Sydney Queer Atheists which hasn’t done anything since Mardi Gras 2009, and restarting work on a public survey of atheist self-identification. Each project has its own timeline, but will all benefit Sydney Atheists, helping the organisation and the atheist community in general become a more diverse and political. A final issue on which I feel I will have to wait for the right opportunity to rectify, is the lack of distinction between Sydney Atheists and the Atheist Meetup in the eyes of many, members and strangers alike.

Carte, T.A., Chidambaram, L. & Becker, A. 2006, ‘Emergent leadership in self-managed virtual teams’, Group Decision and Negotiation, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 323-343.

Howell, J.P., Bowen, D.E., Dorfman, P.W., Kerr, S. & Podsakoff, P.M. 1990, ‘Substitutes for leadership: Effective alternatives to ineffective leadership’, Organizational Dynamics, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 20-39.

Oliver, P. 1984, ‘”If You Don’t Do it, Nobody Else Will”: Active and Token Contributors to Local Collective Action’, American Sociological Review, vol. 49, no. 5, pp. 601 – 610.

West, D. 2008, ‘Informal public leadership: the case of social movements’, in P. Hart & J. Uhr (eds), Public Leadership: Perspectives and Practices, ANU E Press, Canberra, pp. 133 – 144.

i’ve been working on that essay for so long, and trying to restrain non-essential writing like this. i’ll have to write something else in short order, but i have a reprieve as i wait for an answer from my lecturer. meanwhile, the latest thing i feel the need to tell the world…

a week or two ago – time does not run regularly in essayland – i held down the fort for a badly attended stitch and bitch, and the two of us got treated to some wonderful, tasty and nostalgic spontaneous turkish hospitality. good food and conversation till way too late at night. between educating turkish boys about sexism and gender, i had a good hitchhiking conversation, with someone who has clocked up about 20,000km of hitchhiking, all in turkey.

when i got home that night, i naturally furthered my procrastination by counting up my kms on google maps. when you ask for directions from one place to another, it will tell you how far it is by road, thus giving about as accurate a reading as you could possibly get. of course, i’ll have to look up my notes one day to see exactly which routes i took in certain places, and just where we broke down and took a train on earlier trips with kat…

copenhagen to madrid via budapest, around southern finland, helsinki to istanbul, short trips round kapadokya, cold ash to edinburgh, around spain and its neighbours, melbourne to sydney, short trips round sydney and sofia to london via skopje, zagreb, bar and copenhagen… all come to about 20,000 km. i’m pleased to note also that about two thirds of that has been travelling alone.

twenty thousand kilometres. stretched out, that would get me half way round the world; from sydney to the waters outside morocco. quite something! but why leave it there? now i have a goal:  to hitchhike 40,008km: the circumference of the earth. if i make it all the way back, will i finally be able to settle? i’ll wait and see.

i’ve just put this in – on time!

well, that’s after about three extensions and five topic changes… but i’m still happy.

Eight articles around Emergent Leadership and substitutes for leadership

Examining studies of emergent leadership and substitutes for leadership with a view to informal leadership in minority communities produces no comprehensive research fitting the situation, but plenty of interesting points and directions to pursue.

Most work on emergent leadership studies the exercising of influence within an organisation where some leadership is still provided by a positional leader. In a hierarchy, emergent and shared leadership can be of great benefit but it must be supported by several other non-traditional structures and conditions.

Teamwork, training and low structure situations allow scope for emergent leadership and, at least in voluntary situations, pessimism about the likelihood of others doing the job is one reason that people are provoked to act. Yet acceptance by followers is also important; one determinant of people likely to be favoured as emergent leaders by teams is being moderate in their tendency to take control.

Supervisory and feedback behaviour can be substituted for, yet directive leadership behaviour seems to make a difference to the performance of a team. A single point of illumination in each of so many directions, are only starting to shed light on an obscure, yet important area of research. Much more study could be done on a wide range of topics from leadership in non-hierarchical, politically engaged and emerging contexts and different power distance settings, to what former experiences influence people to lead well, or to lead at all.

Many frameworks are drawn from various facets of scholarship to sketch the territory; levels of structure, power distance, categorisations of cultures and lists of tasks and considerations, behaviours and roles involved in leadership. Still, for most practical applications, the best prescription that can be offered so far is to be aware of all the pitfalls and opportunities that can be found.

1. Substitutes for Hierarchy considers emergent leadership as one of several changes that can be made in a hierarchical organisation, which can allow it to flatten its structure; broadening workers’ jobs and authority while reducing the various levels of supervisors; staff doing unnecessary jobs unrelated to its core products and services.

Leadership is contextualised, not as the peak of all processes but as one of many interdependent factors, all of which are important for making an organisation run well. The major tasks of various levels of supervisors are listed as motivation, record keeping, coordinating, assigning work, making personnel decisions, providing expertise, setting goals, planning, linking communications, training/coaching, controlling and leading. However, employing separate ranks of non-production staff is not the only way to fulfil these functions.

Several factors are listed as concerned in substituting for supervisors including systems, flexibility, ownership, access to information and control over decision making in many areas: work design, information systems technology, financial data, reward system practices, supplier/customer contact, training, vision/values and emergent leadership. The article suggests that emergent leadership, as with any other single factor, cannot be introduced alone into a hierarchical organisation and expected to make changes. Unsupported it will probably even cause problems, but new and viable possibilities arise when the right conditions are created, by encouraging it in conjunction many or all of the listed factors.

The one issue about emergent leadership which is addressed directly, is of the ‘key to the emergence of the right kind of leader’. The prescription is the same as for the wider purposes: if emergent leaders are sought in the context of all these other initiatives, they are likely to fit the environment and the goals of the organisation.

Though the article focuses on change within hierarchical organisations, these considerations appear applicable beyond situations with such an initial state, showing an image of a non hierarchical organisation and suggestions of what such an entity could viably involve.

Lawler, E.E. 1988, ‘Substitutes for Hierarchy’, Organization Dynamics, vol. 17, pp. 4-15.

2. “If You Don’t Do It, Nobody Else Will”: Active and Token Contributors to Local Collective Action examines leadership, activism and membership in the context of neighbourhood organisations.

In a study of data collected in Detroit in 1969, some interesting conclusions were made. Perhaps most strikingly, the people who do the most work in a voluntary organisation, were found to be the ones who were most pessimistic about the possibility of their neighbours doing such work. Though this will come as little surprise to those who do work in such conditions, it marks a significant difference from the characteristics of the more structured, less voluntary organisations which are more often studied in leadership literature. Other aspects of attitude and vision are not found to have the impact they do in such situations: while interest in the collective good is a significant factor in determining who will join an organisation, it is found to have very little impact on who does the work.

To understand why people are active, the article examines the various costs and benefits of various levels of involvement. While the success of community organisations involve huge benefits for the community in general, the people who do the work reap little more benefit than anyone else, while shouldering the vast bulk of the costs in terms of time, money and stress. Also considered as costs are more absolute barriers to involvement, such as lack of education or experience, which narrow the pool of people who would even consider participating.

Another interesting finding involves the relationship between activism and ties. While having many friends in the area was an indicator of membership, activists are more likely to have few strong ties and more weak ties, or acquaintances, which may possibly suggest that, while lack of acquaintances is a barrier to involvement, one of the few individual rewards that activism can offer is social interaction for those who don’t have many strong friendships in the area.

In terms of direct investigation of leadership, the study identifies some characteristics of former leaders and otherwise considers leadership as one aspect of activism. Past leaders are found to be interested in local issues and know more people than others do, however no causal relationship is established. Leadership positions are found to be widely available yet hard to fill, in distinct contrast to employing organisations; in voluntary cooperatives being a leader is associated with as bad a ratio of costs to compensating rewards as for any activist, if not worse.

Oliver, P. 1984, ‘”If You Don’t Do it, Nobody Else Will”: Active and Token Contributors to Local Collective Action’, American Sociological Review, vol. 49, no. 5, pp. 601 – 610.

3. Informal Public Leadership: The Case of Social Movements examines the conditions of leadership in politically engaged communities such as social movements, especially several differences between social movement leadership and other leadership literature.

Social movements tend to deal with emerging issues and identities. There tends to be, therefore, no established group of followers or employees for a leader to lead, which means a significant portion of leadership in social movements is concerned with creating and maintaining membership; persuading people to follow, and even just to identify as part of the movement.

Leadership in social movements is under-theorised, both in leadership literature which focuses on institutions and in social movements where there tends to be a suspicion of leadership along with a general opposition to hierarchy and authority.

Any leader in such a context must be informal. They can’t expect to control or predict the actions of the people, but must focus on inspiring, activating and empowering, both to those inclined to listen and those not. With no traditional authority to draw on, moral and social capital are the start of ways to exercise leadership within social movements, which themselves exercise leadership in the broader community.

West, D. 2008, ‘Informal public leadership: the case of social movements’, in P. Hart & J. Uhr (eds), Public Leadership: Perspectives and Practices, ANU E Press, Canberra, pp. 133 – 144.

4. Emergent Leadership in Self-Managed Virtual Teams: A Longitudinal Study of Concentrated and Shared Leadership Behaviors details a study of the messages passed between virtual teams working on a database project within an undergraduate course. Work needing to be done by a group of people in different places is becoming increasingly relevant. Dealing with actual language makes it interestingly specific, but that also means that generalising its findings to other contexts is questionable. This study claims to be unusual in that it deals with internal, emergent leadership instead of the role of an external leader. However, the context is still distinctly framed by the existence of such an external leader, a common but not universal situation for virtual groups.

Four hypotheses are proposed regarding differences in communication between high and low performing teams; that high performing teams display more leadership behaviours in general, and more each of directive, shared and concentrated leadership behaviours, and that leadership behaviours which are evident early are significant and those that develop later are not. The results supported, at least partially, each of these hypotheses.

Denison, Hooijberg and Quinn’s Leaderplex Framework is used, which lists eight leadership behaviours or roles; the innovator, broker, producer, director, coordinator, monitor, facilitator and mentor. They are divided between directive, participative and transformational leadership. Monitor and Producer behaviour, both associated with Directive leadership, were found to vary most between the high and low performance groups, suggesting that these are the areas critical to performance. However many details are not adequately explained, including how teams are designated as high or low performing.

Beyond the original research, many interesting ideas are brought up. Avolio’s E-leadership, Griffith, Sawyer and Neale’s degrees of virtualness and DeSanctis’ concerns about using student responses in studies.

Carte, T.A., Chidambaram, L. & Becker, A. 2006, ‘Emergent leadership in self-managed virtual teams’, Group Decision and Negotiation, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 323-343.

5. Tipping Points that Inspire Leadership: An Exploratory Study of Emergent Project Leaders considers leadership as a social construction, the development of which can be influenced in individuals at various stages of life, by significant individuals and significant experiences. The study investigates such triggers to leadership by surveying university project management students who have been already identified as having performed leadership, or having strong potential.

Teachers and family members, particularly fathers were cited as positively significant by respondents. Potential mentors and inspirations were listed far more often than potential followers.

A wide range of experiences were reported, largely from work and study. The results do not indicate what aspects of the experiences are formative of leadership potential, such as whether success, opportunity or frustration is key, however many possibilities for further research are discussed.

People and experiences having negative influence were surveyed too, but these responses may be of limited value with no control group of bad leaders or non leaders.

Toor, S. & Ofori, G. 2008, ‘Tipping points that inspire leadership: An exploratory study of emergent project leaders’, Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 212-229.

6. Cross-Cultural Leadership Dynamics in Collectivism and High Power Distance Settings illustrates the importance of differences between expected and manifest culture. The example discussed is a North American manager trying to lead a Malaysian workforce; although the manager expects cultural differences, simplistic expectations can prove to produce even more misunderstandings by encouraging inattention to the actual, manifest culture.

Although this article discusses an individual entering the majority culture of a location, the frameworks used could illuminate other situations. Taken from Hofstede’s framework, cultures are distinguished as collectivist or individualist, accepting or not of unequal distribution of power (high or low power distance).

Collectivism is considered to usually be associated with high power distance and individualism with low power distance, but this is not universal. It would be interesting to apply these designations to a minority culture, for example a community or social movement with an (at least) expected culture of low power distance and collectivism, located within a majority culture which is declared to be individualist and low-moderate power distance, such as Australia.

In the example of Malaysia an extra complication is discussed, that of the miscommunications inherent in the clash of different varieties of English. The majority cultures of native English speaking countries tend to fall on the individualistic side of the framework, and many countries where English is a common second language are more collectivist. Considering even just the differences between the definition of collectivism between the article and its usage Australian social movements, the injunction to not ignore any of these differences is probably well applicable to the latter example as well.

Schermerhorn, J. & Bond, M. 1997, ‘Cross-cultural leadership dynamics in collectivism and high power distance settings’, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 187-193.

7. Substitutes for Leadership: Effective Alternatives to Ineffective Leadership explores a history of leadership literature; various theories of leadership have been popular at different times but a constant has been the premise that in any problem, better leadership is a solution. Several examples of substitutes are offered, including closely knit teams of highly trained individuals, intrinsic satisfaction, computer technology and extensive professional education. The aspects of leadership which are discussed as being substituted for mainly involve feedback and supervision.

Leadership neutralisers and enhancers are also discussed. Neutralisers such as physical distance, inappropriate reward systems and the bypassing or countermanding of the leader by a higher level, are considered to reduce the leader’s influence without filling the gap like a substitute should. Enhancers, on the other hand, augment the leader’s impact. The examples given of leadership enhancers include attributes such as cohesion and strong norms of performance or of cooperation with management .

Howell, J.P., Bowen, D.E., Dorfman, P.W., Kerr, S. & Podsakoff, P.M. 1990, ‘Substitutes for leadership: Effective alternatives to ineffective leadership’, Organizational Dynamics, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 20-39.

8. Emergent Leadership Processes as a Function of Task Structure and Machiavellianism considers an emergent view of leadership as a product of both personality and situation.

The study identified people as high, medium or low ‘machs’, indicating tendency to take over control in small groups, and situations as high or low structure; high structure involving the group being given explicit procedural instructions.

The hypotheses of the study were that people identified as high machs would exhibit more leadership behaviours and be recognised as leaders more in situations of low structure, and that low machs would do the same in high structure situations.

The results did not support the hypotheses at all; medium machs were markedly preferred as leaders in both situations.

Implications of structure difference included low structure having more scope for emergent leadership, but high structure leaving people more satisfied with the outcomes.

Gleason, J.M., Seaman, F.J. & Hollander, E.P. 1978, ‘Emergent leadership processes as a function of task structure and Machiavellianism’, Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 33-36.

the mulberries are growing and the student associations are blooming. life is good.

i dropped in at macquarie uni the other day. there are people running around in red, screen printed tshirts for their first student-council-equivalent. and not just a few, there were tshirts everywhere! over the years since i was around, the student council and other organisations got eroded, corrupted and eventually abolished. good people have been working hard for the last several years to create a new, better organisation within the generic association they were bequeathed to replace the whole lot. i’m sure there’s plenty more to do, but on a nice sunny day with people out and talking to eachother, it looks like they’ve gotten somewhere. there’s an energy i haven’t seen there for a long time, perhaps ever. it helps that the wonderful old space that the women’s room never should’ve given up has now become the queerspace, and that people are meeting about a food co-op. people were dancing outside the atrium and i didn’t even feel bad that the old rabbit warren that used to house the student council and the art space has been gutted for the new generic association offices – they’re shiny and glassy and full of people, with a functional reception with a reasonable list of clubs evident at the pigeonholes. the two organisations that the space was taken from were long dead, but indications are that, when their replacements get big enough to be able to use office space, they will have competent enough people to win that fight.

yesterday i was at ultimo tafe and stopped by their student association to catch up. i came away with a similar feeling of hope; there’s been shakeup in the staffing situation, with someone getting a promotion and others shuffling up, and it all seems to be to the better. not only have memberships have gone up to about a third of the population (take a look at that, unis!) but the new board is active, both helping out with the general activities of the association and having ideas. gosh, ideas! all four of them are being put through the frontline management course, which both displays a certain level of commitment and means that there will be four serious student-run projects happening this year. collaboration with departments is going well, including a shiny makeover for the student newspaper that i started, which indicates that it will continue. sports have started up again after a few years of not being able to fill teams, with a soccer competition against eora – one of many collaborations with them which are fruit of the seeds i kept planting back when. all this is in the environment of the tafe pushing a serious commitment to greenskilling, actually surveying people about the footwear courses and trying to work something out, and security keeping up the good work we’ve seen the entire time i’ve been involved. seven of their 21 staff are permanent, and it seems enough to keep up good continuity and make them the best and most understanding service in the area.

i’m no longer enrolled in either of these organisations, but i can delight in seeing results of my previous hard work amongst the bubbling up of good things, even if i’m not there to enjoy them directly. now i’m at yet another educational institution. i’ve gone and nominated for uts’ academic board already, and their student elections are coming up too. i’ll have to investigate…

i did a writing workshop in copenhagen and ended up reading out one of my pieces to an audience. i think i probably rushed it as usual, but the people who assured me they’d gesture if i needed to be louder or softer or slower didn’t, so i guess it was ok. it seemed well received, at the start of an odd program of readings, performances and bands. the piece itself was ten minutes, i think, of continuous writing prompted by the title, which was a line chosen out of a previous exercise. then i had a couple of hours to try to edit it and write it out, while rushing around and doing other things like watching a film in a dark room. here it is.

you can find them in the oddest places.

Frogs. Happiness, or moments thereof. Places you’ll remember forever, and always think of when you need a bottle of latex, or go round a certain shaped curve in the road, bending through the trees just so.
Take as I find. The impulse to write. Maybe it won’t stay but maybe it will, maybe it will change and become the structure for something more useful. Because I’m not sure that compulsive writing is useful, even if the ability to write is. Notebooks to my specifications are available in some countries but not others. The books I currently require in order to feed my habit are A4, stapled, lined, margined. It was not always so. To record the threads of interpersonal relationships and try to weave some sense of my place in the social world required blank A5 pages with a satisfying weight, even spiral binding and – it turned out – a resilient, bright yellow plastic cover. Before that, any attempt to spill onto paper or record my movements were densely written on loose leaf A4 photocopy paper, both sides, often wound around the thick block characters of a hitching sign; or, even denser and likely in pencil, in margins of other work, on the backs of envelopes or even bus tickets. My elegant notebooks sat at home unused, scaring the writing out of me any time I would turn than first, blank page. But this, this worked; something connected and felt tip pen met lined paper 213 pages ago. A field full of daisies, Macedonian food by the side of the truck then gorging on forced cherries in the cool room on a hot day, the circular stairs up a four floor op shop, zig zag edges revealed. Scenes from a life that is mine when I’m here, but may not have been once I got home, but that they are recorded here, made real and thus also lodged, legitimately in my brain. That the only street sign I found in Skopje directs one to one street, one bridge and a gynaecological clinic is not a dream, though having to kill people for some important reason is, and I know that it was brought on by someone coming into my room and cleaning and tying up my toilet. Reality really is stranger than fiction; how would I ever make a story of this material? Being grateful for my life that I escaped Italy, the subtle feeling of wearing my first beard, as ephemeral, more intentionally, than my bowtie that is really, probably, gone; will it have the same eventual impact on my psyche? Translating Slovenian poetry without knowing the language, sliding through Austria on so much goodwill that I barely saw the country. Recovering five-year-stolen bags and running down a Czech highway through the pelting rain with them, broken shoes and pants dumpstered in Montenegro.
Soon, too soon I will take my lined, stapled, A4 notebooks home and make a new stationary choice for a new sheet of life.

one of the things i got to do overseas that i haven’t for ages, was performance. in berlin i joined in a drag king performance at the very last minute, apparently there was footage filmed but i haven’t seen it. i also read out a poem. it was translated from slovenian and it took a lot of editing before it was readable, i only got the printout a day before, and i spent all that time walking around berlin, overshooting my destinations as i read bits out loud, gesturing the emphases with a red pen in hand. noone thought to mention that i’d be juggling a microphone too. five minutes before the show i find out that the translation was done by one of my new friends, and she didn’t like my editing, but she ended up agreeing that i had as much right as her to interpret a translation. and besides, it was about to start. here is the version i read, more or less.

As if we were free
Urška Strle

Somewhere in the centre of the small neglected town, which is, at the same time the capital of some small but relaxed East European state, in a newly cobble embellished street in the inner city centre where they just closed two pubs and a bookstore, I have met a man who ordered himself Culture as if he were ordering coffee with milk.

I have to confess, the cobbles are perfectly laid down, all the gaps are carefully clogged with quartz sand, and at the edge it is possible to recognise a slightly rounded pattern. In short, the street of some small neglected town, which is at the same time the capital of some small, cramped, and relaxed South European state, looks like the idyllic image on an old postcard.

Old bakeries arise in all parts of the town like mushrooms after the rain, as if they had decided one day and achingly wrested themselves out from old corner houses where they had modestly waited for decades unnoticed for their grand arrival, and which, on their frontage proudly show the inscription “Old Bakery”, which even more contributes to this idyllic look. I guess I’ve hurried past them for years and years without even noticing. I’ve walked past exactly this old bakery on the corner of this small idyllic street with carefully laid cobbles in the centre of some small neglected town and so on and so forth.

Suddenly an unbearable paranoia came over me, I got the feeling that somewhere out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of crinoline, and suspiciously I glanced towards the boys in white shirts with black bowties who were picking up the garbage. It appeared to me that time is curving itself as to the pattern of the new cobbles and that we will all find ourselves on that everlasting postcard from the end of the 19th century. Hastily I dashed towards the closest boy, that is, to the left edge, I ripped myself through the yellowish cardboard, and with a crash I landed in front of the doors to the pub which had, in the meantime, already disappeared in another reality.

To eat in this slovenly pub, which displayed insignia as a rallying point for all the enthusiasts of the sautéed potato, was akin to some special kind of masochism. Gnocchi Bolognese turned into spaghetti with tomato sauce, omelette with ham and cheese always remained without the latter two. The bills would be circulating around, they would be counted and discounted and finally there would come the conclusion that there are either too many or too few bills, the cash register is too far away and the next group of naïve tourists are just enough confused, hungry and tired and above all helpless in front of the board, on which specials of the day were written in complicated script.

But the slovenly pub that served for some special kind of masochism disappeared in that other reality, which was, to top it all off, mine. And there is no worse misery than when a person loses her own reality and therefore clings desperately to the handhold of some slovenly pub which went bankrupt, together with her lifestyle.

In the reflection of the filthy abandoned windows of my ailing lifestyle, I saw a mayor. All round and contented he was wiping sweat from his working face on the golden chain on which the city keys were jingling. He was shepherding a small squad of captured guest artists, some stoic, homeless ‘erased ones’, and from his pockets electric cables were forcing their way out, cables which NGO workers for the purpose of some obscure literary event negligently left in the middle of the street in the inner centre of the small neglected town, which is at the same time the capital of some small but relaxed Central European state. He ordered Culture as coffee with milk, and then stirred with a teaspoon an empty cup and grumbled about the bad taste.

I might be extremely happy about the new cobbles if I had to cross them in high heels, but, I think, the magic of the moment was ruined in the second when, under the sole of my beaten up sneakers, quartz sand creaked. Maybe my face would have lightened up if I had been on these new even cobbles with nicely clogged gaps and a slightly rounded pattern pushing a pram that would be running smoothly. But I just stood there at the beginning of that small street in the centre of the town in those damn beaten up sneakers, I was pacing around nervously, under my feet, quartz sand was nastily squeaking and I stared at the abandoned windows of the pub. All this with a newly cobble-embellished street of the inner centre of the small neglected town, which is at the same time a capital of some cramped but relaxed newly joined European state, and there was not a single space left for me to go.

sitting here with the door open, listening to the sound of the washing machine.

i used to get very irritated by that sound. it’s quite loud and intrusive, it’s in my space and i don’t always have control over when it runs.

yet now the sound has associations of not only chores and hassle, but comfort, order, efficiency, white.

in two months of travel such a machine was the rarest of commodities. i got access to one exactly twice. i thoroughly enjoyed running round the continent, sleeping in tents or trucks, washing in hand basins or not at all, eating what i could find and being free. it’s an amazing, vital experience, but it’s not easy. i came to appreciate the comforts i was occasionally offered, and the epitome of comfort was borrowing a fluffy dressing gown while every scrap of fabric i owned was in the wash.

a washing machine is of limited value if you have no soap, no way of drying the finished product, no privacy in which to change, no security to ensure your clothes are safe as they dry or no way of cleaning yourself satisfactorily before you put the newly clean clothes on again. yet my new friend in austria and my old friend in denmark had homes, calm white airy apartments where they kept their entire lives, neatly organised and appropriate. sufficient, functioning. comfortable, available. as a guest in their homes i enjoyed beds in rooms with doors, consecutive dinners and breakfasts, conversation and assistance, internet and phone access and real showers.

over two months i got several other showers, varying degrees of local knowledge, food, beds and doors some good some questionable, but for everything to come together was unbelievable; i can no longer take it for granted.

i’m sure i won’t retain this attitude to machine noise through all the inconsiderate times that it gets run for other people’s clothes, but something has changed. i still maintain that home is where the sewing machine is, but maybe there’s something to be said for a washing machine too.

my introduction to the czech republic, this time, was an empty road, fields, cows. luckily it was pleasant weather for walking, because i did quite a bit of it. eventually i got some rides, a taxi picked me up and took me quite a long way, then i got someone who spoke good second-language german and proceeded to hold a running monologue with me the whole way in to the fountain in the middle of cesky budejovice, pointing out where the first railway was, where the horses were washed, the world’s first pencil factory…
salim was expecting me at 5pm, but i had such a good trip that i was there by 9am!
i passed the day dozing by the fountain, trying to figure out public phones and the czech currency, and eventually dragging my heavy bag into an information office and finding some free internet, which i used while taking regular turns round the fountain to see if salim had arrived.
in the end, he got there an hour or two early and we went to the post office, where i got my hands on the two boxes tied with twine, which held the contents of the bag i got stolen five years ago. dresses i have missed, books with bookmarks in them at places i don’t remember, toiletries that i would no longer use. photos of copenhagen, my flamenco performance and the queeruption protest in den haag! my coat, one dress and stephen’s bow tie were missing, as i more or less expected. i think i spent a couple of hours sorting everything from both packs into a box to send home, a pile to chuck and another pile to absorb into my current pack. it was harder than packing the first time!
eventually i was done and salim, his friend and i took a tram to the university dormitories where he had booked me a night. very similar to a dorm i stayed in in budapest, it was one of many bare blocks standing in a field, but inside it had people coming and going with their possessions and a thriving noticeboard which suggested a much healthier student life than anything i’ve ever experienced. the room itself was made for two, split down the middle with beds, desks, cupboard, shelves and a sink. there were showers down the hall, facing each other with no curtains, and toilets even further down, the toilet paper bolted to the wall by the sink with an ostentatious padlock. i can’t imagine it being comfortable for long periods of time, but it seems to be accepted.

they took me around the city in search of a map, and to a local bus station dinner of gulash soup and dumplings, which was rather good though it looked anything but. it’s a pleasant city with an old town ringed by small parks and what used to be a moat, very quiet and calm at night, with live music floating from many doorways. outside the old town it seems a liveable city with decent public transport, interesting bridges and no tourists.

in the morning i dragged my tired feet to the tram and easily found a nice road, but the trip was a little more difficult than the last ones. it rained in short bouts but quite heavily. i got dropped in the middle of a highway in the middle of the rain and my boots gave out as i squelched my way to the shelter of a little overpass. interestingly, i got several rides from cars with three or four people in them already, which is very rare. just as i was preparing to shelter in my tent from another rainstorm, a car of four teenage heavy metal fans picked me up and drove me what seemed to be five hundred metres, before deciding to let me wait it out in the car. it was a fun interlude, if not very helpful as the only boy amongst them took it upon himself to help me hitch, which will scare most people off! meanwhile the girls bounced and sang and played badminton with a golf ball in the rain.
at about 8pm i found myself on yet another narrow road which boasted a nice section of layback but no cars, and decided to stop for the night. it was delightful to set up my tent in a forest while it was still light. the leaf litter was soft and the trees were green and i could select a nice flat section out of sight of any road or path, where i could hear the road through the birdsong but it just served to reassure me i would be able to get out of there in the morning. and indeed i could, i woke up nice and early and even after laying around enjoying breakfast protected from the rain, i was on the road about 8.30 and in a small truck a few minutes later.
unfortunately this ride, which was promisingly long, decided to take me sideways to an autobahn when it really wasn’t necessary, and my journey soured. i was surprised by a czech motorcycle cop turning on his siren right behind me and telling me to get off the road. he was gracious enough to give me advice as to where i could go, but it wasn’t very good advice as there was nothing at all visible out that direction. after heading out the other way where at least there was a little traffic, i saw two more hitchhikers walking outside the railing of the autobahn, and limped after them, barefoot on ground that is not meant for anyone to walk on. up hill, down valley, over bridge holding on to the outside of the railing; i couldn’t see any other direction but where they were leading. eventually i caught up to them, a whole highway section later at the next on ramp. they were two boys hitching from prague to berlin for shopping, and we shared some lunch and information on the railings of the on ramp, just past the roundabout. three people together have little hope of a ride, so eventually they walked off to investigate the road and i sat on the railing singing to the empty world. just as they were heading back in defeat i got a ride, another family of three, with watermelons wandering around the floor just to make things interesting. they had room for the other two but my german wasn’t good enough to convince them to take us all. i hope they found a ride anyway…
my ride only took me to the next truck stop, and after i had asked most of the cars and trucks, none of whom were helpful, i stood at the exit, behind the barrier and hoped cars could see me on the road. however an unmarked german police car came up and decided i was too close to the road, which was my first indication that i had made it to germany. they kindly told me how dangerous it was to be within two metres of the highway barrier, though three seemed ok, and helpfully told me to walk over a kilometre down the rough, narrow side road to the on ramp. of course cars drive faster down there than they should, considering visibility is not nearly as good as on an autobahn with a whole emergency lane down each side, but rules are rules and danger is naturally governed by them.
half way down i got a ride who took me almost as far out the other side of the on ramp; at least this road was deserted so i could walk on the smooth centre line until my friendly unmarked police came and directed me again, to the only place i could possibly have been going, and then swung around yet again to order me to walk on the left.
thankfully a little two door stopped for me quite promptly, though they were quite uncommunicative until they had already taken me into the centre of dresden. at the central train station having already spent about eight hours on the road that day, i decided it wouldn’t be the end of the world if i took a train, so i spent a couple of annoying hours on the floor of my platform, but i made it to my destination, and was in berlin for my birthday.

when i finally achieved the austrian border there were a bunch of lone young travellers milling around trying to figure out how to find the last quarter of the journey, in to innsbruck. it seems i have the best german of the five of us so i rounded them up to follow someone who knew what to do, thus i ended up on a train to innsbruck and with someone to follow home to a hostel. it was all so delightfully easy, we paid the bilingual, understanding inspectors for our not-too-steep tickets on the nice shiny train and it let us off in the centre of the city with no fuss. john was making a mess of finding a tram to the hostel and i let him, entirely unconcerned as he had an address, of sorts, and it looked like it would take five minutes to walk if he gave up and let me do it. i restricted myself to translating bus drivers for him, ridiculously delighted to be able to do so.

it started raining quite seriously as soon as we got in, but the hostel was full of australians who had just finished school, and other friendly types so we were all kept amused. when the weather cleared a little i dragged john away as he was the only one expressing interest in leaving the room at all. we wandered around, across the noisy river and into the old town. i have never met someone so eager to ask directions, we were lost to the extent that we should’ve walked to the nearest street sign and looked at the map, but instead got asked sharply ‘how can you possibly get lost in innsbruck?’

we saw the golden roof that is in every german textbook ever written, it’s an awning as i thought. the buildings are pretty and well maintained, many with graphics and illustrations stuck on an empty face somewhere, unrelated to the architectural details. it was wet and noone was about except other australian tourists looking for cheap food.

we finally found good kebabs on the edge of the new town, and ate them listening to some distorted concert nearby. all the supermarkets were closed, so we headed back while the weather held, seeing what we could on the way. piles of hard rubbish in the middle of the pristine city, antifa stencils, drinking fountains, people playing bowls with rectangular wooden blocks. i think.

in the morning i set off to the bus station with some recommendations from the friendly hostel owner. i checked the trains, but the price from the italian border was an anomaly and everything else in austria is expensive. i waited for a bus to the shopping centre near my road, it came and went before i could get myself and my bag on, then i realised it really wasn’t the best choice anyway and journeyed through the city to a different bus stop. the shopping centre was big enough to get lost in but i did manage to buy two buttons to replace the velcro i removed from my sleeping bag at least four years ago! eventually i found my road and from there things went so fast that before i knew it i had passed both salzburg and linz, with everyone having taken me out of their way. even my last truck, where i was squished between a fridge and another driver for part of the way, took me all the way up the highway past linz because he didn’t like the intersection where he would’ve let me off, had he continued straight to vienna. my last ride was even more hospitable, offering me a spare room, dinner, internet, phone and – gasp – a washing machine and dryer in freistadt, a beautiful little walled city where everyone living there has shares in the local beer ‘commune’. they get dividends in beer, but the community feeling seems to extend beyond that.

i walked out to the road in the morning, and the first car i stuck my thumb out for, took me all the way to the czech border. i couldn’t complain, as the czech republic was my next destination, but some day i need to get back to austria and see all the bits that i missed.

i’m sure it would be nice to hear about the good bits of my trip, the ones that came after the last traveloguebut instead, let me tell you about italy.

last time i was in italy i stood on burning hot roads and got yelled at, spat at and gestured at, at regular intervals of about three seconds. i got lost and got given bad directions, i got so fed up that i stowed away on a train, then went out of my way to swítzerland because it was a slightly closer border than the one i should’ve crossed.

this trip, i certainly had no intention of setting foot in italy. yet there i was in beautiful, helpful slovenia, on my way to ljubljiana with recommendations of places to stay, things to do and ways to get out at the end, when my truck did not let me off at my highway as he had agreed to. he took me to trieste.

i sadly abandonded my plans for ljubljana and decided that the fastest way north to austria was as good as i’d get.

of course, at the truck stop in trieste it is very difficult to find a truck going a different direction, and leaving the truck stop for the highway is a bad idea in italy, with two kinds of not very forgiving police. and it’s no fun to move at all in the heat of the day. so i let him take me to mestre, where there was a stop where there would be trucks going in different directions.

of course this was not true either. the stop was 2km past my highway, everyone was still travelling west and there were cops everywhere, i think i was told it was a bomb scare. so i got in a different truck to the next likely highway, at verona.

after an extended period of dispairing ever finding my way out of this impossible country, a car took me from truck stop to highway tollbooth. this, however, was not much of an improvement. my driver pointed to a crossroad and said i needed to go there, though the highway i was on should’ve been the right direction. eventually i hopped the small, crushed fence and walked 50m to a shopping centre, there to finally find a couple of people who speak english, staffing a booth selling credit cards or phones or something. they were very helpful, printing out a map and telling me to walk up up up here and down down down here, to find myself at the right road. on pain of prison i was not to jump the fence, that would be very dangerous.

advice safely tucked away and having restocked in the supermarket, half a bottle of cold juice went some way to reviving me. so i shouldered my bags again, and set out. up, up, up a km or two, past three roundabouts and a whole lot of shopping centre, i found the highway and turned back in on myself. down, down, down on the unpaved side of the highway, i dutifully did not stick my thumb out until i reached the end of the motorway, though the signs confirmed i was walking away from my destination.

of course, after at least 3km, can you guess? i found a tollbooth and a crushed fence to a shopping centre. i’m sure 50m of grass and a metre high wire fence is so dangerous that walking kilometres on the road is better.

the sun was going down by the time someone stopped. he was going in to verona and offered to take me to the train station, and by that time i was prepared to ditch the hitchhiking in favour of just getting out to hitch another day.

of course i wasn’t so thrilled when i found i had been taken from somewhere with a nice campable field, and dumped at a local train station, with only local trains, and no people. aimlessly leaving the station i got talking to two nigerian guys, who discussed racism in italy, religion, and how women are made to be protected. i argued well but still accepted their offer of hospitality. i found myself in a little apartment that must once have been beautiful, before everything was broken. my tour of the bathroom included the shower, which was a big bucket to fill with water and a dish to pour it with, and the light. ‘it goes off sometimes, but don’t worry, it goes back on.’

despite all, they were very hospitable. i got to eat the african food they made for themselves, semolina to roll in balls with your right hand and shape into a slight bowl, to pick up the spicy fish and chicken stew. i have much to learn in the etiquette of eating with my fingers, but nothing was said about my stew splatters everywhere or my very imperfect semolina shapes. it was delicious.

by the time it was apparrent i had half a bed, not a couch to sleep on, i was not surprised. after a bit of arguing he accepted the no touch rule, and i got a decent night’s sleep with no covers and an open window. in the morning he was not quite as cheery as he would’ve been if i had accepted being his girlfriend and agreed to come and visit italy again, but he took me to the bus to the big train station and gave me advice. ‘if you get there, ask a black man for the information office.’

the bus gave me a nice tour of the city, despite not knowing how to pay. it went on for ever and they have a lot of old buildings that look like they’ve been standing there placidly for ever, but just might melt if it rains. people live around them like they’re solid and dependable though, so maybe i’ll trust them on it.

of course i found that my latest friends had picked up the knack for italian directions that they themselves had complained about. the train station was supposed to be the end of the line, so i didn’t get off at the bus station. i continued on and on and on through suburbs, to another bus station. hang on, surely that’s the same church with suspicious carvings… i got off and walked back, and just when i was going to ask a black man i found an information office. he was genuinely surprised that i wanted a train, since he dealt with buses, but he waved me to the other building where i found actual, almost-accurate train information, and even acceptable directions to the ticket office. i bought my ticket to the border, which is as far as they would sell, and even managed to figure out which platform i needed, and find it!

i waited an hour or two on the platform, with four tvs cycling the same five ads at me, sound fading in and out. i got it confirmed that i was on the right platform and that the next train would be mine. i thought i was away once i got on the train, there was space and it was indeed non-smoking, but there was one final little mishap just to remind me where i still was. i proudly showed the ticket inspector the ticket i had managed to both buy and follow, but with the aid of a book of pictures he showed me that i was supposed to validate it. apparrently somewhere, on train or platform, i had missed some yellow machines where i was to stick my newly-bought international train ticket. still, he scrawled all over it, stamped it twice and left me to breathe again.

i did achieve the border, met up with another australian with a hostel address and a local who knew that the austrian trains can be paid for on board, and things ran smoothly again. i stayed a night in innsbruck and set off to enjoy the austrian roads. forget macedonia and bosnia, i can be proud i made it out of italy alive!