A community battery intended to lower bills, improve reliability and support the transition to clean energy fails, not because the technology was wrong, but because our inner leadership muscles aren’t strong enough to carry it.
In Narrabri, a well‑designed community battery project with clear benefits was derailed by fear, misinformation and a loss of collective nerve at the critical moment. It is a story many councils and communities will recognise: a good idea that slowly dies, not in a blaze of logic, but in a tangle of doubt, mistrust and political risk.
Looking through the lens of inner development offers a powerful way to understand what went wrong – and, more importantly, what we can build in ourselves and our organisations to ensure good, important ideas have a fighting chance
What happened
Early signals from council were positive. But as misinformation began to circulate – alarming stories about fires, exaggerated exclusion zones, and claims there was “no local benefit” – the tone shifted.
This was fuelled by a dramatic technical presentation on lithium fires, late and confusing risk documents, anonymous social media posts and a wave of anxiety combined to spook decision‑makers. Councillors moved from support to retreat, citing a “lack of information” even as solid evidence and expert advice were available.
On paper this is a story about process failure and misinformation. But looked at through the lens of constructive leadership and collaboration, it’s also a story about underdeveloped inner capacities – in individuals, in councils, and in communities.
Holding your inner compass in a storm
In Narrabri, when emotion spiked, many of the people in the room lost their centre. Rather than returning to a clear sense of purpose – safety, resilience, long‑term prosperity – the conversation was swept along by the most vivid fears in the moment.
This is the “Being” dimension of Inner Development: our relationship to ourselves. It includes our inner compass, self‑awareness, presence and openness to learning. When these are weak, leaders become reactive. When they are strong, they can hold steady in the storm.
If you relate to this story already, a different outcome could have come from councillors and senior staff drawing on:
- Inner compass: A shared, explicit commitment to “safe, affordable, reliable and sustainable energy for our community”, used as the reference point when controversy arose.
- Self‑awareness: The ability to notice “I’m scared of being targeted on Facebook” or “I’m uncomfortable with this technology” and separate that from the evidence.
- Presence: Staying grounded in heated meetings, listening to concerns without being hijacked by them, and resisting the urge to flip positions in the moment.
- Openness and learning mindset: Treating new concerns as legitimate prompts to learn more – “Let’s check that claim and come back with what we find” – instead of as reasons to abandon the project.
When our inner compass is weak, the loudest voice in the room becomes our guide. When it is strong, we can hold fear and still act in service of our community’s long‑term wellbeing.
Sense‑making in the age of misinformation
The battery debate highlighted a familiar pattern: shocking images and worst‑case stories dominated, while probabilities, safeguards and comparative risks barely featured. A technical briefing meant to inform instead amplified fear. Late, unofficial risk material was allowed to muddy the waters.
This is where the “Thinking” capacities of inner development matter: critical thinking, complexity awareness, perspective‑taking, sense‑making and long‑term orientation. Councillors and communities need these muscles if they are to discern signal from noise.
In practice, that would look like:
- Critical thinking: Testing alarming claims, or anything that sounds like a generalisation or exaggeration (“a week‑long fire”, “no benefit”, “huge exclusion zones”) against evidence from fire services, regulators and comparable projects.
- Complexity awareness: Recognising that risk is more than “safe or unsafe”; it involves likelihood, consequence and mitigation, embedded in a broader energy and climate system.
- Perspective skills: Actively seeking and weighing multiple viewpoints – local fire authorities, grid operators, residents living near existing batteries, vulnerable energy users.
- Sense‑making: Weaving these inputs into a simple, public narrative: “Here is what we know, what we don’t know yet, and what we’re doing about it.”
- Long‑term orientation: Keeping the community’s 10–20 year energy future visible so that short‑term fear doesn’t trump long‑term security and responsibility.
In other words, the task is not just to “give information”, but to grow collective sense‑making.
Turning fear or anxiety into shared care
The debate around the battery sharpened divisions instead of deepening shared concern. The most anxious voices became stand‑ins for “the community”, while the interests of quieter groups – low‑income households, young people, those worried about climate impacts – were barely visible.
The “Relating” dimension focuses on empathy, compassion, appreciation, connectedness and humility. These are the qualities that allow leaders to turn conflict into a deeper conversation about what and who we care about.
What could have been different?
- Empathy and compassion: Making real space to hear safety fears and honour them – “It makes sense to be worried about fires; here’s what we’re doing to keep you safe” – rather than dismissing concerns or quietly avoiding them.
- Appreciation: Noticing and thanking community members who engaged in good faith, asked thoughtful questions, or helped others understand the project.
- Connectedness: Framing the battery as part of a larger web – local grid reliability, regional resilience, national climate commitments, and the wellbeing of future generations.
- Humility: Leaders saying “We don’t know everything, and we will make mistakes – but we are committed to learning with you and correcting course transparently.”
Relating skills do not make disagreement disappear. They make it survivable, and sometimes even productive.
Collaborating turns adversaries into co‑creators
Much of the process played out in adversarial formats: time‑limited speeches at formal meetings, pointed submissions, polarised social media threads. The project came to feel like something being done to people rather than with them.
True collaboration is about communication, co‑creation, inclusion, trust and mobilisation. In local government, these are the skills that turn a proposal into a shared project.
Applied to a community battery, they might involve:
- Communication skills: Designing simple, visual explanations of the project and its risks; hosting genuine dialogue sessions; correcting false claims calmly and clearly.
- Co‑creation: Involving residents, businesses, schools and emergency services early in shaping the siting, design and communication strategy, rather than presenting a nearly finished plan.
- Inclusion and intercultural competence: Intentionally bringing in less‑heard voices – renters, First Nations communities, people in energy hardship – so that “the community” is more than the usual faces.
- Trust‑building: Being consistent, transparent and responsive – “Here’s what you told us; here’s what we changed; here’s what we couldn’t change and why.”
- Mobilisation: Supporting local champions to host conversations, speak publicly and answer questions, so the project does not rely on a handful of officials to carry the entire narrative.
Stronger collaborating muscles don’t guarantee agreement. But they dramatically increase the odds that disagreement leads to adaptation and improvement rather than abandonment.
The courage, creativity and perseverance to act
Finally, Narrabri shows how, under pressure, action can shrink. Once controversy grew, it became easier to delay, to look for reasons not to proceed, and eventually to let the project go.
The “Acting” dimension of inner development focuses on courage, creativity, optimism and perseverance. These are the capacities that turn insight into sustained, responsible action.
In practice, that might have looked like:
- Courage: Publicly naming misinformation as misinformation – kindly but plainly – and standing behind evidence‑based advice, even when it is unpopular.
- Creativity: Exploring alternative sites, design tweaks, or additional community benefits instead of treating the choice as “this exact proposal or nothing”.
- Grounded optimism: Drawing on examples of other towns that have safely hosted similar batteries, and holding a realistic belief that “we can do this too”.
- Perseverance: Continuing to work on the project through setbacks, rather than abandoning it at the first major conflict.
For elected members and senior officers, this is often where the real stretch lies: staying with a good, hard idea long enough to see it through, while remaining open to learning and adaptation.
Growing the inner capacity to carry good ideas
The lesson from Narrabri is not that communities can’t be trusted, or that controversial technologies should be pushed through regardless of concern. It is that without deliberate attention to our internal capacities to help or hinder absolutely anything, even the best‑designed processes and projects are fragile.
For councils and local leaders, that suggests a different kind of preparation for the transition years ahead:
- Treat challenging projects as opportunities to practise the internal awareness of what you bring (or block) to the events that arise, not just to “manage stakeholders”.
- Invest in development for councillors and staff that explicitly builds inner compass, sense‑making, empathy, collaboration and courageous action – not only technical or procedural skills.
- Build shared language: use the Inner Development framework in debriefs (“Where did we lose our inner compass? Where did we show courage? What thinking skills were missing?”).
- Ask, before the next big decision: “Do we have the inner capacity, individually and collectively, to carry this idea through the inevitable storms?”
Good ideas will always attract resistance. What decides their fate is not just the quality of the proposal, but the mental models and mindsets of the people responsible for stewarding it.
Want to learn more? We work with teams in local government on issues like this all the time. Get in touch today.
