“I was never afraid to make a decision, I think that held me in good stead.”

Lauren Callaway was awaiting the start of her police sergeants’ course when a wave of anxiety triggered a panic attack. A single phone call set her on her future career path.

“I didn’t think I could do it, I thought I was too junior,” the now Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner told the FW Leadership Series podcast.

“I had a panic attack at the academy, actually. In the end, I rang (my Dad) and I said, ‘Oh, God, I’m pulling out. I’m not gonna do this…’ and he said to me, ‘Don’t you dare young lady. You look around that room and you tell me who is smarter than you. You’ve got this. You can do it. Do not let anyone else intimidate you. You just go out there.’”

“The hardest thing that I had to come to grips with really quickly was the hierarchy of the organisation.”

With her father’s words ringing in her ears, Callaway pushed ahead with the course. Over the years, she has risen through the ranks to her current senior leadership role. 

“I was a little bit more frightened of him than quitting,” she said. “And I always remember that.”

In the wide-ranging interview with FW managing director, Helen McCabe, the former journalist turned police officer shared the many challenges she faced earlier in her career as a woman in the police force.

“I think the hardest thing that I had to come to grips with really quickly was the hierarchy of the organisation,” she said. 

“Coming in as a lowly trainee, first constable – and we’re going back 30 years now – [I] wasn’t really encouraged to have an opinion on things or to be confident.”

It was an environment where the daughter of a police officer and school teacher felt somewhat unfamiliar.

“We were raised to be seen and not heard. But once we got into our older years, and my parents separated, my mum was really into empowered decision making,” she said. 

“So I had been raised to have an opinion and to express it and to be quite forthright. And I’ve no doubt that I showed those traits, probably good traits to be a police officer. 

“But the bit you have to harness is when you bring out those weapons in the working environment. Certainly in those first couple of years, I did struggle a lot with what was going on around me.” 

She quickly figured out she needed to adapt to the workstyle of others, namely male officers.

“As I said this is back in the 1990s, so they were the dominant culture in policing, and you had to fit in with that culture, or it could be quite difficult,” she said.

“I often talk about leadership, from the perspective of surviving. I would say the first five years are ‘survive’.” 

As for what techniques she employed, Callaway admits she changed her demeanour.

“I became very masculine in the way that I operated – so decisive, tough would be a word, unemotional,” she said. 

“I found that when I did it the way the men did it then everything went really well and I just zipped a few of those opinions about things that I didn’t like.”

For Callaway, the first five years of her policing career were about survival.

“I often talk about leadership, from the perspective of surviving. I would say the first five years are ‘survive’ – just do what you’ve got to do to get along with how things are running. There’s a transition period, and then there’s a thriving period and in that transition period, there were things I had to let go of,” she said. 

“In fact, I actually have personality traits that are very different to that… those traits are the ones that have me sitting here today as an Assistant Commissioner. But I didn’t know that at the time.”

When asked by McCabe what Victoria Police is doing to make policing more appealing to women today, Callaway spoke candidly. 

“I often say to people, ‘We have gone through the most significant cultural change in the last 10 years that I’ve seen over the 30 year journey’. And obviously, a lot of that was prompted by the VEOHRC review,” she said.

In 2014, Victoria Police commissioned the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission or (VEOHRC) to undertake an independent review to examine sex discrimination and sexual harassment, including predatory behaviour, happening within the organisation.  

Callaway said the state’s police force is creating safe workplaces for women, which focuses on flexible working practices and an inclusive model. 

“I think for people [now] there isn’t that pressure to fit in,” she said. “I also think that the leadership psyche has changed as well as the appointment of leaders.” 

When she first became a superintendent, it was 2016 and she was one of four women – among 80. 

“Now we would probably have 30 out of 100,” she said. “So that in itself is demonstrating that the organisation is seeing itself differently, appointing different people who think differently, who have different values, and bringing a far more diverse model to the organisation.”

Listen to the full FW Leadership Series interview on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.