Show Notes
Max MacKenzie, founder of Resilience Enterprises, discusses the unwritten rules, conflicts, survival strategies, and personal growth necessary to build resilience and help shape a long career in behaviour support.
Max introduces the concept of ‘invisible rules’, the unspoken assumptions within a culture or service that can lead to someone’s behaviour being labelled as concerning when it is really just unfamiliarity with a local norm. Drawing on examples from remote and First Nations communities, this idea extends to behaviour support practitioners, who often carry hidden expectations from their own training, including the assumption that doing accurate, ethical work will always be rewarded by the systems they work within.
The conversation turns to what happens when practitioners are sidelined, investigated or dismissed for raising uncomfortable truths, and why this is often a system’s survival strategy rather than a personal failing. Being let go as the allocated practitioner, complained about, or investigated for raising accurate, uncomfortable findings is often more a reflection of that system rather than a reflection of poor practice.
Their discussion takes on the metaphor of walking through fire: how to recognise smoke signals, what elements are essential to surviving it, and how to adapt and grow from it.
For those managing complex, high stakes support within services under funding pressure, this conversation offers language for recognising organisational dynamics that can otherwise feel personal, and practical ways to build growth, nurture resilience, and build a long, sustainable career in behaviour support.
About the Guest:
Max MacKenzie is the founder, director and clinical lead of Resilience Enterprises in Cairns, Queensland, a service specialising in behaviour support and education for people who do not fit neatly into service systems. Max is an accredited mental health, disability and clinical social worker, a specialist behaviour support practitioner and a family therapist, and speaks openly about his lived experience as a neurodivergent and transgender man.
Complex FBA & BSP Workshop - Melbourne CBD Thursday 26 November 2026.
Six interactive hours building confidence with complex presentations: real de-identified cases, functional hypotheses, planning, risk and restrictive practices. Templates you will use, plus a certificate mapped to the NDIS Behaviour Support Capability Framework. Register now at https://specialistbehaviour.com/event/complex-functional-behaviour-assessment-fba-behaviour-support-planning-bsp-workshop/
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