Dig Deeper

When one of your people brings you work that's accurate, well researched and clearly argued, and it still goes nowhere, where do you look for the reason? At the decision maker who ignored the evidence? Or at what your person couldn't see from where they were sitting?In this solocast, I start with a CFO placement I lost early in my career as a recruitment consultant. I had the strongest candidate on the shortlist and still missed, because I'd answered the brief without asking what the client was really trying to solve. From there I look at research from Gerald Ferris and colleagues showing that intelligence and the ability to read a room are separate capabilities. That's why context is something you need to teach your people rather than hope they pick up. You'll come away with three things to keep in front of your people, and a question that might change what you hand over next.You'll learn:Why a strong shortlist still lost the CFO role, and the three questions that would have changed the outcomeWhy clever and savvy are separate capabilities, and what the research says about which one predicts performanceHow most people actually learn context, and why neither route counts as a development planThe three things your people need to weigh up to get an idea across the line: content, circumstances and consequencesHow to walk alongside your people while the work is still taking shape, rather than after it's failedWhy handing over context does more for your people than handing over correctionsThe question to ask yourself about what you know and haven't said out loudTimestamps (00:00) Introduction (00:10) The CFO placement I got wrong (01:52) Answering the brief and missing the real question (02:09) When great work isn't enough (02:52) Clever people and astute people (03:38) Context is taught (04:25) Content, circumstances and consequences (05:22) Giving context rather than the answer (05:46) A question for youCheck out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/ Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/thoughts#subscribe Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

What if the most powerful thing you can do to lift your team's performance isn't to add more, but to remove what's getting in the way? And what does a sheep meat trade ban in Mexico have to do with how one CEO is building a high-performing city?In this conversation, David MacLennan and I get into what 15 years of diplomacy teaches you about leading without authority, a trade crisis that became his most formative leadership moment, and a framework he's built his entire organisation around. We land somewhere worth sitting with: the job of a leader might be less about what you add and more about what you remove.David MacLennan is the CEO of the City of Vincent in Perth, Western Australia, named the second most livable city in Australia last year. He is also Chair of the Australian Urban Design Research Centre at the University of Western Australia. He spent 15 years as a diplomat with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, fluent in Spanish, with postings to Papua New Guinea, Mexico City, Lima, and London. During his time in Lima, he was awarded the Order of Merit for Distinguished Services, Commander Grade, by the President of Peru for his contribution to Peru's hosting of the 2008 APEC Leaders Summit. Before joining local government, he was Assistant Director General at the WA Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from UWA and a Master of Management from ANU and has been at the City of Vincent since 2018.We get into:How a trade ban on Australian sheepmeat became the leadership lesson David still draws on todayWhy the CEO's job is best understood as pain management: finding and removing what stops people doing their best workHow the City of Vincent gave a whole community permission to lead their own streets, and what that says about leadership at scaleWhat it looks like to get an entire organisation into flow state, and how David accesses his ownWhy the problems in your work life never go away, and what that actually means for how you growTimestamps:(00:00) - Introduction(01:40) - From small-town WA to diplomat: David's unlikely career arc(06:52) - The Mexico sheep meat crisis, and what no one saw coming(11:55) - The lesson that stayed: step up when no one else will(17:24) - Clever, creative, courageous: running a city with limited resources(21:11) - Town Teams and giving a whole community permission to lead(24:52) - Performance equals potential minus interference(29:41) - Getting an entire organisation into flow state(30:56) - How David accesses his own flow state(32:30) - From individual performance to a culture of high performance(37:44) - Reflections and where to find DavidYou can find David MacLennan at:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-maclennan-35724334/Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribeFollow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

Someone comes to you with a problem. What's your first move? For a lot of us, there's a pull to just solve it, hand over the answer, and feel useful. It's a natural instinct. It's also, more often than not, the least helpful thing you can do.This episode walks through a model I've used in workshops for years: five levels of intention, from combatant at the bottom right up to co-creator at the top. Each level sounds different, asks different questions, and leaves the other person with something different. Underneath it all is one idea: intent determines impact. Your technique matters less than what you're actually trying to do underneath the words.In this solocast, you'll get:The five levels of intention, from combatant through to co-creator, and what each one sounds like in a real conversationWhy solving someone's problem for them can quietly teach them nothing but the shape of your answersA second lens, attention in, attention out, and a tension between, that's arguably more useful than the levels themselvesWhy your job gets easier, not harder, once your attention shifts off yourselfA simple fishing metaphor for the difference between catching someone's fish and teaching them to fishOne thing to try this week: picking a single conversation and moving up just one levelTimestamps(00:09) The pull to give someone the answer, and why it's not actually help(02:08) The ladder: level zero, the combatant, and level one, the troubleshooter(04:08) Level two, the advisor, and level three, the enabler(06:27) Level four, co-creator, and the second lens: attention in, out, and between(08:32) Your centre of gravity, and one thing to try this weekI've put the whole model, all five levels, the questions that go with each one, and the fishing language, into a free one-page PDF. Download it here: https://digbyscott.com/five-levels-of-intentionThere's also a longer written version of this model on my website: https://digbyscott.com/thoughts/intent-determines-impactCheck out my services and offerings: https://www.digbyscott.com/Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.digbyscott.com/thoughts#subscribeFollow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

How do you know if the way you're showing up as a leader is actually landing the way you mean it to?Francois Barton has spent years learning to host, not control. As chief executive of New Zealand's largest CEO group, his job isn't to have the answers, it's to set the table and get out of the way. In this conversation he talks candidly about the moment a partner pointed out the gap between his intention and his impact, why tenure can sharpen a leader or dull them, and the shift he's now navigating: from curating conversations to challenging what's actually being said in them.Francois Barton is chief executive of the Business Leaders' Health and Safety Forum, New Zealand's largest CEO membership group. More than 440 chief executives, representing over a quarter of the country's workforce, are part of it. Francois helped found the Forum back in 2009 and has led it since 2015. Twenty years working across business and government in policy, strategy and regulation shaped a belief that sits at the centre of his work: progress only comes when leaders confront difficult realities together.You'll hear:Why Francois thinks of himself as a curator, not an expertHow a spare afternoon with one visiting CEO turned into a Forum-wide way of connecting leadersWhat "the sweat's on the right back" taught him about caring less what people thinkWhy tenure can be a strength or a trap, and what decides whichHow his partner's honest feedback exposed his own intention-impact gapWhy he doesn't trust "skinny cooks" in leadershipWhat's pulling him from hosting conversations toward challenging what's said in themTimestamps:(00:00) - Introduction(02:05) - Catching up, turning 53(04:18) - What Francois is still holding onto(06:44) - Curating vs controlling (08:09) - The intention-impact gap (10:35) - Inside the Business Leaders' Health and Safety Forum(15:12) - Does tenure sharpen or dull a leader?(21:41) - What's missing in leaders who've gone stale(24:15) - Why Francois doesn't trust "skinny cooks"(27:37) - How the CEO connection lunches started(30:30) - What Francois deliberately doesn't do as host(33:58) - Where the real value actually lives(38:15) - Risk, relationships, and resourcing(41:21) - From curator to challenger(44:46) - What surfaced in this conversation(47:57) - Where to find Francois(48:34) - Digby's reflection and sign-offYou can find Francois at:Website: https://www.forum.org.nz/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francois-barton-6a040b11/Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribeFollow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

You walk into a room where nobody knows you. No shared history, nobody to vouch for you, and whatever you've built is sitting in a file the person across from you will never open. So what actually earns you credibility in the next ten minutes?I've been living this question. Over the past few months I've been building a practice in Perth, and almost twenty years of trust earned in New Zealand counts for nothing in a room where I've just met someone. So I've been carrying a mantra with me: credibility is in the eye of the beholder. It's granted, not claimed. Which shifts the question from what you've built to what you're doing to earn it right now.In this solocast I share what 25 senior leaders came up with when I asked them what makes someone credible, why our brains judge warmth before they judge anything else, and the three things that have to show up together.You'll get:Why the person across from you is the one deciding whether you're credibleWhat 25 senior leaders put on the flip chart, and the one word that only turned up onceWhy a primal part of your brain asks "friend or foe" before it asks anything elseThe Amy Cuddy and Susan Fiske research on warmth and competenceHow competence, care and character add up to credibilityWhat you look like to others when one of the three is missingWhy leading with care first is what opens the door to a second conversationTimestamps:(00:00) - Introduction(00:40) - The mantra: credibility is in the eye of the beholder(01:21) - Credibility is granted, not claimed(01:44) - What 25 senior leaders said makes someone credible(02:30) - Care: friend or foe, and why warmth comes first(03:09) - Character: showing who you are(03:30) - Competence, care and character together(03:56) - Leading with care first in a new city(04:19) - Three questions to leave you withReferenced in this episode:Susan Fiske, Amy Cuddy and Peter Glick, "Universal Dimensions of Social Cognition: Warmth and Competence", Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2007Amy Cuddy, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest ChallengesCheck out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribeFollow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/