Dig Deeper

If you lead people, there's probably something you're holding on to right now because handing it over feels risky. Maybe you've handed it over with so many conditions attached that it never really left your hands. And the conversations with the people around you have stayed small, stuck at the level of tasks and updates.In this episode I've handed over my own podcast. Katee Gray, my fractional practice manager for close to three years, takes the host's chair and asks me questions I'd never been asked. What if trust was where you started rather than something people had to earn? What would change if your time away was for generating new thinking rather than escaping? And how do you lead in a way that keeps going once you've moved on?Katee Gray has worked alongside me as a fractional practice manager and thinking partner on the practice for close to three years, and she ran the process that led to hiring my current practice manager, Jemma. She's been on the receiving end of how I hand things over, which is why she knew where to push. In Part One we explore:How starting from trust, rather than asking people to earn it, changes what a working relationship can becomeWhy task-level conversations leave me flat, and what I've noticed about meeting people where they areWhere my habit of assuming the best in people comes from, through my mum and her parentsHow the confidence and wonderance continuum helps you stay clear of arrogance on one side and imposter thinking on the otherWhy I call time away "generative time", and the planning that makes seven weeks away possibleHow burning out at 30 shaped the boundaries I hold todayWhy a leader's boundaries give everyone else permission to have their ownHow Leading Lasting Impact grew from a question I was asking myself, then heard from my clientsConnect with Katee on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kateegrayBook a time to pick Katee's brain on people, profit and process for your business: kateegray.com/#chatFind out more about Leading Lasting Impact and take the free leadership diagnostic: digbyscott.com/leading-lasting-impact

How often do you stop yourself from doing the thing you know is right, because it feels like it isn’t your call? And how many people around you are doing the same?In a recent conversation on Dig Deeper, City of Vincent CEO David MacLennan shared a formula from Tim Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis: performance equals potential minus interference. In this solocast I explore what changes when you see your job as clearing what’s in the way rather than adding more.Key takeaways:Why removing interference matters more than adding capabilityThe three kinds of interference: practical, structural and psychologicalWhy frustrating rules usually start out as sensible onesWhat it means to be a “pain manager”How one staff survey across 25 areas led to decisions that freed things upHow hosting looks different from heroing when it comes to potentialTwo questions to take into your weekTimestamps: (00:00) Introduction (00:10) Permission and “that’s not my lane” (01:15) The Inner Game of Tennis formula (02:02) Potential minus interference (02:32) Three kinds of interference (03:02) Why interference piles up, and the pain manager (03:35) The City of Vincent staff survey (04:01) We don’t grow potential, we release it (05:05) Two questions for your weekListen to the full conversation with David MacLennan: [Interview] Leading a City for Lasting Impact | David MacLennan Others mentioned: The Inner Game of Tennis, W. Timothy GallweyCheck 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/

Have you ever found out that something you were doing to help was actually getting in the way? You had good intent, and knew exactly what you were trying to do for your team. Then someone told you, in much kinder words, to get out of the way.This episode is about the gap between what you intend and what people actually experience (and, what to do when you find one of those gaps in your own leadership). Celena Harry and I get into how to go looking for that feedback without making a production of it, why the best work a leader does is often the work nobody sees, and what it takes to stop telling yourself the worst version of the story.You’ll learn:Why your intent matters far less than your impact, and how to tell the differenceThree questions that close the gap between the impact you want and the impact you are actually havingHow to ask for feedback in a way that gets you something useful backWhy the best work a leader does is often invisible, and how to get comfortable with thatHow perfectionism shows up as an inner critic, and what it costs the people around youHow to work out whose opinion genuinely matters to youCelena Harry is Chief People Officer at Ando Insurance and previously held the same role at Mitre 10. She has spent more than two decades helping organisations grow through great leadership, strong culture, and a healthy dose of pragmatism.Away from work, Celena is a mum of two and stepmum of three talented young adults, and cat mum to a feline who has very clear views on household leadership. Proud to hail from West Auckland, she’s built her career on keeping things practical, people-focused, and refreshingly free of corporate jargon.Whether she’s talking leadership, culture transformation, or what it takes to create a fantastic workplace, Celena believes the best conversations are honest, human and grounded in real life. And if those conversations happen to be accompanied by a 90s rock soundtrack, even better.Timestamps:(00:00) - Introduction(02:22) - The feedback that changed how she leads(03:48) - What getting in the way actually looked like(05:17) - Handing over the stage, and what happened next(07:00) - Wind beneath my wings: the work nobody needs to know you did(09:34) - Why people are led by their leader, not by HR(11:59) - Getting braver, and what changed when she went contracting(15:38) - What Playcentre taught her about the human condition(17:57) - Separation, redundancy and Dare to Lead in 2020(20:37) - How to catch the story you are telling yourself(22:57) - Dual awareness, and finding language for your own state(28:25) - Perfectionism, and who is actually in your arena(33:53) - Leading for impact when your impact is indirect(36:54) - The three questions that close the intent and impact gap(38:48) - A practical way to find out how you are landing(42:13) - Gloriously, beautifully messy humans(45:21) - ReflectionsYou can find Celena at:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/celenaharry/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/

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/