Dig Deeper

Do you ever act fast and call it decisive, only to find out later you were missing half the picture? Or maybe you can see exactly what's going wrong, but you're not the one who gets to change it?

This episode explores why "focus on what you can control" is only half the story. Acting with agency but no awareness can set you up for exactly the mess you were trying to avoid. This episode walks through a simple two-by-two model, scrambling, sideline, stuck and solid, so you can spot which one you're operating from right now, and what it takes to move towards solid, where agency and awareness work together.

You'll walk away with:

• Why "focus on what you can control" only tells half the story
• A simple model for spotting whether you're scrambling, sidelined, stuck or solid
• Three practical shifts for each state, to help you move towards solid
• Why guarding your energy matters as much as guarding your judgement
• The ski-field story about the time Digby got tracked down on a chairlift, and what it taught him about hoarding agency

Timestamps:

(00:00) Why focus on control is only half the story

(02:26) What agency without awareness costs you

(04:34) What awareness without agency costs you

(06:56) Introducing the agency and awareness model

(09:16) Three shifts to move out of scrambling

(11:18) Three shifts to move out of sideline and stuck

(13:35) Staying solid, and where Digby gets caught out

(15:32) An invitation to explore this with other leaders

Check 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/

How much of your energy goes into making sure everything looks perfect? Into being the leader who's got it handled, even on the days you really haven't?

This episode pulls together five conversations from the Dig Deeper archive, each one built around the same discovery: the leaders who earn real trust aren't the ones with all the answers. They're the ones who let people see what they're still working out. You'll hear what it costs to admit that, and what changes once you do.

Five guests, five very different stories. Jodi Willocks left a senior role with no plan and learned to trust her gut instead. Sarah Manley led an organisation through her own rock bottom and found the words to ask for help. Nicola Nation stepped out from under the leader she thought she was supposed to be. Rita Cincotta got called out by a friend for looking “too together” to need anyone. And Erin Judge worked out what leadership looks like once you stop making it about yourself.

Here's what we get into:

• Why trusting her gut mattered more to Jodi than having a plan
• What it took for Sarah to tell her team the truth about a really hard year
• The moment Nicola realised she'd been performing someone else's leadership
• The friend's comment that showed Rita what she'd been putting out into the world
• Why Erin reckons real impact has got nothing to do with you

Timestamps:

(00:45) Introduction

(01:54) Jodi Willocks: trusting her gut through a career break

(07:57) Sarah Manley: leading through rock bottom

(15:07) Nicola Nation: stepping into her own version of leadership

(20:59) Rita Cincotta: the friend who called out her L plates

(28:20) Erin Judge: leadership that isn't about you

(33:47) Closing thoughts

You can hear the full conversations with each of these guests in the Dig Deeper archive:

Jodi Willocks

Sarah Manley

Nicola Nation

Rita Cincotta

Erin Judge

Check 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/

Do you know that feeling when you're the one everyone comes to, the one with the answers, the one holding it all together? It can feel like competence. It might actually be a bottleneck with your name on the label.

In this solocast I share a moment from a coaching conversation with a leader who runs a big, messy part of the health system. She described her role as owning the circus, then caught herself and landed on something better: it's everybody's circus, and she's just the ringleader. I unpack why that distinction matters, why leaders who hold onto everything end up exhausted, and why what they build tends to wobble the moment they step back.

You'll get:

• Why "I own that circus" and "it's everybody's circus" are two completely different ways to lead
• The difference between the ringleader and someone carrying every act themselves
• Why being across everything feels like competence, but works against you over time
• What tends to happen to a team the moment a leader who's been holding everything steps back
• A question worth sitting with: which parts of your circus were never yours to own in the first place
• Where to find my free five-minute Collective Brilliance self-assessment

Other references

• Are You the Circus Owner or the Ringleader? Blog Post
• Free five-minute leadership self-assessment: Your Lasting Impact Stage

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/

Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe

Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

What if the thing you're calling stuck is actually the moment your character is being revealed, not tested?

Most of us treat the messy middle, that stretch between where we are and where we'd rather be, as something to survive rather than something to learn from. We chase the next skill, the next framework, the next fix, when the real block might be a story we've been telling ourselves for years without ever checking if it's still true.

This episode is an invitation to slow down and look at that gap differently. My guest Andrew Horsfield has spent his career helping leaders navigate exactly this territory, and he brings a host mindset and a systems-aware lens to it: rather than pushing for outcomes, he asks what a person, a team, or a relationship actually needs to move well. Andrew is a performance consultant and the author of Better. He's also just come through eighteen months in which he and his wife counted twelve or thirteen major life events hitting at once, including his mother's cancer diagnosis and a son struggling at school. What he shares isn't theory. It's lived.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why the messy middle reveals who we are rather than building it from scratch
• How to tell the difference between productive struggle and simply spinning your wheels
• Why reflection is a practice almost nobody actually does, and what gets in the way
• How a mentor's question, "why do you always have to be approved of?", can expose a story problem hiding behind what looks like a skill problem
• Why courage in leadership often looks quiet rather than dramatic
• How the tool Bigger Me and Smaller Me can help you notice which version of yourself is driving
• Why understanding someone's perspective matters more than winning the argument
• How three simple end of day questions can turn effort into genuine growth

I wonder what might shift if you started treating your own messy middle as information rather than a problem to fix. What's possible here isn't a tidier life. It's a truer one.

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Navigating the Messy Middle

(12:12) - Choosing Between Bigger Me and Smaller Me

(20:57) - Turning Struggles into Strengths

(31:08) - The Courage to Lead: Insights from Mentorship

(38:55) - Productive vs. Unproductive Struggle: Finding the Right Path

(46:52) - The Power of Story: Shaping Our Leadership Journey

References:

• Robin Sharma
• The Messy Middle | Scott Belsky
• Bigger Me Tool

You can find Andrew at:

Website: andrewhorsfield.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewhorsfield/

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/

Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe

Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

You've probably noticed that the way you lead in one room doesn't quite land in the next. The approach that makes you sharp in a crisis can fall flat in a quiet one-on-one. And most of the time you're not choosing your style at all. You're running the one that comes naturally.

This solocast looks at two things that separate leaders who operate well at senior levels: fluency and fluidity.

Fluency is your range across the organisation. The ability to move between functions, contexts and conversations without losing your footing. Fluidity is quieter. It's noticing your default mode and choosing, in the moment, to step out of it when the situation in front of you asks for something else.

You'll come away with a clearer read on your own defaults, and a simple way to choose who you need to be before you walk into the room.

Here's some of what we get into:

• Why fluency is built over time, through the range of experiences you collect along the way
• What organisational literacy actually looks like, and why fluent leaders lean on it
• The difference between knowing your natural style and being run by it
• A door-framing question to ask before any meeting: who do I need to be here?
• Why self-awareness, not just behaviour, is the real marker of fluidity

Have a think about your own default mode as you listen. I reckon you'll spot it quickly. The more interesting question is what it might be costing you on the days you don't step out of it.

Fluency & Fluidity Blog Post

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/

Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe

Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

Have you ever caught yourself fighting a habit, a reaction, a way of showing up that you've been trying to fix for years? There's something worth sitting with in that. What if the behaviour you want to change isn't actually broken? What if it's doing exactly what it was designed to do, but it’s now just well past the point where it's still useful?

In this episode, Dr. Amy Silver and I explore the idea that the patterns we run, like people-pleasing, over-controlling, avoiding the hard conversation, aren't character flaws but protective strategies. They made sense at some point. The work isn't to fight them. It's to see them clearly, meet them with self-compassion, and then get deliberate about what happens next. I wonder what becomes possible for you and the people you lead when that reframe lands.

Dr. Amy Silver is a clinical psychologist with over three decades of experience studying how fear and habit shape human behaviour. She began her career at Oxford University, where she worked as a tutor and researcher before making a bold leap to drama school and then into the corporate world. She is the author of the award-winning book The Loudest Guest: How to Change and Control Your Relationship with Fear, and works with organisations, leadership teams, and executives across Australia to build cultures of courageous collaboration. Amy brings rare depth to this space: the rigour of clinical psychology combined with the humanity of someone who lives what she teaches.

You'll learn:

• How to recognise a protective pattern for what it is, without making it mean something about who you are
• Why self-compassion isn't a nice-to-have idea but the prerequisite for any real behaviour change
• How fear operates in teams and why so much of what looks like dysfunction is actually people trying to stay safe
• Why the question isn't "what's wrong with this pattern?" but "how flexible can I be with it?"
• How to identify your personal choice points and build experiments for what to do differently
• Why changing your environment, even in small ways, can shift the pattern before you've said a word
• How the difference between self-awareness and deliberate action is where real leadership lives
• Why the most useful thing you can do with your fear is stop fighting it and start using it as a guide

Other References

• The Loudest Guest | Dr. Amy Silver
• Conversations Create Growth | Dr. Amy Silver
• Oxford Guide to Behavioural Experiments in Cognitive Therapy | Bennett-Levy, Westbrook
• Exposure Therapy: Flooded vs Graded Approach
• The Amygdala and Threat Detection

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Mastering Fear: A Personal Journey

(05:51) - The Role of Self-Compassion

(17:49) - Deliberate Action and Choice Points

(21:10) - Changing the Environment for Better Outcomes

(29:37) - Understanding Team Dynamics and Patterns

(42:34) - The Power of Choice in Everyday Life

You can find Dr. Amy Silver at:

Website: https://www.dramysilver.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amysilverbrave

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/

Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe

Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

Right now, public sector organisations across New Zealand are losing people in numbers we haven't seen before. The redundancy figures get reported. The org chart gets updated. But what happens to the knowledge that walks out the door with them, the way someone could read a tricky stakeholder in three seconds, the history of why a system was built the way it was, the relationships that kept the wheels turning?

In this solocast, Digby argues most leaders are treating workforce reduction as a numbers exercise when it's actually a capability exercise. Systems and technology can pick up some of the slack. They cannot replace the relational, tacit knowledge that lives in people's heads and in how a team works together. Digby sets out a practical way to prepare for these transitions: map where critical capability actually sits before it leaves, invest deliberately in the people who stay, and build systems strong enough to survive the next departure. As he puts it, you can be the fire or the fire tender.

You'll learn:

• How to identify the institutional knowledge that exists only in people's heads, before it walks out the door
• Why systems and technology can't replace the relational work that holds a team together
• The difference between leading as the fire and leading as the fire tender
• A practical way to map critical capability before a restructure hits
• How to invest in the people who stay so they can carry things forward
• What it actually takes to build a team that survives transition without falling apart

Other References

• What Survives When People Leave Blog Post

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/

Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe

Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

How much of your energy goes into being the version of yourself you think the room expects? For many senior leaders, that performance runs quietly in the background all day, and it is exhausting. You spend years climbing toward the room where the big decisions get made, only to arrive and quietly wonder whether the person doing the job is actually you.

This episode explores what changes when you stop managing a persona and start leading from who you already are.

My guest Erin Judge calls the hierarchy we all defer to the "fictional ladder," and once you see it that way, the distance between the newest person in the room and the most senior starts to look a lot smaller. What becomes possible when you trust that the thoughts in your own head are as worth saying as anyone else's?

We also explore a deceptively simple idea for handling feedback: rather than rebuilding yourself every time someone pushes back, you keep your essence and adjust the dial.

Erin Judge (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) has built her career inside some of New Zealand's most complex systems: child welfare, criminal justice, and sector-wide public reform. She came from a low socio-economic background, was the first in her family to go to university, and was admitted to the bar at 21. She went on to become Chief Legal Officer at Oranga Tamariki and helped establish the Government Legal Network. These days she works for herself, moving between Iwi, NGOs and the public sector, and the value she brings is holding several of those worlds at once and helping each one see where the other is coming from.

You'll learn:

• How to tell the difference between leading and managing, and why chasing the title is the wrong prize
• Why the newest person in the room might be the most valuable, and how to give them permission to speak
• How dialling your strengths up or down beats trying to become someone you're not
• Why every strength carries a shadow, and what it costs to hide behind the thing you're good at
• How understanding someone's motivation changes the way you influence them
• Why seeking out hard things, and views that rile you, builds the kind of resilience that lasts
• How to lead for impact that outlives your tenure, without needing the credit
• Why a breadth of experiences often matters more than deep technical expertise

Timestamps:

(05:03) - Journey to Authentic Leadership

(10:00) - Resilience Through Adversity

(25:41) - Understanding Perspectives and Influencing Change

(28:05) - The Duality of Superpowers

(35:18) - Leading vs Managing

(39:39) - Creating Lasting Impact Beyond Tenure

Other References

• Supernormal, by Meg Jay
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
• Proverb: planting trees whose shade you'll never sit in

You can find Erin at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-j-16001153

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/

Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe

Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

How much of your day do you actually choose to give your attention to? Not just your time but your attention. Because there's a difference. And most leaders are managing the wrong thing.

This episode cuts through the noise around productivity to explore what's really going on when leaders feel stretched thin and constantly reactive. The answer isn't a better calendar or a tighter to-do list. It's getting deliberate about where your focus actually lands and protecting it like it matters. Because it does.

In this solocast, Digby explores the distinction between time, attention, and intention management, and why most productivity advice stops one layer too shallow. You'll hear about:

• Why time management alone won't fix a scattered leadership practice
• The difference between attention and intention, and why intention is where the real leverage lives
• How notifications and constant availability are quietly eroding your capacity to lead well
• Why sanctuary time, protected space to think without interruption isn't a luxury, it's a leadership discipline
• What wisdom has to do with AI, and why it's the distinctly human edge that no tool can replicate
• The one question worth sitting with at the end of each day

Other references

• Leadership as an Act of Attention Blog Post

Check out my services and offerings: https://www.digbyscott.com/

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe

Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

How much of what you measure actually tells you whether you're making a difference?

Most senior leaders can point to a dashboard full of healthy-looking numbers. Attendance is up, participation is steady, the reports come back green. And underneath it all sits a question that's easy to avoid: is any of this the thing that actually matters? Grant Yonge took a job with that exact question built into the title.

When Grant said yes to becoming Executive Director, Organisational Impact at the Y, his honest answer was that he didn't yet know what impact meant. What he knew was what it wasn't. This conversation follows what happened next: the shift away from counting participation towards real evidence about whether young people are flourishing, and the discovery that a 180-year-old story could anchor purpose better than any strategy document. What if the most useful thing you measured was also the hardest thing to count? Let's explore what changes when a leader stops settling for the easy version.

Grant Yonge is Executive Director, Organisational Impact at the Y in Western Australia. He arrived there by an unusual route, starting out in hotel and resort management before spending the past fifteen years in the not-for-profit sector. He brings corporate rigour and a genuine sense of purpose to the work, and he thinks about leadership the way he thinks about playing in a band. In this episode, you'll hear:

• How to move an organisation from counting participation to evidencing real impact
• Why "getting to what's real" matters as much in corporate and government as it does in the social sector
• How a story from 1844 becomes a living tool for shaping culture today
• Why knowing your part, and resisting the urge to play every part, makes the whole team stronger
• How stepping back can create more impact than stepping in
• Why naming each person's "spikiness" leads to better decisions
• How to help people find their place in the work, even on their hardest day
• Why deep conviction and real vulnerability can live in the same leader

Timestamps:

(08:27) - The Journey to Defining Impact

(19:09) - Gathering and Sharing Stories of Impact

(26:31) - The Metaphor of Music in Leadership

(30:34) - Understanding Your Unique Contribution

(35:36) - Navigating Leadership Challenges

(39:13) - Connecting to Purpose and Legacy

Other References

• Y.M.C.A Song
• Y.M.C.A Boy George re-recording
• How Great Leaders Inspire Action | Simon Sinek TED Talk
• How to Make of a Life | Jim Collins
• The Gifts of Imperfection | Brené Brown
• The Art of Possibility | Ben Zander
• Keith Richards

You can find Grant at:

Website: https://theywa.org.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-yonge-b6a30924/

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/

Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe

Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/