What if the leadership model you've inherited is the very thing standing between your team and its potential? Most of us have experienced at least once what it feels like when a team is genuinely alive. When trust is in the room. When leadership moves around naturally, and people show up as their whole selves. And yet for most leaders, most of the time, the unspoken hope remains that the right person will arrive with the right answers and fix things. We race straight to task. We skip the human stuff. We declare a safe space and wonder why trust is still so hard to build, and so easy to lose.

What if there's a fundamentally different way of meeting each other? One that's not just a nice idea, but a proven strategy for performance under the kind of pressure that matters most?

In this conversation, Christian Penny brings a frame that has been tested across thousands of years on the marae and refined through decades of applying it in drama schools, Olympic programmes, and elite Super Rugby environments. It's a frame where presence and people come before task, not as an indulgence, but as the very investment that pays off when the pressure is on. Where leadership isn't a position but a question: what does this moment require, and who in the room can answer it? And where your distinct strengths, the things that only you bring, aren't optional extras but the contribution your team is quietly waiting for you to own.

Christian Penny is one of New Zealand's most quietly radical leadership thinkers. A former Director of Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School, co-architect of the Ruku Ao leadership programme for senior public sector leaders, and a current adviser to the Hurricanes Super Rugby team and the Black Ferns Sevens, Christian has spent his career asking a single question across wildly different performance contexts: what really creates the conditions where people and performance can thrive? Drawing on Māori frameworks, the craft of theatre, and years at the edge of elite sport, he brings a practice that bridges indigenous wisdom and contemporary leadership with uncommon depth and warmth.

In this episode, you will discover:

• How the myth of the hero leader persists even when we know it doesn't work, and what the marae offers as a practical, tested alternative
• Why putting people before task isn't soft leadership, it's the investment that pays off under the most intense pressure
• How "go slow to go fast" transforms team performance precisely when it counts most
• Why alignment is often a fantasy, and how learning to use each other's difference is the real leadership skill
• How to ask the question that changes the room: "What does this moment require, and who can lead us here?"
• Why trust is emergent, not declared, and what that means for how you build it deliberately
• How knowing and naming your strengths doesn't just make you more potent, it makes life easier for everyone around you
• Why courage, not confidence, is the real prerequisite for stepping up, and how that reframe changes everything

Timestamps:

(00:00) - The Myth of the Hero Leader

(10:25) - Presence Over Task in Leadership

(17:26) - The Shift from Hero to Host Leadership

(23:31) - Emergent Leadership and Dynamic Teams

(30:01) - Overcoming Resistance to New Leadership Models

(36:37) - The Importance of Small Victories in Leadership

Other references:

• Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School
• Ruku Ao leadership programme
• Manutūkē Marae, Rongowhakaata
• High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ)
• The Hurricanes
• Black Ferns Sevens
• Digby Scott's Superpowers exercise

You can find Christian at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-penny-54016515/

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/

We focused a lot on what's a good leader look like, you what are the qualities of a good leader. And yet the social conditions in which we could operate as hero leaders have all either dried up or disappeared. And yet the fantasy that there could be a hero or heroine leader hasn't. So culturally we still have a kind of desire for someone to ride in on a white horse and save us, you know, like if only we fire this boss and we get a new one, then things will be better.

And yet we really know that that's not how it works.

you

If your team already has what it needs to perform at its best, and what's missing isn't strategy or structure, but a fundamentally different way of meeting each other. Well, my guest today is Christian Penny.

He's an elite leadership coach who's moved between directing theatre, coaching Olympic athletes and working alongside elite super rugby teams, asking the same question throughout. What really creates conditions where people and performance can thrive? This is such a rich conversation. I love this conversation. It's all about connection, trust, difference and what leadership looks like when it comes from the inside out. Hi, I'm Digby Scott and this is Dig Deeper, a podcast where I have conversations with depth.

that will change the way you lead.

Christian, welcome to the show.

Ka pai, ka pai, ka pai. Pai ki te noho i to whare te Gbe. No reira ko tēnei te mihi a koe i o whānau me o mahi mai tēnei uri o Tainui Waka. No reira, tēnā koe, tēnā koe. Tēnā rā tātou katoa.

So for those who might not speak Te Reo, what did you share just then?

Just a mihi acknowledging you and your family and your work and my ancestry to the Tainui waka and to the Ngāpuhi iwi and just linking us to whenua, to this place, to Aotearoa.

I'm in Western Australia at the moment and there's a relatively recent addition to how people here start conversations, start meetings called an acknowledgement of country. And if it's more formal, then it's a welcome to country. And it's something that's really only been around probably last 20 years. I've lived away from Australia for most of that time and coming back here more regularly now, I'm noticing how this is happening.

sort of an acknowledgement, a presencing, grounding ritual. Yet I noticed that it's done in a fairly clunky way a lot of the time, or it's scripted. And the way you just let off there, you know, it felt the opposite, it felt just like, okay, well, this is genuine, this is conversation. I'm curious about what do you reckon the purpose of something like what we've just done? What are we trying to achieve through that?

Transition so we have to come together somehow we have to go from the beginning into them Mahi we would say in New Zealand into the work and We need some way to do it So in our Māori frame in the indigenous frame we go through people and you're the person in front of me and so You know when I say tēnā koe that means there you are so it's like literally starting with who's here who's in the room us? Here we are together you and me and then

What's behind that is your people, what's behind me is my people. They're all here too, kind of. So that's who we are.

I love that. Here we are. And we're to have, well, an extension of many conversations we've had for many years. And we're preparing for this a couple of weeks ago in a coffee shop. And I think I said to you, we could have been recording this one, you know, that conversation is an extension of a storyline, right? So for people who don't know you, I would reckon it's worthwhile you sharing a little bit about.

the world you grew up in. And I'm particularly curious about what has that taught you about how to navigate our world.

The world I grew up in and then learning how to make sense of what that meant are two really distinctive parts. So I'll tell you the first and then the navigating bit comes, feels like it is an ongoing thing. So I'm born in the 60s in New Zealand and sometimes describe myself as a pre-pill baby. know, prior to contraception in New Zealand, prior to the family benefit, my mother gave birth to me and she was a Māori woman growing up in Pukekohe, which is south of Auckland.

in the 60s in a big Irish Catholic Māori onion farming family. I'm a McCourt on that side. And my father was an Englishman and they, he wanted to have a go at this, I think, with her, but she was, she was like, she had some instinct that it couldn't work with him and it couldn't work if I was adopted into her family. So that would be the more Māori thing to do. But I think for her, the idea of being

my auntie rather than my mother was too painful. least that's the way she's described it to me. So she adopted me and they wrote on my birth certificate Māori baby. So I got that and then I got Māori parents. So my father is Māori and English and my mother is Nui and Rarotongan. However, I think when my mother picked up this baby, she must have gone, this is a very fair Māori baby. pretty white to me. So that's a part of the...

both working in rich people's houses. So both my parents' families knew each other. They went to Parnell Primary School together and their parents' hope for them, one had come from the islands, one from up north was, you know, we'll leave this old way behind, we'll assimilate into the Pākehā world and our kids will get educated. So I didn't grow up close to a marae. I didn't know any of those things. I didn't grow up in the Māori world though. I knew, you know, it was all around me and my grandparents.

way of being. We weren't in a culture with a whole bunch of forms around us. We were living in the Western frame. So all of the things I've learnt about all of that have come from learning the language and being in the Māori world through my work and through learning the language. That's been a super rich thing to have done that.

I sometimes think when I'm learning the language that I wish my dad had done it with me or I got to do it with him I think you know right near the end of his life

some things cracked, you could say, in him. Like he just started making these, drawing these Māori motifs. He was a good drawer, he was an engineer. But you he'd never expressed really any kind of interest in that side of things. He never blocked me doing it, but he never followed it anyway. That's I always think would have been such a thing. I mean, one way I think about these things is it's intergenerational healing, right?

These are things that are lost and I'm in a healing process. So they say one generation to lose their ill, three to get it back. So maybe my kids, my two daughters, their children will have the language. And I'm a part of that reclamation by starting to learn when I did in my 20s.

How does it shape how you show up and navigate in the world?

Early on in my 20s, it shaped me in a way where I kind of felt less than. So I kind of wanted to be more Māori, wanted to know things I didn't know, wanted to be more free in the Māori world. And I just didn't know enough to move in that world or, you know, I didn't know myself particularly. So what I've come to realise is my role is much more around translation. Like I can translate some of the things now because I've lived inside the world long enough.

I don't have a steep enough whakapapa to lead from a Māori perspective in the Māori world, but I do have enough capacity and understanding and love and connection to all of that frame and enough language and understanding that I can translate it out. So one of the dreams I've come to and had is that I'd really love more of these processes to get mainstreamed in New Zealand culture and to be more seen and accepted internationally, you know.

the way we orient around people, connection, group. Yeah, that's a dream. That we could start to accept or employ these processes, the ones we were doing at the beginning and others that live on the marae and the place we gather as Māori. So that, you know, when I go to 21sts or funerals, this thing of acknowledging each other, of doing mahi, of speaking to... One way I think of our world is...

We're particularly skilled at the capacity of dealing with the emergent. What's happening now? What's the thing that's coming? And I've seen such beautiful and skilled leadership and spontaneous leadership in this area in the Māori world that I know this could help us all, like if we got more onto this thing.

You're really touching a nerve, I think around this. love the language of dealing with the emergent. And it makes me think that we try to control as opposed to respond to. I'm curious about digging into this idea of firstly translator. Yes. I reckon that's how I see you. The bringing the technology. Yeah. The human technology, what becomes possible?

the human technology.

Do you think when we bring those aspects into the mainstream?

Here's a simple way to think of it. In the indigenous frame, when we meet, it's presence and people at the front. Task is second. So we'll get to task. We're not afraid of that. We just think we have to meet as people first. What I've learned is in the Western frame, or you know, the mainstream frame, the the frame that we've inherited from the Enlightenment, we like to place task at the forefront.

Often when I'm in settings with people who aren't familiar with this other way, we get straight to task immediately. you know, obviously that's the job we have to do, but it masks a whole lot of things that we haven't explored or understood. And anxiety, right? So that all just gets kind of swept under the carpet.

And then we only get to people when the shit fucks up and we have to kind of deal with the fact that we're dealing with human beings and this thing is complicated and complex and has lots of lines going off it in all sorts of different directions and da da da da da da.

Yeah.

I've just written down task masks. If we focus on tasks, we mask the real stuff.

Yeah, and if we get the real stuff dialled, we used to teach it to the students at the drama school as we go slow to go fast. You they were so desperate to begin and we were like, no, no, no, no, we need the foundation so we can go deep and we'll speed up. By the end, we'll get really fast. I think a common misconception with Māori is people who don't know the world think, you know, they say so much and it's so long and so much time is taken at the get-go.

But what I've found is if you do that bit right, by the time you get to the pressure points, be they making a show or sport or a deadline in a software development process, if you're connected and you understand what you're doing together and the roles and responsibilities are all really clear and the purpose, the kaupapa is clear, then you need less language at the end, no more. And that's where it really pays off because under pressure...

We don't want to be having to explain to each other what's going on. We don't have the time then.

Yeah, this is an investment mindset is another way putting this, isn't it? You're investing in the resilience and the anti-fragility of ecosystem people. So then when the stuff does hit the fan, then you are good because you've got the foundations in place. Now you co-led Ruku Ao's leadership program, which came out of Toi Whakaari, the drama school, as its gestation. Yet it was working with really senior.

public sector leaders for memory and it was a longitudinal over time leadership program, from my understanding, you know, really incorporated a lot of what you're talking about. What did you learn about how to bring that sort of work, that leadership development work into mainstream from that experience and others?

We had the luxury of a year, right? So it's a year-long program. And we also had the luxury of a site where there was an exemplar. We'd only created that program to teach it once we got our own house in order. So once the school was running well on these principles, we could take 20 tier three and four leaders from the public service and put them into the school, into events. We used to gather the whole community up twice a week, 8.30 on a Monday and a Friday.

We could pop them bang into that session and then they could see the work in action. And the thing that amazed them, know, super educated grownups was how fast things were moving, how quickly the balls were going between people, how much leadership was being passed around, who were the teachers? They couldn't tell, you know. And so it gave them a model without any theory about this is a dynamic environment where people are excited to be in it. They're self-leading, self-authoring.

co-creating it. From there we could put them into the planning groups that led it. So they were student-led but heavily guided by teachers so they could see how it was being constructed. So that's one bit, right? So they can see the result, they can see the engineering. So we don't have to teach a lot of theory. They know that's good performance. Then we took them with us back to the marae of Teina Moetara up in Rongowhakaata, Manutūkē Marae, where we could pop them into a

deep source experience, you know, so they go into the puna, into the marae, into the way it really lives on a Māori and then they can contrast the two. Oh, this is what it looks like and it's true form. This is the adaptation. How do these two things, I see how these two things fit together or not so much I can see how they fit together, but I can see the work that's been done to go from there to there and from there

We would set them safe to fail challenges in a way. Pick a corner of your work you want to apply some of this and then guide that. So it was nearly all applied learning, not trying to teach a theory and then get them to do it and not in a classroom separate too much. They were in a tutorial together as they went along fortnightly, but all of that was skin in the game stuff. So nobody was allowed to talk about or complain about. It all had to be real things that we were struggling with either with each other.

or with the work or the thinking or that sort of thing.

What did you notice when they took these ideas and go and apply it? They give it a go. What were the conditions under which it seemed to get traction in, let's call it the mainstream. So they go back to their agency, whatever it is. What enabled do you think those ideas to take root, to get life?

their confidence about what they were trying to do, and then scaling it appropriately. So not going too big and not trying to drive top-down change, trying to drive bottom-up exemplars of excellence that they could then sell out. Scaling was important, and then them working off their own vision, because they're the leader. The leader is always the expert in the setting, not you or me. We're alongside them, but we're not the expert. We don't have enough intel or insight or history.

You know, they were following their own wisdom and to some degree, think, dream Digby, you know, that's starting to make the work a dream come true instead of a place I have to tolerate. I love

that? What do we had more of that? This is what I want to create more of in the world.

And that's a rocket fuel, you know, when any of us touch what matters to us, like you were saying before about me, you know, when I described that thing I lit up, like it's because it matters, right? Like it's close to what I think I'm here to do.

When we were just about to press record, you were mentioning, you know, we're lacking some language for the sort of leadership you reckon we need more of at the moment. Tell us a little bit about what you're seeing and maybe some background around the work you're doing now in working in high performance sport. I'm curious about how that's informing your thinking here, but coming back to that challenge here, what are we lacking when we think about leadership at the moment?

Well, we focused a lot on what's a good leader look like, you know, what are the qualities of a good leader. And yet the social conditions in which we could operate as hero leaders have all either dried up or disappeared. And yet the fantasy that there could be a hero or heroine leader hasn't.

So culturally we still have a kind of desire for someone to ride in on a white horse and save us, you know. Like if only we fire this boss and we get a new one, then things will be better. And yet we really know that that's not how it works. That's not how high performance works. That's not how good teams work. And my metaphor for this is the marae. Like so everyone's working on a problem. Everyone has their corner. We all know what to do. People aren't bossing each other in their areas. The kitchen's being run by Aunty Tui, you know.

Koroua on the paepae, da da da da da da da da. He doesn't go into the kitchen and give her instruction on how to run the kitchen, you know, like, but one without the other, it's got no mana. So we don't really have a collaborative model, but we have a desire for a collaborative space. We're right in the middle of that problem, I reckon, right now.

this work I'm doing in this hero versus host concept of leader, think that's the same as an attempt to try and address that issue as well. You know, I quite like the language of hosts. think as an alternative to hero and a hero being not just the expert in the conditions, but also the expert in the answers. That's what we're we've had a dream of having, and that's what we champion. And when I've said the host.

I like the metaphor that the host creates the conditions for things to occur, but they don't do the things they cultivate. They connect, they sense, they guide, they might prod. They might pull some weeds out of the metaphors of garden, but they're not, they're one of, think it's probably the other way I think about this too. They're one of as opposed to above.

All of that makes sense to me as a metaphor, and I like it because it's changing the perspective you'd stand in as a leader from a kind of a saviour to a collaborator. Yeah. But what it doesn't address is the fact that a host has guests who have responsibilities. Like everyone's on about their rights, but not many people are on about their responsibilities.

Let's go there. Are you getting me going now?

That's the bit that's missing there. Like, if I'm your guest and you're my host, what are my responsibilities? And that's baked into marae tikanga, the way we work on the marae, Like, manuhiri tangata whenua, that's the meeting. Who's hosting who? Who's coming on? How are we going to co-create this? That's just baked in, and it's baked in over 2,000 years. And it's baked in, and anything that's lasted that long has lasted that long because it works, not because somebody thought it up.

That's a good idea.

Can we get practical on that? I'm really curious about this idea, how we're going to co-create this beneath that is, and what's my part? What do I need to own? What's my responsibilities? How do you lead that conversation? The traditional leader might say, well, okay, you're responsible for that. You're responsible for that. But it sounds to me like you're alluding to something that's more nuanced than that. In the framing I've been mentioning around hosts, you're saying it doesn't link to how do we help people take responsibility for their part is I think what you're saying.

So how do we do that?

We have to get clearer first what we're here to do, you know, in any given situation. And we need smaller sites of practice, so we can't keep practising top-down solution-based leadership. That's like, we know enough to know that doesn't work, you know. So it's got to be models, smaller models inside the businesses or the teams. And then we build out from those cells of excellence. Those cells of excellence have to get clear on the purpose, and then they have to get clear on

how we use each other's difference better. That's the bit I think we are really just waking up to. This is what I notice. We tend to think that, you know, people use the word alignment all the time. If we align, we'll be better. And underneath that is a kind of fantasy that as long as we're all thinking the same way, but we don't think the same way and we don't have the same perspectives. And this is where the marae is really helpful. It's not a democracy.

There are people in leadership roles and they're there because they have more experience and they're not going to ask you if you don't have much experience how to deal with this question. And you understand that or we understand that. The democratic lens we put over the workplace means that everybody thinks they should have insight into everything and that just slows everything down and corrupts the power that we need to move. The skill set we haven't got good at is going...

It's not about status, it's about what does this moment require of us and which person in the group could lead us here now. That's what I've learned being in that Ruku Ao world with Teina in the Marae. Like just if we get better at seeing each other's difference. you know, sometimes the shy person is the right person to lead because their tenderness and vulnerability is the right tone for this moment.

And then sometimes we need the tougher, meaner person, because we all do need to like sharpen up and toughen up for a second.

This is really powerful. It links back to the emergent work that we need to do. I love that question. What if leaders could ask that question? What does this moment require of us and who can lead us? And that's such an invitation to dissolve hierarchy, to dissolve it's the leader's job because they're the leader. It's like, well, no, what's the leadership act and where can that come from?

That takes practice. First we have to know what we are good for and value it. Then we have to give up the idea that we need to be good at everything. That would have been my perspective in my 20s and early 30s as a leader. I've got to get good at everything. And then through directing stuff in the theatre, I remember once getting stuck with an actor and they had a... I thought the problem was vocal. I wasn't strong on voice, but I got an actor friend to come in and I said...

take this guy and you work with him for a couple of hours and he came out and boom, the actor was in exactly the right place. I couldn't have fixed that. Like I didn't have the skill set for that, but I could identify what was needed. So that's the frame, Like we don't need all the skills, but if you're leading, you need to be able to see what's needed and then go release the people who can do it to do it.

Want to just come back to the bit about first we need to know what that is for us. You know, what is the thing that we bring? That's a strength. That's a uniqueness and might even be fully formed. It's an emergent one. Right. So, you know, for me, I remember years ago being told that I asked great questions and I was a really good listener and I was in my early thirties and I had no clue that that was a strength of mine until I'd asked the question, you know,

How do I make a difference when I'm with you? You know, that was a kind of a scary question to ask, to be honest. You how do I make a difference to you? Because, know, in this culture of no tall poppies, it's like, you don't want to big note yourself, but it's so helpful to hear the answer. And since that feedback came from more than one person, since I got that, I decided not to brush it away, but to embrace it because it will, that's making a difference to other people. Why wouldn't I do that more and do that?

more deliberately. And so now I've gone, yeah, I am good at that. And I can always evolve and improve.

And what got easier once you got clearer about that?

Interesting. I let go of needing to be good at everything else.

And what got easier because you did that?

question I found and got more deliberate about my career path because I, started to do work that involve using those strengths that it was a virtuous cycle. You know, I did more leadership coaching, which involves asking great questions and listening well. And I got a reputation for being really good in that space because I was owning that.

Yeah, nice. And what got easier for you and your being once you got that reputation?

I reckon it was a slow lightening. wouldn't say it was a fast thing because I had a lot of baggage about it, but there was, there was a kind of like a breathing out. Okay. This is me at my best. like this version of me.

here to do this in a way.

I used to say, and I still say actually my works like this giant creative project that will never end, you know, until I'm not around, but hopefully it carries on from then too. But that requires a sustain. think you used the word fuel before, or it's that conviction, that passion, that sense of purpose. And so I think by linking, what am I naturally good at that I enjoy using to make a difference? Well, why wouldn't I do more of that? You know, it's that kind of logical path.

I also want to ask you a question about what became easier, not just through for me, but also for others. What I saw was that by using my strengths, it made others lives easier in some way because I'm more potent by using my strengths, my talents deliberately that accelerates the solving of a problem or unleashing possibility, whatever it might be.

So something became easier for others too. And I think you don't want to discount that. You know, it's this attention out, not just attention in.

We're social beings, so we're built to respond to things happening together. So when we feel any situation, work, a wedding, a birthday, a funeral, when we feel ourselves pulled together to make the thing mean more than it meant just in our heads, that's the thing we love, you know, because like that's hardwired in us from mai rānō, we say Māori, like from way back, you know, like from...

We sat around fires together like we, that's community and that's the experience of being a part of something but being yourself, you know? That's what we're trying to create, I think, when you're saying hosting.

What I'm taking from this is a level up in how I'm defining hosting. And I think it's something that will really add to my work and the work I do with people I work with. You said earlier, the leader needs to be able to not do the work or be the expert in everything, but needs to be able to see who might want to step forward or could step forward and identify that. I think that's really powerful. I'm curious, Christian, where are you experimenting at the moment?

in your world with these ideas.

I'm currently working with the Hurricanes, the Super Rugby team. So I'm working with the coaches and the player leaders. So it's kind of the edge of this experiment at the moment. Like how could those coaches coach better together? Because they've all got different departments, but together, how could they coach better together? Because all of that gets translated through the player leaders onto the field. How could the player leaders own, understand, and then direct that more powerfully on the field? Yeah, that's the edge of what I'm working with.

I mean, don't know how much you can give away, but what are you trying there? Like what's the experiment you're running or experiments?

It's pretty close to what we discussed before. So using the engagement frames that come from the marae, so working on meeting as the human beings we are first, then getting clear on who we are to each other and what might be possible if we worked in sync with that, then naming more specifically the strengths that I see in you and you see in me, and then getting clear how we want to use those and then workshopping that.

coming back to it again and again. So there's the work and then noticing how we work. What did we learn there?

What sort of resistance do you see to these ideas and how do you deal with that?

Well, big resistance is most people don't have any model of it, right? So you're teaching into or leading into a space where it's invisible. But the desire doesn't tend to be invisible. Like people know that the best leadership situations they were in, either family or church or teams or, know, usually people have one example of where it worked well. So they know something of what it is. The resistance is...

is mostly cynical like I've seen everything tried and it's all failed so why try one more time

And there's a tiredness that can come with that, right? Or a fear of some sort. What happens when you work through the resistance? What do you see? What's the liberation? What's the shift?

think it's a bit like what you described about yourself. Like once I realise that my skills are of value to the team or to the setting and they're seen and they're named, I'm licensed to bring them. Then I can both relax. I don't have to keep worrying and I can act more powerfully when I act. So you can both be stiller for longer periods and then more powerful when you come in.

What haven't we talked about Christian? Where's your sense of where we want to take this conversation?

I mean, the thing I keep noticing is we want to default back to the old method, either because the new is too messy and it might expose us to too many risks and we might fall over and da da da da da da da da. Or there's a desire for people, they want the sense of community, but they've never really experienced the intimacy that comes with that.

And so they know it should be there, but they don't want to do the relational work or the intimate work or the revealing work that you need to do if you want to build an environment of trust. You know, so the common thing I hear is like, this is a trusting space. I'm like, maybe, but in my experience, like trust is again, emergent. Like you get some trust in an environment and then someone takes a risk and then the trust goes because we went further than we've ever gone before. And then you have to rebuild it. then.

We trust again and then someone takes another risk. So it's the dynamism of teams of people of collaboration and creativity. So that's the bit I see. Missing a lot is if you haven't lived inside a creative process, you don't really haven't found that somewhere in your life or had no one's taught you about it. The resistance is we default to systems. We think one more flow chart will do it or one more model from somebody will do it. We aren't practised at.

really valuing our little corner, testing our little corner and then growing from there.

So that's what you mean by the creative process, like just having an idea, trying something out, seeing what happens, seeing how we feel as we go through that process.

Yeah, and seeing if the thing we want to have happen, like in a sports team, it's like, we better connected? Are we training harder? Are we keeping focused more? Are we having better conversations about what's not working instead of talking shit about whatever? Are we on task more? Are we more empathic with each other when it's tough or are we more just more demanding, you know, and that just dries up because people can't function like that.

How do you position your role? We say the Hurricanes, right? So you're working with the coaches. How do you describe to them the role you play with them?

It depends on the context. So today I was working with a coach who's going to go to Europe with a sport. He's got a really tricky kind of highly contested, unconstructed setting, lots of athletes working on their own who have to come together. With him, I have to make sure I work at the pace that he's working. When I'm working in the Black Ferns Sevens, I've worked with Cory for a couple of years. It's very clear I'm there to hold us into the conversation about how we're going as leaders.

So I'm working with the player leaders and the leading management group. So I'm there to make sure we're discussing our leadership. And that frees him up. He doesn't have to hold that. He can be a part of that question. And then I was working with a senior executive team last week. And the thing I'm doing there is I make it explicit I'm not teaching them, but I'm really holding them to, is anything progressing or are you just stuck again?

beyond that, you know, where my mind wants to go is, it only asking that question or there is there a nudge beyond that?

Yeah, yeah, there's a nudge beyond that, but I've moved away from teaching so much, you know, so I would have in my 40s, I would have taught them things that would help them lead. So I taught the masters in directing at Toi for nine years. There I was teaching different bits and pieces of leadership. Now I'm more curious about holding them into the question and trusting that they will have the answers as long as they don't walk away from it. That's the tough bit, like making sure they don't walk around it.

It seems to me that what's really important, I think perhaps this is a lesson for anyone listening maybe is to be very clear on what your role is and what it's not when you bring people together. You know, what am I actually here for? Bring your strengths. Am I actually the right person for this? Interesting when I get asked to do work these days increasingly, I used to be, yeah, 10 years ago, I would have said, I can probably do that. Yeah, look, I've done that before.

But is it my superpower? And now I'm at a point where I'm just saying, look, this is the work I do. This is the stuff I do best. And I can help you with these problems in this way.

So yeah, I've done that. I've gone, no, you need this person to do that. That's not a good context for me. And then someone in the other day didn't want me to work in their context. And, you know, I was feeling a bit sore about it. And this mate said to me, who I work with, he said, no, no, no, no, they're just not ready for you yet. Reframe. And I was like, well, that's good. And that's true in the sense that I do tend to dial up the degree of intimacy in a room.

Heheheheh, great re-

and the degree of being real. And that's not everyone's cup of tea, you know, like that doesn't suit a certain kind of leader at a certain stage. You have to have known enough about the value of being real and authentic with each other to want to go there.

Anything else that we haven't talked about as we bring the plane into land now and circling a bit before we touch down, anything else that's there that you want to name and explore.

just think it's really important to keep getting little victories, not big victories. One of my teachers said at one point, any leadership's better than no leadership. That applies across the system. Like, leaderships can be present anywhere, any kind of moment from anybody.

But mostly we don't lead because we don't feel authorised or mandated or skilled. But what I've learned is most leaders, including myself, don't feel confident when we're leading. We're just leading because we can see that leadership needs to happen. To me, that's a way better frame than when I'm confident I'll lead. I'm like, well, we're all going to be dead by then.

And there's a distinction there between courage and confidence, right? You know, I'll wait till I'm confident until I lead. Well, actually, what about if you could just find some courage? And that comes from conviction that this matters.

Yeah, and you know, again, the marae is a good model because the koroua would say to you, you now up, you speak. And it's like, I'm not ready. It doesn't, you don't get that option. You're like, no, you now. That flips back to the first discussion about, you know, the great leader. Like we need more compassion for the fact that people are trying things and leading isn't about being good. It's about trying things and then getting back up and getting back up. This is where I like Americans and Australians, I think in New Zealand.

You know, we're tough on the fact that if it isn't really completely authentic, completely this, completely that, it's no good. And that's just not true. It's not true.

Yeah. Wise words. That feels like a great place to bring us to a close. We've covered some territory, mate. What's it got you thinking just through our conversation? What's come up? What are you learning? What are you being reminded of? What's bubbled up?

There's still a lot to do and the thing you said about what's the resistance, like what can't people see and what can I do to help people see it more? What's the work of visibilising this thing that we know, we've felt, we're comfortable in? There's a need for some good shapes and better metaphors, some good language that help people gain confidence there. So it's got me thinking, keep going on that.

Mate, where can people find you if they wanted to keep a conversation going with you?

I'm on LinkedIn. Yep, that's probably the easiest way to get to me.

Christian Penny, easy to find my friend. Hey, thank you. Been wonderful.

Yeah, Raui. Tēnā koe.

See you soon, ka kite.

Just a quick reflection on that pretty rich deep conversation with Christian, hey, very deep and rich. I’ve known Christian for a while and every time I speak with him, there's some wisdom, some nuggets that come out and definitely today was another one of those. For me, I reckon this idea of what does this moment require, that question, what does this moment require and who can lead?

I think that's such a different frame than, okay, this is how we're going to do it, coming out of a leader's mouth. So ask the question, what does this moment require? There's something I reckon is if we could just do that a little more often, I reckon we get a lot more collaborative leadership, a lot more collective leadership emerging. Big stuff. Wondering about what this has got you thinking and wanting to try out. One thing that might be of interest for you is

a if you want to know what are your leadership strengths, how do you make a difference? There's a little exercise I have called superpowers, which gets you to go and get feedback on five questions about your strengths, about when you're at your best. I'll put a link in the show notes. So that's just digbyscott.com forward slash superpowers. Check that out. It's a great exercise. Thousands of people have done it and got huge value from being shown what they're awesome at in ways that they might not have not.

I'm Digby Scott, this is Dig Deeper, and until next time, go well.