Dig Deeper

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 today
Why the CEO's job is best understood as pain management: finding and removing what stops people doing their best work
How the City of Vincent gave a whole community permission to lead their own streets, and what that says about leadership at scale
What it looks like to get an entire organisation into flow state, and how David accesses his own
Why the problems in your work life never go away, and what that actually means for how you grow

Timestamps:
(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 David
You can find David MacLennan at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-maclennan-35724334/

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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 conversation
Why solving someone's problem for them can quietly teach them nothing but the shape of your answers
A second lens, attention in, attention out, and a tension between, that's arguably more useful than the levels themselves
Why your job gets easier, not harder, once your attention shifts off yourself
A simple fishing metaphor for the difference between catching someone's fish and teaching them to fish
One thing to try this week: picking a single conversation and moving up just one level

Timestamps
(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 week

I'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-intention
There's also a longer written version of this model on my website: https://digbyscott.com/thoughts/intent-determines-impact
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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 expert
How a spare afternoon with one visiting CEO turned into a Forum-wide way of connecting leaders
What "the sweat's on the right back" taught him about caring less what people think
Why tenure can be a strength or a trap, and what decides which
How his partner's honest feedback exposed his own intention-impact gap
Why he doesn't trust "skinny cooks" in leadership
What's pulling him from hosting conversations toward challenging what's said in them

Timestamps:
(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-off
You can find Francois at:
Website: https://www.forum.org.nz/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francois-barton-6a040b11/
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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 credible
What 25 senior leaders put on the flip chart, and the one word that only turned up once
Why a primal part of your brain asks "friend or foe" before it asks anything else
The Amy Cuddy and Susan Fiske research on warmth and competence
How competence, care and character add up to credibility
What you look like to others when one of the three is missing
Why leading with care first is what opens the door to a second conversation

Timestamps:
(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 with
Referenced in this episode:
Susan Fiske, Amy Cuddy and Peter Glick, "Universal Dimensions of Social Cognition: Warmth and Competence", Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2007
Amy Cuddy, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges
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How do you know when your team needs a rebel and when they need a prefect? And what happens when you've only ever learned to lead one of them?
In this episode, I sit down with Cat Hall to explore an idea we built together years ago: rebels and prefects, and why both are essential when you're driving change. Cat brings six research-backed traits from her master's in Change and Organisational Resilience that shape how well people adapt, and partway through the conversation, she turns that research back on herself. We land on something worth sitting with: adaptability starts with psychological safety, and with giving people permission to play.
Cat Hall is a workforce strategist and change leader who helps people thrive in a rapidly changing world of work. With a background in organisational development and change, she now works at the intersection of future-of-work strategy and practical change, designing future skills frameworks and adaptive ways of working, from her early years pushing against the status quo inside a large government department, through to building a practical adaptability playbook now used by leaders and HR professionals. Her recent master's research went beyond the adaptability buzzword, focusing on what actually enables people to adapt to change and what organisations and leaders can practically do to foster it.
We get into:
Why rebels and prefects both matter, and how to know which one your team needs right now
How psychological safety is the real starting point for building adaptability
Why self-efficacy and resilience show up differently when change is happening to you rather than being led by you
How small pockets of autonomy give people permission to experiment with change
Why a simple mantra helped Cat get through one of the hardest years of her life

Timestamps:
(00:00) - Introduction
(01:44) - Rebels vs prefects: what do the words actually mean?
(05:38) - From "good girl" to rebel: Cat's story
(09:22) - Finding organisational development and a career-defining moment
(14:09) - Full rebel mode at Inland Revenue, and learning to bring people with you
(20:11) - Back to study: a master's in Change and Organisational Resilience
(25:13) - The six traits of adaptability, and turning the research on herself
(29:51) - Doing a master's through the hardest year of her life
(34:37) - Bringing the playbook to life
(37:06) - Where adaptability starts: psychological safety and permission to play
(39:48) - Reflections, and where to find Cat Hall

You can find Cat Hall at:
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-hall-834220199/

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/