Dig Deeper

Have you ever stopped to consider that the image you project as a capable, in-control leader might actually be the very thing keeping your people from truly connecting with you? There's a particular kind of isolation that comes with always having it together. And if you're honest with yourself, I wonder how much energy it costs you to maintain that facade and what it might be costing the people around you too.
What if the shift that changes everything in your leadership isn't about acquiring more knowledge or developing another competency, but about letting go of the performance? This episode is an exploration of what becomes possible when leaders trade the polished, textbook version of themselves for something more real. We dig into the relationship between authenticity and energy, vulnerability and performance, and why learning together with your team might be the most underrated leadership practice available to you right now. What's possible here when you stop trying to be the one with all the answers?
Rita Cincotta is a leadership expert, coach, and consultant with 25 years of experience supporting leaders across Australia. She's the founder of The Deliberate Leader, author of two books on leadership, and is currently pursuing a PhD to rigorously test whether deliberate leadership is genuinely distinct from other leadership approaches. Rita brings rare intellectual depth and disarming human warmth to this conversation and she models everything she talks about, right from the first moment. In this episode, you'll explore:
How the image of having it all together can quietly push your people further away
Why reconnecting with your purpose as a leader is the source of the energy your team needs from you
How a single piece of feedback, being called a "textbook reader" and became a turning point in how Rita led
Why psychological safety isn't just a culture initiative, but a daily practice that starts with you
How leading with an L plate changes the dynamic between you and your team in profound ways
Why balancing empathy with performance becomes easier, not harder, when you lead human first
How vulnerability at a senior level creates a ripple effect that lifts the energy of an entire team
Why contributing to the learning of others not having the answers is where lasting leadership impact lives

Timestamps:
(00:00) - The Burden of Perception
(10:10) - The Shift to Authenticity
(20:47) - Embracing Vulnerability in Leadership
(26:47) - Human First: Balancing Performance and Empathy
(30:06) - The Messiness of Life and Leadership
(36:39) - Learning Together: The Power of Contribution
Other References
You are how you lead | Rita Cincotta
Swinburne University of Technology
Manaaki Tāngata | Victim Support NZ
Home and Away TV Show
Mike House Podcast Episode
James McCulloch Podcast Episode
Deal In Energy Blog
Upgrade your Identity Blog
Forget Time Management, Master These Disciplines Instead Blog
Leading Lasting Impact

You can find Rita at:
Website: https://thedeliberateleader.com.au/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rita-cincotta-80a1263/
Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/
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Have you ever left an interaction at work feeling genuinely seen? And when did you last create that feeling for someone else?
Most leaders focus on strategy, capability, and performance. But the ones who build real loyalty, the ones whose people genuinely want to show up for, tend to share something far simpler: they pay attention to the human stuff. The greeting. The name. That moment of genuine connection in an otherwise ordinary day.
This episode starts with a story from an ordinary morning in a coffee shop that stopped me in my tracks. It's a story about two places, two very different choices, and what it reveals about the kind of leader you're choosing to be every single day.
You'll discover why attention, not talent or strategy, is the real currency of trust, how the smallest interactions shape loyalty more than most leaders realise, and why making people feel seen doesn't require anything extraordinary. It just requires intention.
I'll walk you through:
Why the difference between a leader people want to follow and one they don't often has nothing to do with skill or resources
How a headmaster in a school of 900 kids used one simple practice to shape the people around him
The distinction between doing excellent work and giving people your attention — and why both matter
Two honest questions to sit with about how seen you make your people feel
Why this doesn't need to be big stuff — it just needs to be human stuff

Whether you're leading a large organisation or a small team, this episode is a gentle reminder that the most impactful thing you can do today might take less than thirty seconds.
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What if the strategies gathering dust in your organisation aren't the problem, but rather the shadow strategies everyone's actually following?
You know the ones. The unspoken "work harder, work longer, make more money" approach that contradicts your official commitment to innovation and people-centred leadership. That tension between what you say you're doing and what's actually happening costs more than productivity. It costs truth. And when organisations can't tell themselves the truth about what's really going on, they plateau in ways that feel both frustrating and invisible.
This conversation explores a different way forward, one that honours healthy friction over comfort, embodied wisdom over abstract strategy, and possibility over certainty.
Melissa Clark-Reynolds brings a rare combination of street-smart entrepreneurship and rigorous futures thinking to help leaders navigate complexity with both imagination and pragmatism. Melissa is a street smart futurist who started university at 15, built and sold multiple tech companies, and was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the tech sector. She's trained at Stanford's Institute for the Future and the UK's School for International Futures, bringing both rigorous methodology and practical wisdom to her work with organisations navigating uncertain futures.
In this conversation, you'll discover:
How to identify the "shadow strategy" your organisation is actually following beneath the official one, and why naming this incongruence is the first step toward real transformation
Why living in possibility rather than certainty opens more pathways forward than any five-year plan, and what questions like "I wonder" and "how might we" make possible
How embodied strategy reveals truths that spreadsheets and presentations hide, and what happens when teams physically experience the difference between growth, transformation, and collapse
Why curiosity combined with commitment to excellence creates the conditions for continuous improvement, rather than the confident mediocrity that keeps organisations stuck
How to reframe the past as an empowering platform rather than a weight to escape from, particularly through bicultural and indigenous perspectives on whakapapa and time
What it means to find your tribe, the people who challenge you with love and compassion, see something more in you, and give you invitations to greatness rather than comfortable reinforcement
Why effective leadership means knowing whether you want to be right or you want to be effective, and how bringing the full triangle of inspirers, doers, planners, and storytellers creates sustainable impact
How to embrace your outlierness as a superpower rather than moderating yourself into mediocrity, and why the world needs the juiciness of your weirdness

Other References:
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Sohail Inayatullah
Jennifer Garvey Berger
David Snowden - Cynefin framework
Institute for the Future
Stanford University
School for International Futures
Cultivating Leadership
Casual Layered Analysis Framework
Episode 22 with Jennifer Garvey Berger
Episode 26 with Kirsten Patterson
Episode 17 with Derek Sivers

Timestamps:
(00:00) - The Power of Healthy Friction
(13:32) - Finding Your Tribe
(20:39) - Embodying Strategy in Organisations
(25:12) - Incongruence in Organisational Strategies
(30:23) - Living in Possibility: Leadership Mindset
(32:27) - Reframing Time: Past, Present, and Future

You can find Melissa at:
Website: https://www.melissaclarkreynolds.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissaclarkr/

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/
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Do you have a network? Of course you do. But is it the one you actually need? For most leaders, the honest answer is probably not — and it's not because you don't care about relationships. It's because you've never thought about them quite this way.
In this episode, I explore why the word "networking" can feel a bit icky, and why that reaction might be costing you the impact you're trying to create. I share a simple but powerful framework for thinking about the nine distinct roles people can play in your network, and why having a balanced set of those relationships, deliberately cultivated, can accelerate your progress and keep you grounded while you do it.
In this episode, you'll discover:
Why leaders often resist building networks and what's really behind that resistance
The nine distinct roles people can play in your network (and why balance matters)
What a "door opener" and a "critical friend" actually look like in practice
Why the quality of your relationships, not the size of your network, determines your impact
How to start assessing the strength of your own network using a free diagnostic tool

References:
Network Diagnostic
Mike House Podcast Episode

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What if the moment you're told you've lost your job isn't the time to narrow your focus, but to widen it? When everything in you is screaming to grab control, shore up certainty, and solve the problem immediately, what would it take to do the opposite? To put down your phone, pick up your camera, and walk into the unfamiliar streets of a city that feels both beautiful and unsafe?
This conversation with Dr. Chris McKeown invites us into a different way of understanding leadership under pressure. Chris is both a photographer and an energy consultant—a combination that might seem random until you realise that both practices are about the same thing: knowing where to put your attention, understanding depth of field, and recognising that widening the aperture lets in more light.
When Chris lost his employment contract while sitting in Havana, he didn't rush to fix it. He grabbed his camera and walked. What he discovered wasn't distraction—it was something far more powerful. The neuroscience of awe. The practice of presence. And the recognition that our nervous systems are so jacked up by algorithms, back-to-back Zoom meetings, and the relentless pressure to perform, that we've forgotten how to stop.
Here's what you'll discover:
How widening the aperture—literally and metaphorically—helps you lead through uncertainty more effectively than controlling every detail
Why forcing yourself to stop isn't a luxury but essential infrastructure for doing hard things as leaders
How the anterior cingulate cortex connects awe experiences to empathy, compassion, and the ability to make difficult decisions
Why successful CEOs all have "opposite worlds"—creative practices outside work that aren't optional
How back-to-back meetings compound stress in your autonomic nervous system in ways your conscious mind doesn't register
Why "holding space" for others might be more powerful than solving their problems
How Chris's photography creates lasting impact in hospital rooms—and what that teaches us about legacy beyond our presence
Why the simple practice of looking up activates the default mode network and changes how you think

Other References
The Creative Act: A Way of Being | Rick Rubin
The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health | Ellen Langer
Atomic Habits | James Clear
Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion | Alain de Botton
Stolen Focus | Johann Hari
Peak Experiences & Hierarchy of Needs | Abraham Maslow
Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)
Katie Hair Career Coaching
Katie Hair Podcast Episode
Te Papa Museum
Chris’s substack

Timestamps:
(00:00) - Creative Clarity in Old Havana
(08:52) - Widening the Aperture: Leadership Lessons
(14:24) - The Challenge of Attention in Modern Life
(19:45) - The Neuroscience of Awe and Leadership
(23:11) - The Importance of Creative Outlets for Leaders
(36:14) - The Impact of Art and Photography in Healing Spaces
You can find Chris at:
Website: nzenergyconsultants.com
Photography: chrismckeown.photography
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismckeown/
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/