Dig Deeper

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/

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When everything around your team feels uncertain, what are you actually meant to give them? Not answers you don't have. Not confidence you can't hold onto forever.
A few weeks back, working with a group of senior leaders from a New Zealand local government agency, I asked what they found hardest about leading through uncertainty. Almost every answer came back the same: it's hard to give people certainty. This episode is about why I don't think that's actually the job.
I reckon most leaders default into one of two modes when things get shaky: heroing, where you perform having the answers and end up carrying it all yourself, or hoping, where there's no answer and nothing gets handed over either. There's a third mode: hosting, where you create real room for people to find their own answers, whether or not you know the way yourself. Certainty is a promise you often can't keep. Agency is a gift you can always give, and there's real research behind why that matters, including a decades-old study where small everyday choices measurably changed how long people lived.
In this solocast, you'll get:
Why performing certainty under pressure quietly turns you into the bottleneck
The difference between heroing, hoping, and hosting, and why hosting is the one that lasts beyond you
What a nursing home study from the seventies reveals about the measurable power of small choices
Why giving away agency is still hard, even after fifteen-plus years of coaching leaders through it
The cultural pressures, boards, media, performance systems, that quietly punish anyone who says "I don't know"
Three practical tools you can use this week: a certainty and agency check-in, an agency audit, and a language shift
A simple sailing metaphor for what it looks like to lead without controlling everything

Timestamps
(00:00) The question that started this: what leaders find hardest about uncertainty
(02:29) Heroing, hoping, and hosting: a sailing metaphor for leading without controlling everything
(04:35) Why giving away agency is still hard, even after fifteen-plus years of coaching
(06:47) Three practical tools: a certainty and agency check-in, an agency audit, and a language shift
(09:11) A close: the one decision you could hand over this week

I've put together a free model and a downloadable toolkit with the practical questions and language shifts from this episode. Grab it here: https://assets.cdn.filesafe.space/8yuhB4NRc6tP0qlIfnMn/media/6a7003b2a4c8a1a2c376e427.pdf
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You've probably heard the advice: back yourself, have confidence, don't let self-doubt hold you back. But what happens when confidence tips into needing to prove something? And what happens when you're the one everyone comes to for the answer, every single time?
In this conversation, Monique Davidson traces her own shift from proving herself to improving herself, and what that's changed about how she leads. She talks about building a culture of curiosity, asking better questions instead of jumping in with answers, and about a metaphor she keeps returning to: the cape that leaders wear without realising it, and the weight of carrying it for too long.
Monique Davidson became one of New Zealand's youngest local government chief executives at 29. Nearly a decade on, she's leading Horowhenua District Council and serving as Vice President of Taituarā, Local Government Professionals Aotearoa. She's known for a candid, reflective style of leadership grounded in service rather than ego.
We get into:
The shift from proving yourself to improving yourself, and why it changes everything
How to build a culture of curiosity instead of always being the one with the answers
Why leaders wear a cape without realising it, and the weight of carrying it for too long
The cost of holding on to a hero identity, even when things are going well
How to build a healthier relationship with your own ego
The distinction between an ally and a confidant, and why every leader needs both

Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(00:29) What got you to the top
(03:34) From proving to improving
(05:42) Your relationship with your ego
(10:46) Taking the cape off
(14:31) The cost of wearing the cape too long
(21:35) Imagine your actions written in the sky
(28:59) Balancing delivery and discovery
(30:08) Creating a culture of curiosity
(38:03) What she'd tell a 29-year-old
(41:19) Ally versus confidant
(43:59) The kitchen floor
(46:49) What she's learned from this conversation
You can find Monique on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moniquedavidson/
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/