[Interview] How to Measure What Matters, and the Gift of Legacy | Grant Yonge

[Interview] How to Measure What Matters, and the Gift of Legacy | Grant Yonge

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 [https://theywa.org.au/], 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 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-yonge-b6a30924/] 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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y.M.C.A._(song)] * Y.M.C.A Boy George re-recording [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi2hEyzqfos] * How Great Leaders Inspire Action | Simon Sinek TED Talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4&vl=en] * How to Make of a Life | Jim Collins [https://jimcollins.com/books/whattomakeofalife.html] * The Gifts of Imperfection | Brené Brown [https://brenebrown.com/book/the-gifts-of-imperfection/] * The Art of Possibility | Ben Zander [https://www.benjaminzander.org/the-art-of-possibility/] * Keith Richards [https://www.keithrichards.com/] You can find Grant at: Website: https://theywa.org.au/ [https://theywa.org.au/] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-yonge-b6a30924/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-yonge-b6a30924/] Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/ [https://www.digbyscott.com/] Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe [https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe] Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/]

[Solocast] What Will Outlast You?

You know how most days go. There's the list to clear, the email that just landed, the conversation that has to happen by Friday. You sort it, and tomorrow you do it all again. Those things matter, and I'm not going to pretend they don't. But if a good day's work is only ever solving the problems of that day, I reckon you're missing a trick. Because your days become your weeks, become your years. When you look back over those years, what will you be able to say you contributed? And what do you want to be able to say? This solocast came out of a briefing call with a school principal. She told me she'd been sitting in her own leadership team meeting, listening to everyone work through what needed doing, and quietly realised she didn't need to be there. She wasn't threatened by that. She felt good, like something had finally worked. We get into what makes that moment possible: the difference between a problem focus and a possibility focus, what shifts when you stop patching symptoms and start improving the system, and the language change that marks leaders who've started thinking beyond their own time in the chair, from "this is what I'm doing" to "how am I setting this place up to outlast me?" Here's some of what I cover: * Why a possibility focus lifts your energy, while a problem focus has you tired and playing defence by Tuesday afternoon * The shift from delegating tasks to genuinely growing the people around you * Three questions we worked through at the conference, worth sitting with on a quiet morning * How to find the intersection of where you're energised and where you're uniquely positioned to serve * Why lasting impact asks you to choose one thing, not everything at once If relentless busyness is the pattern you keep running into, drop me a line at https://www.digbyscott.com/contacthttps://www.digbyscott.com/contact [https://www.digbyscott.com/contact] and we'll have a chat. Blog post https://www.digbyscott.com/thoughts/what-will-outlast-you/ [https://www.digbyscott.com/thoughts/what-will-outlast-you/] https://www.digbyscott.com/thoughts/what-will-outlast-you/ Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/https://www.digbyscott.com/ [https://www.digbyscott.com/] Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribehttps://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe/ [https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe/] Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/]

[Interview] From Hero to Host, Letting Go, and Leading with Impact | A Dig Deeper Compilation

There's something seductive about being the leader who walks into the room with the answers. Leadership culture has spent decades rewarding exactly that: the person who steps up, takes charge, and makes things happen. What if that pattern, the very thing that got you here, is also quietly limiting how far your people can go? And what if the most significant move available to you right now isn't to lead more, but to lead differently? This episode explores the shift from hero to host. It's one of those ideas that sounds deceptively simple and turns out to be one of the hardest things a senior leader can actually do. To mark a milestone in the Dig Deeper archive, five extraordinary guests are brought together, each of whom has found their own way into this idea. Through event design, pandemic leadership, organisational transformation, the craft of facilitation, and the quiet philosophy of letting go, they're all pointing at the same thing. I wonder what it would mean for your leadership if you took it seriously. These five voices shape the conversation. DK is a creative producer, speaker coach, and curiosity lightning rod who spent nearly a decade designing celebrated TEDx events in Wellington, known for an approach that starts with the people in the room, not the content on the stage. Sir Ashley Bloomfield served as Director General of Health for New Zealand through COVID-19, and discovered, sometimes painfully, that what people needed from their leader wasn't certainty. James McCulloch is CEO of Victim Support New Zealand, a leader who has quietly and deliberately refused to be the superhero the role invites him to become. Simon Dowling is a facilitator and author who has spent years helping leaders understand the spaces they create and why those spaces shape everything that becomes possible within them. Callum McKirdy is a coach and facilitator who makes a distinction between being, doing, and trying that might just change how you show up in your next meeting. From these five conversations, here's some of what you'll discover: * How the shift from hero to host creates the conditions for lasting organisational change * Why designing with your people in mind, rather than your agenda, changes everything * How the distinction between legacy and impact reveals a fundamentally different kind of leadership * Why kindness and niceness are not the same thing, and why that difference matters profoundly for teams * How self-awareness is the foundation that everything effective leadership rests on * Why the spaces a leader creates, intentionally or not, determine what becomes possible in those spaces * How admitting what you don't know builds, rather than erodes, your credibility as a leader * Why the word between "doing" and "being" is "trying," and what that costs us Timestamps: (00:00) From Hero to Host: A Leadership Paradigm Shift (06:55) The Power of Team Dynamics in Leadership (12:46) Legacy vs. Impact: Redefining Leadership Goals (19:00) Creating Intentional Spaces for Leadership (25:08) The Permission to Be: Authentic Leadership Practices Other references * Ted Lasso [https://tv.apple.com/us/show/ted-lasso/umc.cmc.vtoh0mn0xn7t3c643xqonfzy] * Flawsome by Georgia Murch [https://georgiamurch.com/product/flawsome/] * Jim Collins | Level 5 Leadership [https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/level-five-leadership.html] * The Castle (1997) [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118826/] * Tony Blair coming to power [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/news/05/0501/results.shtml] Connect with the guests: DK: Website [https://justadandak.com/] Sir Ashley Bloomfield: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-bloomfield-knzm-cminstd-b7181b17/] James McCulloch: Website [https://victimsupport.org.nz/] | LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-mcculloch-65a2931b/] Simon Dowling: Website [https://www.simondowling.com.au/] | LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/simondowling-aus/] Callum McKirdy: Website [https://www.callummckirdy.com/] | LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/callummckirdynz/] Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/ [https://www.digbyscott.com/] Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe [https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe] Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/]

[Solocast] Fear: Name It, Frame It, Tame It

Have you ever stood in front of a room with your heart thumping in your ears? Or walked away from a moment knowing you should have spoken up, and didn't? Fear runs more of our leadership than we like to admit. Powering through it works for a while, until it doesn't. Getting specific about what's actually going on underneath is where the real shift starts. In this solocast I share a three-part framework I've used for years to work with my own fear, especially before walking onto a stage: name it, frame it, tame it. It's simple, and it applies to all the everyday moments where the stakes feel higher than they probably are. Here's what I get into: * The moment before I addressed a large audience for the first time, and what was actually running through my head * Why putting words to a feeling changes what your brain does next * The difference between fears that are about survival and fears that are about social standing * Why the worst case version we play in our heads rarely shows up in real life * A small action that builds more real confidence than another round of rehearsal * Why naming your fears out loud builds trust with the people you lead References * Fear - Name It Frame It Tame It worksheet [https://drive.google.com/file/d/14_V5JCGNko5sO7nB_3k7SEnBO22cO3yY/view?usp=sharing] * Start Close In | David Whyte [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=030YqrN4SFc] Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/https://www.digbyscott.com/ [https://www.digbyscott.com/] Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/thoughts#subscribehttps://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe [https://www.digbyscott.com/thoughts#subscribe] Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/]

[Interview] Intergenerational Healing, Translation, and the Courage to Lead | Christian Penny

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 [https://www.toiwhakaari.ac.nz] * Ruku Ao leadership programme [https://hpsnz.org.nz/about-us/news-media/christian-penny-to-lead-acclaimed-hp-coach-accelerator-programme/] * Manutūkē Marae, Rongowhakaata [https://maorimaps.com/marae/manutuke] * High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) [https://hpsnz.org.nz] * The Hurricanes [https://www.hurricanes.co.nz] * Black Ferns Sevens [https://www.allblacks.com/teams/black-ferns-sevens/] * Digby Scott's Superpowers exercise [https://www.digbyscott.com/superpowers] You can find Christian at: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-penny-54016515/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-penny-54016515/] Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/ [https://www.digbyscott.com/] Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe [https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe] Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/]