26. Breaking Out of ‘Answer Mode’, Building Collective Wisdom, and the Village That Raises Leaders | Kirsten Patterson

Kirsten Patterson (: 00:10

was the last time you asked a question you didn't know the answer to? I see that play out in board meetings all the time and I guess it's one of the complaints from managers about boards is that, and we call it the chocolate fish test, know, too often the question is actually, know the answer to this and I'm trying to catch you out, or I know the answer to this and I'm trying to test you and it feels like an oral exam, or I know the answer to this and there's a mistake in your board papers and I've found it so I'm gonna get a chocolate fish.

Digby Scott (: 00:44

you

Digby Scott (: 00:48

The question isn't, where are all the leaders? But instead, where are all the responsible adults?

Today I'm joined by Kirsten Patterson, better known as KP. She's the CEO of the Institute of Directors in New Zealand and chair of the global network of directors institutes. She had an auspicious start in her world by getting suspended from school at the age of five for challenging the system on her first day. Yet she went on to become one of New Zealand's most respected governance leaders. Go figure. We explore together how wonder and curiosity might be the antidote to our crisis driven world.

and why asking questions we don't know the answers to is a lost art. We also get into how creating space for reflection isn't a luxury, it's actually an essential element of responsible leadership. Whether you're wrestling with uncertainty or seeking to lead with more depth and authenticity, I reckon this conversation will challenge how you think about what it means to be a grown up in today's world.

Hi, I'm Digby Scott and this is Dig Deeper, a podcast where I have conversations with depth that'll change the way you lead. Let's get into it.

Digby Scott (: 02:06

Welcome to the show.

Kia ora, it's Great to have you here.

It is. We have had some lovely warm up into this conversation and where I'd like to start is something pretty hot, which is the question, where are all the responsible adults?

Yeah. We're both curious about it. Yeah, we are. And it's kind of a rhetorical question, isn't it? Because actually we are all the responsible adults. But it's something that's really been challenging me and making me scratch my head as I look at what is happening globally overseas, but frankly also in little pockets of New Zealand and wondering where are the responsible adults and who are we looking to to step up and what role do we all play?

Do we just sit back as observers watching all of these things and what role has social media and all of these things made us into observers rather than participants, whether that's our civil processes or in our own leadership in our communities and organisations? So I'd love to know where are all the responsible adults?

Digby Scott (: 03:08

What do you mean by responsible? Let's maybe kick that around a bit because I think you could go a few ways in interpreting that. What's your take on what is responsible?

My term for responsible is a wider leadership lens. It's about not service and leadership for yourself, it's service and leadership for others. And I think, know, responsible adults are able to make big decisions, make choices, understand nuance, understand shades of gray. And I think we've kind of lost that a little bit in terms of our leadership cohort in many ways.

particularly our public leaders and we're looking to our community and business leaders, I think, to step into that space. And I guess my question about that is as much a challenge. We're the responsible adults. We all need to step forward. And frankly, if this was leadership best practice in action globally, we'd have to say we're not great role models.

Yeah, I'm with you. And I'm wondering about what are the forces that are shaping the choices we're making, because we always have choice. I was in a coaching session with an exec this morning, actually, and we were talking about micro moments of choice that essentially give you the results that you get tomorrow. You know, the stuff you do now gives you the future that you either want or don't want. And there's something about

how we're driven in the moments of choice, which will show us up as responsible adults or not. another thing I'd put into responsible adulthood is taking a long view. You know, climate change, for example. The choices I make today might be convenient for me now, but what about serving seven generations down the track? And I think as

Digby Scott (: 05:07

As humans, we find that really hard to do. Yet we can still make some conscious choices. And it feels to me as though we're in this short-termism, survival, fear-based world. think perhaps that's it, if I'm trying to make sense of this with you. feels like it's fear is overriding higher purpose.

I think so, and I think there's just some natural physiological things playing out as well. think, you know, we're all kind of adrenaline addicted or adrenaline kind of depleted, you know, whether it's post-COVID and the kind of experience that we've had globally, there's kind of levels of angst playing out and, you know, disinformation and division across our societies. And we've got a range of dichotomies and things kind of happening.

On one hand, we've got access to too much information. There's so much coming at us. There's so much information that it's hard to process it all. And the range of issues that we're all having to deal with as leaders feels frankly overwhelming. Whether it's cyber security or whether it's a geopolitical issue, whether it's a trade and tariff issue, whether it's a culture issue, bullying in the workplace. Every issue is playing out in our workplaces. But then on the other end,

We've got these kind of echo chambers that because there's so much and because technology is now kind of so advanced, we're actually getting access to less and less information that we don't agree with. So we've got these kind of models of so much information out there, but actually being a consumer of one and being fed this content that is going to be just for me, what I wanna know, what I will agree with.

And as a result, we're getting these kind of communities getting split. And I see it happening across our organisations, across our countries. And as you say, those micro decisions are the ones that lead us closer to having a big grown up conversation that lead us closer to inquiring about someone's alternative view. I remember when I was working at New Zealand Rugby and the All Blacks doctor used to say, this isn't your practice body.

Kirsten Patterson (: 07:25

And it's not now till I'm in my fifties that I realized that the kind of decisions that 30 year old KP was making 20 years ago, she was kind of treating her body like it was a practice body. And my 50 year old body is now saying we could have done with a little more exercise and care and attention things. So that we're not great at taking that long-term view.

Yeah, the now is so much easier just to deal with, isn't it? Even though we may say it's harder. Okay, questions coming up. What's your model for a responsible adult? If you were to see one on the street, how would you know? Or if you were to hear them speaking or you just to be in their presence for a while, how would you say, that's a responsible adult? If you could get inside the wiring of their brain.

Yeah.

and their thought processes. How would you know?

I wouldn't know what would that look like. I think I would be seeing great questions. I think because they'd be interested rather than thinking that they knew the answers to all of the things all of the time. They'd be interested in different perspectives. Also, I'd see a really strong ethical decision framework. So courage in their decisions, the ability to make decisions within a framework that

Digby Scott (: 08:44

Tell me more.

Kirsten Patterson (: 08:53

is not just about what's best for them. And that's what I love about governance because boards have this responsibility legally to the company, not to just the shareholder, not just to themselves, not to themselves as business owners. It's to the company. It's this kind of outside obligation, which gets you to think differently. You think about it as a personhood and that kind of sense of decision-making and an ethical framework or ethical decision-making also comes with

judgments and decisions that are not necessarily in your own best self-interest or having to make the tough longer term best interest decisions and thinking about that intergenerational, thinking about the impact of your decisions on others, thinking about the unintended consequences of your decisions. And frankly, I think as well at the moment,

a responsible adult would be doing more to bring communities and teams together rather than drive us apart.

It comes to the me, we dichotomy, doesn't it? It's the, the absence of a framework, ethical decision-making framework, we default to what I can influence and control directly, which is me. And if we have a framework and the invitation that that gives us, we can free ourselves up to think about higher purpose.

I love the saying there's attention in and there's attention out. And this is about attention out and it's enabling that, which is the focus on the other, the broader, the different, the longer term, all of that stuff. gets it away from me and survival and fear. Just coming back to your first point about asking great questions. I'm a big proponent of balancing confidence and wonderance. This idea that you want to have confidence in you, what you're sharing and you want to be able to say, look, here's my perspective and here's why.

Digby Scott (: 10:53

This is how I've come to this conclusion. Yet the wonderance is the humility, as you're pointing out, that you don't know at all. what other perspectives are there? And I feel like a lot of the time what we're trying to do is project our confidence because that's what makes us good. And perhaps our systems and our cultures are saying, well, that's what someone in your position needs to able to do, you know? And what if we could bring a bit more wonderance and this idea of

Yeah, bring as many questions as you've got answers. And to me, that is not just a responsible adult, but it's an empowering and enabling adult, right? It invites us in to be that way as well. I'm curious about the second thing too, though. This idea of an ethical decision-making framework. And yeah, we're saying we're all responsible adults. And back in the day, something like the church might give us at least a framework and the decline of engagement in

something like the institution of churches is to me that is there's a vacuum. I'm not particularly religious yet. I feel like I've sought out in other ways and created an ethical decision-making framework of my own that really does guide me. You know, I'm a bit of a magpie, but I've done that. So what does it take to create an ethical decision-making framework?

There are some really great things for us to unpack in there. And I think that a lot of our societal structures have changed over recent times and in this last generation. And people are often looking for some certainty in what are incredibly uncertain times. And our previous structures and in our communities did give us a lot of that kind of guidance. And I see that across some of the

great communities that I get to engage with and whether that's faith-based or otherwise and the impact that that can have. Like all of our strengths though, we overuse those things. They can become a weakness. And we're seeing that also play out in the fact that people are perhaps leaning into the trappings of some of those issues as giving them certainty and support and not doing the deep analysis about.

Kirsten Patterson (: 13:12

what they mean from a values perspective like you've done, Digby. And I think at their core, they are about a greater sense of not just me, it's we, and a greater sense beyond self. And the groups and great leaders that I get to see who do have those ethical frameworks in place understand or think about the trade-offs and choices that come with ethics.

I've been lucky enough to be doing a range of presentations across the country with Institute of Directors members and mock boards, giving them ethical and moral dilemmas. And I've done over 300 people now in these kind of sessions. they're great, right? Because not once in these mock boards as I've gone around the country, have all of the boards agreed on the ethical approach we're going to take. I can give them exactly the same frameworks.

exactly the same information for the little mock company that they're managing. And not yet have all of the boards agreed on the approach that they're going to take because humans are complex and they bring diversity and different things to the table. And each group can justify within a framework why their decision is the right one. That's what we have to be able to discuss as grownups is to go, why you've made that decision and explain how you've made that decision as opposed to

retreating and trying to attack each other because we can come to different views.

Yeah, the field of dialogue, the practice of dialogue, I think we don't really understand what that means. The way my take on dialogue is it's the ability to share with some confidence, but also with the wonderance and to be able to be skilled in not just sharing your perspective or asking questions about where you might be limiting your thinking, but also invite others to do the same.

Digby Scott (: 15:10

Hey, help me unpack that. Help me understand that. really want to understand how you came to that conclusion. And I've noticed in books and studies about, the big divide in the U S right now, for example, what's lacking is the ability to do that is to be able to go, can I just understand how you take, I may not agree with it that's not the point. It's like, let me understand. And I wonder whether

part of that is that we're driving for answers and we're driving for certainty and we're driving for decisions. And so there's a time pressure that we're saying, we don't have the luxury to do that. We just need to on face value say, what's the vote? What do you think? mean, does that make sense?

Yeah, I think it does. I think there's also a piece there that people are looking for certainty, aren't they? whether it's quick decisions or whether it's actually with all of this kind of swirling around me and feeling like I'm in a sense of storm, give me a place where I can feel a sense of control. Yeah. So, you know, show me my tribe, reaffirm that I'm on the right track, help me feel safe in all of this and give me some certainty.

Give me a foothold, right?

Kirsten Patterson (: 16:22

And actually, you know, one of the things that one of my very, very early managers used to say to me is, know, watch the three questions you're asking the most of your teams. And he was absolutely right. And it's something that stayed with me even now, because, know, he said, you can go out and tell them that your, you know, your priorities are health and safety or on customer service. And you can put that up on posters and that can be all the strategy. But if you go out and the questions you're asking and the team.

consistently at meetings are, you know, how are we saving money on this? What's the return on that? They will know what you value and what's important to you on the questions that you ask. So make sure those questions match with what you say are important. And if they don't, then you've got to do that sort of assessment about what are you truly, truly valuing. The questions of wonderance that you said, I love that term because that innocence is what boards do because all of the

day-to-day stuff, the known things, where there is an answer. Management deals with all of that now, right? Boards are there by definition to deal with all of the tricky stuff, the stuff where there is unknowns, where they have to make choices, they've got to make judgments. And the only way you can do that is have a sense of wonderance and to have an iterative process to build on ideas, to question and to explore.

Exactly.

Kirsten Patterson (: 17:46

And something I've challenged the Institute of Directors members and I challenged them at our conference last year is when was the last time you genuinely changed your mind? Yeah. Because as grownups, we don't do that very often anymore. you know, reflecting on when was the last time I actually listened to some information or some data or a different person and genuinely changed my mind? I self-reflected on that and actually it had been a while.

Yeah. And there's a related question, which is when was the last time you asked a question that stopped you in your tracks and you know, and it was like, I have no idea how to answer that. Right. And I feel like those sort of questions are the ones that boards need to be able to ask and not just boards. Right. I think we all need to be able to ask better questions that short circuit our default thinking, which is I think challenging because it goes against certainty because of what that's underlining is that

I don't know and therefore I'm uncertain and that's not a good thing because I've got too much of that already in my life. Thanks very much.

Yeah. And it's also that point about when you ask, when was the last time you asked a question you didn't know the answer to? Right. And I see that play out in board meetings all the time. And I guess it's one of the complaints from managers about boards is they, and we call it the chocolate fish test. You know, too often the question is actually, I know the answer to this and I'm trying to catch you out, or I know the answer to this and I'm trying to test you and it feels like an oral exam, or I know the answer to this.

and there's a mistake in your board papers and I've found it, so I'm going to get a chocolate fish." Right? So, and my CFO, he loves it when people find mistakes in his reports. He genuinely hands them out chocolate fish. He's like, well done. He's like, great. I want to do better at my papers. That's, you know, I want to get, pick up those things. He leans into mistakes as being a good thing to find, but not everyone takes that approach. And too often we ask questions we know the answer to instead of trying to be.

Kirsten Patterson (: 19:53

inquisitive and learn something new.

How do we put wonderance more on the development agenda? How do we create more curiosity and genuine curiosity and action where those sort of questions become the norm in a culture? That's something that I wrestle with a lot. And I'm always getting feedback that, yeah, Digby, you're always asking the curious questions stuff, which is awesome as a unit of one. How do we create cultures where that's expected? It's not just, this is interesting.

But actually, this is what drives our outcomes. This is what drives our evolution. How do we get into that space?

There's a couple of things that stop us from getting to that space. One of them frankly is Maslow's hierarchy. There was an article when I first joined the HRNZ community many, 20 mumble mumble years ago. I snipped out the little article because in those days we used to get hard copy magazines that would arrive and I used to cut the bits and pieces out and I stuck it on my desk. It was a chief executive who was talking about how HR practitioners could have more impact.

and get to the top table. And he said, everyone wants to be at the table talking about strategy, but the reality is you won't get invited to the table to talk about strategy unless you have your operational house in order. And it was quite a good reminder for me at that point about, hey, I have to do a really great job of where I am right now and get that working really well so I can actually work on the higher order things. And I think that's true across some of these conversations.

Kirsten Patterson (: 21:27

people can't get to a sense of wonderance if they're living in uncertainty and don't know whether they're going through restructuring or the organisation's got all of those kind of pressures on. And I often describe it in some of the pressures that we're on is like when the human body falls into ice cold water, the blood will return to the vital organs.

And at the moment we've got the blood going to the vital organs, whether that's economic conditions or whether there's kind of pressures coming on. And I think wonderance is probably out at the fingers and toes, you know.

It's like a luxury, right? It's a nice to have at the moment. I think you've nailed it. You would come back to earlier in the conversation, you know, we're all the responsible adults and well, they're all just in survival mode. It's vital organ time.

And we need time. So we need time for wonder. I have a day a month in my diary and it always gets eaten up and I never get the whole day, but you know, I try and it's called KP's play day. Love it. That's my day where I can go and explore new things, go and meet with a team or meet with an organisation just to explore and to see what they're doing.

It's my day when I do a dive into things that I'm learning about, where I might go and play with some new technology and think about, what does this mean for the organisation that I'm leading or the boards that I'm leading on? Or what does it mean for governance in New Zealand? And, you know, how could I share some of those kind of issues? But I'm lucky enough to be able to do that.

Digby Scott (: 23:02

Yeah, that's what's coming up for me is I'm saying I'm listening to this and I'm a middle manager and I'm now forces coming at me from all sides. How do I create that for me? I see this as a perennial challenge. It's how do I create the playtime? What do you see people do if it's not a whole day? What other ways can we do that?

this.

Kirsten Patterson (: 23:25

First thing, we need psychological safety within our organisations to be able to do that. And that's become a modern day term, but it has always been true. This is not some new kind of lefty liberal woke workplace change. Our organisations have always needed an environment where people can share and have the opportunity to share the difficult and the tricky and not just try and...

stick within the perfectionistic boundaries all the time, because creativity and innovation, all of those things are on the edges. All of that stuff's a bit messy, right? And I think we've kind of lost our ability to fail safely, and this expectation that there's gonna be perfection at all times, at all costs, and that's just not true. So being prepared to kind of get back to that sense of, as you say, wonder and play. How do we do that as middle managers?

First thing is trying to get that operational house in order, getting as efficient as we can so that we've those kind of issues that we can get away from some of that crisis management as best we can. But it all comes down also to the questions. So who have we got around us and our management teams, whether that's reporting up or reporting down, thinking about the questions you ask. It can be as simple as at the beginning of a meeting, putting a discussion topic on the agenda.

you know, asking people, what have you explored this week? What made you wonder this week? So that doesn't have to be lengthy. It doesn't have to be a play day like me. It doesn't have to be, you know, strategic retreats or any of those things. Just asking some of those things in a different way with a different energy can make a difference.

That's really powerful. You know, this idea of what have you learned this week or what are you curious about? You know, and questions like that and bring the questions. It's interesting. I reckon a large part of why I or how I make my money if it comes down to it as someone who's consultant, essentially, is I reckon I'm brought in to bring the questions that they're not asking and bring the energy that's different. And.

Digby Scott (: 25:39

you know, whether it's in a team session or a whole group session, one-on-one, whatever it is, I feel like that's the essence because people aren't able to make the time to do it themselves or they don't know how. I love the simplicity. It doesn't have to be a carved out day. It can just be a slightly different conversation. I often talk about balancing delivery and discovery. So delivery is make the stuff happen and that tends to dominate. But what if we could have conversations that

blended a bit more discovery. So what did we learn from that last week and what would we do differently next week? That's a discovery conversation. And that's where maybe play is too strong a word, right? But there's something about, there's a different energy and different possibility released when you ask a single question like that.

And isn't it funny how we can put aside that time because you're coming in as an external person. Funny how actually the same way that when we're hosting people, all of a sudden we tidy the house or, you know, we save things for good for other people, but we don't save them for good for ourselves. And same things happen in organisations, right? We, we tidy things up and

General forcing function.

Kirsten Patterson (: 26:58

dedicate that time for others, but we don't prioritize it for ourselves. So bringing someone like you in, great, great. organisations are saying, hey, to do this, we recognise we have to have a visitor before we're prepared to sit down and do this.

Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it? I like to think that I'm building capability. I wonder, there's systemic forces, structural forces that just keep it, the asking questions. That's what we have the experts for, which is scary, right? And one of the other questions is, well, if we want more responsible adults, how do we develop that at scale? Because someone like, someone in my role or someone in your role, right? There's only so much we can do. How do we grow?

a shifting in maturity, you know, how do we do that at scale? And there's the units of individuals, but we've got to have some structural stuff that shifts, I think, right? What do you think about all that?

hopeful that actually some of the shifts we've seen in the education system are going to see some of that flow through. I don't think that we as current generation parents actually understand that. And it's kind of challenged our knowledge or approach about what you come out of school knowing and learning. But actually I think that we are seeing an education system in many ways that is trying to teach people to ask questions and ask good questions.

And linking to that is the rise of AI. later this week, I have a guest coming on the podcast who's written a book called The Answer Trap, and it's Kate Christiansen. And it's all about how so easily we fall into seeking answers and giving answers. And the idea of AI as a way to give us really easy answers. But man, what if we could use it to teach us to ask better questions? And that's how I'm thinking about, and that's how I use it most of the time.

Digby Scott (: 28:54

It's like here are some questions I'm thinking of exploring with my podcast guests. Help me upgrade these. What are the questions I'm not asking? And that requires a discipline from me that I think the education system can help with if we're doing it at scale, right? How do we learn that our job isn't to be answer machines, but more question machines? And AI can help us accelerate that, I think.

completely agree and I can see in the future the resurgence of the classics. Yes. Because, know, to ask great questions, to be a great prompter in the future with AI, you're going to have to understand the classics, right? Because if you want responses in the style of particular art styles or music in the style of particular genres, if you wanting a written response,

and prompting in the style of particular authors or considering a particular philosophical approach to ask really great questions in the future, we're going to have to get back to some of those skills.

That's awesome. You know, it reminds me when I was in my early thirties, I did a six day course. I was in Australia, an organisation called the Cranlaner Foundation. And essentially we studied and read philosophical texts for six days. I was sort of sponsored into it.

I feel like I was a bit too young to appreciate the power of it because there's all these chief executives on the table and community leaders and all of these really interesting people. And what was fascinating about that is when you read these texts from Socrates right through, it was the wrestle that actually there's no right answer. There's no simple answer. And that was the point. And the moderator, was two moderators in the room.

Digby Scott (: 30:54

you know, we were driving to answers. They would point that out and they would encourage us to, you know, as Rukas says, live the questions. It was fascinating. And I felt like, my God, there's something here for me, but I can't put my finger on it. You could see the others, these are much more experienced leaders than me having the same wrestle. But I look down to my right here, I've still got, there's these two massive textbooks we got with all these readings and they're still

within arm's reach of where I sit now because there's something about understanding the classics, including those philosophical texts, which I would love to see more of that come through in our schooling.

Yeah, and into our workplaces and into our leadership, right? If you kind of did a snapshot of leadership management, self-help books, guides, however you would kind of call those over the last 15, 20 years, the theme running through those is authenticity and know yourself. It's not about particular processes or systems and controls.

we can kind of get those things running. The difference being leadership, right? And the difference on that coming down to know yourself. And that questioning and recognising all of those dichotomies of being able to hold all of those different views where there might not be or isn't an answer to those things. You know, that's why there's such a strong conversation about values because we recognise that we make decisions within.

value frameworks. I find it interesting this kind of piece about often when I'm talking to directors or people who are working across multiple organisations, they'll say, I can only work with organisations that meet my values. And that's true, but they're able to work across multiple organisations who will actually have different values. So it's actually not about the values on the wall. It's about how your values overlap and connect with those values.

Digby Scott (: 32:55

That's great. And as you were talking, there's know yourself. And I think an extension of that is be okay with yourself, which is not just know them, but know that they're not the same as everyone else's. Yeah, be okay with not needing everyone else to agree with you. Own your values is maybe the way to put it. Know yourself and own yourself is, I suspect, perhaps, you know, when we're...

driving for answers and we're asking those chocolate fish questions and that sort of stuff, it'll often come from, well, I need to look good. What if I'm okay with myself? I don't need to look good. I just need to elevate the conversation.

And again, you know, we're getting incredibly philosophical, but that we often talk about someone having an ego or, know, she's got a big ego or he doesn't have an ego. We all have an ego and recognising that and recognising those things where the ego needs to be fed and actually where the ego needs to be pulled in and because getting comfortable with yourself.

and your differences is recognising all of those things and aspects about yourself as well. And how much of that comes with reflection? How much of that comes with 360 and guidance from others? How much of that comes with age? How much of it comes from having kids and them reflecting you back from them? And you think, goodness me, where did that come from? my goodness, I'm turning into my mother. All of those life experiences.

Yeah, with

Digby Scott (: 34:28

Totally. Talking about life experiences, what we haven't really touched on, KP, is how you ended up being in a place where you're asking all these sort of questions and doing the work you do. If you can get in the way back machine, what were some of the pivotal or a pivotal experience or moment where you went, yeah, this is the path for me. This is the work I need to be doing.

Yeah, think some of the really pivotal moments for me was I grew up living on a funeral home. That's a really unusual childhood, right? My parents were funeral directors, owned a chain of funeral homes. And so I literally grew up in an environment where I was getting to see the best of humanity every day. And I say the best, even though it's a time when people were...

often at their worst because I got to see so many different families at a time when they came together and shared love. They shared conflict as well and they shared all the messiness of life. But I developed really early on this kind of observer role, right? Having the opportunity to look in and see so many different families and diversity across our community and the things that unite us and that made us all so similar.

despite all of the messiness of life. And so that really helped form up my life against a backdrop of being an only child and being incredibly introverted. And people are often really surprised to hear that I'm introverted because they often see me performing, see me on stage or having to do things and podcasts, all those sorts of aspects when actually I love meeting people.

I just don't like them in large groups. Right. And it's been a learned skill for me to be able to do the kind of networking or to do public speaking. just, don't enjoy that, but I do it because it's a huge part of my role. But then against that kind of back-drop of funeral retreat thing, very early on, was even at five years old, a disruptor, I got suspended from school at five on my very first day because I told the

Kirsten Patterson (: 36:46

that she couldn't legally make me be there because you don't legally have to go to school till you're six. And that's still true in New Zealand today. And so I got sent home from school until, you know, I'd come back each Monday and I'd say, you ready to be here? I'd say no. And I didn't end up starting school till I was much older because of this kind of view that I had between about what was fair and what was right. And so probably no surprise, I then went on to law school after school.

obvious choice.

But it wasn't until I found employment law at law school where I thought, this is my space. This is because it was a human lens. Again, it was the combination of those two things. I was lucky enough early on in my career to end up working at New Zealand Rugby. I went through an HR pathway from employment law and it was at Rugby I kind of saw the power of a brand and what an organisation like that kind of gives you a platform to be able to do.

And I thought, well, if I'm going to be here in this amazing privileged position, because what an amazing place to work. And it was fun. It was great. had both my kids there and it was a privilege. thought I need to use this privilege for a positive position. What can I use this platform for? How do I drive change and use this as a positive platform to do that? And that's what's guided my leadership journey. And then on to.

being chief executive for the Institute of Chartered Accountants because they're the business leaders. And I thought, well, that's where I need to go to influence the change. You know, how do we create better workplaces and better communities through business? That's my lens of how I do that. That's the kind of platform. And then I got there and found, hey, there's another layer above the Chartered Accountants or the decision makers, the boards. And that's why I've been with the IOD now for eight years.

Kirsten Patterson (: 38:39

but I've never put my hand up for leadership roles. I think that's the introverted part of me coming through. I have relied really heavily on mentors and sponsors, seeing leadership opportunity in me and kind of pushing me forward.

It's a beautiful story. The bit about not putting your hand up and having others put you forward, it feels like there's something more to it as well though, that you had cultivated a deep inner conviction for what mattered and what still matters to you. And I reckon that emanates. You know, there's something about your aura, your glow, your mana that I believe when someone like you

has that sense of, I'm on a path. I'm here to serve some bigger question that we need to tackle. I reckon that comes through. I suspect as an introverted person, the reason you get up on stage and talk to 300 people isn't because you want to get better at that per se. It's because the mission matters and your

I'll get over my petty fears and discomfort because I'm in the chair, I'm in the role. This is part of the mission.

Yeah, absolutely. know if you've read the book Quiet by Susan Cain and her Ted Talk for anyone who's an introvert like me, I really recommend it. But she makes that kind of comment that introverts can behave as extroverts for people or causes that they love. Yeah. And that's kind of been me so many times that I will kind of be in that room going, where are the responsible adults?

Kirsten Patterson (: 40:28

and going somebody needs to do something, but recognising actually if no one's going to step forward, I will do that. I will be the advocate. I will be the voice. I will step forward to kind of do that. And one of the things that probably stands out for me in terms of my own thing is I don't do peer pressure. I don't drink. I think I've had alcohol four times in my life. You know, in a New Zealand Kiwi culture, that's not uncommon now, used to be incredibly uncommon.

What do mean?

Kirsten Patterson (: 40:56

You know, I'd be at events all the time and then say, you know, why don't you drink? I just don't. I don't do peer pressure. I'm prepared to be that person who's different to stand up and go, no, I'm not doing it.

It's know yourself and own yourself right there. Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful.

be different. And I had that at rugby, know, was most of the time in the leadership team, I was the only girl. So, you know, just being that little bit different in some of those operating environments and going, okay, actually, that's my strength.

That's awesome. And the way you've responded speaks to, if I was walking along the street and I bumped into you, I'd go, there's a responsible adult. Just that story. Right. There's a, not every day. No, and we're not about perfect, right? We're about, we're all creatures in evolution. yeah. So we started by asking the question where are all responsible adults? And we've tackled a lot of facets of that. Here's a question. If you were given a blank slate.

Not every day.

Digby Scott (: 41:54

to reinvent the system of developing responsible adults for society. Where would you start?

don't know where I'd start, but I know that it would be a collective rather than an individual approach. And the reason I say that is, there's this saying that it takes a village to raise a child. I think it actually takes a village or a community to raise a leader as well. And that careers are often talked about as individual things, that they belong to you as an individual.

when actually I think that our careers are again, outcomes based on all of the people who have informed us along the way, positively and negatively, because we react away from and set boundaries from people who are bad examples as much as we lean into people who have been great examples. So I think it would be a collective activity creating responsible adults and

sense of community again probably comes from that perspective of safety. There's this really great principle, particularly because I used to be chair of the Wellington Homeless Woman's Trust and I'm still an ambassador, and the Wellington City Missioner, who I really admire, Murray Edridge, talks about this principle that no person is without value and that if you approach each person or each circumstance believing that they are inherently good, then

your approach and your outcome and your view changes. Sometimes I struggle with that from time to time with people in my life.

Digby Scott (: 43:35

rather than the practice sometimes. Exactly.

But as a general rule, if we take those approaches and are prepared to be wrong, prepared to recognise the shades of gray, I wasn't great at that actually early on in my career. I was very, very black and white, probably my legal training as well. You know, they train that into you. And one of my very early managers, he was my mentor, I call him my tour mentor. He used say to me, it's okay to, once you've killed them, allow them to crawl away. You don't have to keep.

know, reversing over their corpse. And I was just very black and white. And he introduced me to all the shades of grey, of messiness of life. And it made me a much better leader.

That's something I would love to see is how do we appreciate shades of gray sooner in our lives and be able to work with that. This has been such a rich conversation. You know, as I was waiting to start the conversation and waiting for you to join the call, I was thinking, where's my energy in this conversation? you know, because we could have started with, who's KP and all the stuff you've just shared, but we went straight into it. And it feels to me as though that's made it such a lovely, rich, delicious.

exploration. As my last question for you, we spent some time together. Now, what's one thing you've learned or been reminded of during this conversation?

Kirsten Patterson (: 45:00

of great questions. It's just made me think about am I being deliberate enough about the questions that I'm asking? Am I coaching my team enough to ask the right questions? And how do I create space for wonderance?

Beautiful. Thanks so much, KP. We'll see you soon.

Take care.

Digby Scott (: 45:29

Just a quick reflection before you take off, like KP, I'm really struck by the idea of thinking about the questions you ask and the intent behind them.

When we ask questions, where are we coming from? What's our highest intent here? Is it to protect or show that you're smarter and you know the answer, or is it to actually further some sort of higher mission or purpose that we're actually here for and doing that in the service of learning and growth and improvement? The idea of questions, there's so much possibility to be unlocked when we ask a powerful question. So it's something to think about. I'm certainly thinking about that.

If you'd like the idea of getting into questions, I reckon you'll really enjoy episode six with James Miller where we talk more about the idea of balancing delivery and discovery. Check that out.

If you like the idea of learning more about curiosity and questions, can also check out my newsletter, which I'm always writing about that. Just go to digbescott.com forward slash subscribe and you'll get the very next one. Remember to share this episode if you found it helpful with someone else that you think would be getting value from it. And also follow the podcast in your feed. So you just stay up to date with the next ones coming through and also the archives. I'm Digby Scott. This is Dig Deeper and until next time, go well.

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