9. End of Year Reflections: Embracing Discomfort, From Hero to Host Leadership, Creating Space for Reflection, and the Let Go | Digby Scott

nal episode of Dig Deeper for: 2024

If I look back over some of the themes that have come up for me, I've got four in mind. I'll just talk you through each of them briefly now. The first is shifting from a hero mindset to a host mindset when it comes to leadership. The next is creating space for sense making and reflection. So important. Third is the idea of letting go where we might be holding on too tightly.

and the fourth is one around the power of discomfort and that last one the power of discomfort it's been such a recurring theme in so many of the conversations I've had on the podcast this year in particular and in my own experiences so let's start there.

I often talk about being unhurried, slowing down to create space for reflection and deep thinking, but what I realised is that this space, this letting go of busyness, often comes with a price, that price is discomfort. But I reckon that's okay, in fact I reckon it's essential, because to get any sort of new discovery you often need to go through discomfort first. But lots of us, including me, won't lean towards discomfort, we'll lean away from it.

Back in episode one, Callum McCurdy talked about how we often avoid making people uncomfortable, particularly when it comes to giving feedback. And this avoidance can stem from a fear of how others perceive us or maybe are reluctant to confront difficult truths. I reckon there's a disconnect within us between what we think of ourselves and what we hope other people think of ourselves, think of us.

And the fear comes from either people not seeing us who we want to be seen as, or people seeing us that way. So the true, our true selves and them not liking that. Callum highlighted that discomfort is where growth happens. And he shared this anecdote about how my introduction of him in the podcast made him feel both good and uncomfortable. You know how when you, when you get introduced at a

conference and you've written the bio and it's been sort of played back to you and like, what a dick you've written all this sort of stuff. so you've, you've come up with that yourself and there was none of the, I didn't get a chance to call myself a dick in my head as you were sort of going through that. But I'm also thinking, really? Like, is that me? Like, cause I don't feel like any of those things, which I think is probably, that's the point, right? It's, you know, we,

We don't experience ourselves the way other people experience us. was uncomfortable for me to hear him describe that feeling. was this discomfort though, that sparked a deeper conversation about feedback and leadership. And then Callum encouraged all of us to rebrand discomfort as an essential ingredient for growth. And this really resonated with me because I noticed my own reaction to Callum's discomfort. I felt a bit squirmish when he called out.

ultimately this led to a really valuable discussion about owning and reframing discomfort. In episode 3, DK, who is a creative producer, talked about the importance of being comfortable with not knowing and he used the analogy of the blank page where he noted that most people want lines or guidance, but true pining of spirit comes from embracing the unknown, having the blank page, and weirdly enough I love blank pages, I hate notebooks with lines on them.

And DK emphasized the role of translation, narration and curation as essential skills for pioneering spirits to bring others on the journey. This really resonated as well with my own belief that discomfort is where we discover new possibilities. you're comfortable with being uncomfortable, if you don't mind not knowing, if you relish in what you're describing, which for most people, they're not comfortable being in that space.

Again, back to the white piece of paper. Most people want some lines on it. know, most people want to know what the next step is. when you find yourself shrinking back from a situation because it feels uncomfortable, I reckon lean in, ask yourself, what can I learn from being uncomfortable here? And consider how this discomfort might be a signpost pointing you towards some form of new growth.

The next idea I'm going to share is this idea of shifting from hero to host mindset when it comes to leadership. So let me explain. So heroing as I like to call it is this default leadership style that we see in plenty of organization. It's the leader as the savior. It's the one with the answers. It's the one who might feel that they have to rescue things. might be about being right or at least being seen to be the one to look to for what is right.

And hosting is different to me. Hosting is more about creating a space for others to shine. It's about asking questions, the right questions really, instead of giving the right answers. It's about recognizing that leadership is less about individual brilliance and more about collective wisdom. And this idea of host leadership, I reckon is really important because as leaders, we can't have all the answers and particularly when it's fast changing and it's messy and it's complex.

We can't be the one who it all rests on to save the day. It's just a crazy, outmoded idea. And we have people around because of their brilliant ideas, because of their perspectives. And I reckon our job as leaders is to bring those people together to harness that collective brilliance. I had some great conversations about this idea of hero versus host this year. And one of them was, again, it was DK as the curator and host of the TEDx Wellington experience. Most people don't come through the delegate experience lens. They don't start there. They do the inverse, which is go, we got these speakers and we need to find a venue. Now from an event producer perspective, that's the logistics. Ask to kind of meet them bones. That's fair enough. But when you come through the delegate eyes, you then become a host. Coming back to your language rather than a hero.

Because if you're a host, what you're trying to do is make the experience for the people attending, whatever it is that you're crafting, best for them. I was also reminded that host leadership can be great in a one-on-one setting as well. James Miller from episode six, who is the host of a farm stay as well as an executive coach.

shared how his former boss created space for him to learn and grow by giving him the freedom to explore and discover. only gave me two-thirds of my work. What does that mean? So he, we'd sit down and he goes like, here's what we need to do this year or this quarter or whatever else. Here's the work that lies ahead of us. But I, but that's only two thirds of it. I'm not going to give you three-thirds of the work. I'm just going to give you two-thirds of the work. I want you to go and work out what the other third is.

Wow. You need to work that out. I can't tell you what that is. So get to know the business, get to know the people that you're working with, get to know your peers, colleagues and the clients that you're working with inside the company and find out what the hell is going on. Find out what needs doing and, and when you know that go and do that. What was the gift there for you? That's amazing. I think the gift was probably trusting in me to know, to be able to find out what was necessary. reckon.

The host mindset is a bit like being a gardener. Now, when you're a gardener, you're creating the conditions for the garden to do what it naturally does. Yeah, you might have some guard rails, but you are essentially setting the scene and then allowing the garden to grow. And I reckon this can apply with people as well. But it's not necessarily easy because we are often conditioned to think that leadership is about heroing.

So I'd suggest maybe one thing you could try is just notice how often you default to heroing. And if you notice that it's a common thing for you, then just consider how you might dial it down and maybe instead dial up your hosts, maybe ask a few more questions first, maybe just allow yourself to listen and take on board what others are saying before responding and resist that urge to jump in with solutions straight away.

Okay, let's talk about creating space for sense making and reflection because this theme has come up repeatedly in my conversation with podcast guests and I write a heap about it, particularly around the idea of unhurried productivity, which means that we can be productive, but we don't have to be hurried all the time. In fact, it's essential as part of productivity to create space. Now, there was a

A couple of guests in particular that have mastered the art of deliberately creating space, in episode two, Danny Ermelova Williams, who's a change coach, shared how she and her husband quit their jobs and took a year off to do only things they wanted to do. We talked about it. We talked about it every day for quite a long time. And we said to ourselves, we just need to stop. We're, let's make it a fresh start. And so we talked about Break Free 23.

And we wanted to be absolutely crisp on that, that we were breaking free because you can't, when you're, when you're super busy, I found you just can't take stuff out of the bucket and put new stuff in. You don't know where to start because your brain doesn't have capacity. Yeah. So we tipped the bucket over and we just left and we decided that we're going to have a whole year of doing only things that we wanted and chose to do. And I took a six month sabbatical last year.

And it was amazing and gave me plenty of time and space to reflect, to reconnect and to come up with a bunch of new ideas. And similarly episode five, Katie Hair, who is a career coach and facilitator. She's mastered the art of taking career breaks. And she talked about how she uses these breaks as opportunities to reflect, experiment and pivot. She's very, very deliberate doing it every few years.

how can you be more intentional about that to kind of for your own growth and development? And I'd come across a couple of things. One was a video by Stefan Seegmeister, Power of Time Off. It's a TED talk and that was quite inspirational for me in terms of what you can do to make the most of your time off and.

Yeah. He's this really cool creative designer is, know, quite world renowned and for me that was just like, well, what a whole totally different concept of instead of like retiring early, why don't you take say five of those retirement years and interspersed them in your working years and springboard what you can do with your time off. And so that was like, I was like, I love that concept.

The key message here is that we always need to be able to have that capacity to create the space to reflect, to make sense of what's happening and to connect with what really matters.

One thing that reminds me about the power of space is this awesome poem called Fire by Judy Brown, which comes out of a book that is well thumbed and dog-eared. The book is called A Leader's Guide to Reflective Practice. And this poem I'm going to read for you now, just to kind of let you sit with it for a bit.

Fire.

What makes a fire burn is space between the logs.

A breathing space.

Too much of a good thing, too many logs packed in too tight, can douse the flames almost as surely as a pail of water can.

So building fires requires attention to the spaces in between as much as to the wood.

When we're able to build open spaces in the same way we've learned to pile on the logs,

Then we can come to see how it is fuel and the absence of the fuel together that makes fire possible.

We only need to layer log lightly from time to time.

A fire grows simply because the space is there with openings in which the flame that knows just how it wants to burn can find its way.

I love that.

There's also practices you can do and you can create this space through plenty of practices. It doesn't have to be career breaks or sabbaticals. can be things like journaling, just writing down your thoughts. I do a thing called morning pages, which is just three pages of freeform thoughts. as soon as I get up, I just write nonstop for three pages, whatever's coming out of my mind onto the paper. Maybe it's walking, just getting out into nature and just unhooking.

Maybe there's a meditation practice that you have or maybe it's as simple as just unhooking from your tech, simple things as you plan and think about the new year ahead, make sure you build in some time, some non-negotiable time for sense-making. do it in large chunks, like, every month. I'm definitely building in days into my month, which are non-negotiable days where nothing else can come into them, except what I say, but also on a daily and weekly basis, find some of those practices, something that will sustain you I think is the key thing.

The final theme that I'd like to talk you through is this idea of letting go of control. Now if you think about the previous three themes, the power of discomfort, the shift from a hero mindset to a host mindset and creating space for sense-making and reflection, I reckon the red thread that links them all together is this idea of letting go. It's almost like the meta-theme for us. And I thought just to bring this to life a bit more, I'm going to read you a blog, a piece I wrote called ‘The Let Go’ this year.

I'll put a link in the show notes so you can read it as well. Here we go then, The Let Go.

Last week, I spent a morning listening to presentations from the latest graduates from my Changemakers program.

One of the themes I heard in several presentations was what I call The Let Go.

Letting go of stories in their heads about what a leader should do and embracing genuine authenticity instead.

Letting go of trying to win arguments and prove points and embracing listening, learning and collaborating.

Letting go of busyness and embracing a more sustainable pace letting go of striving and embracing flow. Just letting go.

Control is an illusion.

Do you know that feeling when you're driving super hard to make stuff happen when you get into hyper focus mode and nothing matters but getting it nailed, when your stress levels go up, your sleep levels go down yet you push on regardless?

Sidebar: I know this very well.

Have you ever had that feeling when you decide to stuff it, I'm going to stop trying and you immediately feel the weight fall off your shoulders. And when you let go, as if by magic, different things start to happen, things that you couldn't have even foreseen, things that take you in a direction that opens up what's possible.

That's The Let Go.

The Let Go is a powerful tool in any leader’s toolkit.

Many of us live under the illusion that we control what happens. Really?

Here's race car driver John Green on the fallacy of that idea:

Control is an illusion you infantile egomaniac. Nobody knows what's going to happen next, not on a freeway, not in an airplane, not inside our own bodies and certainly not on a racetrack with 40 other infantile egomaniacs.

Or if you'd like a more eloquent way of putting it:

The more we try to control, the more out of control we become.

That's from the Tao Te Ching.

Put effort in its place.

Don't get me wrong, there's a place for effort. As Professor John Kabat-Zinn puts it, we can't control the sea, but we can learn to surf the waves.

If you want to ride the wave, you've got to paddle for it. And then know when to let the wave take you.

I reckon there's a spectrum that looks like this. Just imagine a line is horizontal and on the left-hand side of a line, there's the word force. And on the right-hand side, there's the word ignore.

And in the middle there's a sweet spot. Just to the right of the word force is the word make. And just to the left of the word ignore is the word let. The sweet spots in the middle between make and let. Put in the effort and then let the larger forces of play do their thing. Trying too hard or forcing is wasted effort and ignoring what needs to be done is wasted opportunity.

How do we get this balance right? It comes down to wisdom and trust. The wisdom that emerges from the lessons of bitter experience and trusting that you're not the only agent at play in this story.

I see too much effort put into making stuff happen that inevitably turns into forcing stuff to happen because of the inability to know when to deploy The Let Go. The cost is burnout, distrust and ineffectiveness. You don't need to be the hero. Learn the art of The Let Go.

Back to those change makers, every single one of them reports that they're more effective when they let go. They've got more clarity, more confidence, more calmness and more clout. They've found the sweet spot between making and letting. They've embraced the let go.

Where could you let go?

We've explored four themes. The power of discomfort, shifting from a hero mindset to a host mindset, crowing space for sense-making and reflection, and the idea of the let go.

So as we wrap up this episode and this year, here are a few final questions just for you to ponder over the break.

First one, how could you use discomfort for growth? Where could you be a little bit more host and a little less hero? What does sense-making and reflection look like to you? And what could you let go of this year?

Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for being a supporter of the podcast and a supporter of me. If you're listening, I'm a supporter of you, whether we know each other or not.

I wish you all the best for the year ahead, looking forward to our continued connection through the podcast. I'm Digby Scott, this is Dig Deeper, until next time, go well.