[Interview] Learning to Challenge | Francois Barton

More from Dig Deeper All episodes →

1. 

   S1 · E88 · 12 Oct 2026 · 49 minNew

   [Interview] Gloriously Messy Humans, Honest Feedback, and Getting Out of the Way | Celena Harry

   Have you ever found out that something you were doing to help was actually getting in the way? You had good intent, and knew exactly what you were trying to do for your team. Then someone told you, in much kinder words, to get out of the way. This episode is about the gap between what you intend and what people actually experience (and, what to do when you find one of those gaps in your own leadership). Celena Harry and I get into how to go looking for that feedback without making a production of it, why the best work a leader does is often the work nobody sees, and what it takes to stop…

2. 

   S1 · E87 · 28 Sep 2026 · 6 min

   [Solocast] Answer the Question, Not the Brief

   When one of your people brings you work that's accurate, well researched and clearly argued, and it still goes nowhere, where do you look for the reason? At the decision maker who ignored the evidence? Or at what your person couldn't see from where they were sitting? In this solocast, I start with a CFO placement I lost early in my career as a recruitment consultant. I had the strongest candidate on the shortlist and still missed, because I'd answered the brief without asking what the client was really trying to solve. From there I look at research from Gerald Ferris and colleagues showing…

3. 

   S1 · E86 · 21 Sep 2026 · 40 min

   [Interview] Leading a City for Lasting Impact | David MacLennan

   What if the most powerful thing you can do to lift your team's performance isn't to add more, but to remove what's getting in the way? And what does a sheep meat trade ban in Mexico have to do with how one CEO is building a high-performing city? In this conversation, David MacLennan and I get into what 15 years of diplomacy teaches you about leading without authority, a trade crisis that became his most formative leadership moment, and a framework he's built his entire organisation around. We land somewhere worth sitting with: the job of a leader might be less about what you add and more…

4. 

   S1 · E85 · 14 Sep 2026 · 11 min

   [Solocast] Intent Determines Impact

   Someone comes to you with a problem. What's your first move? For a lot of us, there's a pull to just solve it, hand over the answer, and feel useful. It's a natural instinct. It's also, more often than not, the least helpful thing you can do. This episode walks through a model I've used in workshops for years: five levels of intention, from combatant at the bottom right up to co-creator at the top. Each level sounds different, asks different questions, and leaves the other person with something different. Underneath it all is one idea: intent determines impact. Your technique matters less…

5. 

   S1 · E83 · 31 Aug 2026 · 5 min

   [Solocast] Credibility Is Granted, Not Claimed

   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…

6. 

   S1 · E82 · 24 Aug 2026 · 43 min

   [Interview] Rebels vs Prefects, Psychological Safety, and Permission to Play | Cat Hall

   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…

7. 

   S1 · E81 · 17 Aug 2026 · 10 min

   [Solocast] Don't Give Them Certainty. Give Them Agency.

   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…

8. 

   S1 · E80 · 10 Aug 2026 · 47 min

   [Interview] From Proving to Improving, Creating a Culture of Curiosity, and the Weight of the Cape | Monique Davidson

   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…

9. 

   S1 · E79 · 3 Aug 2026 · 17 min

   [Solocast] Why “Focus on What You Can Control” Is Only Half the Advice

   Do you ever act fast and call it decisive, only to find out later you were missing half the picture? Or maybe you can see exactly what's going wrong, but you're not the one who gets to change it? This episode explores why "focus on what you can control" is only half the story. Acting with agency but no awareness can set you up for exactly the mess you were trying to avoid. This episode walks through a simple two-by-two model, scrambling, sideline, stuck and solid, so you can spot which one you're operating from right now, and what it takes to move towards solid, where agency and awareness…