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What I've Learnt - Holly Ransom · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Holly Ransom is a globally renowned content curator, powerful speaker, with the belief that if you walk past it, you tell the world it's okay.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Named one of Australia's 100 most influential women by the Australian Financial Review, she has delivered a peace charter to the Dalai Lama, with Sir Richard Branson's nominee for Wired Magazine's smart list of future game changers to watch, and was awarded the US Embassy's Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Leadership Excellence in 2019.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Having interviewed the likes of Barack Obama, Malcolm Gladwell, Richard Branson, Billie Jean King, Condaleza Rice, Nobel Prize winner Mohammed Younus, and the world's first humanoid robot Sophia, Holly fights complexity with curiosity, apathy with empowerment, and fear with fact.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: As a Fulbright Scholar and Harvard Kennedy School Class of 21 Fellow, Holly is a recipient of the prestigious Anne Wexler Public Policy Scholarship, allowing her to action social and economic inclusion by connecting people with the decisions that affect their lives.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, Holly's got a new book, The Leading Edge, which I'm very excited about.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: It helps people harness their own potential to lead by asking better questions, thinking beyond biased answers, and building collective momentum for change.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: In the Leading Edge, Holly brings the real-world leadership lessons of so many diverse thinkers and pioneers that she's met to the fore.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: So, Holly, welcome to the What I've Learned podcast.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: Thrilled to have you on board.
1:38
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me, Deb.
1:40
SPEAKER_02: I'm thrilled to be in such illustrious company as the guests that you've had on this podcast over the journey.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, you certainly fall into that uh that crew because you are quite illustrious yourself.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: And you certainly have have um you and I do share a very similar journey, and I think it's a similar passion for really engaging and listening and learning from others.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: So you know, it's it's quite it's quite lovely to have you here sharing that um that passion with me.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, so let's focus on you because I think you've got some really interesting little nuggets and gems to share with us.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime, why don't we just start by talking about who are some of the most extraordinary people you've interviewed?
2:26
SPEAKER_00: And I know there's many.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: I really have to ask you what it was like interviewing Barack Obama, because that was pretty, pretty insane.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: And it was on stage, so it was live.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: It was live.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: I know it was what in in those crazy wild days before COVID.
2:40
SPEAKER_02: That's the new BC, right?
2:41
SPEAKER_02: Before COVID, uh, when we were still allowed live events.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: So that was nice at least.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: Tell me, we how did you because that you were on a young-ish, you're still young, but tell me a little bit about how A, you prepared for that and B, what was it like?
2:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it was uh well an incredible experience to begin with.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: And I think I was very fortunate that um Obama selected me to do that interview to begin with.
3:07
SPEAKER_02: And I I sort of, it was one of those opportunities where you you got where I sort of knew I was on a short list being considered, and I was like, yeah, cool, I've been in this game long enough to know I never, you know, stuff like that.
3:16
SPEAKER_02: That's like great, don't get excited about it, it'll never come off, that sort of thing.
3:19
SPEAKER_02: So when the phone rang and said, no, you've been the one picked, it was a very surreal moment.
3:24
SPEAKER_02: And then the request was can you kind of draft some examples of questions?
3:28
SPEAKER_02: Because as you can imagine, with someone of that nature, it's really important that you respect there are certain boundaries.
3:34
SPEAKER_02: So he's a president, for example, that uh is of the belief that once you've left office, you should leave the that territory to the person who follows, as George Bush had done for him, you know, kind of step out of politics, don't take pot shots, you know, leave leave it.
3:48
SPEAKER_02: Admittedly, I think maybe his view changed a little bit towards the back end of the Trump administration.
3:53
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I remember I've never sweated more than sort of preparing these questions because I just thought, oh my gosh, I just don't want them to come back with red pen all through them and then going, why did we pick this one to do the interview?
4:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, but fortunately they they were really happy with them and sort of said, look, you know, we're very comfortable if you stay within any of this territory that you just take the conversation wherever you like.
4:12
SPEAKER_02: So we went 75 minutes together.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: It was an incredible um period of time to get to spend with such a deep thinker.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's one of the there are a couple of things that were impressed upon me during that interview.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: One was I think because he's so capable of transcending pop culture, that we sometimes forget how fiercely kind of academic he is and how considered his thinking is.
4:35
SPEAKER_02: And watching as he would unpack an answer to a question, you know, over 10-15 minutes, explaining his thinking and the way he'd approach something, you just got a real sense of the incredible intellect, which was never in doubt, but it was just quite something to behold.
4:48
SPEAKER_02: I think the second thing for me was uh what really struck me about President Obama was his energy.
4:56
SPEAKER_02: He has a really calm, grounded energy.
4:59
SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure you find this as well, Deb, given the number of people that you've interviewed over the journey.
5:03
SPEAKER_02: You you definitely meet different energies.
5:05
SPEAKER_02: And his energy was so striking in that what it projected to me was this sense of someone who was so secure in who he was and had done the work to work out who he was and what he believed in and why he believed it.
5:21
SPEAKER_02: And so there was this really grounded confidence.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: And to contrast with a lot of the politicians I've met and interviewed over the years, I would almost say that they're more akin to like a golden retriever.
5:31
SPEAKER_02: Like they they want they're there.
5:33
SPEAKER_02: Come on, come on, tell me I'm good, tell me I'm good, you know, like kind of that that's a lot of people.
5:36
SPEAKER_02: They want affirmation.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
5:39
SPEAKER_02: It's not all of them.
5:40
SPEAKER_02: That's a gross generalization, but it was so striking how secure and and and grounded Obama felt.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: So they they were probably some of the interesting observations from that period.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: I think it's also interesting, you know.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm very big on obviously, and in this situation, you had no choice, you had to have vetted questions.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting that you maintained a 75-minute interview, is quite a credit to you because it must have been organic in its essence.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things I, as you would appreciate, I love not having, I generally don't give questions to any of my subjects like that.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's the same.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Unless you absolutely have to, because you maintain the authenticity and the organic nature of exchange.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: But in that circumstance, clearly, it was that, or you weren't going to get the interview.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: But but it must be a credit to you.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: You must to be able to hold your own in that context would have required enormous stamina and and also emotional engagement, but also intellectual engagement.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: Did you find that he was also a good listener?
6:39
SPEAKER_02: Definitely.
6:40
SPEAKER_02: And he is one of those people, and I remember observing this, so we hadn't met in 2014 when I was chairing the youth summit for the G20.
6:48
SPEAKER_02: And we we'd have a conversation where I found it really interesting.
6:51
SPEAKER_02: We were at the leaders' dialogue that night.
6:54
SPEAKER_02: Um, it was like watching uh people at large, like people that I've grown up like idolizing, you know, in terms of role models, senior figures in the Australian government and business sector fan girling and boying over the same person, and sort of being incapable of making anything other than quite uh quite awkward small talk with President Obama.
7:13
SPEAKER_02: And it was funny because I'm like, oh my gosh, this is, you know, this is Obama.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: What a great opportunity to get to talk to him about young people and women.
7:20
SPEAKER_02: And we had this whole conversation about women's entrepreneurship and everything like that.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: And he was so interested in what we were talking about.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: And and I think that's something that he he carried through his whole presidency.
7:30
SPEAKER_02: Every country he went to, and I I think he's still the only president that's done this, he always met with young people, whether that was every town on the presidential campaign, whether it was every country he went to when he visited, he had such a focus around kind of that intergenerational piece.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I and then I genuinely sense there was this want to empower people.
7:50
SPEAKER_02: And and part of that empowerment, as you know all too well, is is listening, seeking first to understand before you seek to be understood, right?
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and listening to their stories, which he obviously was very open to.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, to be at the summit just sounds an extraordinary experience.
8:04
SPEAKER_02: Uh definitely, absolutely was.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: And and also to be open to hearing the perspectives and issues.
8:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we had a prime minister that year that um for the first time in the history of the G20 refused to meet with young people.
8:15
SPEAKER_02: So we were the set the world record to be the first nation hosting the G20, where the leader of the country hosting just would not meet with young people.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: He had time to eat an onion that year, but not to meet with young people and hear the demands of one and a half million uh billion people that are across the G20 that classify as being young.
8:31
SPEAKER_02: So it's a quite a big stakeholder group.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: And so when that's your experience in your own backyard, when your country's hosting, you're kind of hoping that the captain of the home team might come into bat.
8:39
SPEAKER_02: It was, it was a really sharp contrast to have a leader whose only address when he was in Brisbane was all about how young people were the future of the Asia Pacific region and how important it was we took up that responsibility.
8:51
SPEAKER_02: Um, and and to have him directly engaging too was uh it was a sharp contrast of what leadership can be, that's for sure.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: And how ironic that he used that as a platform in that particular I mean, it sounds like also that that's obviously where you engaged with Obama amongst amongst others, and obviously you stood out as somebody that he really respected, or he wouldn't have asked you to come and do that interview.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: So that's a credit to also your ability to communicate.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: And also, I get a sense just from listening to you and the research I've done, you're very much somebody who um you don't come with a pedestal, you come, you're very much whoever you're talking to and engaging with, you seem to be very, while yes, you can fangirl over some, and I get it, especially with Obama.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a beautiful um energy that you have where you're sort of an equalizer.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: And do you think that's something you've mastered over time?
9:44
SPEAKER_00: That sense that, well, we're all equal, we're all humans, we're all global citizens, and we really that that's very much your genre, which I I really, really respect.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts around that?
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's something you've you've always been like, or is it something you've mastered over time?
10:00
SPEAKER_02: It really warms my heart that that's an observation that you might make because uh my grandma Dorothy, who's the most important person on the planet to me, she's um 90 years old this year, she'd been married to my grandpa, 70 years, actually wrote uh here's here's one from the the family uh secret chest.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: They wrote uh international best-selling sex book, Sexual Joy and Marriage.
10:21
SPEAKER_02: So grandma and grandpa are pretty pretty trailblazing.
10:24
SPEAKER_02: Um I love that.
10:26
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
10:26
SPEAKER_02: What year was that?
10:27
SPEAKER_02: What year did they write?
10:29
SPEAKER_02: Great question.
10:29
SPEAKER_02: Uh it was published by 25 countries.
10:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm guessing it was the 80s, might have been earlier.
10:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'll have to go ahead and check what the publishing year was.
10:37
SPEAKER_02: It's called Sexual Joy and Marriage by Michael and Dorothy Clark.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: You can look it up.
10:41
SPEAKER_02: Probably still find it on Amazon.
10:43
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
10:43
SPEAKER_02: Um but I love that.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
10:46
SPEAKER_02: One of the things I've always loved about my grandma, and it's uh it's probably had one of the strongest sort of uh impressions on me of any trait that an individual can have, is my grandma, it doesn't matter whether you are the local um rubbish collector, whether you're the neighbor next door, whether you're the mayor of the town, she would always treat everyone the same way.
11:07
SPEAKER_02: And she had this incredible ability and still does to make anyone that she interacts with feel like they are such an important person.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: The world is so lucky that they're that they're here, and the the world is all the better for the fact that they're showing up and doing what they're doing.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: And I always just thought from a very young age, when I would watch the way that people would feel taller and walk away bigger after conversations with my grandmother, what a gift that is to be able to give people in every interaction that you have.
11:34
SPEAKER_02: So it's something that has she's just seared into me and I think is of enormous importance.
11:40
SPEAKER_02: Everyone absolutely deserves the same opportunity to have their story heard, deserves to be treated as though they matter with dignity, um, to be given the chance to succeed and the opportunities to do so.
11:50
SPEAKER_02: We know that's not how the world is.
11:52
SPEAKER_02: You know, opportunity resources are absolutely unequally distributed.
11:55
SPEAKER_02: But if we can play a small role in trying to change that balance, I think we've got the responsibility to do it.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it's very much what you and I are on a mission to do in our own way, which is to provide the platform for these stories.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: And I love the grandmother.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I love what was your grandmother's name?
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Dorothy.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Dorothy.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: But also, isn't it interesting that the lessons learned are often very close to home and that we imbue those.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I'm the same with my mother who was a family court judge, and you know, she was an extraordinary woman.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I did a podcast with her.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: But oh, I'm gonna go listen to that.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you'll love it.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: And it's really about learning from those closest as well, is also a really good point that you raised that sometimes, you know, the the lessons that we need to hear um don't have to necessarily be from people up on pedestals, although some are, like I know Bama, but No, but I love that point, you know, and it's interesting you say it because it's one of the reasons I actually opened the book with a story.
12:52
SPEAKER_02: Um just finished writing my first book, and um The Leading Edge opens with a story of being in a supermarket at age four with my grandma, and it's my earliest memory.
13:00
SPEAKER_02: Um, and the man in front of us in the checkout was aggressively having it a go at the woman, young girl, teenager on the checkout, because she'd evidently given him the wrong change.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: Before I could blink, my five-foot-tall grandma Dorothy had inserted herself between this giant of a man and this girl on the checkout and had pointed her finger up at this guy and said, How dare you talk to that young lady like that?
13:19
SPEAKER_02: You apologize.
13:21
SPEAKER_02: This guy had obviously never been told off in his life.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: Like he kind of, you know, took a few seconds to take all that in, went, went kind of bright red, grabbed his stuff, mumbled sorry, and walked out.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: And I remember your grandma proceeded like nothing had happened, paid for the milk and bread, off we went, type of thing, before she realized I was still back in the queue, kind of watching all this take place.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: I I hadn't followed her, wasn't holding her hand anymore.
13:40
SPEAKER_02: And I said to her, I said, Grandma, that was so brave.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: And she said to me, honey, if you walk past that, you tell the world it's okay.
13:48
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I've thought about that.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: And that's a story that has taken on more and more meaning and significance in my life as I've gotten older and I've understood it more.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: But one of the things that strikes me, reflecting on that, you know, with the benefit of time and all that I've seen uh of uh leaders who step in and leaders who don't, and and the like, my grandma had no title there.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: She wasn't store manager, she wasn't half the size of the person that she tried to, well, you know, uh stand by.
14:14
SPEAKER_02: Exactly, you know, and here she was going, that's not okay.
14:17
SPEAKER_02: And I've got an opportunity to do something about that.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, not only to your point around, you know, those lessons can come from anywhere and they can be really close from home, but also I think that notion of not discounting our own contribution because it's not leading a country, because it's not leading a Fortune 500 organization, like that idea that those small moments and what we choose to do matter as much as what we do in big movements.
14:42
SPEAKER_02: Um, I think that's a really important philosophy we need to get our head around in this day and age, because it's going to take all of us to turn the tide on some of the challenges in front of us.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a really important point.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: And one obviously your book reflects as well, because at the end of the day, um, we all play a small part, but when you've got a lot of people playing a small part, it can act.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, all the revolutions really, if you look historically, most of them are actually by, you know, if what do you say, ordinary people doing extraordinary things, you know?
15:11
SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, that's really what you're referring to.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Also, I do think the the notion of the bystander and thinking, oh, well, someone else will deal with that, someone else will do that, someone else will manage that, is a really big part of what you're also referring to.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you're a big per you're somebody who's always stood out and said, you know what, I'm happy to have the dialogue.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: You might not agree with me, but this is my view version or my view or my perspective, and what's yours?
15:39
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I like about your energy and the way that you actually um conduct yourself, both with your podcasts, with your um any of your interviews, but also your book.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: So tell me a little bit about what I'm really interested in, is who, other than obviously your gorgeous grandmother, who one day I'd love to meet, she sounds amazing.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: I know it's like it's really interesting.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: That generation of something else.
16:05
SPEAKER_02: Just amazing.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: Just amazing and so impressive.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Um but I think what another point that you raise, which I think, and and also I've been thinking a lot about, is there's a lot of noise, right, around leadership.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, find your path, find your journey.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: And you know, if you're on social media, it's like every every single social post is like, you know, find your heart, find your path, find your journey, find your healing.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of pressure to get clarity.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's really hard amidst all this noise to actually find clarity because everyone's like, wait, climate change, COVID, and what are we going to do there with health and public policy?
16:48
SPEAKER_00: There's so many issues that need addressing.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: How do you stay focused and how do you stay inspired?
16:57
SPEAKER_00: And what's your advice for people who are wanting to actually be part of change, but a little bit like overwhelmed?
17:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, definitely.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh a lot of what you've described there is the reason that I wanted to write the book.
17:11
SPEAKER_02: And I think that stemmed from two things.
17:14
SPEAKER_02: One, I spent some time, I just went and did my master's, and I spent some time doing the literature on leadership, and it's overwhelmingly lacks diversity.
17:22
SPEAKER_02: I was reading these stories and these leadership lessons that we lionized, and it's people that predominantly male, predominantly military, or elite sport coach, or uh, you know, Jack Welsh kind of Fortune 500 or Silicon Valley CEO.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: I thought, wow, there's like a lot of people who, if this is the story of leadership, no wonder people think I'm not part of that.
17:41
SPEAKER_02: I'm not invited in, I don't have the opportunity.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: What I do, say, think, um, contribute doesn't matter.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: And that's problematic because it absolutely does.
17:50
SPEAKER_02: And there are leaders out there who look and sound and think very differently to what it is in the books.
17:56
SPEAKER_02: And we need to do a better job of telling those stories.
17:58
SPEAKER_02: So each and every one of us can look at that and go, wow, not only can I see myself in that, but wow, that's a different way of leading.
18:04
SPEAKER_02: That's a different way of applying your skills.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: There's not just one way, one context, one type of organization in which you can lead.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: So for me, there was a really big want to kind of put those different stories out there so more people can see that.
18:16
SPEAKER_02: And the book's got 60 case studies, but you know, equal gender split, 42 different sectors, leaders from 20 plus countries, every generation, every sexual orientation, you name it, like whatever way you want to cut diversity, I've really intentionally tried to put people at all different stages of their journey too.
18:31
SPEAKER_02: You know, some people who are um very much like looking back and reflecting, some people are in the trenches, you know, right here, right now, still trying to get the progress that they want to see on the issue that they're tackling.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: So I think um, I hope in that that people can find inspiration.
18:46
SPEAKER_02: Because I know to your point, it's really easy if you just take the daily news to get pretty depressed about the state of the world and the state of leadership.
18:54
SPEAKER_02: And one of the things I found so encouraging about writing this book is there are so many points of light out there if we go looking for them.
19:01
SPEAKER_02: And I hope I've illuminated some of them.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: And I hope others in reading this will share others with me and will connect and amplify more of the great examples that they see in their own context.
19:11
SPEAKER_02: I think the second thing when it comes to, you know, how do you how do you start?
19:15
SPEAKER_02: Um, or where do you begin?
19:17
SPEAKER_02: I totally agree.
19:18
SPEAKER_02: And that's one of the reasons that I wanted to make it clear with this book that you leadership is yours to define.
19:25
SPEAKER_02: You can define leadership as being leading your family.
19:27
SPEAKER_02: You can define it as leading your team at work, you can define it as the way that you show up for your street, your community.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've been incredibly hyper-local in the last 12, 18 months.
19:36
SPEAKER_02: Many of us have connected with our neighbors in our street for the first time, you know, yeah, ever, really.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: And so there's plenty of different ways.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: And as was said with that story of grandma, that that does matter, that the way you role model, the way that you um demonstrate your leadership in those day-to-day interactions is really important.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: When it comes to kind of thinking about how you start, I mean, my biggest thing is working out to begin with what your why is.
20:01
SPEAKER_02: You know, what is your passion, your purpose?
20:04
SPEAKER_02: Um, what is the thing that gets you out of bed?
20:06
SPEAKER_02: You can talk underwater about, you feel in flow doing.
20:09
SPEAKER_02: Um, and if you don't know what that is, that's totally fine too.
20:13
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I opened the book with a story uh of one of my mentors and inspirations, a wonderful lady by the name of Jane Shuson, who is originally who I know very well.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: She's a rockstar.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Rockstar, amazing woman.
20:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: Amazing woman.
20:26
SPEAKER_02: And Jane typifies to me this idea of putting yourself where the lightning strikes.
20:30
SPEAKER_02: So the idea of putting yourself uh where you will, as Jane always says, you know, um meet the people, feel the issues, uh, and come across things that might spark that in you.
20:41
SPEAKER_02: Go and volunteer, go and try, go off the beaten track, step out of your normal routine, go and watch different films, go and meet different people, try and find ways of putting yourself where you're gonna find that thing.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I think from there.
20:54
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: I actually love that.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: That's just so powerful and I totally resonate with that.
20:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: And then I think it's just that case of going, uh, start from where you are with what you have right now.
21:05
SPEAKER_02: What is the smallest thing I can do today, tomorrow, this week, whatever timescale you want to define it on, to step forward, you know, and to begin with, it might be understanding the issue more.
21:14
SPEAKER_02: It might be signing up to a mailing list of an organization that's doing something in this space.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: It might be, you know, choosing to reach out to someone on LinkedIn that you know has made an impact in this area or responding to a call for volunteers.
21:28
SPEAKER_02: Whatever it is, just think about how you can start right here, right now.
21:31
SPEAKER_02: Because to your point, I think sometimes we get in our own way.
21:34
SPEAKER_02: And the way I've always visualized it for myself is if I look up and I see a hundred meter hurdles track, I'm far less likely to start running than if I look up and I just see a hundred meters of straight track.
21:44
SPEAKER_02: So if I'm gonna look up and tell myself all the problems, oh, but I don't know this, this, this, this, this, I don't know how to find a full time job in it, I don't know if I'm qualified, I don't know this, I don't know that, I will never start.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: If you start, momentum is your greatest friend.
21:57
SPEAKER_02: You will work away through those hurdles as and when they present.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: themselves.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: You work out whether you want to jump those hurdles as and when you present they present themselves, but don't let that be the reason you don't start.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: Totally agree with you.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, you've answered that really well because, and obviously it's intrinsic to the themes in your book.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: But I think, I think to that point, clearly, while and I love the hurdle um analogy because clearly, yes, if you just see lots of hurdles ahead, it becomes insurmountable and you just feel paralyzed about action.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: However, I'd be curious to note what you do see as some of the greatest challenges that you for you in terms of your focus and what you what you see as being I suppose your something that you would really like, and I know you've got many, but maybe just hone one or two that you see as the biggest issues you'd like to see change, um, because you're active on so many.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: What what is something that really you'd like to see your focus on?
22:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I think uh this book in many ways is a bit of a stake in the ground on my focus in terms of really wanting to put a lot of focus behind leadership development.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: You know, I want to play a big role in empowering people who want to be the change they wish to see in the world, um, and really wanting to think about, you know, we spend billions of dollars a year as a as a world on leadership development.
23:20
SPEAKER_02: And to get the output that we're getting now suggests we're throwing a lot of money against the wall on tools that were designed to solve very different problems at a very different point in time, and arguably tools as well that were designed for a very specific type of person.
23:31
SPEAKER_02: And so we've got a job to do in retooling, reskilling, and rapidly building that capability and making sure a lot more people uh realize their responsibility and can gain accessibility to those uh skills and tools.
23:45
SPEAKER_02: So for me, absolutely, that's massive.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've watched that Annabelle Crabbe series uh misrepresented.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, like it's great.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: So while there, you know, there's some controversy around who's featured and how, it is an interesting notion because as females, um we clearly uh have been struggling, and I've interviewed so many women, trying to actually get traction.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, whether it's um women in the arts or women in in various sectors, leadership is uh often elusive.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even just partnership in law firms, you know?
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Or talk it's near impossible.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Not only is it near impossible to get to be a partner, but it's really hard.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: A lot of women are saying, well, maybe that's not what I want, but that's a separate issue.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: But my point is do you see women as a major part of your drive here to empower women with leadership resources and skills and tools?
24:41
SPEAKER_02: Definitely.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: I I think anyone who we look at leadership right now and go, they're not there.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh and I think there's many more ways that we can cut debt than just gender.
24:51
SPEAKER_02: Um, I think the frustration is for many of us who thought, you know, uh gender for the want of a better description would be the gateway drug to a much bigger uh diversity and inclusion uh world.
25:01
SPEAKER_02: It hasn't because we've failed to make progress.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: You know, we are we are stuck, we're still looking at World Economic Forum numbers that suggest it's you know 99 years to equality and then some.
25:11
SPEAKER_02: So we haven't made progress.
25:13
SPEAKER_02: And I think I'm encouraged by the emergence, I still don't think it's mainstream by any stretch, but the intersectionality conversations that we're having, where we're talking about um race, where we're talking about sexual orientation, where we're talking about um, you know, uh all range of abilities and things like that.
25:28
SPEAKER_02: I think that's really, really important.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: Um, but absolutely, I think without question, uh, you know, if we're we're just at a basic level thinking about 51% of the world's population, who whatever metric we want to look at in leadership, uh in income, in access to resources, in uh poverty line, you know, you name it, uh, in the caring responsibilities, you know, that it is always disproportionate in terms of either the the burden borne by women or the the difficulty in getting access to the resources that others find more plentifully.
26:00
SPEAKER_02: Um that is an enormous part, I think, of what our generation needs to change.
26:03
SPEAKER_02: I hope to change that.
26:04
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't have children yet, but I hope and I think one of the responsibilities we've got is to pick up that baton and run it further forward.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I interviewed Christina Hobbs uh recently and she heads up Verve Super, which is a really interesting business.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know if you know her, but it's yeah, yeah.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: She's a very impressive woman.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: And she she really talks to this.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: And and one of the biggest things, I mean, obviously, as you mentioned, it's it's across the board, there's diversity issues, there's, but just for the gender lens for just one moment, she does refer to the fact that um, and as women, we really are extremely underrepresented in so many ways.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: But she talks about the disempowerment of women financially, and that's become a huge push in um many sectors.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: She's driving that encouraging women towards superannuation, which many women don't for whatever reason have that discussion.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: But it's it's part of that.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: How do we become leaders when we're trying to actually everybody's trying to actually just, you know.
27:03
SPEAKER_02: And something I'm sure you're passionate about too, Deb.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: Part of it for me also starts, and it's one of the stories I opened the book with is when I interviewed Gina Davis, the Hollywood actress who started the Gina Davis Institute for Film and Media.
27:15
SPEAKER_02: And in that work, she's looking at the stories that we tell children and the portrayal of women and the betrayal of men.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: And obviously, now uh with the more advanced work they've done that started that way about 2008, I think it was when there was no really comprehensive benchmarking of any of this sort of stuff.
27:33
SPEAKER_02: And it was horrifying when they started benchmarking the world's top films and they worked out that, you know, only 28% of speaking characters were women, and only 17% of people in crowd scenes were female, and you know, 83% of narrators are male.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, oh my gosh, if we're feeding our kids a diet of that, are we surprised that by age 10, when they're asked to draw leaders or astronauts or whatever it might be, that they're drawing men, that they're counting themselves out because they don't think they look like leadership capabilities, that they're not speaking up as often because they're so conditioned to hearing male voices.
28:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, and now they're looking at a lot more, you know, at the kind of the intersectionality piece where they're going, okay, you know, characters of colour are far more likely to be shown as violent.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: Characters with disability are far, you know, more likely to be shown as less worse looking.
28:17
SPEAKER_02: Like, how is this happening?
28:18
SPEAKER_02: This is this is most recent data benchmarking films that have been coming out in the last five years.
28:23
SPEAKER_02: We've got to think about changing the story.
28:25
SPEAKER_02: 100%.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, what I find really very important is the power of the arts in changing that enculturation.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Completely.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: And making sure that we do, like, for example, whether you've got Bruna, you know, Papandreas have made up stories, she's doing some wonderful films, obviously, about women.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: Not all women.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, she's not all her stories about women, but you've got the Reese Witherspoons who are, you know, with Hello Sunshine and trying to actually make sure Empowering female producers and writers Producers and directors and you know, as I'm I mean, I did my masters of film producing, and let me tell you, the drive is huge for women to want to tell their stories, but the logistics um can often be challenging.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: And so some of these women, like you talked about Gina Davis in the book, can't wait to read it.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, that is a very important thing to note that the arts also has a really important role in changing that trajectory and making sure that we do have uh female and other stories represented.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: So we need to invest in that.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: Couldn't agree with you more.
29:29
SPEAKER_02: I uh I've sort of, it's funny, I feel like I've absolutely fallen head over heels in love with the arts in uh when would it be, the last five, six years.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: And what's interesting is intellectually I got the arts before I got it with my heart.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: I was working for a leader who was big in the philanthropic space in funding the arts.
29:47
SPEAKER_02: And at the time I was working for him in Western Australia, he said, Can you go and write me a paper basically validating, uh making the call to arms to business and government to invest in the arts?
29:57
SPEAKER_02: So I wrote this paper called Get Your Arts into Gear, which was it was talking about the economic multiplier of every dollar spent in the arts.
30:03
SPEAKER_02: And there's great work on this in the US, you'd be familiar with, where you know, the ripple effect of what it does for societal well-being and all of that, like just the cultural value add of the arts.
30:12
SPEAKER_02: And so I got it there and I was like, wow, this is so important, and it is such a shame that it seems to always be one of the first things that we pull money from when we're looking for things to cut the budget of.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: But then when I was doing a year that I talk about in the book, I did a 365 days of doing things I was afraid of with my best friend.
30:29
SPEAKER_02: I saw that for acting and singing lessons, and I got the best teacher in the world, and I fell in love with the arts.
30:38
SPEAKER_02: I've become obsessed with theater.
30:40
SPEAKER_02: I love 16th Street and kind of everything they do.
30:42
SPEAKER_02: I've been to watch and audit Larry Moss several times over.
30:45
SPEAKER_02: So I'm just obsessed with all that world now.
30:48
SPEAKER_02: So I couldn't be a bigger believer in the power of the arts and specifically the power of the arts' ability to take us in to moments of reflection on ourselves and the world around us before we even realize it.
31:00
SPEAKER_02: You know, that is an incredible gift that the arts have because it happens in a way that isn't in your face, and you're on a journey and a story, and then all of a sudden, whoa, we're in the middle of some big issues, and I'm being asked to reflect on and consider some big, and there is so much power in that storytelling and its ability to help us join connections in a way where if we're, you know, being presented with an opinion or it's being jammed down our throat is often kind of the more direct media world landscape is doing, or it's um we're gonna we're gonna continue to confine to our echo chambers.
31:32
SPEAKER_02: And so I actually think right now, with this kind of hyper, hyper specialization, the algorithms that are continually feeding us more and more and more bespoke stuff that's talking even more specifically to what we already know we believe and who we believe it from, that the role of the arts in helping to keep our minds broad has arguably never been more critical.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, um, like a recent interview I did with Eric Banner, who was star of the dry.
31:57
SPEAKER_02: Casual name drop, big, big one there.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: How good, how good is he?
32:01
SPEAKER_00: He is he was so lovely, so down to earth.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: And talk about, you know, we talked about that earlier on.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we talked about that earlier on, that notion of just operating at the same level.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: He was just so grounded, so not, you know, for all of his successes, but he talks about how his film and how working in as an actor is his therapy of sorts, you know, that it actually helps him as an actor, but also the stories he's telling.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, once again, Jane Harper, who wrote The The Dry, is an Australian author telling amazing stories, started as a journalist, by the way.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: But that's another but also I think probably my main concern at the moment is how the arts is being smashed by COVID.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's really very troubling because they are the soul of our community, to your point.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: And so that is another factor that we have to make sure that we protect, fund, and support the arts because those stories are critical.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: And we need all of those actors, producers, writers, directors, musicians.
33:03
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
33:04
SPEAKER_02: Yep, couldn't agree more.
33:05
SPEAKER_02: And I and I hope, you know, those listening, and I'm sure people that are listening to this are of the nature inclined to be those supporters anyway.
33:12
SPEAKER_02: But I think that call out to where you can great to you know go back to um your your interests in whatever way they might be, whether it's sport, whether it's eating out, whatever.
33:21
SPEAKER_02: But if we can make sure that some of that money goes to some of our incredible performers and artists and venues and things like that, that's absolutely so critical.
33:29
SPEAKER_02: And I hope we'll continue to find ways to make sure support comes through from business, from government, you name it, um, because it would be a very, it would it would just be devastating to think that this period in time led to a decline in the arts organizations that we say operating and thriving in this country.
33:47
SPEAKER_02: It's challenging enough as it is in a good year, oftentimes.
33:50
SPEAKER_02: That's something, you know, friends of mine who work in the space have have continued to impress upon me, let alone when your livelihood is taken out from from under you.
33:58
SPEAKER_02: And I have some appreciation, you know, doing a lot of live events myself.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: I I miss I miss crowds, I miss the ability to do that.
34:04
SPEAKER_02: I I long for the day we can be back in front of venues, but um, I really do feel, particularly for those in Victoria.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: I mean, a friend said to me the other day that, you know, uh kids in Victoria haven't had a full term of school since the last term of 2019.
34:19
SPEAKER_02: That basically means on par with uh an artist has not been fully working since the end of 2019, because you can basically mirror when schools close to the reality of any any kind of gathering in any kind of venue.
34:33
SPEAKER_02: So for 18 months now, that's been very, very challenging, very precarious.
34:39
SPEAKER_02: And I hope that people are really uh showing as much empathy as they can as well, with regards to financial hardship and just helping artists through this period so they can come out the other side of this and we can get them back on their feet.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally agree with you.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: And also just one question: did you actually harness singing?
34:55
SPEAKER_00: How did you go with your singing lessons?
34:57
SPEAKER_02: Oh, look, in my next life, I'm coming back on Broadway, like I dream of it.
35:01
SPEAKER_02: Um I'm absolutely not remotely talented at it.
35:04
SPEAKER_02: So I love uh singing, dancing, and acting, and I'm equally useless at all three.
35:09
SPEAKER_02: I like to think I make up with a triple non-threat.
35:14
SPEAKER_02: I like to think I make up for it with enthusiasm.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: I don't know that my partner agrees when I sing at all hours of the day.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I did, I loved it.
35:21
SPEAKER_02: And for me, it was actually more about uh, and I don't know if this will resonate with some of your listeners, but uh I love crowds.
35:29
SPEAKER_02: Like speaking for me is a delight.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: The bigger the audience, the better.
35:33
SPEAKER_02: Something about singing was so damn vulnerable.
35:35
SPEAKER_02: Like it was just terrifying having to sing, maybe because I'm not good at it, maybe because I I I don't know, it just felt more exposed and raw or emotional.
35:44
SPEAKER_02: Um I can't even quite tell you.
35:45
SPEAKER_02: Probably a combination of all of the above and then some other stuff.
35:48
SPEAKER_02: But it it was really interesting, the kind of journey of exploration that both the acting and singing classes took me on.
35:56
SPEAKER_02: So um, I'm a big believer in lateral learning.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: You know, I I did it, I remember the way I wrote to my potential singing uh and acting teacher was, you know, I'm really keen for the lessons I think that this can give me that can help me grow as a speaker and a facilitator.
36:10
SPEAKER_02: I like learning outside of my discipline.
36:12
SPEAKER_02: In fact, I like learning outside of my discipline more than I like learning directly.
36:15
SPEAKER_02: I don't I don't think I learn as well from that.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: And uh and I said, but I'd also just like to be really kick-ass at karaoke.
36:21
SPEAKER_02: And uh she bit at that joke.
36:23
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, this is my person, and uh on we went from there.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love it, but also I do I do like the way that you uh you say that you go outside of your comfort zone because really that's part of the learning experience, and that's something that seems to be quite thematic.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: You push yourself, you know, whether it's and you know, going to do the Fulbright Scholarship, which is a huge thing, and you know, doing all of the things that you've done, um, you're certainly not somebody who just sits in cottonwool because you know that you have to push yourself to to grow.
36:57
SPEAKER_02: Definitely.
36:58
SPEAKER_02: And I know, you know, it it does sound cliche to say, you know, growth begins at sort of the energy comfort zone, but it's also true, you know, some of these reasons that things become cliche is because they're actually wetted in a kind of fundamental truth.
37:10
SPEAKER_02: And it absolutely is.
37:11
SPEAKER_02: We don't grow by doing what we repeatedly know how to do.
37:14
SPEAKER_02: We might get more efficient at it, but we certainly don't grow in our capacity.
37:18
SPEAKER_02: Uh and I think one of the arguments I make in the book is that the single most important habit that each and every one of us can be building right now is to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
37:27
SPEAKER_02: Nobody can sit here and tell you exactly what the future is going to look like.
37:29
SPEAKER_02: I mean, God, none of us predicted the last 18 months.
37:32
SPEAKER_02: But the thing that we do know is it's gonna be characterized by more volatility, more uncertainty, more complexity, more ambiguity.
37:39
SPEAKER_02: And so if that's on your operating environment, learning how to get comfortable with that is everything.
37:45
SPEAKER_02: At whatever age, whatever stage, whatever pursuit you're doing, that's gonna be mission critical capability.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: And so for me, finding ways of starting to build that muscle, and it is a muscle, I believe, in yourself.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: Don't always say to people when you're doing something you're afraid of, don't uh don't decide you're gonna debut in the extreme.
38:03
SPEAKER_02: Like if you don't like public speaking, don't start in front of 400 people.
38:06
SPEAKER_02: That's like going to the gym and attempting to bench press 200 kilos.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: Like it's not gonna end well, and you probably never go back to the gym.
38:12
SPEAKER_02: Like you've got to think about how you kind of take these baby steps, but that notion of building that habit and routinely getting good at this stuff.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: So all of a sudden, when something comes out of the blue, something changes.
38:23
SPEAKER_02: Oh, cool, okay, this is new.
38:25
SPEAKER_02: I feel comfortable here.
38:25
SPEAKER_02: I've done this before.
38:26
SPEAKER_02: I've got reference points.
38:27
SPEAKER_02: I can tell myself a story about that time we did that hard thing three weeks ago, six months ago, whatever it might be.
38:33
SPEAKER_02: It just changes our ability to adapt.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was about to say, so really the key, you know, as humans, we've always been able to adapt and we've always had to.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: This is a particularly extreme circumstance with the pandemic, but actually, there are a lot of people thriving in the, yes, we know about the people struggling, and and to be honest, it's not either or.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: Some are doing both, you know, like some are, you know, thriving one one week and struggling the next, and that's okay.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: But I think to your point, and it sounds like your book references this a lot too, it's really about um, it's it's more actually part of human nature to adapt and for things to be um monolithic and global and for things like this to have happened to all through history.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: There's been almost not a uh a century where you haven't had, you know, such extreme challenges.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: And humanity is a very, very um resilient uh group of people.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: And we have to all just make sure that we take care of each other along the journey and hear each other.
39:38
SPEAKER_02: There are some parallels to what we've been through before.
39:40
SPEAKER_02: You know, one of one of the people who I just love, uh, Professor Genevieve Bell, Dr.
39:44
SPEAKER_02: Genevieve Bell um out of ANU, like a part of the kind of grounding group of, she's actually an anthropologist who ended up at Intel, kind of leading all the development of the original UX out of the valley, you know, uh a couple of decades ago.
39:57
SPEAKER_02: She's one of our national treasures.
39:59
SPEAKER_02: If you haven't watched her Boyer lecture series from a few years ago, it's it's a must-watch.
40:03
SPEAKER_02: But when I interviewed her for the book, she she was powerful in so many ways.
40:07
SPEAKER_02: But one of the quotes that she shared with me that just continues to stick with me is we need to look back at history and know our history, not in order that we can get answers, but in order that we can ask better questions.
40:17
SPEAKER_02: So the thing I would encourage people to say, just because we've been through this before, doesn't mean that the strategies we use to get through it are the ones that we should be applying now.
40:26
SPEAKER_02: Thank gosh, we're evolving our thinking about mental health.
40:29
SPEAKER_02: Thank gosh, we are getting a literature around resilience and toolkits around that.
40:34
SPEAKER_02: So I the thing I hope we will keep updating, and again, this is part of what I hope to make a contribution to, but this is a much bigger body of literature than my book, is a new set of tools that can help us through the reality of this better than when we did it 20, 30 years ago.
40:49
SPEAKER_02: Just because that was the way we did it then does not mean it's the way that we should do it now.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: I totally agree.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: And you know what, we're all part of this brave new world, and that is certainly a book that was written a long time ago and is still very pertinent because really, at the end of the day, we are in a brave new world.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: But to your point, adapting, listening, growing, and finding new ways to actually um find resilience and just take care of each other is actually the key.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: And I am so grateful to have you on my What I've Learned podcast.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining me.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: I could talk to you for another hour because you're always back at you.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: You're you're very um engaging and articulate and charismatic, and all of that is probably what's taken you to where you've landed.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: And I look forward to seeing you tap dancing, singing, acting, and performing at your next public speaking event.
41:43
SPEAKER_02: I'll be what have I got myself into?
41:45
SPEAKER_02: Dear gosh, hopefully nobody nobody in the events industry hears this.
41:48
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I'm in trouble otherwise.
41:50
SPEAKER_02: I'll be in my next brief.
41:51
SPEAKER_02: I'll be like, by the way, can you do some interpretive dance between morning tea and the lunch session?
41:57
SPEAKER_00: Lovely to speak to you.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: You take care, Holly.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: The What I've Learned podcast will now be coming to you weekly with new episodes released every Tuesday.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind, and curious.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Love dear.