[Interview] Holding Space, Attention, and True Presence | Dr. Chris McKeown

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 telling yourself the worst version of the story. You’ll learn: Why your intent matters far less than your impact, and how to tell the difference Three questions that close the gap between the impact you want and the impact you are actually having How to ask for feedback in a way that gets you something useful back Why the best work a leader does is often invisible, and how to get comfortable with that How perfectionism shows up as an inner critic, and what it costs the people around you How to work out whose opinion genuinely matters to you

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 that intelligence and the ability to read a room are separate capabilities. That's why context is something you need to teach your people rather than hope they pick up. You'll come away with three things to keep in front of your people, and a question that might change what you hand over next. You'll learn: Why a strong shortlist still lost the CFO role, and the three questions that would have changed the outcome Why clever and savvy are separate capabilities, and what the research says about which one predicts performance How most people actually learn context, and why neither route counts as a development plan The three things your people need to weigh up to get an idea across the line: content, circumstances and consequences How to walk alongside your people while the work is still taking shape, rather than after it's failed Why handing over context does more for your people than handing over corrections The question to ask yourself about what you know and haven't said out loud

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 about what you remove. David MacLennan is the CEO of the City of Vincent in Perth, Western Australia, named the second most livable city in Australia last year. He is also Chair of the Australian Urban Design Research Centre at the University of Western Australia. He spent 15 years as a diplomat with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, fluent in Spanish, with postings to Papua New Guinea, Mexico City, Lima, and London. During his time in Lima, he was awarded the Order of Merit for Distinguished Services, Commander Grade, by the President of Peru for his contribution to Peru's hosting of the 2008 APEC Leaders Summit. Before joining local government, he was Assistant Director General at the WA Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from UWA and a Master of Management from ANU and has been at the City of Vincent since 2018. We get into: How a trade ban on Australian sheepmeat became the leadership lesson David still draws on today Why the CEO's job is best understood as pain management: finding and removing what stops people doing their best work How the City of Vincent gave a whole community permission to lead their own streets, and what that says about leadership at scale What it looks like to get an entire organisation into flow state, and how David accesses his own Why the problems in your work life never go away, and what that actually means for how you grow

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 than what you're actually trying to do underneath the words. In this solocast, you'll get: The five levels of intention, from combatant through to co-creator, and what each one sounds like in a real conversation Why solving someone's problem for them can quietly teach them nothing but the shape of your answers A second lens, attention in, attention out, and a tension between, that's arguably more useful than the levels themselves Why your job gets easier, not harder, once your attention shifts off yourself A simple fishing metaphor for the difference between catching someone's fish and teaching them to fish One thing to try this week: picking a single conversation and moving up just one level

How do you know if the way you're showing up as a leader is actually landing the way you mean it to? Francois Barton has spent years learning to host, not control. As chief executive of New Zealand's largest CEO group, his job isn't to have the answers, it's to set the table and get out of the way. In this conversation he talks candidly about the moment a partner pointed out the gap between his intention and his impact, why tenure can sharpen a leader or dull them, and the shift he's now navigating: from curating conversations to challenging what's actually being said in them. Francois Barton is chief executive of the Business Leaders' Health and Safety Forum, New Zealand's largest CEO membership group. More than 440 chief executives, representing over a quarter of the country's workforce, are part of it. Francois helped found the Forum back in 2009 and has led it since 2015. Twenty years working across business and government in policy, strategy and regulation shaped a belief that sits at the centre of his work: progress only comes when leaders confront difficult realities together. You'll hear: Why Francois thinks of himself as a curator, not an expert How a spare afternoon with one visiting CEO turned into a Forum-wide way of connecting leaders What "the sweat's on the right back" taught him about caring less what people think Why tenure can be a strength or a trap, and what decides which How his partner's honest feedback exposed his own intention-impact gap Why he doesn't trust "skinny cooks" in leadership What's pulling him from hosting conversations toward challenging what's said in them