Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Holly Ransom

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Hi. My name is Jenelle McMaster and welcome to the Change Happens podcast. Conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today I’m joined by Holly Ransom and look it’s hard to know where to start with Holly’s CV. I most certainly will never do this justice but let me give you some highlights.

She is a globally renowned content curator. A much sort after public speaker. The founder and CEO of Emergent which is a strategic advisory firm specialising in constructive strategy and building leadership capacity to execute change.

She is also the youngest Director who has been appointed to an Australian Football Club, Port Adelaide. She was named one of Australia’s 100 most influential women by the AFR. She has delivered a Peace Charter to the Dalai Lama and has interviewed some of the most influential people in the world including Barack Obama, Sir Richard Branson, Billy Jean King and Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus.

In 2017 Holly was named by Sir Richard Branson as a future game changer to watch. In 2019 Holly was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship and undertook a Master of Public Policy and graduated in the Harvard Kennedy School Class in 2021.

Now at just 31, yep, 31, Holly already has achieved so much in delivering content to the Corporate Not-for-Profit and public sectors and has presented over 500 sessions across six continents in the past 3 years. Holly is well versed at being the interviewer having several of her own podcast series, one called Coffee Pods and more recently the Energy Trailblazers podcast too.

So I look forward to the not insignificant challenge of being the one to ask Holly the questions today! In this episode I’m looking forward to exploring so many things including how Holly is creating change. How she runs at such a pace and the lessons she has learned along the way. I almost feel like I should drop the mike on Holly’s behalf and walk away but there is just too much to get into here.

So Holly welcome.

Holly: That was an incredibly generous introduction, Jenelle. Thank you for being far too kind there.

Jenelle: I’d like to say generous and yet I still feel like unbelievably I’m still falling short on the many, many things that you’ve done. It took some time to figure out how I was going to navigate and summarise that CV.

Holly: You’re very, very kind thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jenelle: My pleasure. I’m really looking forward to the chat Holly. I wonder if we can kick off by having you help the audience understand who you are.

Something about your family and where you grew up.

Holly: Yeh so I grew up in Western Australia though I always describe myself as a hybrid model cause I’ve lived on the East Coast for the last 7 or 8 years now. I describe myself as someone who is born in the west but very much entrenched in the East, living in Victoria now days.

Holly: Growing up I think probably the most influential when I think back to childhood in Western Australia – to Denmark. Denmark for those who are familiar is about 4½ hours south drive of Perth. My grandparents who were incredibly influential figures in my life, particularly my grandmother lived down there and every childhood holiday was spent down there. Surfing, mucking around, planning all forms of scavenger hunts in their backyard that wove into the back paddock and forest and all that sort of thing. The freedom and the opportunities to adventure I was a big part of what I remember vividly from childhood in the West.

Jenelle: It sounds like a fantastic childhood. Thinking about.. I’ve heard you speak about your grandmother in the past and one of the things you’ve said about her is that she had the ability to make you feel seen. Tell me a bit more about that? In what ways did you feel seen?

Holly: I love that you’ve asked that question because it’s one of the things I most admire about my grandmother and if there is any trait I hope to emulate of hers it’s this. It didn’t matter who she was talking to, the guy that was coming to pick the garbage bin up. Whether she was talking to the librarian at the local library. Anyone in between, the Mayor of the town you name it, every time she spoke to someone she had the ability to make them feel like they’re so important, they matter so much and the world is so lucky that they are doing what they’re doing. I always thought what a gift to give people. This ability to feel seen. To feel heard. To feel appreciated. I think it’s a universal set of needs. My grandmother had an incredible ability to do that and still to this day does with everyone and anyone.

I just remember how important that was particularly growing up to have someone who believed in you infinitely. You know those people who believe in you before you believe in yourself. That’s my grandmother. That’s not just my grandmother for me. That’s my grandmother for everyone she ever meets. I just think that’s such an incredible leadership trait. To me she is an embodiment of what I think leadership needs to look like.

My grandmother was someone who always embraced – in that sense ‘Well actually you’re leading, you have a responsibility in every interaction you have with everyone you meet. Your energy. Your curiosity. Your attitude. That’s an opportunity to shape the world for the better.

Jenelle: What an incredible human being she is.

Holly: Yeh she is.

Jenelle: It’s also fantastic that you recognised the power of that attribute in her. Very often I think people might experience it but not realise how incredibly special that is and something that is an attribute that is to be aspired to and mimicked really. It’s such a special attribute and good for you for recognising that at such an early age.

Holly: I often think there is an enormous importance in our earliest memories. One where my grandmother and I were out shopping in a supermarket and we were in a queue to buy milk and bread for lunch and this guy who was in front of us in the queue - I would have been 4 or 5 at the time. This man looked like a goliath. He was yelling at the poor young girl on the checkout who had evidently given him the wrong change. He was making a real song and dance about it. He was being quite aggressive and before I even blinked my 5ft tall grandmother Dorothy had inserted herself between goliath and this poor girl on the checkout and pointed her finger up at him and said “How dare you talk to that young woman like that, you apologise”. I just saw this moment of this man who had obviously never been told by anyone to check his behaviour, cause it took a few seconds what was going on to register and then he went bright red in the cheeks and mumbled “sorry” and grabbed his things and ran out of the store.

Holly: My grandmother proceeded like nothing unusual had happened and bought the bread and milk and off we went and she came back and grabbed my hand and I said “Grandma that was so brave”. She said “honey if you walked past it you’d tell the world it’s ok”. Now I think about it and I reckon it took me two decades to work out what that meant. Maybe longer. In terms of actually understanding what my grandmother meant and what that phrase meant and what that idea meant. But the power of what my grandmother did there, she didn’t say it, she did it.

Jenelle: Yeh you knew what you were experiencing.

Holly: I understood what I’d seen. I understood that you didn’t let bullies do that. I understood that it was your job to step in and I think that for me was one of the earliest lessons in leadership right. It’s about what you do, not what you say. I mean it’s about both right but absolutely we see a lot of people who are very happy to talk it but not so happy to walk it.

So I think that’s the power in, for me I probably didn’t have the ability to put language or to describe what my grandmother was doing well into my 20’s but I saw it over and over again.

Jenelle: It’s funny you said it took you a couple of decades to be able to narrate what you experienced – that intuitive leadership on her part but there is so many words that have come in to our lexicon now – crucible moments, understanding empathy being an upstander, leadership without authority that your grandmother demonstrated at as a matter of course without even thinking about it. The language came afterwards for not just you but I think the rest of us in the world but she just obviously embodied that so intuitively.

Holly: 100%. I think it’s great that we’re starting to see the shift and it was one of the passions for me in writing the book around trying to change up the narrative of who we’re role modelling as examples as leaders because when you go and do the literature review, most of the leadership books still don’t read like that. We’re still not admiring and lionising leaders of empathy. We’re still not talking about a diverse set of architypes – what leadership can look like and I think it’s really, really important because if we don’t do that we risk too many people looking at the terminology, the discussion, the conversation around leadership and going “Oh well that’s obviously not about me”. “I’m obviously not involved in that mix cause I don’t look like those leaders”. “I don’t lead in that way”. “That’s not my context”. And as you and I both know Jenelle, particularly the problems that are facing in the world right now, we need everyone to understand their role as a leader and everyone has a role to play as a leader. Whether you are leading for better or worse, you’re leading every day. The influence you’ve got in your immediate relationships whether that’s your household, your team, your community, you name it.

Jenelle: Can you tell me how you define your purpose given there are so many things that you do. How do you articulate your north star or your reason for being in amongst all that?

Holly: Yeh look it’s a great question and for me my passion and purpose is really around democratising access to leadership development. So my want is to give people the tools and the inspiration to be the leader the world needs them to be and to be the change in the world that they want to see. That’s what I’m absolutely passionate about. Cause for me that notion, and I think this comes from the evolution of my thinking when I think about my involvement, particularly in the charitable sector over the course of my primary school years and then teenage years into 20’s. I started working on what I would describe as hand out courses.

Holly: So my connection, my lighting the fire in the belly moment came at 10 when I was shopping in Perth and encountered a homeless man that was sitting on the side of the street. My Mum was in a bookstore and I got really, really bored so I wandered out to the street and this guy was sitting there with his hat upturned and he was begging for money. It probably won’t surprise you that I’ve never been a shrinking violet. So 10 year old me just wandered over to him and said “What you doing?” And he told me that he was trying to earn enough to get a roof and a feed. And I remember thinking and I looked down at his hat and counted there was $4.20 sitting in his hat, and I’m going “it’s not getting anywhere”. I said, and I never should have said it but I should clarify it’s one of those most 10 year old moments that you kick yourself for later in life.

Jenelle: The provocative of a 10 year old’s honesty I’m sure.

Holly: Oh I know and I just “But that’s not very much”. And he chuckled and he said “No this is a good day, I’m doing pretty well”. So that was one of those moments that I couldn’t get out of my head. It’s still the reason I don’t sleep very well at night when it rains in the middle of winter. Cause that night I went home and it bucketed with rain and all I could think about was how come by luck I’ve got a roof over my head and I’ve got food in my stomach and the guy that I met on the side of the street doesn’t. So went to school the next day and bailed my school principal up before school and told him what had happened and said “I want to fix it”. “How do I fix it?” And we sort of did a school fundraiser and we donated all this food to the local homeless shelter.

But I’ll never forget going back there two years later doing a community project at primary school and the conversation was around how the homeless shelter had doubled in the past two years – the number of beds it was offering and this was being painted as really great thing. I’m sitting there going “but isn’t that a problem?” That there is twice as many people needing help and support. So that naturally led me into interesting social enterprise and things like micro finance, where I went and did some work in Kenya and it was this whole piece of how do you teach people to fish? And how do you create these sustainable models where we can lift people out of extreme poverty in particular. So that for me is not only the purpose but where I think it originates from.

Jenelle: I love that and it’s very clear. It’s very clear how that has steered you with the things that you’ve taken on. I’m really interested in that 10 year old. I’m also interested in the 31 year old! But the 10 year old curiosity and that brazenness of asking the question. I know you’ve talked of that fact that we seem to lose our childlike curiosity as we age and that successful leaders really need to nurture that childlike curiosity. To keep fresh. To stay relevant.
How do you maintain your curiosity and that sense of play? That clearly you had right from the get-go and continue to. How do you maintain that?

Holly: That’s a great question and I love it because it is something that really alarms me. I think it alarms anyone on self-reflection. If you haven’t spent time around 4 or 5 year old’s recently you should borrow some from friends, or brothers and sisters, or whoever it might be or go volunteer for a day in a primary school and help them out, and you’re astounded by the volume of questions in a 5 minute period let alone in an hour!

Jenelle: Yep exactly!

Holly: I think there is a couple of things. One is helps to begin with to understand its importance. So firstly I think it comes from a commitment of having a ‘why?’. And I believe that curiosity is the birth place of innovation and new answers. So it comes from that why to begin with.

Holly: Then in terms of the discipline of it. I think it’s knowing how you work and think. So I am a kinaesthetic learner which is a fancy way of saying I learn best by doing things. I’m not great at absorbing from books. I’m not great at absorbing from just passively listening to something. I’m really good when I get the opportunity to engage in subject matter and so I have to build learning experiences that kind of dovetail with that, because I’m going to engage more. I’m going to learn more and I’m going to be shaped more effectively. I try every week to be, having a couple of conversations with people that are outside of my wheelhouse so that I’m learning about their world, their challenges, their problems, their approaches and that’s part of it.

When the world is open and not in Covid lockdown, what my partner and I are actually doing at the moment we have a creative date of the month where we take ourselves out on a date that is purely delving into something that we would never otherwise do.

So we’ll go to interactive theatre. Or we’ll engage in a cooking class with one of the local migrant communities. Or we’ll do something that takes us into a different dimension and I find that really helpful, and I found the arts and cultural space in particular, really helpful for building new skills and challenging my thinking. Whether that is going and doing improv workshops. Whether that’s taking myself of to work with circus performers.

Anything that can push me outside of my comfort zone. Sometimes I think people get overwhelmed with this sort of stuff because it’s really easy to go, if I can’t get to the museum or the art gallery, or if I can’t go and do I can’t go and do x for a full hour or a half a day, then it’s not worth doing. I think the thing I always try and remind myself is how do you break this down into the smallest bite. Like it can be as simple as I’m going to listen to a podcast that’s from someone in a total different sector to me. I’m going to commit to reading a book. That’s probably the other thing I’d add in that mix, make it fun! Know what you enjoy or who you enjoy doing it with and the more that you can bring either of those elements in the easier it is to make a rhythm out of this sort of stuff.

Jenelle: Holly, this is a podcast. We talk plenty about leadership and growth, our podcast is heavily focused on change. When you think about a particular change agenda that you have driven and I know there has been multiple. What has been your experiences in driving change? The good, the bad and the ugly of how you’ve been able to affect a particular change agenda?

Holly: I mean many different situations I can think to. Probably different ones when I think about the good, the bad and the ugly to be honest and very useful learning curbs all of them. I think sometimes people think it’s cliché but you do often learn more from the ones that certainly either don’t work, or don’t work at least how you first intended them to more than you do the ones that go by without a hitch.

When I think about ones that didn’t work and it’s the reason that I’ve become so passionate about this and I talk a lot about this and I write a lot about it. It was a real failure to understand the ‘why’ of the people that we were talking to. Your listeners will be very familiar no doubt with Simon Sinek and his start with Why which launched that whole conversation in the business community 10 years ago. I’m a big fan of Simon and he is a great friend and I think his thought leadership in the space is sensational.

The thing I often pick up about that whole idea is I do think there is a more nuanced conversation that flows off the back of it.

Holly: Start with Why is important. Each and every one of us needs to connect with our Why to have the motivation and momentum that we need to be able to go about what we’re doing to be able to have the all the energy to be able to pursue change initiatives. All of that that’s mission critical for each of us as individuals.

The challenge I think we’ve got sometimes is in extending that then to ok if I’m going to motivate others – the key is not to share my ‘Why’. The key is to be able to tell the story in a way that evokes their ‘Why’. Once we start to understand and not everyone is driven by the same thing we start to understand the importance of these particular initiatives.

So I’ll give you an example. So I remember quite vividly working on a change initiative with the leader of a major school and this person was intent on revolutionising education. Reinventing the way it was done. Flipping it upside down. Really pioneering a new way forward that was going to meet the demands of the future of work. To be fair you can make a pretty strong business case that’s exactly what we need more about. So what was interesting was the extraordinary resistance they faced. When I came in it was a couple of months into this process. it was an uphill battle. Starting to lose some of that stakeholder support. A lot of resistance to giving it a go.

Now when you step back from that and you think about what is going wrong here. It’s pretty easy to work out that as exciting for those of us who are driven by growth and change, as it is to hear about innovating and revolutionising education. We’re talking to two cohorts that definitely don’t come with that driver. That is teachers and that is parents, who in their own ways (and this is a generalisation right for the purposes of the exercise) who are driven by certainty and stability more than anything. Now teachers at an individual level because it’s a very routine based profession and as well there is this whole piece ‘Well hold on if we revolutionise things, do I have a job on the other side of things?’ ‘Do you still need me to teach my subject if this is how we’re doing things in the future?’ And parents nobody wants their kid to be a guinea pig. So all they were hearing when they were hearing ‘revolutionising and innovating’ and this, that and the other, was fear.

Jenelle: Of course.

Holly: All they were caught in was this idea of hold on a minute – I don’t want to be guinea pig. I’m not convinced about this etc. So we had to change the narrative entirely. We had to go this agenda of ‘Ok what’s a way you talk about this so that it resonates with a wider group of people who are driven by certain instability? Firstly, you think about how do we show that this isn’t the first time this has been done? What are the case studies? What are the evidence points? What are the things that we can point to and say “We’ve not just invented this overnight this has come from a strong business case, rigorous research, examples of this working in other high performing institutions etc”. Secondly, how do we think about the way to effectively communicate? The single biggest risk would be to take right now is to keep teaching their kids the same way. The greatest thing that they could do for their kids’ safety and security is actually to be part of something that is going to broaden their skillset and better prepare them for the world ahead.

Jenelle: Of course.

Holly: We made those tweaks and started to change the game in terms of the understanding and the support and the way that we started to build traction particularly with some of that middle ground who were critical to move the mass and get that 50% plus one which really allows you the momentum to be able to start properly.

Holly: So that’s probably one of the most vivid things when I think about – it’s almost by default. Often the changes that we succeed really well in - either the rub of the people that need to make the decisions align with our way of seeing the world or if we have been effective enough in how we have shaped the business case to capture them. Often the ones where we don’t is we failed to unpack. The reasons why and the reasons why not for the people that ultimately hold decision making authority. That was one for me in terms of really understanding it’s not just your ‘why’. Great if that is the Why of the people that you’re talking to but on the whole it’s that ability to step back and go ok which one is the major motivating driver of the majority of my audience and how do I communicate and think about that.

So that would be a big one for me. The other thing I think I’ve seen is people just become overwhelmed by the scale of change. I’ve seen so many great changes initiatives just end up sitting on the floor by virtually the fact that it all becomes a bit too big. No one is quite sure how to start etc. and so that ability to chunk down change and it is easier said than done in the sense people are very good are talking about this idea – they’re not so great at following through, but I always say to people “Ok what is the one thing we do today?” “What is the one thing we need to get done this week?” How do we start thinking about that really micro level because the greatest gift that we’ve got when we are trying to achieve change is momentum. So the more that we can get that sense of momentum behind us. We love to stay consistent to a version of ourselves that we announce out loud to the world. So there is this want to pull in the direction of the thing. If we said we’re heading that direction, we want to go there but we’ve got to get that sense of momentum behind us so the more we can think about “ok how do we start?” What’s the way alongside a very busy business as usual, we are going to chip away. 

They’re probably two of the biggest things that I think across the pattern of different change programs I’ve worked on have been game changers when done well or deal breakers when not done well.

Jenelle: Yeh. So well outlined Holly, thank you for those brilliant examples. I’m thinking about another time as well in your life which I’m going to ask you to shine some light on. When I think about change as you’ve talked about. We do really need to understand where others are coming from. We need to understand points of commonality. We need to understand nuance. All those things are critical to making change happen. When you were 20, you along with seven other people drafted the Peace Charter for the Dalai Lama. I just have to say those words again and slowly because I said them in the intro and I said them just then like they’re pretty stock standard things to call out, but you drafted the Peace Charter for the Dalai Lama!
Can I ask you what did you learn in that process about navigating those grey areas? About understanding nuance. About finding the common space. I can’t imagine that would have been the easiest process.

Holly: It was a really interesting opportunity. I was lucky enough to be at an international Peace Conference of young people that was hosted in Japan. There were 100 and something of us there for a 10 day period and as part of that group 8 of us got selected to go through that drafting process which the culmination of the whole program which was effectively peace charter and a global governance charter that we wanted to put to the Dalai Lama on behalf of this generation of young people.

It was really interesting. It made me appreciate what diplomats do for a living because there was so much debate over synonyms and the placement of words and what was relevant and what was obsolete and we ended up going all night. I think we had till 7pm – I think we finished at 7am and quickly had a shower and jumped on the bus and off we went.

Holly: But it was really interesting because I think from the 8 of us we were certainly from 8 different countries. I think 4 different continents. So it was really interesting that exercise of trying to find a common ground across on the face of what appeared quite a diverse group of people.

It’s funny that came in handy a couple of years later when I was lucky enough to be chairing the Youth Summit for the G20 and we had the exact same challenge. You’ve got 1.5 billion young people who are represented by the 20 countries in the G20. What’s the single most important thing you could go and talk to leaders about on all their behalf.

So you really have to boil down to – in the case of the G20 for example, what’s the unified point of having hurt. What is it that’s the most acute pain point for young people across the world and how do we carve out a conversation, and how do we meaningfully talk to leaders about that. In that instance it was youth unemployment, an issue at the time was not only extraordinary levels in some G20 countries. I remember countries like Spain – 62% youth unemployment that year. Riots on the street in London and in France and in the global governance context it was really about what are the single most important things in an aspirational sense versus the burning platform probably of the G20 where it was about challenge. This was more optimistic and aspirational and that was the brief. So it became, what are the things we think matter most and how do we drive a conversation or how do we put something coherent together that can speak to that on all of our behalf.

I think the thing that both processes taught me is that we actually have a lot more in common with one another when we get down to it and when we strip back agendas and politics, and this that and the other.

• All of us want the opportunity to earn a living. 
• All of us want the opportunity to feel fulfilled. 
• All of us want the opportunity to belong and be included. 
• All of us want the opportunity to be able to realise our dreams

There are certain conditions then that we need to create in the world to make sure all of those things become possible.

Jenelle: You’ve traversed so many things. You’re working in sporting arenas. CEO of your own organisation. You co-founded the energy disrupters forum in Kalgoorlie back in 2019. I feel like there is a question to be asked in how you find the time but that’s not the question I’m going to ask you. Instead I’m interested in understanding how you’ve made the choices about where you’ll put your time and energy.

Holly: Awesome question. I want to stress as well I have only learnt how to get this right for myself through getting it wrong. I think again I would probably argue it’s not a destination it’s a journey in the sense that I’m still continually refining it because we always face choice points in life. I feel like I’m recalibrating around some at the moment again because there is new opportunities that are coming forward and you are starting to think through ‘Ok what is the criteria of this moment in this point in time. I mean that I’ve probably given a little bit of an indication to my answer.

I think one of the most powerful things that I’ve learnt and I credit Layne Beachley a great mentor of mine for really teaching me this idea and really holding my feet to the fire on it as well – is the power and importance of your choice criteria. Or you filter criteria. So just like you wouldn’t want to make coffee with an old filter in the machine or you wouldn’t want to drink water from a jug that had a very old filter in it.

Holly: That idea of making sure that you’re updating what it is that are your criteria for deciding. As life evolves, as your circumstances change, as your priorities shift, whatever it is that’s the catalyst. Making sure that you’re continually agile with what they look like.

Like the decisions I make now are fundamentally different to what I made 3 years ago, 5 years ago and so on and they’ll be completely different again.

Jenelle: Based on changed criteria?

Holly: Totally and also by of virtue of progressing more time, more opportunity, more experience we naturally get the opportunity to make different choices.

So the thing I always say to people is know what matters to you in terms of how you want to navigate opportunities. For example, there are some criteria that are just basic entry tickets to the game.

1. One is to say yes to something it has to be aligned with my purpose. I have to believe that it’s making a contribution to what I care about most in my ‘why’.
2. The second thing it has to be values aligned. So I have to like the way whether it’s an organisation. Whether it’s individuals. The way they go about their business. The way they conduct themselves. What they stand for. I get approached all the time by companies and organisations that I have a complete ethical disagreement with and I won’t ever work for them. Despite how much they might want to dangle things in front of you to try and get you to do so. So that’s really important to me particularly in this day and age, trust and reputation are everything. So it’s really important that you safeguard what matters to you most and so for that for me is a second one.
3. The third thing is I’ve got to enjoy the people. Life is too short to be working on things they aren’t purposeful and to be working with people that you don’t enjoy working with. So I’m always interested in working with people who stretch me. Who have a good sense of humour. Who and said already values alignments but who are going to bring out the best in me and who are really good at what they do. I’m getting to learn and benefit from the incredible capability they’re bringing to bear on a project.

So for me there some of the criteria that have never changed in terms of those three. Then once we’ve got entry ticket into the game then you’re thinking about other things. Have I got the capacity on my plate to fully say yes to this for example. Or if I added this in I’m just going to be stretched too thin to be able to have an impact on all the other things I want to do.

Jenelle: Speaking of some of the choices that you’ve made. In 2015 at the age of 25 you decided to go out on your own. You were in corporate roles before that and you started a company called Emergent. What made you decide to do that? What was the filter criteria back then that you had for yourself? What did you learn about yourself as a leader in those early years perhaps?

Holly: It takes me back. It’s incredible to think how long ago that is now to. It was terrifying at the time. I remember people thought I was ludicrous. 

Leaving a really good role with a very stable trajectory in front of me. To step out and do something that I had no idea if it was going to work or not. But I think the thing I remember quite vividly talking to one of my best friends from my early working career, Christine. She said “This is the right time in your life to go for Plan A”.

Holly: Her comment was really around “Don’t make your Plan B, your Plan A”. As in if you need to different points of your life, if it doesn’t work anything like that you can find a way of making a Plan B work.

I don’t mean that disrespectfully to any of the organisations I was working with or talking to at the time. I mean that more in the sense of what lit me up and what felt really purpose aligned.

Also I think I just had this want to take the risk. To see if I could do it. I worked in really structured environments where the cadence of the organisation – once you learnt that you knew how things operated. There was just this piece around the whole blank page that came with having to go out on your own that was terrifying but also really exhilarating and I think for me at that time I didn’t have kids. I didn’t have a mortgage. It was that perfect moment in my life to go “Why not?” Why don’t I give myself a year and see if I can do this and if I can’t I know it’s not for me or I know that I’ve got to go and do something else and no dramas. If that’s what happens, that’s what happens.

But yeh I look back 6 years now and I go “Wow that’s been a hell of a ride”. I think the thing that was really interesting and probably the biggest learning curb for me about stepping out into doing that was I didn’t help myself with how I started in the sense that I had really high bars for the sorts of results that I wanted to see myself hit. I think I was almost paralysed by not really knowing how to go about it but feeling the weight of expectations. The sort of goal setting that I would have been quite comfortable doing in a world where I knew how to operate but here I needed to take the pressure off. The best thing I ever did was say to myself “Year 1 all I want you to do is find a way to make the money you would have made if you had stayed in the role you were in”. By the end of the year have a solid business plan what you are going to do moving forward. That was the best thing I ever did cause it completely took the pressure off.

Jenelle: You were breaking it down into small bites again.

Holly: Totally and it allowed me to not know. It allowed me to go and ask for help cause I didn’t have to know. I had 12 months to get that sorted out. It’s one of the things that I see paralyse a lot of executives and leaders I worked with who are in companies who’ve been doing things a certain way for a really long time and who are now on major transformation and change journeys. I speak from an experience. It’s flipping terrifying being a beginner when you’re really used to kicking it, or knocking it out of the park or whatever you want to call it every day of the week in your whip house.

So we’ve got to make it easier for ourselves and for others to be a beginner. We’ve got to make it ok to say I don’t know and it is absolutely ok to say I know don’t. We need people who are comfortable asking questions and in fact the best leaders are the ones who ask the best questions and who then can go on a journey of developing a process that arrives at the best answer.

So that’s a big swap that I think we’ve got to make in the way that we are looking at the world at the moment.

Jenelle: It’s such a necessity. I think anyone who is claiming to have the answers in today’s world where there is so much complexity and dynamism and change and interdependency, I think we are probably calling BS on it anyway. Questions are absolutely at the forefront of us seeking truth and making sense of the world.

Speaking of terrifying choices – there are so many.

Holly: Where are we going here!

Jenelle: I want to pick up on your book. You took on the challenge of writing a book about leadership which arguably is one of the most crowded spaces on the business and management book shelves. What motivated you to write your book? What did you think that you could bring to that? That sounds like a loaded question. I know you brought it. What was the gap that you saw and said “Yeh you know what I’m going to be writing about this.”

Holly: You mentioned that I’d spent the last 2 years doing my Masters at Harvard and a lot of my focus in that study was on public leadership and spending time learning at one of the world’s best institutions and obviously doing a lot of reading and a lot of looking through the leadership library. I was quite astounded by how lacking in diversity leadership literature was. It was overwhelmingly white male politicians, elite sport coaches, navy seals. That type of profile. There was a real lack of generational and cultural diversity. There was a real lack of gender diversity. People leading across different sectors and leading in different ways. Different size organisations – movements not just large companies, non-profits, you name it, so for me there was a real want to disrupt the narrative.

I’m a big believer that’s part of where the change begins. It’s allowing new thought processes to happen. If more of us can read things and go “Oh wow that’s what leadership can be”. “Oh wow that’s what a leader can look like”. Then more of us are going to challenge ourselves to go “Hey well maybe I can do that”. “Or maybe I’m not too different from the sort of person that can make an impact on that issue.”

So that was a big motivation, was going I want to change that up. There are 60 case studies in the book. They’re equal gender split. All manner of sexual orientation, cultural diversity, 42 different sectors. Leaders in their 20’s. Leaders in the 80’s, and I’m really proud of that diversity that I’m bringing to the conversation. I think it’s enormously important in this day and age. It was a really great opportunity for me to consolidate 10 years’ worth of leadership research to reach out to some incredible leaders that I’d always wanted the opportunity to interview for this purpose as well as ones that I historically interviewed. Pull all of that together into a book that I hope can make people wherever they are and help them start. Whether it’s aiming that little bit higher. Whether it’s moving that little bit faster. Whether it’s driving change that little bit deeper or standing exactly where they are, as exactly all that they are and owning that.

Jenelle: Well I have to say Holly that I have read the book and for those who haven’t it’s called ‘The Leadership Edge’. It is a fantastic book. One that I would highly recommend. Very rich with insights. Massive congratulations to you. It really is a masterful contributor to the leadership management bookshelves I would say.

One of the questions you ask in your book is “What is the most valuable piece of feedback you’ve ever received?” and “How have you fed it forward?”
So I want to turn that question on you. What’s been yours?

Holly: So many bits of feedback. It was both the combination of feedback and self-reflection, what was the most profound change I’ve made in the way that I interact with people and what prompted that.

I think it was an observation certainly some had made of me in my early 20’s. I was really not great at being vulnerable. I was really not great at opening up and sharing candidly and being real about what was challenging, what was hard, what was going on, it wasn’t what I grew up with.

Holly: It’s always funny the standards we put on ourselves that we never extend to others. Like I never would have not wanted others to share that sort of stuff with me but when it came to me personally I had this view that was weak or that wasn’t what you were meant to do. That took a lot of unlearning. A couple of people who said to me “you got to let me in”. “You’ve got to show me a bit more of you” and people said it more directly than that too. It takes sometimes a couple of times of hearing that and I think also it takes sometimes learning that the hard way. It’s a pretty hard way to live not being vulnerable because when you have to give off .. we have to try and live in a way where you don’t allow yourself to express emotion or suggest anything is getting to you. It’s pretty dam unsustainable.

So I think the biggest feat forward for me was doing the work to change that and it started with the people I was closest to and trusted most in terms of offering more of myself, letting people in, reframing actively vulnerability as a strength not a weakness. All those sorts of things. I think probably that’s probably been the most profound change for me.

Jenelle: I have no doubt about that and I guess perhaps in one of the rawest displays of vulnerability I know that you’ve spoken publicly about having had a period in your life where you struggled with depression. I’m thinking about that in the context of the pandemic where so many have struggled with their mental health. Many refer to it as the shadow pandemic. Can you talk us through some of the strategies that you use to manage your mental health?

Holly: For me when I look back at that period - I’m very fortunate as challenging as that period was all those years ago, I did the work at the time to really re-make foundations and I’ve been very fortunate (and I know this is not everyone’s experience of mental health) and I’m always very mindful when I talk about mental health to be clear that everyone’s experience is different. So please take this with a grain of salt and think about it in your own context, but for me one of the things that was clear when I hit the wall and got diagnosed with depression was I was really living in an unsustainable way.

Part of that was being completely invulnerable and not letting people in. That is not a way to live. Part of it was managing time and not managing energy. Seeing 24 hours as a challenge for how many things I could fit in versus this idea that actually I need to be alive to my own energy levels and what activity deserves that energy and having balance and mindfulness and all those sorts of things.

At the time, I can’t recommend to people highly enough – getting good help. Getting people that you trust around you to help you through that period is absolutely critical and I’m indebted to the people who helped me in that period of time.

I think the second thing is, in the moment that you’re in it, there is a need to be selfish and by that I mean you only have to tell the people that you believe can help you get better and that was a big thing for me. There was some people that I loved that I didn’t bring into that tent because I knew them asking or them being worried wasn’t going to help me get better. I think you have to be really mindful of who supports you. Then you learn to be really ruthless with your energy and your decision making. One of the mantras I developed at that time is I’ve got to be strong enough to walk away from people and things that no longer serve me. That was in part from a reflection that when I hit the wall there were a lot of people that I expected to be there that weren’t. There were a lot of people that I clearly… a lot of opportunities sorry that I worked myself into the ground for that certainly weren’t worth what that cost me, and that’s my fault I’m not putting that on anyone else. It took that for me to create that awareness of actually to the point of what we talked about earlier, I’ve got to develop a new set of filter criteria, cause otherwise I’m going to end up here again.

Holly: So working on, firstly getting yourself well. That’s the most important thing whether you’ve got to take some time for you. Whether you’ve got to find ways of inserting more joy into your life. Doing more of the things you love or a combination of both. Whatever works for you that’s really important. Then I think it is resetting filter criteria and making new choices for yourself and starting small if that’s what feels more comfortable or some people make whole self-changes cause that’s what’s needed. Only you will know what’s right.

Then I think for me the most profound change and I write about it in the book at length was learning to manage energy not time. When I think about what’s allowed me to sustain a really good mental health state from that point forward, it’s knowing myself better. I think we’re really good at masking stuff whether that’s drinking 5 coffees to get through a day. Whether that’s a few glasses of wine at night to calm the head down. There are ways of pushing through if we want to. So what I’ve tried is to become really good at is tapping into just myself and listening to myself and going “Ok in a day I know when my natural energy peaks are – like when I’m high energy” “What activity deserves my high energy periods of the day?”. It’s not my email. 

It’s not the people who don’t give value back to me in the way that I give them value. 

The thing I found really encouraging about the research – this work that is coming out now around micro habits, cause I think one of the great barriers often to how mental health is people go ‘Yeh great but I can’t find 20 minutes to mediate’, ‘or I can’t go to yoga for 1 hour’ and for some people I know that’s very real. I’m not making light of how challenging this is to juggle some of people’s realities. The thing is encouraging for me about the micro habit stuff though is it can be as simple as 10 deep breaths.

Jenelle: That’s it.

Holly: It can be simple as getting up and squatting in between your Zoom meeting or going for a 3 minute walk around the block and you can start to see the physiology benefit. Be as simple as writing a gratitude note every day cause we cannot have negative thoughts coexisting with gratitude. So think about those really simple things that you can insert as circuit breakers. Start there if nothing else and then think about those foundational anchor habits that you can build that really help you be your best you.

Jenelle: What a great set of practical things to consider for health support, I love that.

The Last Three – three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.

Jenelle: I’m going to finish with the Fast Three that I always finish all of my interviews on. So really quick, sort of gut responses to these questions. What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?

Holly: Jane McGonigal’s book on Gaming that’s the one I’m reading at the moment.

Jenelle: Very good. What’s your super power? There seems to be many but this can be something that’s hugely additive to the world or a useless party trick.

Holly: I actually need more useless party tricks. I can kind of still juggle but not all that well. I would say my super power is questioning.

Jenelle: Yes it is. If you were going to put a quote up on a billboard what would it be?

Holly: One that’s on the background of the computer that I’ve had forever. It’s sad actually! The devasting part of writing my book was finding out that this isn’t actually attributed to the person I’ve always attributed to!

Jenelle: Oh awkward.

Holly: So that’s sad! But the quote is “Never doubt that a group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” So it’s attributed to Margaret Mead. Apparently that cannot be verified but I’m not sure who I’m meant to attribute to in her absence. So that would be my quote.

Jenelle: Oh you can claim it if you like! Holly, listen there has been so much. If I thought doing your intro was a challenge and doing a wrap up of this conversation is probably of equal levels for me. No doubt lots of people will take away many, many different things but for me what’s really stood out is the power of looking at role models far beyond the traditional leaders that we probably looked at. The broader architypes of leaders and the role that we all have to play in leadership. The power of collective leadership and the story of teams.

I love you breaking down change. Break it down to small bites. Make it fun. Learn from others. I think your message around evoking the ‘Why’ of others is so important, as is the point that we have more that unites us then what separates us.

You have had a wonderful way of shining a light on what it is that’s common amongst us all and then driving that to action. I’ve loved understanding about making choices being a skill. Being clear on the criteria you make for your choices before you go and make those choices and safe guarding what matters to you.

You know if your purpose is to give people the tools to be the change then you are most certainly doing that on an every day basis and you made the comment about your grandmother, being the point the world was so lucky. She made me people feel like the world is so lucky to be doing what everyone else is doing but I would say on behalf of the world that we’re so lucky that you’re doing what you’re doing and thank you for your incredible leadership and the game changing stuff that you do out there every day.

Holly: Thank you so much for having me Jenelle and that means enormous amounts. So thank you for your very generous words.

The Change Happens podcast. From EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

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