Podcast transcript EY Change Happens Podcast Kirstin Ferguson

Voice Over: While there is no extended conversation on the topic, this podcast does briefly mention domestic violence. If you find yourself in need of assistance, please call 1800 Respect, or if you're in danger, call Triple Zero. We'd also like to thank Channel Seven for the use of audio from the morning show.

Jenelle McMaster: Hello, and welcome to season four of Change Happens. I'm Jenelle McMaster, and this is a podcast exploring leadership through key moments of change. And in speaking with leaders over the course of these podcasts, it's clear that they almost always have somewhere in there a story arc that required a call to adventure or a call to action, a crossing of some sort of threshold or the encountering of some messy bits, and finally, some sort of insight and enlightenment. So in this season of Change Happens, I'm focusing more closely on my guests’ critical moments of change, and I seek to understand how they cross the threshold and discover what it was that they learned along the way. Now in this episode, I am talking with Kirsten Ferguson, and specifically, we're looking at the critical change moment that she led with the viral hashtag Celebrating Women.

Voice Over: Famous for creating the hashtag Celebrating Women. Her social media campaign empowered females everywhere.

Voice Over: Dr. Kirsten Ferguson is a globally recognized leadership expert, best-selling author, columnist, and company director. With over a decade of experience on a range of public and private company boards.

Voice Over: This leadership powerhouse is set to inspire while addressing equality.

Voice Over: And she was recently awarded an AM, in the Australia Day honors list in 2023 for her significant contribution to business and gender equality.

Voice Over: Let's go back to your 2017 social media campaign, which was hashtag Celebrating Women. What was it that fueled your desire to start it?

Kirstin Ferguson: Well, like many women, I was fed up. And I've always believed that every single woman is a role model for someone else. And so I made a commitment to see if I could celebrate two women every single day from all walks of life and all over the world, and by the end of the year, celebrated 757 women from 37 countries.

Voice Over: So what happened in 2017 when Kirsten found herself sending out a tweet with a simple but powerful message behind it? A change movement with a story worth sharing.

Kirstin Ferguson: We all thrive if women thrive. So I want everyone to be able to achieve what it is they want to achieve.

Jenelle McMaster: Kirstin Ferguson welcome back to the pod.

Kirstin Ferguson: Janelle, I feel so privileged to be back again. Thank you for inviting me.

Jenelle McMaster: Well, for those who don't know, you were the very first podcast guest I ever had on Change Happens. Let's be clear, I didn't invite you back because we're running out of guests. Not by any stretch to the imagination. It was really when I think about as I said, the focus on this season is all about zeroing in on those key moments of leading or experiencing change, I just couldn't help but think immediately of you. That's why I rang you and the change that you created with Celebrating Women movement.

Kirstin Ferguson: I guess that time in my life in 2017 when celebrating women sort of came about out of nothing was a really significant moment that I could never have predicted was going to happen.

Jenelle McMaster: So I'm dying to get into that with you. And as you say, you can never predict it happened. I would even push it even further and say I have it on the public record. In your opening speech at an event a year before in Brisbane, and I think you were speaking to about 1000 people, it was an International Women's Day event. And you actually said, and I quote, my gender is the least interesting aspect about me. It is the only thing in my life I have no control over, the only thing I had no part in choosing. So that strikes me as quite interesting because fast forward to a year later and you created a global movement around profiling and celebrating women and then writing the number one management book Women Kind. Tell me what happened, what changed? Why did you make the thing that you called least interesting about you an actual thing?

Kirstin Ferguson: Oh, Janelle, I have to congratulate you. You've probably done the deepest research on all the interviews I've done on Celebrating Women to find that quote, because you're quite right, I hope, for most of my careers. I've just turned 50. And celebrating women happened when I was about 45, I think 55 years ago now. So for the first 45 years of my life, I hoped no one noticed I was female at all. And that's because I'd come through really male-dominated environments. I'd joined the military when I was 17, I'd done really well, and I'd sort of learnt that keeping my gender, the least interesting part about me, as I said, worked. Now, obviously, research supports why we do that, because if you keep your head down, you survive. How wrong could I have been? And you were quite right. A year later, I would never have predicted that I would have been loudly and proudly celebrating women on social media or that this thing was just going to grow out of control and go the way that it did. So what happened, I think if anyone listening remembers back to the start of 2017. Women were taking to their streets in their pink pussy hats.

Kirstin Ferguson: America had just elected a man who had boasted of sexual transgressions. We had very few women heads of state around the world, still very few women CEOs, and one woman every week on average was losing their life to family violence in Australia.

Jenelle McMaster: It was also a time, I think, from memory. Harvey Weinstein was being brought to trial that year as well, wasn't he?

Kirstin Ferguson: A bit later. So, interestingly, MeToo all happened in the same year, but later in the year. But there was clearly this groundswell of women generally feeling fed up and I was one of them. And I remember I'm online, I use social media a lot, I really enjoy it, but I remember seeing a thread of tweets aimed at an Australian female journalist and it was just this typical abusive thread of tweets. I can't even remember what they were. And they were aimed at Patricia Carvelis from the ABC. And I was on the board of the ABC at the time and I remember thinking, if someone had said that while I was standing next to her or anyone else, you would do something, you call the police on some occasions, but when you're online, you really feel like a bystander. And I just, I was on holidays it was right at the start of the year, beginning of January, sitting on the beach in a hammock, and I just remember feeling really pissed off and thinking, well, what can I do? I'm sick of watching this, I'm sick of seeing everything that's going on. So I took myself off for a walk along the beach and went off to a local brewery.

Kirstin Ferguson: I wish I had a better story, because I knew I was going to tell this story so many times, but I had a shandy at the brewery, so I'm not even particularly interesting. And I remember writing down on the back of a napkin, like in the movies, four questions. And on the way back along the beach, I rang my mum and asked her these four questions and I posted her answers and some photos onto social media. And I didn't tell anyone she was my mum. And I noticed that my newsfeed was just that bit more positive temporarily. And Mum was a retired nurse. Nothing or anyone particular that we would normally hear about. So, not being one to do things by halves, I then committed the very next day to seeing if I could celebrate two women from all walks of life and from anywhere in the world every single day of 2017.

Kirstin Ferguson: The four questions in celebrating women firstly, I only introduced every woman I celebrated by their first name. So I asked them how would they describe what they do without using a position title? And that's not that easy. So anyone listening, men or women, think about how you would tell a five year old what it is you do. The second questions was, what did you want to do when you're at school? And I asked Mum that because I literally just had no idea. So I was curious. The third question was three words to describe your life to date. And the last question was, who do you hope to inspire and why? And there was no qualifying criteria to be involved. All I needed was someone to identify as a woman. And I certainly celebrated trans women as well. And just through word of mouth, through the celebratory nature of what I was doing and through the lack of obstacles, I ended up celebrating women from all over the world. 757 women from 37 countries, and they were as diverse as house painters, business leaders, women at home with their kids, military officers, truck drivers.

Kirstin Ferguson: Some were famous, most weren't. There was a pet whisperer from no surprise, California, and everything in between. And the whole thing was self-nominating. And I had no resources. This was just me and my laptop and a bit of an idea, and it just grew and grew and grew. And I think one of the really important lessons for me was not to overthink things. If I had thought through how this was going to go or how big it was going to get or where it would take me, I would have spent far too long planning and thinking about it. And I'm so glad I didn't.

Jenelle McMaster: Such an important lesson. Before we get into that, I want to go back to I'm imagining you walking on the beach, and you go to a brewery, sit down with anger and you write out furiously on a napkin these four questions. What was it about these four questions that I'm not sure how I can connect this anger with those beautiful questions? Take me through the bridge to that.

Kirstin Ferguson: Yeah. And that is another really good question, because I'm not someone who has ever responded to trolls by being angry and I'm just not a confrontational person anyway, so it never would have crossed my mind to do anything other than something positive. And the four questions then came about from me thinking, well, if I'm going to ring Mum, what am I going to ask her? And those four questions never varied and I would have given them ten minutes thought, if that sitting, drinking a shandy. So it's remarkable that they ended up being answered by everyone from, like, the Foreign Minister at the time, Julie Bishop, right through to a hotel cleaner who I celebrated, and they applied. And I think that universality of asking people about what do they do without using a position description. And little did I know, but that was probably the most inclusive question, because it meant you could say, I look after children or I help children read books to the all those kinds of things that you might want to answer. It didn't matter. And I remember getting a very senior CEO sort of use her title and I send it back and went, no, thanks.

Kirstin Ferguson: You need to tell me what it is you do. Yeah.

Jenelle McMaster: What I really like about this, when you think about the power of mindset change, one of the things I remember that I do it with my kids. In fact, they do it with me too. If you say if you find yourself saying I have to go to work today, or I have to go and study today, and you change the word from I have to, to I get to, I get to go to work today, I get to study, it completely shifts your whole affect. Like biologically you change, you sort of go, oh no, it is a privilege to have a job to go to, I get the access to go to school and study. It's sort of counteracting something with a very different way of looking at it. And I guess if you've been talking about the denigration of women, but now you've shifted to the celebration of women, was that what the intention was, to counteract something negative and shift the mindset and the whole affect to something positive? Or was it not as much as that, it just evolved.

Kirstin Ferguson: I think it was a combination. I have always understood the skills and the benefits of reframing situations, but I think I did that unconsciously at the time. It would be probably false of me years on, having now written about it so extensively to claim that there was some great meaning behind it. I suspect it's more reflective of who I am and that even watching that thread of tweets from the troll, I would never have countered it with angry words. It seemed more natural to want to fill my newsfeed with really positive stories, as opposed to I wanted to try and drown out that denigration as opposed to tackle the denigration head-on. And one of the benefits of doing that was remarkably, I received and the women involved received little to no trolling throughout the campaign. And I ended up collaborating with Twitter throughout that year because it became such a significant movement and did an event with Jack Dorsey, who was the founder of Twitter and certainly was still leading it back then. And he too was amazed because most of these kinds of initiatives, especially if they involve women, unfortunately would be the subject of fairly torrid trolling.

Kirstin Ferguson: And I was terribly worried that these women who I was being allowed to share photos and things like that and their stories would be trolled. But it never happened. And I truly think it's because of the positivity of the campaign and because I was celebrating those trolls. Mothers and sisters and neighbors and teachers and everyday women, it never sought to put particular women that we often hear about in the limelight. I really wanted to show that every single woman is a role model. And I like to think that the reason we didn't get trolled was because of that.

Jenelle McMaster: Why did you call your mum first?

Kirstin Ferguson: Well, she's not on social media. And I thought she'll trust me to just answer the questions and send the photos without any real explanation, and that she did. So I just needed a test dummy, really. And it was perfect because those four questions were questions I wanted to ask mum and she answered them with a sentence as I asked her. And she gave me some photos. So she was my very first profile and profile number 757. The last one was my eldest daughter. So it was really lovely how it all came full circle.

Jenelle McMaster: It's beautiful. It is beautiful. As you said, you had no idea. If you had known then what it was going to be, you probably would have gone back and started overthinking things and looking for resources. When did you realize that this tweet or this was shifting from a moment to an actual movement?

Kirstin Ferguson: I can remember. The day was when there was a three-month queue of women wanting to be celebrated and they were chasing me, saying, when is my turn? And I'm like, oh, my God, what have I done? Because it was a full-time job, it became and I obviously had all my existing responsibilities that were keeping me busy anyway. So for a year, my family would laugh, I would get up early. That's the only time I could do it and celebrate my two women post my ladies, I used to call it, and do that. And every single day of the year, whether I was overseas or sick or Christmas or birthdays or whatever, I did it and didn't miss a day. And as the year progressed, and it obviously became well known, I had lots of offers of help, but I turned all of them down. I really felt this was something I had committed to and I wanted to make sure it was me doing justice to the women who had put themselves forward, most of whom 90% of whom I didn't know. And I felt a huge sense of responsibility to tell their stories and to celebrate them in the way that I thought they deserved.

Jenelle McMaster: Did it ever feel overwhelming?

Kirstin Ferguson: Yeah, every day. I think I got to about July and I was thinking, oh, my God, I've got another six months to go. But I've never really been a quitter. I said I would do this and I did. And again as it progressed and people loved it and it became a daily habit towards the end of the year, I had many people saying, can you keep it going? And that was a clear, oh, no, absolutely not. And I really believe in handing the baton on as well. And so one of the most rewarding things of that experience has been the number of spin off. Celebrating women in firefighting was one. Or celebrating women in New Guinea is another I'm aware of. I don't own this concept. I want other people to take it and run with it.

Jenelle McMaster: What did you learn during that period of time?

Kirstin Ferguson: I think I, as a leader, learned a lot about diversity and inclusion. And it's not enough as leaders to just say, I want diversity and hope it's going to follow unwittingly. And I think it's just, again, because of who I am, it was incredibly inclusive, so I had no barriers to entry. I celebrated every single woman equally. And as a result, that visible difference meant that more and more women saw themselves in people they wouldn't have normally seen being celebrated. And I remember there was an autistic lady who openly said she was autistic and I celebrated her and it opened me up to this whole network of other women on the spectrum because they had seen her. And so I would always see this sort of pattern where I might celebrate someone like that, and then two weeks later, I'd have this influx of other women on the spectrum wanting to be part of it, which is magnificent. And the same thing happened in different countries. I'd see a wave of Nigerian heritage women from the UK that was another sort of subset that somehow discovered it. And I think it's a real reminder that inclusion must be the strategy, and from that, diversity will follow it's not the other way around.

Jenelle McMaster: Well, that all sounds really magnificent and positive, but as you say, people can be pretty brutal, especially online, because they become faceless and you can troll without consequence. Was there a dark side in all of this? Did you face any trolling? Did you see any downsides in doing this?

Kirstin Ferguson: I have to be honest and say no. I think I remember one person being critical, and this is how rare it was. And then that person being absolutely flooded by all the fans of celebrating women, that I didn't really have to do anything at all. It really was an example of putting positivity out into the world brought that back. I still meet people today who I celebrated, and they tell me about how it gave them the confidence to go and apply for a job or things like I almost can't get my head around that posting and celebrating someone online could do that. But if you're someone who's never been recognized publicly before, (Jenelle: so many people feel seen.) Yeah. Even in what to us, you and I, who has a profile and we do this sort of thing a lot, it doesn't feel like that would actually make a difference, but I know it has made a difference. And in the book Women Kind, which I wrote with Katherine Fox, we interviewed a number of women who'd participated and they talked about this confidence that it gave them having been seen.

Kirstin Ferguson: Probably there were critics at the time, especially at the beginning, who may have thought it's pretty superficial what does doing a post about with four questions actually mean? And I understand that, but I think it judges the importance of simple measures to celebrate and amplify women. And this was a simple but highly effective way that was consistent.

Jenelle McMaster: That's so fantastic. And I sort of reflect on that simplicity comment. I know that. I remember Catherine Fagg. I think it was in your book, but Catherine Fagg, she was the President of Chief Executive Women at the time, said the concept of celebrating women showed you can make a difference quite quickly, you can keep it simple and step forward, and you don't need to go to a highly complex model, which I think is exactly what you did

Kirstin Ferguson: It definitely wasn't complex. It was just a lot of work.

Jenelle McMaster: Was there anything about from the four questions themselves that you learned? Because you are right, they're simple questions, but perhaps that surfaced some insights in and of themselves.

Kirstin Ferguson: My dad. He was a big supporter of the whole thing. Every day he'd ring me up and every single profile want to talk about the person but he made a word cloud of those words at the end and he had it printed on everything. It was very lovely, but what it meant is I could see the most common words and the most common word to describe your life to date from those women was “challenging”, and then very quickly after was “rewarding”. So it's that real mix of there were a lot of women that had tough lives, but they ultimately found their way through. I think the most telling question was, who do you hope to inspire and why? And that one always revealed a lot more about the woman than you'd think that question would, because if it was a woman who had gone through domestic violence, they would often say, I want to inspire other women living in fear with my story of having escaped that.

Kirstin Ferguson: Or it might be other single mothers, and so there was all these different paths that women's lives took, and it often came out in that question.

Jenelle McMaster: What did you learn about yourself during that time?

Kirstin Ferguson: Well, I never did the profile I kept getting asked, and I never wanted to do it myself. I think I learned I'm very determined, so even when I really had so many other priorities, I never stopped on this one. And I think, as you said at the beginning, and it's only really thinking about it now as you're asking, that it is in my nature to always turn things around and reframe it from being a negative to how we can benefit from it and wanting to benefit as many people as possible. And I never, ever would have guessed that I would end up doing something like this or that it would be so meaningful to me, but it was genuinely the most rewarding year of my life.

Jenelle McMaster: You know you've got this whole kind of combo of Barack Obama and Ted Lasso in here with the positivity and that whole when they go low, we go high vibes coming through.

Kirstin Ferguson: It is a bit I hadn't thought of that.

Jenelle McMaster: So on the other side of that time, actually, that's 2017. We're 2023 now. Have you had any further reflections? If you think about the reflections in that time and what you're experiencing to life after, lots and lots of things have happened. You've done so many things since then, and I want to cover off your latest book in a moment. But what are your reflections from that period of time that you then took on to apply to what you then subsequently did?

Kirstin Ferguson: I think it was this wonderful reminder at the time, which I've now really embraced, this idea that no one gave me permission to do this. No one said, I think it's time for you to go and do this. And here now we'll give you the authority to go and post about women. I just took it. And we look at so many people that lead movements or far bigger and more meaningful and impactful than mine, but things like Black Lives Matter or Greta Thunberg or Me Too, which all sort of came through that year. And it really all starts with just a single person saying enough is enough. And while celebrating women was minuscule compared to those, it's the same principle. And I think it's this reminder that anyone can do this sort of thing. It didn't really depend on who I knew because I wasn't asking people I knew. It didn't really depend on a profile as such because at the beginning of that year, my profile wasn't anything like it went on to be. I think this movement created a profile around that. So it is definitely something that we can all, if we're passionate about it.

Kirstin Ferguson: And the reason you're doing it is pure. Now, I am sounding like Ted Lasso, but if you're doing it to think that it'll lead to book deals and different things, then I doubt it will happen. But if you genuinely have no expectation of anything other than wanting to make a bit of a positive difference, then I think you're in with a shot.

Jenelle McMaster: You went on to do many other things, including writing yet another best-selling book called Head and Heart the Art of Modern Leadership. And I'm deeply proud of getting a chance to read an early version of that, or the version one of the first versions of it and writing a testimonial. But there is an interesting parallel, I thought, in that book, to the celebrating women movement, in that with the hashtag, you chose to celebrate female role models from all walks of life, not just those in the public spotlight, as you've said. And with this latest book, you chose to focus on everybody as a potential leader, not just those in the workplace. That holds an official title on an org chart. So I was going to ask you whether that was a fair line to draw between the two, a continued desire to make more types of role models visible and accessible. It's in there, it's in all of us. Can do you draw that same sort of direct link between?

Kirstin Ferguson: Yeah, I think I can now. It's clearly something I've obviously believed for a long time. And I really wanted to remind not just women this time, but men as well, that we are all leaders. Whether it's just of your family or you might be a single parent. It's just of your kids or in your community or at work, whatever it is you're leading in your role. And there's a lot of nuance to this, obviously. There's also formal leaders that might have lots of followers. But let's put that to one side and just think about all of us. And I did really want to bring that out and remind people that if you are already leading, you may as well leave as positive a legacy as you can. Because I think for some people, they haven't either considered the impact of their words and actions and behaviors and that they are role modeling that to those around them every single day. And modern leaders, obviously in this book, I argue those that we need and can lead with both their head and their heart. And you can do that in any context.

Kirstin Ferguson: So whether you're leading at home or whether you're at work, the best kind of modern leaders actually integrate the leader they are across all those spectrums.

Jenelle McMaster: And so, the book has been doing amazingly well on the charts. I know it's been flying off the shelves. Where to from here for you?

Kirstin Ferguson: Well, I'm going to be writing another one. I'm just working through now with my wonderful publishers, the next book. But I am loving working with organizations around what it means to be a head and heart leader and helping people from the most entry-level graduates in an organization right through to the CEO. It's the same principles and thinking about it. And I would encourage anyone listening to visit headheartleader.com because you can measure your own head and Heart leadership totally free. And it's just interesting to see what your strengths are and areas you might like to focus on and then see whether or not you're more inclined to be a head or a heart leader.

Jenelle McMaster: We go. I actually did fill in that questionnaire myself. You and I had a chat about that, if you recall. (Kirstin: Yes), well worth doing. Now, finally, I'm going to draw to a close, but you mentioned that your dad had done that wonderful word cloud analysis of all 757 women profiles. And I know that you also said you refuse to do answer the four questions yourself, but in that word cloud, he had the top three words came out, as you said, challenging, rewarding and fulfilling. What would be your words if I asked you at least just that question?

Kirstin Ferguson: That's a good one, which I have not prepared an answer for. I don't want to use those three because I think they do apply to all of us. I think mine is always my life has been surprising, loving. I've always felt loved through my life and exciting. Like, I love my life. I love the different things I get to do. I love that I write books while I also sit on boards and I get to go to writers’ festivals, which I've just done the last two weekends, and yet I'm also sitting in audit committee meetings. Like, my life is very bizarre, but I love it and I feel very privileged to live the life that I do.

Jenelle McMaster: That is fantastic. They are three phenomenal words, and you used I get to in there as well, which I love hearing, because it does change the emotional temperature. And I have to say, you've talked about something that was big in your life in 2017. And the way your face lights up, there's such a glow. There's such genuine pride and joy in what you did, but also what you experienced, who you met, what that's created. And you can't make that up. You certainly can't carry up that kind of energy unless you feel it from within. And it's so evident to me.

Kirstin Ferguson: Can I tell you, I was on a flight just a week ago, and a lady came up to me and quoted her profile number and told me how much it had all meant to her. So it really is phenomenal.

Jenelle McMaster: It's so amazing. And so for me, there is so much in this conversation, Kirsten, but I love that you showed what you can do, even with a negative emotion. You were fed up, and you channeled that. Rather than just a little quiet rant, you did something about it. I love that you asked yourself the question, what can I do? And I think it's a good reminder to not overthink things. I'm a great offender in overthinking things. And the more I think about it, the more I think, oh, I better not do it, and I don't have enough resources. And you overegg it on a whole lot of things. You moved into a space without, I guess, anointed permission. But clearly there was a huge need and a desire and a yearning for that. And I think you have shown the power of positivity, the power of reframing. And I love the point around reducing or removing the barriers to entry, because what that makes me realize is that there are so many obstacles. There are the obstacles that we have in our own minds about, I can't do this, I can't do that. There are the obstacles that you can see and then the obstacles that you can't see.

Jenelle McMaster: And so by just removing any hurdle, you've removed the visible and the invisible. And I think that level of accessibility opens up so many new pathways, and that genuine intentionality with no other ulterior motive means that that's always going to trump the negativity. No one ever can pull you down when you know that's the genuine motivation. And I think you've also lived and breathed what a grassroots movement can be, how that operates. I think your three words I understand the three words, I think they are so genuine. And long may the many, many chapters of celebrating women continue to unfold around the world. And thank you, just thank you for your continued work and can't wait to read the next book.

Kirstin Ferguson: Yes, I may come and interview you for that one, Janelle.

Jenelle McMaster: I'm here for it. Got the mic set up.

Kirstin Ferguson: Thank you for having me.

Jenelle McMaster: Thanks, Kirsten.