[00:00:12.710] – Speaker 1
Hi everyone, I’m Chris Tompkins and welcome to the Shaping Our World podcast. My goal is to invite you into a conversation that will leave you more confident in understanding and inspiring the young people in your life. Each episode, we talk with leading thinkers and practitioners and offer some resources to help you dive deeper into the world of our youth today. Today we’re joined by Karise Hutchinson. Karise is a professor of leadership with over 20 years experience researching, teaching, consulting, writing, and speaking about leadership. She works with private sector businesses, governments, and the public sector organizations from all over the world. Karise is also the founder of Illuminaire, helping leaders grow in wisdom, integrity, and healthy leadership. She’s passionate about helping leaders connect the dots in a fast-paced, information-saturated world. She believes that leaders don’t just need more information, they need wisdom, discernment, and a principled framework for making decisions. She’s also the author of Leadership in Small Business: The Power of Stories. She grounds her work in the timeless ideas of truth, goodness, and beauty, and uses storytelling to make complex research memorable, impactful, and transformational. She’s passionate about helping leaders foster resiliency, unity, and healthy cultures, both personally and professionally.
[00:01:45.240] – Speaker 1
It’s a great conversation with Karise, and you’ll hear how her experience in leadership applies to how we create young leaders. So let’s dive into our conversation with Karise. Karise, it’s great to have you. Thanks for joining in.
[00:02:07.470] – Speaker 2
Thank you for inviting me.
[00:02:09.320] – Speaker 1
And you’re one of our few international guests. You’re Zooming in from across the Atlantic Ocean, so it’s great to have you today.
[00:02:16.760] – Speaker 2
Great, looking forward to the conversation.
[00:02:19.340] – Speaker 1
So we did a bit of an intro and gave people your bio, but let’s get to know you a little bit better. What shaped your world when you were growing up? What were the big influences in your life?
[00:02:29.290] – Speaker 2
So I grew up in the north coast of Ireland, and, um, like good old Irish families, there were seven of us siblings, and, um, I was the eldest. So for me, a big part of what shaped me at a young age was actually just the family dynamic. So that went from, you know, being a child to quickly growing up as the eldest in terms of having that role. But do you know, Chris, a lot of what I remembered in my family— my mum didn’t necessarily, she didn’t have employed work, but she worked very hard with us— was actually having a sense of safety in, in the home. And actually, like, I didn’t super love school in primary school, but I always knew that when I got home, it was safe, and I just loved that. So that was a huge big part of me. Big family. My mum and dad were incredibly hospitable, good old Irish hospitality. So they lived that out where they would pick up strangers and bring people back to the home. So our house was always full, not only of children, but of guests and people and strangers. And so I learned very quickly about that gift of hospitality and what it means to be family in a really healthy way.
[00:03:42.200] – Speaker 1
Our experiences are very similar. I can remember calling my parents. We lived in Australia when I was really little, and I can remember calling my parents’ house and someone with an Australian accent answered the phone. So, and who is it? They’re, oh, we’re visiting, staying with your parents. I’m like, oh great, are my mum and dad home? Like, can you pass me over to them? So, uh, yeah, I totally know that experience. Yeah.
[00:04:02.370] – Speaker 2
Do you know what, you take it for granted, Chris, but actually today, you know, that is, that is, I tell people that and they’re really And really shocked, you know, but that was just, that was just the way. I’m not so sure I would do it now in terms of having strangers in my house, but we did it then.
[00:04:17.630] – Speaker 1
It does kind of weave its way into your life. We try to create a lot of space for other people, as I’m sure you do, practising that hospitality. So let’s talk about what’s shaping your world today personally, your family. Tell us a little bit more about you that’s kind of beyond the bio.
[00:04:34.180] – Speaker 2
So a big part of my world is my family. I’m married to Ali. We’ve just celebrated 30 years of marriage and we have 4 children. Ranging from big adults, but like what you have, Chris, one’s married off the books. The other 3 are still around. So our eldest is 27. Finley, again, spent some time in New Zealand, but he is 25 with a daughter studying at the minute, getting ready for university. And then I had a surprise 40th birthday present, and that’s very much shaped my world at this stage in my life. And he’s an absolute blessing. So that’s a big part. Family remains. I think those values that are instilled into you as a child really pull through in terms of, I guess, the current shaping of my world. And then another big part of me is faith. So living that out in a real way in my community, serving. I sit on a board of trustees of church, but more than that, just the kind of values and friends that we have around that. It’s a big part of my life. And another part is reading. And I know, Chris, you also, when I’ve seen your library of books, we share a deep appreciation for really good books, challenging books, those that encourage us to dive a lot deeper, those that encourage us to look at things very differently.
[00:05:58.970] – Speaker 2
So reading is a big part of what shapes, and that also shapes professionally what I do as a researcher, writer, and educator. And then the fourth one for me, and you might see this behind us, is art.
[00:06:12.570] – Speaker 1
Yeah.
[00:06:12.840] – Speaker 2
So if you— when you come to my house, Chris, I will say that in good faith, that when you come visit and I shower Irish hospitality on you, you will see that I have a deep appreciation for art and what art can do to really invite us into a really beautiful— like, these beautiful spaces are very provoking and They just, they really, I’m finding they engage us in a whole other way. And using art has become actually a big part of this new phase of Illuminaire for us, that sense of using art as a way of telling a story. And every art piece that I have in my home actually tells a really important storey about what has shaped my world and what is shaping who I am.
[00:06:54.970] – Speaker 1
Well, I look forward to seeing the art when I visit, probably maybe in the fall. We’ll keep an eye out for that.
[00:07:01.200] – Speaker 2
Good.
[00:07:02.020] – Speaker 1
Tell us a little bit about your professional work. How are you shaping the world around you?
[00:07:08.200] – Speaker 2
So, um, I probably have two domains in my life at the minute in terms of my working life. On one hand, I work in university. I’m a professor of leadership, so I’m in, um, business faculty. So I lead a lot of the leadership development work around, um, for students, usually postgrad students. As well as undergraduate students. Um, so that’s one part, that’s executive MBAs, any executive leadership work, which I know is a big part of what Muskoka do as well. But the other part of my life is actually, um, Illuminary Leadership, and that is where I am taking the research or the science, um, of what it means to lead today and pulling that in with strategic wisdom. So I love to do just what you’re doing right now today, is like inviting the kind of experiences, those that have been maybe on a different path, and inviting that perspective in and then telling it through story. And I do that around— we have a publication series. We also do that with work with companies and organisations. So it is always emerging. We’re doing topics like— and I know I’ll probably touch on this today— which is around strong and healthy leadership.
[00:08:20.410] – Speaker 2
How do we develop that? And then another big sort of like question that’s become a bit of a quest is how do we lead in these times? How do we lead through ambiguity and uncertainty and where things are certainly most unpredictable? And then I’m just writing the third one at the moment, but that is to be continued.
[00:08:39.000] – Speaker 1
Well, I’m really looking to get into that topic with you today. It’s obviously it’s something that’s really important when you think about, like you said, the professional world, business leadership. There’s a lot of conversations around that, executives. But our heart at Muskoka Woods, and I know yours is too, is that we can look at leadership at all ages and give people an opportunity to think about what it means to lead and how to refine some of the competencies and skills around that. And that can start kind of at any age. So I’m looking forward to getting your perspective on leadership and from your experience in the work that you do both academically and with Illuminaire and how that kind of even applies to parents and young people. So I want to dive right in and just maybe start with a bit of an umbrella question, a conversation, because you spent, you know, years, over 20 years researching and writing and teaching about leadership. So when you look at the world today, what kind of leadership do you think we most urgently need?
[00:09:42.550] – Speaker 2
So I, I mentioned this kind of world, and again, to use Arthur, use a metaphor, is the sense of this grey zone. And what I mean is that leaders today are navigating uncharted waters where there’s not a map, or certainly there’s no precedent for these times. And it can feel a lot like that for parents as well, is like, and just in terms of the wider external environment. So when you have no map, what is your compass? And I think for me, you know, and certainly my work with leaders and in what I’m reading and writing about, character is the compass. And when I’m talking about character, we hear a lot of different kind of like understanding of character. It can be quite an elusive term, but what we’re actually speaking about here is who the leader is, not just what they do. Now, what they do matters, that’s competencies, and we develop that, and that there are skills that we want to develop in our young people. But I think the big question is, who are you becoming? And that is what character is about. Character can be developed in a really positive way, but it also can be developed in a negative way.
[00:10:54.080] – Speaker 2
So it’s quite an immoral concept. But when I’m talking about character, I think, what does the world need? They need leaders that can make good, sound judgments, practical wisdom. So there’s a lot of work that talks about things like integrity, like, um, how we can lead with a justice lens, collaboration, humanity. Um, and actually a big part of this is actually around courage. My goodness, how much courage do we need to lead in the times that we are, whether you’re a parent or whether you’re a leader in an organisation. Courage. So I think character is actually— and I was at Oxford University 2 weeks ago, um, they were having a political leadership roundtable about What is the future of political leadership? I will not get onto that subject specifically. But what they did say, one of the leaders said, and it was a global conversation, he was actually from Australia. He said, I think there’s two things we need to hear leaders say and we don’t hear them in terms of a public narrative, but we need to actually say, I am sorry. And we need to also say, I don’t know. So, I think that those really struck me.
[00:12:05.140] – Speaker 2
It’s funny how the things that you remember, and I remember, like, thinking, gosh, you know, such profound questions, quite simple questions in a way, but very challenging in terms of, like, if we hear that, leaders, how does that, like, how does that actually get received? How do we transmit that? Like, I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. No leader has the answers. And then secondly, that sense of I’ve got that wrong, so I’m sorry. So I think that is also an interesting language and words that we really hear.
[00:12:36.300] – Speaker 1
I think these are, you know, in kind of the commentary around this, we can talk about like hard skills or the competency stuff, the characters, you know, these soft skills that we develop. And when we think in terms of young people, all those things you talked about, you know, wisdom, making wise decisions, integrity, How do we as parents, like, when, when do we start observing? And when do young people really— I know as parents we want our kids to grow up with good character, generally speaking, but when we’re thinking about like leadership values, uh, how early do these things start? And what can we do as parents to keep reinforcing some of these things that you’ve talked about, you know, leading with wisdom and integrity and learning to say I’m sorry? What, what role do we play in this, in developing leadership skills for the young people in our world?
[00:13:27.690] – Speaker 2
I would say that our role is absolutely critical, and that doesn’t even feel like it’s a strong enough word. But I, I really believe the formation of leadership happens in 3 different ways. So I talk about nature, nurture, and choice. So nature is how your child is born. They have a unique personality, or there’s certainly personality traits. I have 4 children. My goodness, not one of them the same. They might have some similar crossover, but they are not the same, right? So you’ve got that sort of unique nature that your child is born with. And then you’ve got nurture. How do you actually provide an environment for them to grow? And then you’ve got choice. How do we guide them through the choices that we make? And I would say, Chris, from my experience, that it’s been very aware of your child’s personality from an early stage and actually really Looking at that in terms of how you communicate, what are you focusing on? So for example, I have my daughter is incredibly fiercely independent and very forthright and very clear and full of a lot of courage and yeah, can really stand up for herself versus my second son who is much more softer in his approach, is very empathetic and highly relational and very socially aware of that.
[00:14:57.470] – Speaker 2
And, you know, whenever it comes to how we nurture that, it’s really important that, that you actually create the opportunities for them to make good choices. So we’re talking about, say, for example, wisdom, you know, and a lot of those can come down to questions of like, you know, what are you choosing in terms of, you know, what are you feeding your mind? You know, like how much time, what are you feeding you actually physically in terms of like, you know, like food. And kind of, that’s also, also very important. But helping them along the way is really, um, really is critical because leadership is not, not just about a title or a budget or a status. Um, leadership is a process and it’s socially constructed. So they learn that through what we model. So I would say that the choices that they make— and I, I was just talking about this today It’s like sometimes as parents we feel like we want to grow our children, so we focus on activity. So we just activity after activity after activity. And I would really challenge that and say, let your child be bored, because how on earth are they going to be able to sit in stillness and to actually discern what they are in and what they are seeing if they cannot sit in boredom, if they cannot sit and be still?
[00:16:19.200] – Speaker 2
And that’s hard. And another aspect of that in terms of like formation is actually just around consistency. So character, this idea of integrity, being the same person no matter what room that you step into. The consistency of that is a challenge. And getting our young people, like the exercising of that, to sit with the discomfort, I think is really— so we have a huge role, but too many, too many parents want to smooth the path and make it really— remove the objects, make sure that it is, is the easiest path. But we are doing great disservice to their growth and their potential as leaders.
[00:17:05.810] – Speaker 1
And that’s so good, uh, talking about wisdom. And you talked about like feeding your body and making good decisions. Our young people today live in a world where they have so much access to information through the internet, through social media, and there’s just this bombarding of info. And there’s a difference between like knowledge and, and, you know, the accumulation of facts and knowing things and, and wisdom. And so I want to kind of put those kind of two things together and ask, what could we do to help young people be more discerning about the information they’re exposed to? Because You know, with cell phones in our rooms all the time, some people take them into the toilets. We have access to so much information, yet where’s the discernment in helping that information help us become wiser and make better choices? Even how do we make good choices about the information we consume? I just wonder if you have some commentary in that.
[00:18:09.520] – Speaker 2
Sure. Um, I think the sheer, um, overload and overwhelm of information. It used to be that, you know, knowledge is power. And I think it’s very— this level, this deluge of information is actually disempowering. So I would say, first of all, for parents, we got to teach our children what it means to have boundaries and limits. So no phone shouldn’t be in their bedroom. That’s my take on it. You leave it in the kitchen before you go to bed. That’s just That’s just one of the boundaries, you know, or we limit— like, I watch my son in limiting, you know, screen time. And it’s like— and he’s like, well, if I do this now for 20 minutes, then I’ve really only got 10 minutes left. Isn’t that right? I said, yes, you make the decision. I might just leave this and save this for later because I know, you know. So I think it’s really good that we teach our children the limits and boundaries is number one. Number two, beware of the news and algorithms. So we need to be teaching our children, beware of the news and beware of the algorithms. So Jonathan Haidt, I’m sure you know his work well, but this idea of the anxious generation and he’s got lots of practical ways, but beware of the news and the algorithms.
[00:19:26.870] – Speaker 2
My goodness, we need to teach our children. And that’s, that’s on us as well to actually educate our children as well as our educational system, which tends to fail us most of the time. And then I think I think the third dimension to this is actually to encourage cross-generational learning or multi-generational. I was watching my son sit with my dad and we’re big football fans. Well, I’m not actually, but in my house I kind of get sucked into it. But I watched the transfer of information and there’s such a hunger in young people for knowledge. And yet they can have so much of it. But we were not made to live and consume the level of knowledge or information that we have coming at us that’s hurtling towards us. We’re not made for that as human beings. So I think there’s something around the physical presence and the sitting with people in different age categories. Like, I would encourage children to to mix well and give your children plenty of opportunities to sit with. If they’re saying they’re 8 or 9, to sit with older, like sort of teenagers, 17, 18, and for the 17, 18-year-old to sit with them and then to sit with older people.
[00:20:45.090] – Speaker 2
So I would focus a lot on that and teaching my children how to interact and how to communicate. And you get that lovely flow. Well, you know, not just the, well, I remember in my day, But, you know, here, gosh, did you think about this? You know, so I think there’s a lot to learn, but I think the most important thing to remember about just the, the level of information is that we really have moved from citizens to the sense of like being people over history to consumers where we’re actually now the commodity. And that’s the challenge around information. We’ve become the commodity. And if it’s free information, that means We’re the product. So just be really aware of that and be very careful about the passive consumption of information.
[00:21:32.950] – Speaker 1
And one thing I might even add a little bit just to that and kind of bridging the intergenerational conversations, I also think when you talk about like being aware of the algorithm, I think we should be suspicious when we consistently hear one point of view, you know, one perspective starts to become dominant in our news and our thinking our, our threads and the things we’re paying attention to because it’s feeding us the things that quote unquote we want to hear. And I think you talked about hearing storeys from different generations. I think actually hearing from people that have different opinions and think about the world differently, you know, that in politics they’d say, you know, across the aisle conversations, uh, and I think for young people that, that’s a really good discipline to actually think about Where am I gathering information that’s maybe a little bit different than what I would believe or what I’m hearing? How am I learning and growing from listening to where other people come from and gaining information that I don’t normally have access to because the algorithm doesn’t send it to me? So just a little thing. I always try to follow people on all sides of the argument, debate, fence, just to hear what people are saying because then I can be shaped a little bit more rather than just being bombarded with one.
[00:22:51.560] – Speaker 1
I think that’s really good, especially with TikTok. Like, the TikTok algorithms really spit out the same kind of news and perspectives, uh, to young people.
[00:23:00.530] – Speaker 2
In using AI, one thing as well that, um, that I’m always challenging, um, young people on is it does not equal truth, right? So always cheque the sources. And always be okay. So, so, okay, so it’s telling me X, Y, Z, right? Give me the sources. Go cross-reference, always cross-check. You know, it just shocks me how people are just speaking into their phone and just saying, you know, tell me, tell me what, you know, what is happening right now. And they just give you what you want to hear. And I was like, I’ve challenged that a couple of times, but there’s another side to that. Yeah. So it does not equal truth.
[00:23:37.070] – Speaker 1
Well, I heard someone also say that you can ask AI to make a counterargument to something that you know, and how would you argue against this?
[00:23:45.100] – Speaker 2
Yeah.
[00:23:45.490] – Speaker 1
And provide perspective that again, so it just helps shape that. I think it’s a fact. I mean, we could probably go on the podcast for most of the rest of the time talking about this topic. That’s really good. But I want to transition into Illuminae because through that work, you look at leadership through the lens of truth, goodness, and beauty. That’s language we don’t often hear associated with leadership or in that more the corporate space. So what do these words kind of mean to you and what do they look like in practise as leaders?
[00:24:18.290] – Speaker 2
So when we talk about truth, what I’m talking about is having a posture of curiosity whereby you want to understand more and you want to explore. So that is the sense. There’s lots of like, what is truth? So, you know, in an era of a lot of fake news and a lot of representation artificially of what could be true and actually in a way that’s very compelling, is that that search, you know, that proactive search and curiosity for truth is an active stance. So it’s not just about accepting a person or— but really, really just always been on that path of just curiosity, like being like a Scout in the, in the new terrain. The second one around goodness is really just, um, reflects back to probably more ethics and character. So really our focus is on who the leader is, not just what they do. So I think what they do is their competencies are important, but like, it’s the who they are and that goodness. And, you know, is this decision going to result in human flourishing, or is this decision going to result something else. So that goodness means for me is the sense of like, what is the lens or the glasses that you are actually viewing the decisions and your kind of like take on the world.
[00:25:43.520] – Speaker 2
And then the thirdly is beauty. This is the interesting one where I get questioned a lot on, and it really comes down to from the very beginning of time, and kind of who we are as human beings. We have a deep appreciation for things that are beautiful. Beautiful— what’s beautiful to me will be different to you, Chris, or will be different to the next person. But there’s a deep appreciation that happens through, through art and through, like, photography that I don’t believe AI can capture. Or certainly there’s something about the human endeavour around beauty that cuts through the noise and touches our senses in a way where just text and words don’t. So I think that’s right brain. I think it’s a really important lens. So that— what does that mean in practise? That means that I’m always on the stance, being curious of like, what does the research tell me? But what is the counterargument? Like what you’re saying. So I’m always keeping that kind of search for truth, always challenging people’s ethical stance. Why are you making that decision? Where is that coming from? How are you looking at that? You know, what is the, what is the impact of that on human flourishing?
[00:27:00.950] – Speaker 2
And then just a lot of what Illuminaire does is tries to bring the art and the design and the photography, because I find that when we wrap it in that way, are we wrapping it as almost like a storey that doesn’t have to have words. I think it cuts through a lot of the words and the information deluge that we have.
[00:27:22.590] – Speaker 1
Yeah, I think the words appreciation, awe, curiosity, I think those are probably not talked about much in leadership, maybe curiosity a little bit, but I love that around beauty, you know, just touching another part of our brain and our spirit and our soul and unlocking things that just maybe get lost in the day-to-day grind of like ploughing through work and trying to make good decisions. And definitely there’s something there. I probably wouldn’t be as naturally inclined to that myself, but when I know when I’ve sat and, uh, I just remember going to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and not really being into art really, and just being like, I’ll go because it’s a historic and thing you should do when you’re in a new city. And when I was there, I just remember stopping at some of the paintings and just being like drawn in, just entering a different space in my brain, in my heart. And, uh, I would tell you I wouldn’t have done that before. I would have just walked through and gone, oh, these are nice. But there was something about it being, you know, face to face with some Van Goghs that just came alive, you know, off the wall, so to speak.
[00:28:34.210] – Speaker 1
It was a really good experience. So I love that that’s brought in along with the other things Yeah, that you talked about. Yeah, you did mention how that can kind of create storeys without words, but you also talk about storeys themselves being really important in the leadership journey. And I wonder if we look at young people who are kind of shaping their identity and, and who they are, how do the storeys they believe about themselves or they hear inform what kind of leader they’re gonna become or are becoming as they’re growing up?
[00:29:09.830] – Speaker 2
So this is really critical. These storeys that young people hold in their head are the mental maps. So they’re shaped by the nurturing or the choices or experiences that they have during their life, or as you get older, maybe some previous roles that you have had. So they form these mental maps that actually then become the lens through which we make our decisions, or I would say through which we interpret what we see. And we have to remember that the mental maps or those storeys are always incomplete and they are always biassed. So we think, therefore we think that’s real. So perception is reality and we’ll have heard that. But it’s understanding that those mental maps and those stories, like even I’ve been doing a little research at the minute around neuroscience and memory and the fact that memories aren’t actually an accurate representation of what actually happened. They are our take on it, and they can be emotionally— so I often think about when I’m, when I’m doing leadership development programmes, I’m sitting in and there will be people, or maybe 20 people in the room, and you can have people walk away and look at that and experience that in two completely different ways, to the point I’m like, were they in this room?
[00:30:33.330] – Speaker 2
Did they just experience something completely diff— different? Because the storey or the tip or the mental map that they had made that they viewed that in a completely different way. Um, so I think that’s really important that we understand that. And as parents and people that are involved in developing, um, our young people and their leadership, need to also be aware of for some, and for many young people now, they’re either ashamed of their storey or they say, oh, it’s not extraordinary, it’s not like it is in social media. And that’s why the storeys that are often portrayed in social media are the life or the storey that they want or that they desire, they want other people to think, but it’s not the reality. So I think it’s really important that actually our young people understand that even the ordinary, mundane is worth the storey and is worth the telling. And even the debris in your life, like the really, um, horrible stuff, like the really— the stuff that’s, you know, um, has been really hard, the messy stuff in your life, that’s also part of your story. So I think, um, like in the work of leadership, um, this is really, really important.
[00:31:50.450] – Speaker 2
I wrote a book about the power of stories. It’s how we make sense of our own stories, how we mine them. And actually, the biggest revealer of— actually, when you start to look for the themes in your story, is actually the hard stuff. It’s the crucible, it’s the refiner’s fire. And I think that’s really— it’s challenging today because there’s a prevailing narrative of leadership that is told over and over and over again. And often for our young people, they’ll say it’s either comparison— my storey’s not like that— or, do you know, or, or they have suffered in, in as a result of whatever other kind of story. So I think it’s really important that leaders and our young people are taught from an early age that their storey matters, but also their stories, they have agency. It’s not like they’re some sort of like third person and they’ve got no There are some things in life that happen to us that are outside of our control, but there’s other stuff that we can, and we can turn the page and we can start a new chapter.
[00:33:01.190] – Speaker 1
We do this thing with our young leaders as we bring them on to staff. We’ve called it lifelines, we’ve called it our roots, where we kind of have them go back and think through their storey and find some threads to help them you know, rethink of who they are and, and how they got to where they were in their leadership journey. And now, you know, we can then move them forward and do some training and development and give them a lot of opportunity to lead with responsibility. But I, I was thinking the other day, Chris, and it’s interesting you brought this up, that when we hear those storeys told back, there are so many times where, um, words were used that had a negative impact or shaped people. You know, someone said this to me about how I looked or what I did, or, you know, those kinds of encounters. And I thought, you know, where are a lot of the storeys where they’ve been shaped by the positive affirmations and what they’re told to do? I’ve shared on this podcast a bunch of times, I can specifically remember a time when my, gym teacher when I was 12 or 13 got me in trouble.
[00:34:11.040] – Speaker 1
And, well, I thought I was in trouble. I went to his office. He told me he was disappointed that I’d quit track, but it was because I was a leader and he like spoke into that. And I can distinctly recall that. And then that shaped a lot of my journey because an older person who was taking interest in my life affirmed something in me that I hadn’t seen at the time and gave some definition to it. And so I wonder, as parents, as adults who care for people, how we can continue to, over time, maybe with how we act, but I think specifically the kind of things we affirm in our young people that continues to build their identity and can shape their character. I mean, I’m just thinking, like, when we see— and we talk about this in our CEO Leadership Program— when we see young people do the things that are so positive and show their character that it’s kind of unprompted. You haven’t said, can you please say you’re sorry to your brother? And then they say sorry. But it just— when it comes spontaneously as an adult or a parent to speak into that and say, hey, I just saw the way you handled that with your brother.
[00:35:17.080] – Speaker 1
I just need to affirm that was, that was really good. That was really positive. Thank you for doing that. That says a lot about who you are. Like, if we could kind of speak into that, I, I think that’s pretty powerful. It would— again, that was kind of my monologue, but anything that you want to build on that?
[00:35:32.580] – Speaker 2
It’s so important. But do you know what it requires, Chris? It requires us being present and be attuned. So we first of all need to know our children’s strengths. I think one of the best things when my daughter did CEO was the Strengths Finder. And oh my goodness, the revelation of that and also of the shadow side of that. You know, if your top strength is competition, do you know, that’s amazing. But that is also like, there’s a dark side to that that you need to manage. And, you know, and it’s actually been present to say like, I love this about you and this is what makes you uniquely you. It’s part of your nature and this is what I’m nurturing. But it also means you’ve got to make tough choices and you’ve got to pay attention to maybe the stuff that you maybe don’t want to hear. And we’re doing that, you know, My son’s applying for jobs and we’re just like, I can see your gift. Your unique gift is empathy, is connexion with people in a relation he can connect with. I’ve watched him with top leaders and I’ve watched them with young boys that are literally maybe 7 and 8.
[00:36:47.480] – Speaker 2
And that is a gift we need to pay. That also means at times he needs to not to get so embroiled in the story, to get so, you know, that you actually miss the bigger picture. So I think we just, we need to be present as parents to actually, to keep that kind of like viewpoint and to really affirm and also to challenge when that, the shadow gets cast, you know, in a room and you can see it. And ultimately like, Sometimes we just don’t know it’s self-awareness. So yeah, couldn’t agree more.
[00:37:26.680] – Speaker 1
You talk about leaders being able to connect the dots. And I wonder what that skill looks like for teenagers and young people, and what can we do as adults and parents who care for kids to be able to help them nurture that ability?
[00:37:45.850] – Speaker 2
I use the metaphor of the balcony and the dance floor. So when I’m talking about connecting the dots, I think it’s about how we teach our young people how to get on a metaphorical balcony, and that is so we can gain a sense of perspective to see some patterns. But the thing that I often— that people forget is that on the balcony, they think it’s just them on the balcony. And a way that we can sense-make and teach our children how to do that is, who’s on the balcony with you? Is actually helping you make sense, that is bringing a different perspective. Because remember back to the mental maps are always incomplete and they’re always biassed. So I think we, we talk about, you know, zoom out, get the viewpoint, but who also is there challenging that? And then I think the third aspect of sensemaking or connecting the dots is around and just creating space for that. So in a very noisy, information-overloaded environment where we don’t even have to do anything and the information is at us, how are we creating space to not be distracted? Because distraction is a huge challenge if you’re trying to make sense of the dots.
[00:39:02.690] – Speaker 2
So I think those are the three things that I’m certainly really challenging my children. Okay, that’s fine and that’s good. I, I can see that you see that, but what do you not see from the balcony? And you can help you maybe turn over to the left or turn to the right.
[00:39:19.930] – Speaker 1
Um, so yeah, that’s really helpful imagery to, to think through that. That’s really good.
[00:39:26.490] – Speaker 2
Yeah.
[00:39:27.550] – Speaker 1
As young people, um, are growing in their leadership, you know, before they get to positions of leader— now some of them have them, but before they get to like significant positions of leadership in their life or their workspace, they learn about leadership at home from us. And we’ve talked a lot about a lot of the principles that are woven into leadership on every podcast. I think most people have talked about the importance of modelling certain behaviours. And so I wonder if young people are learning about what it means to lead early in the home? What are some things that parents can be attentive to? What sort of leadership behaviours or practises can they instil or practise in front of their kids as they interact with them every day?
[00:40:16.230] – Speaker 2
So I think absolutely parents need a role model. So that’s— and, and kids are great at saying, hey, you said that, but look what you’re doing right now. They love to give feedback. There’s no shortage of feedback in my house for my children. But I think The second kind of maybe the other side of that, Chris, is actually around how we set the environment for them to grow and to learn. So I often talk about leaders are like farmers. They don’t grow the crops in the field, but they set the conditions for the crops to grow. So I would say to parents, and I’m still live in this at the minute, but I worked on a couple of things with my children with an eye on I want them to be responsible. I want them to be leaders of character. I want them to be strong and healthy, essentially. So I worked on resilience. So how do you work on resilience? Well, you only get resilient if you go through tough stuff and you can— you’re actually able to kind of bounce back and make a way back. So I think that’s the bit where we can’t protect our children from hard stuff that we need to teach our children not to give up.
[00:41:29.230] – Speaker 2
You can imagine, well, my youngest child is incredibly— he’s very bright. He is always seems to be straight ahead, you know, in terms of education. Not all my children, they’re not all like this, but like it was number 4 and he just, he’s just that wired, which is, which is great. But you know what the problem is? Everything comes really easy. So when he encounters something really hard, he’s just like, I’m out of here, I’m giving up. So we have, in order to create the environment for him to grow, we’ve had to really create experiences for him so he has to stick at it. And he’s like, we talk about growth mindset. If you mention that to him, he’s like, don’t show me that book. But it’s like, you know, how do you cultivate that? It’s a hard And then I think the other one for me in terms of leadership is responsibility. So how do we teach our children to be responsible? Well, we give them stuff to do and we give them tasks to do and we create some kind of parameters around that. And if they forget or if they don’t do it, there has to be an element of feeling it.
[00:42:40.660] – Speaker 2
So if you pack your child’s school bag every day, And if you make sure that they have everything they need to do and you have the notes and you’re looking after all of it, and this all depends on the child, like the age of the child, of course, but like teaching your child in small ways, like, okay, so tomorrow you have swimming, can you go get your stuff? And it’s kind of like an hour later, if it’s not there in the morning, it’s not there. Well, then you don’t have your stuff for swimming and you’ve got to, you’ve got to be able to feel it. So I think what has happened with technology And it’s actually created a frictionless or a reduced friction environment where everything becomes very easy. We don’t even have to figure out what we want because we’re told what we want. One click. So there’s less friction. And in order for things to grow, again, setting the environment, we need the friction, we need the discomfort. And I, I use the metaphor of a seed. And, um, so we have seeds and there’s a coat on seed that actually is the very thing that protects the seed, right?
[00:43:44.060] – Speaker 2
So you— the problem that we have with seeds, if the seed stays within that protective coat, it’s protected, but it never becomes the tree that it was destined to become. The only way it becomes a tree is if the coat, um, is actually disrupted and it’s broken off. And the oldest seed to be planted— maybe you know this— but the oldest seed to be planted was actually, um, in a tree in old King Herod’s palace in Masada, and that was a seed that was over 3,000 years old. It was protected through, through 3,000 years, but when planted in the right soil with the right nutrients, the coat was broken and it’s this huge big palm tree. So I think there is something as, as parents that we need to— we’ve got to create the soil and the nutrients from the grow, but that means to discomfort. That means a bit of friction. Enable them to sit down with conflict and to have the debate. If you were in my house and all of the very lively debates, we encourage that because we want, we want our children to actually know what it’s like to sit.
[00:44:51.130] – Speaker 2
And you can throw a bit of competition in there. And if there’s people in high relationally with all different strengths, that’s very colourful. But we, we’ve got to be able to let our children grow because that’s critical for who they are becoming. Because leadership, the skills you can teach, Chris, you know that this is what you do, you know the competencies are there, but who they are and that becoming process, I think that’s our role.
[00:45:16.330] – Speaker 1
I would add one small one too. You, you mentioned earlier about, you know, parents doing the things that they, you know, that they’re contradictory in integrity. And I think a A connected point to that is, is doing what we say we’re going to do. I think there’s a follow-through piece. I see this with a lot of young people that come on to our staff, this idea of following through on commitments, things you say you’re going to do. And it may seem really small to parents, but if you say, hey, we’re going to do this and then it doesn’t happen, that teaches kids something, that it’s okay to not do what you say you’re going to do. And when we get to a work environment, That’s really important for us. If we commit to something, we’re going to follow it through. And so, you know, that’s like, you know, we say we’re going to go for ice cream if we do this, and then work gets really busy or something comes up and we don’t do that. And it sounds so silly, but it actually is reinforcing this. Well, if you say something that we’re going to do, we don’t actually have to do it.
[00:46:16.410] – Speaker 1
If you don’t think you can go for ice cream, don’t even say it. But if you say it, even if you’re busy, like follow through on that. Kids will learn those little things from us about follow through. And that I’ve learned that in my, my house because, you know, when my daughter’s been like, Dad, we said we were going to do this and we never did it. I’m just reminding that. And so how does that translate to her showing up in a job or a work environment when something’s being asked for her? How does she then reinforce? And we say at Muskoka Woods, um, we do what we say we’re gonna do. We have one of our core values is tenacious follow-through. And we do what we say we’re going to do. So if we say it, we’re going to follow through. If we can’t follow through, then we should figure out how we’re going to say what we can do in that. But I think that’s just another subtle thing people learn. Young people are watching and participating, and that value can be passed down unintentionally as parents, as we’re leading.
[00:47:09.610] – Speaker 2
One of the biggest things when I’m in with speaking to leaders is emerging leaders or leaders in the workplace that won’t actually follow through. So that sense of like commitment and actually sticking with it. And we had it here in our house last week. My daughter was like, oh, she double booked, you know, she was going to do a whole big thing with her friends. It was all booked. In fact, she’d organised it and she’d forgotten she’d committed to help out in youth. And it was that sense of she was like, I know, but like, I just totally forgot. Like, it’s not my fault. And I was like, Well, it is. And what I had to listen to for 24 hours was like— I was so tempted to say, do you know what, just apologise and you can just say, I’m sorry, I can no longer volunteer. In my head, it would be so much easier, and it’s what she wanted me to say, but I would not. And for me, it was like, oh, it takes me to be disciplined just as much as it does for children.
[00:48:04.100] – Speaker 1
And that’s— I agree, we— I see that follow through in our context as well. And then I started to think like, where do we learn that that’s okay? You know, and so as adults, we always got to go back to say what storey is unfolding around the young people in our lives. So we play a role in that. We’re kind of wrapping up our time, Karise, and would love to just get a couple quick insights from you. You spend a lot of time teaching, you spend a lot of time, you’re a parent yourself. When you look at this generation of young people coming through, I think it’s easy— you see the news reports and anxiety and all these other things— but what gives you hope for the future, seeing these young people who inevitably will be taking over positions of leadership in politics and school, education, medicine, business? What gives us hope for the future when we look at our young people?
[00:48:56.690] – Speaker 2
I think there’s a yearning for a different story. And I can see that with a great discontentment and in some places and in some lives, a disenchantment with the big storey of leadership. But I’m hopeful because there is a yearning to say, this is not what I want. I want something different for my children and for my life and for my future. So there’s a yearning for a meaningful narrative that is counter to what the world is currently in terms than providing in the news. And I think that is what, what gives me hope is I think they’re asking us hard questions. They’re asking hard questions about education and university. They’re asking us hard questions about politics. They’re asking us hard questions about climate. And I think that’s good.
[00:49:43.560] – Speaker 1
Uh, and maybe finally, as we wrap up, could you leave our listeners with, um, a guiding thought or piece of advice about strong and healthy leadership, whether at work or in family life, that would encourage them today?
[00:49:57.670] – Speaker 2
I use this metaphor a lot, and it’s strong and healthy leadership is like a muscle. So I say, I would say to every parent and every listener, and I say this to all of my children and anyone I meet, we all have the leadership muscle. You choose whether you want to exercise it or not. And how do you exercise muscle? You exercise it by lifting the heavy weights that’s called resistance training. You exercise your muscles by consistency. So that’s just doing it every day, habits. And you also practise and develop it by actually cultivating times of rest and recovery. So I think if we all look at it like that, it is much more than the, the title and the status and the actual positional power. And it’s much more about the process of who are you becoming and, and how we how we steward that in a, in a strong and healthy way.
[00:50:54.120] – Speaker 1
Resistance, practise, and rest. I love that. Three simple things and yet very profound when you actually practise them out. But thank you. That’s amazing. Great things to think about as we wrap up our conversation. Thanks so much, Karise, for your time today. It’s been a really encouraging and insightful conversation. And I, again, I always am tracking with all these little things that, uh, we talk about and help me become a better leader and a better dad myself. So thanks.
[00:51:23.520] – Speaker 2
No problem.
[00:51:26.720] – Speaker 1
Well, that’s it for our episode today. If hearing from Karise Hudgenson helped you think differently about leadership, wisdom, and the power of story, why don’t you head over to muskokawoods.com? There you’ll find blog post with key takeaways from this episode and a link for you to listen again. Don’t forget to subscribe to Shaping Our World and share this episode with a parent, a teacher, a coach, someone who’s interested in the lives of young people and maybe who’s passionate about helping young people grow in wisdom, resilience, and integrity. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time on Shaping Our World.
