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To those that are listening today, this is an episode for you if you want to know about leadership and how does it all work in today's world with AI and everything else that we're dealing with.

Why Leadership Feels Hard Now

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I've got an amazing guest today, Kyla Colbin. She's the founder and CEO of Bomber and a visionary leader dedicated to shaping a future of international and courageous leadership, from pioneering TEDx Christchurch as New Zealand's flagship TEDx event to bringing Singularity University to New Zealand and Australia. She has equipped thousands with insights into exponential technologies and their societal impact. Trained by Al Gore as a climate project ambassador and certified by Brunei Brown as a dear to lead facilitator. She lives by one simple purpose to be an uplifting presence in the world. Hello, Kayla. Hello, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming. It's where are you based at the moment? I'm here in Ototahi Christchurch. Lovely. And I hope the weather is good for you, just as well as it is for us in Carpeti. It's always too cold for me this time of year, but it's fine. It's fine. Sheltered, I'm warm, I've got good clothes. Yeah. Which brings me to a question. You're a New Yorker, I believe. Correct. Born and bred in New York City. What are you doing in New Zealand? I came here with

Christchurch Quakes And Resilience Practice

1:27

my now ex-husband 21 years ago. And it is home. It is home. I am eternally grateful to him for bringing me here. And I became a citizen more than a decade ago. A couple of years ago, I renounced my U.S. citizenship. This is this is where I want to be. Wow. How long have you been here again? 21 years. 21 years. Awesome. Just as almost as long as I have been here. I've been here about three years, four. So yeah, I feel you. I feel New Zealand becomes home, doesn't it? It it just feels right. And I love Christchurch. I love Christchurch. But you were there right after the earthquake and stuff, right? I yeah, I was here for the earthquakes. And in fact, a big part of my TEDx journey that you referenced in the bio happened right around then. So our very first TEDx event was in 2010. It was about a month after the 7.3 quake that we had in September, which was the first one that kicked off all that. And then the next event that we ran for a couple of years, actually, we ran an event that was specifically focused on the future of the city post-quake. And we were able to bring people like Art Agnos, who had been the mayor of San Francisco during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, to bring him to Christchurch to talk about his experience and what he learned and connect him with, you know, our politicians and the folks who were kind of in charge of the rebuild. And it was a it was a very interesting time in this city for sure. Because for me, like when I look at people that have had something happen and then they have to learn from it, like this are the moments that either shape you or break you, right? What that kind of distraction has taught you in terms of resilience that you can't learn any other way. Yeah, I mean, every hardship is an opportunity to practice. And so that's true whether it's an earthquake or whether it's a breakup or, you know, having a client reject your proposal, or, you know, any hardship is an opportunity to practice. And one of the things that I've noticed in my work, because I do so much work on courage and on communication and having hard conversations and showing up with empathy, and there's a temptation in my work that is totally understandable, it's totally normal, it's totally human. As far as I can tell, it's universal. I've certainly been subject to it. Like everybody falls prey to this, and it is entirely unhelpful. And it is the temptation to think about all this work on communication and courage and hard conversations, et cetera, and immediately think about how to apply to somebody else. You know who really needs to get good at this is my boss. You know who really needs this is my employee. That, you know, who really needs it, that one colleague that I've got. Like they're the worst, right? And it's totally normal, totally human, totally, you know, near universal, as far as I can tell, entirely unhelpful because there's nothing on the planet that lets us control the behavior of a single other human being. 100% of the gold is within ourselves. That being said, you know, transform ourselves, our relationships transform, right? Every relationship is emergent from the parties to that relationship. You change 50% of the ingredients, the recipe is going to change, even if the other ingredients stay exactly the same. And so, to your question about dealing with a hardship like this, you know, an earthquake is almost easy in a way because there's no one I can really blame for it. But when it's a hardship of like a client or a colleague or a business partner or an employee or whatever, it's always tempting to really focus on what the other person did. And the gold is always this is an opportunity for me to learn something about myself, about how I show up, about what I didn't didn't do, about how I stayed calm or didn't, how I got reactive, how I became defensive, whatever it is, the all of these things are content. And when we see them that way, then it stops becoming like a good or a bad or a thing that happened you know, that I'm a victim of it or whatever. And instead, it becomes like life is going to give

Stop Trying To Fix Others

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us content all the time. And so we just go, Great, I have another opportunity to practice. I love that. I absolutely love that example that you're giving because I can relate to it from my point of view, where we're sitting, is I deal with a lot of clients in the most stressful times of their lives, right? They're buying a house, they're going through massive decisions. It's usually their first home. They have no idea what they're doing. So they need a lot of help and support. And this is where we see the differences in clients. Some clients just take it in their stride and they just go with it. Whatever happens, they're just happy. You know, if we need more information, they're happy to provide more information. But there are clients that get very stressed out, even with little requests, they may get, oh my God, I don't want to buy a house anymore. It's too hard. So it's really about the resilience and building that resilience. And often, as you say, the rejection of the offers, when clients place an order, an offer to buy a house, and if their offer gets rejected, they they take it to heart. Some of them really take it to heart. And a lot of my job is working with their psyche, working with their character, going, hey, you know, it's all about learning experience. Because if you don't put an offer, you don't know what's gonna come out of it. So you just have to keep trying. Would would you relate to that? Would you say that this is what you're seeing as well across various situations? Yeah. So what I would my my observation there is, you know, again, I always like to bring it back to ourselves, right? So you're dealing with clients who are understandably going through what for most of them is the largest transaction they're ever going to make. They'll have a lot of fear around it, they'll have emotion around it, they'll have stories about do I deserve to have own a home or not? Am I the kind of person? Am I, you know, rich enough? I come from a family that wasn't educated or didn't have money or whatever. You know, they're all sorts of noise in that kind of transaction. And so for me, the curious thing and the thing that I that's so beautiful and what I'm hearing from you is that they're gonna show up how they show up. That's them. That's their job and their problem. My job is how do I show up? Because it could be very easy, I think, for someone in your shoes to get frustrated or to get reactive or to get impatient with a customer who's going, oh, I changed my mind, oh, but what about this? And oh, but you know, and and and and what I'm hearing from you is, you know, what what your job is, is to accept them exactly as they are and go, yep, if you can change your mind, here's what's likely to happen if you do, here's what the consequences are. Your choices are your choices. If you're stressed about it, that's not a reflection of me. My job is to guide you, and I'm gonna guide you, and you can take the advice or not. That doesn't affect me personally. That doesn't, you know, that's not a reflection on me as a human being. You're going through your own journey, and I'm here to walk alongside you. And that's where you have the advantage of having that opportunity to practice again and again with every single client, right? To go, oh man, I found that client so frustrating, huh? That's so interesting. I wonder what was going on for me that I felt so reactive to that. Oh, 100%. You know, a lot of the times people ask me, you know, do you like you work so many hours? You know, you work pretty much day and night. I answer my clients any time of the day, any time of the night, doesn't matter. I was giving birth to my four fourth child and I was responding to messages. So for me, I love what I do. I absolutely love what I do. I I live and breathe what I do. So for me, it never feels like I'm working. I'm I'm not working hard in my mind. My mind is enjoying it because what I'm seeing is I'm seeing a client that's going from a position of, oh, I don't know if that's possible. Because as you say, the stories in their heads told them that no, you don't deserve a house. You know, you you you can't do that because your parents never did that, your grandparents never did that. How can you do that? So I love seeing that transition where I can take the client's mind, going from I cannot do this, this is not possible, to oh my God, I did this, how could I achieve that? And then normally they come back a year later and they go, I want to do this all over again. So for me, this is exciting to see that transformation. It is a real privilege, I think, the job that you do. I mean, certainly the job that I do as well, but that ability to support someone in this experience that is quite, you know, for most of the people you work with will be quite a major experience and have such a huge impact on their quality of life. It's it's a real gift to be able to do that kind of work. Kyla, tell me more a little bit about what do you actually do day to day? You know what I do, but what do you do? Uh so mostly I do leadership development. And so our biggest

Leading Clients Through High Stress

9:37

focus right now is we leverage lessons from sports to create values-based leaders or to support values-based leadership. And so the best example of that is we partnered with the Crusaders rugby team several years ago. We created a program with them called the Crusaders Leadership Program, which features five of their greatest legends. So Sam Whitelock, Wayne Smith, Kieran Reid, Robbie Dean, Scott Robertson. And we've we have a two-week online program that we've had people from 35 countries come through where you can learn about the culture and systems that have led them to be so consistently successful over such a long period of time. And there's nothing in it that's technical, tactical. Like I grew up in New York City. I am not a rugby person. I don't know anything about rugby, but I learned so much from these guys and from this organization about how they bring individuals together to accomplish something greater as a collective than what they can do individually. So, so we basically, you know, as a result of that, we've ended up doing a number of projects elsewhere in the sports space. And we've done some work with the U.S. Soccer Foundation. I have my own podcast called Hunger and Heart, where I talk to people who have achieved at the highest level in the sporting world about how they reconcile their ambition and their drive for success with being at peace with what they see when they look in the mirror. So I talked to, again, a bunch of rugby people, Wayne Smith, Graham Henry, John Kerwin, people like that, but also Barbara Kendall, the sailor, and uh Miyamotsu, the boxer, and you know, all sorts of really interesting people. It's I'm glad you have a podcast. I really enjoy having a podcast. I hope you do too. It's so much fun talking to people and trying to understand what makes them tick. Because for me, when I see people in front of me, I really want to get to know them. I really want to understand what made you who you are today, what shaped you into that person, you know, with based on your upbringing, based on how you also changed. Because a lot of people, you know, it's so easy to get stuck in a routine of, well, my childhood was crap, and you know, this happened to me, that happened to me, and get stuck in that victim mentality. And yes, unfortunate things do happen to people, but then as you say, you know, we're all in charge of ourselves. And how do we get ourselves out of that and pursue something bigger than just sitting there in a little place and making ourselves little? Because we the life is meant to be to live for. That's that's the way I see it. Look, I'm from Tajikistan, you know, a tiny, tiny country in Central Asia. It's probably one of the smallest countries in Central Asia. We've had a civil war break out when I was a kid. So for me, like when I came to New Zealand, I was like, oh my god, this place is amazing. You guys are living in heaven because it's beautiful. You've got this mountains and hills and rivers and food. You have food. And no war. No war, you know, and it's amazing how just that shift in mindset for me that I went from I grew up in a scarcity mindset where everything you have to make sure you you hold on for things for tomorrow because you don't know what tomorrow will bring. And to come to this land of plenty. I'm not gonna start singing, and and then to see the people that live here and how disconnected they are with what they have. And so part of my journey has been is really working with my friends. Now I work a lot with my children, making sure they understand how fortunate they are to be living in New Zealand, to have a peaceful sky above their heads, you know, and to set goals because it's so easy to get complacent. Like when you go on holiday, you enjoy the holiday, but when you actually live in that place, you get a little bit like, oh so yeah, absolutely. And you know, there's a thing there for me that I think about quite a lot, actually, which is the relationship between autonomy or agency and luck. And what I mean by this is like I consider myself a high agency person. I'm someone who goes, well, if I want to do something, I can just make it happen. And I have the resources and the skills and the intelligence and the education and all that kind of stuff. And at the same time, I feel that it is almost entirely luck, if not entirely luck, that got me here. And so what I mean by that is not luck in the sense of not hard work, but luck in the sense of lucky to be wired for hard work, lucky to have the education that I had, lucky to have the parents and the genetics that I have, lucky to have the context and access to the people that I got to learn from. Like those are things that I think I'm associating luck. I'm using like the like the term privilege is maybe a better term for it, right? That all this stuff that I didn't actually earn or that kind of came to me naturally. And so there's a thing there of, you know, we see maybe someone who is from here who doesn't appreciate as much what's available here. And you've had the experience, the collection of experiences that have led you to be able to contrast one environment with another to appreciate that everything that we have here, the peace, the freedom, the food, the warmth, the you know, the education, the healthcare, all those things, that all of those things are not things that you would ever take for granted because you've had that contrast. And so there's a piece thereof, and what I'm hearing you do again, which is such a beautiful thing, is you're bringing that insight and you're inviting others to share it who haven't had that experience that you had, right? Like you're inviting your children, you're inviting the people you work with to go, actually, do you know what? We live in paradise here, and it is easy, and we should never lose sight of

Sports Lessons For Values Leadership

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the challenges that we face here. We face very real challenges here, challenges of depression, challenges of, you know, healthcare. Like there are all sorts of challenges, challenges of inequity, challenges of, you know, moving backwards for in our relationship with Tangitza Fenua. Like there's all sorts of very real challenges that we face here. And and so none of it's to diminish those. Your invitation to go while we are fighting for the things that we think are right or the things that we think should change, we can also be grateful that we can look up to the sky and feel the sun on our face. We can also be grateful that we have roofs over our head and food to eat and warm clothes, and those two things can go hand in hand at the same time. No, thank you. That was that was beautiful. That was beautiful the way you just put it in. So with your leadership one, with your leadership program, do you work with women much at all? Um quite yeah. So one of the things that's really interesting is you know, I run you you you asked me for the short version of what I do. I didn't give you a very good answer. I'm sorry. I do run in-person programs. So I trained with Brene Brown, as you mentioned in the bio, uh, Dr. Brene Brown to facilitate her Dare to Lead curriculum, which is a curriculum about building the four skill sets of courage. One of the things about courage is that we often talk about people as, you know, oh, that person's really brave. I would never be so brave. But courage, actually, it's a skill like other skills. So it's a skill that we all need to be taught, that we either get taught or we don't, that once we're taught it, we need to practice it lots in order to get good at it. And so, so, you know, it's the this program is teaching the skill sets of courage, which are number one, our ability to lean into and navigate vulnerability. Number two, our ability to turn values from fluffy words on the wall into tangible and practical behaviors we can hold ourselves to account for. Number three, our ability to trust and be trustworthy. And number four is basically resilience. Like, you know, when we, when we when we strive for courage, when we do courageous things, if we're brave enough often enough, inevitably at some point it's going to go terribly wrong. We find ourselves flat on our face. What do we do in that moment? It determines whether we end up continuing our courage muscle-building journey or whether it just becomes a workshop that we did. So I run that program. It's a three-day program. Our next one's coming up in July right here in Christchurch. I've taken thousands of people through that program. It's an incredible curriculum, it's a real gift. As I said, we also run this Crusaders program. And then I do quite a lot of custom work with organizations. I'll come in and work with senior leadership teams or with full teams about culture change or building uh growth mindset environments or building environments of accountability and ownership. And, you know, you just asked whether I do a lot of work with women. One of the things that I find fascinating is I will run a Brene Brown program and I will get 80% women coming along to that program. And I will run a Crusaders program and I get 80% men. Men on that program. And the thing that's amazing to me is that there's no daylight in what we talk about. There's no friction between these programs. You could equ you could take exactly the curriculum and there's no conflict whatsoever in what the crusaders talk about with what Brene talks about. And I don't really care. I don't care how it gets to you. I care that it lands in a way that's useful. And so if I need to use, you know, Sam Whitelock to get the message across, then fantastic. And, you know, if you'd rather hear it through Brene's research, we'll do it that way. It's fine. I love this. The reason I've asked about women, because what I'm finding is in my role, and I've got a couple of heads as well, just like you, in one of my heads, I'm finding that a lot of women tend to be left behind. You know, when they get married, usually they're the ones that take time off work to look after the kids. Then when the separations happen, they're usually the ones with lower investment KV savers, all of that sort of stuff. So it's like, you know, you've you've separated from your husband, I've separated from mine, and we had to rebuild ourselves in one way or the other. And it's about what I'm seeing is a lot of women, it takes them a lot of courage to get to that point first of the separation, and if they weren't blindsided by it. But then it takes them a lot of courage to take those financial steps as well. As going, okay, how am I going to rebuild my life? How am I going to buy the house on my own now? Or what do I need to do with my insurances and things like that. So and that's why I've asked about the leadership course and the women, because I find that a lot of women now I know they they do need things like that because that that's the courses that help them to build that skill. And I mean,

Courage Skills And Gender Gaps

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look, I don't wanna sound offensive to the men. There's also a lot of men that go through hard times and you know, they also go through separations and things happen to them too. But I I find on average it's the women that tend to be left behind a little bit. So I'm so grateful that programs like yours exist to help those women find their voices again, find that courage again to keep going in life. Yeah. So so first of all, I'm so I'm so grateful that you mentioned men also. You know, I am a huge advocate for men. And I think men suffer far more than maybe the headlines would indicate. Greater rates of depression, greater rates of suicide, die earlier, all the more dangerous professions. And so I'm a huge fan of a of a worldview that uplifts men and women. And what I'm hearing you say, and uh, and so important, is this thing of going, you know, when we get this setback, when we get this knockback, what can I reach for? What have I cultivated in myself that can help me navigate this with grace and with courage and with empathy for others and compassion for myself? And, you know, you mentioned about money, about people getting, you know, splitting up and then having to deal with financial setbacks. There are all sorts of things in this world that are that can be so impacted by our emotions and by the stories that we have. And what I mean by that is I might have grown up with a story of I'm I'm poor. I don't have, I don't have enough. And that story might impact my relationship with money going forward. And it might impact it in such a way that I go, actually, I need to make a ton of money. It doesn't matter how much money I make, it's never going to be enough. And I have to keep working forever. And I have to, you know, and I'm always could be always anxious about money, no matter how much money I have. Or it could be that I don't go for a big job because I believe myself that there's no way anyone's ever going to pay me that kind of money in order, right? Like it can play out in all sorts of ways. But money, food, education, our health, these are all things that in addition to the tangible environments we find ourselves in, we carry stories and noise about. And when we can give people the gift of going, actually, what do I want here? What do I choose here? What can I own here in terms of my decisions, my approach, my intentions, my well-being, my self-care, then it unlocks a freedom for us that has nothing to do with money and everything to do with owning our own, being the authors of our own story. I love that. I absolutely love that. And I guess through your podcast and stuff, like you mentioned, you interview a lot of high performers that gone from really average families, right? A lot of them didn't come from rich, crazy rich families that had it all. And they suddenly become high-performing sportsmen. And then what I see as well is a lot of those sportsmen, that money story just shifts in their head because suddenly they're earning a lot of money, but they just don't know what to do with that. And then they either start wasting it because that's what everyone else is doing around them. You know, they're having parties, they're buying uh fancy things, fancy houses, whatever. Or if they have a great mentor in their life that they can listen to, then they can actually channel that money and rewrite those stories for themselves of what to do with that money. And how can money be a tool to get them to the next level? Because once that sports career ends, what's beyond that? And and I guess you interviewed a lot of people that would have shared those stories with you as well. Yeah, it's it's really interesting. We've never we're completely outside my area of expertise here. I don't talk about money very often with the folks on my podcast. I will say the story you're describing, I've heard that story, right? I've seen it online. I've I've read stories about people having that experience. You know, if you become an NBA basketball player, it's kind of from a financial perspective, it's kind of like winning the lottery. You're sort of catapulted into this into this world. One person that I follow on LinkedIn that I really recommend following is a guy called Spencer Keith Jones. So, Spencer Keith Jones, he is probably the number one basketball player on LinkedIn. And he plays for the Denver Nuggets. And I've been following him for a while. He when he first started playing for the Nuggets, he was what's called a two-way contract. So it means you can play for the major league, you can play for the league below, and they can sort of flip you back and forth however they feel like it. And I started following him then. And he was really documenting his whole journey on LinkedIn. But to be fair, he did go to Stanford. So this is a guy who is highly educated, highly motivated. But he talks about all the things that are within his control and what is not within his control. He talks about the increase in pressure. He talks about the money, his relationship with money, and that so many people, when they first get into the big leagues and they start making the kind of money that those guys make. You know, one of the first things I do is I buy a fancy car and he's like, here's what I've done. I've I spent my money like this, I've invested over here, I've decided to go with a sneaker brand that I can take equity. And so he's really communicating his journey on all of those levels and really well worth a follow, even if you're not really interested in basketball. He's a fascinating guy. Thank you. I've written that down. Yeah. Spencer Keith Jones, you heard it here. Because we do need that. We, you know, there's the way I see it is money is a thing that people will always have in life to deal with, right? It's whether you're earning your first paycheck and you want to go out with your mates to a movie and buy a burger, or whether you're getting married and you're saving for your home, whether you're retiring and you need to plan for the retirement. You know, money is always part of our journey in life. And how much money do you have? How much money do you need is always the conversation. And every time you go to any barbecue party, you know, there's always someone talking about something to do with money, whether they're buying a house, whether they're buying a rental, whether they're buying a business, how the business is doing, et cetera, et cetera. So that's why I'm always fascinated. How do people deal with money in life? And then also I find with the leadership skills, just to tie it back in with you, the way I see the leadership is if you can be a fantastic leader, lead yourself, develop certain habits, then the money will

Money Stories And Asking For More

27:00

also come into play. Usually. Usually you will know what to do with your money because then you're sort of leading the way. That's the way I see it. Correct me if I'm I'm wrong, if my thinking is wrong. Yeah, I mean, I hope so. I like I feel like there are a lot of people who can be really outstanding leaders and who have a kind of a blockage when it comes to money. And so I I I think you know, there's a thing there of, you know, that's saying, like, do what you love and the money will follow. And lots of people try that and it doesn't work. And so I I don't want people to feel like, oh, I must be failing at doing what I love, right? Hang on a second, I'm just gonna just gonna have a little uh throat lozenge here. Bear with me. So I you know, again, I come back to that thing of money, is in particular, is one of those areas where we have so many stories often about it, and our ability to accept receiving money. I'll tell you my favorite money story. So years ago, a friend of mine and I hosted a dinner party. It was called a stone soup dinner party, which is a concept my friend Stuart came up with Stuart Candy. And the premise of a stone soup dinner party is you bring a dish and a plate. And so uh sorry, you bring a dish and a story. So everyone, the party is basically created by everyone bringing a dish and a story. And so we're at this party, and a friend of hers came along and shared this story. And basically the story was that this woman, she was a hotshot music producer, and she's told the story of how she got started. When she first got started, she was working in public television when MTV first came on the scene, so like 1986. And MTV gets started. So she goes, she applies for a job at MTV, and they say, What are your salary expectations? And she's going, man, in her head, you know, she's like, I don't know what to say here. I can't tell them what I'm making now. I'm working at public television. Like it's peanuts. There's no way. I don't know what to ask for. I don't want to be ridiculous. I don't want to under undersell myself. So this woman says, you know, I don't really know what an appropriate salary expectation is, but I do know you wouldn't dream of paying me less than you pay the male producers. At the time, she was the only, she was the only female producer there. She says they ended up hiring her and paying her a dollar more than the highest paid male producer at the time, which already is a great story. But but beyond that, she said one of the things that happened was within about 10 minutes, they completely forgot why she was the highest paid producer. And all they knew was that she was the highest paid producer. And so when the Rolling Stones come, or you know, you two or whatever, they're like, okay, we need to give you our best. Who's our best? Well, who's the highest paid? It's her. Get her on the thing. So all of a sudden, the entire course of her trajectory shifted because of that one thing of going, actually, I'm gonna position myself at the top of this group rather than in the middle or at the bottom, how we might otherwise. And that story is always stuck with me, right? This thing of going, actually, who who am where am I positioning myself in terms of what my worth is in this place? And how do I make sure that I'm positioning myself? It doesn't even matter how much it is, that I'm positioning myself appropriate, relatively speaking, for what I'm offering. I love that story. You know what? I'm gonna tell my clients to use that because often when I work with clients and I say to them, look, your income is a little bit low, you know, if you were earning a little bit more, you could have borrowed for this house. Because sometimes people come to me with a house they want to buy, and I'm like, Oh, you're a little bit short here. So usually I encourage them to go back to their employers and ask for a pay increase. And a lot of my clients actually end up getting pay increase because they're like, hey, we've been loyal to you, but now we need to buy a house. Can we please, you know, get a little bit of pay increase and then the application works? Awesome. So I love that line though. That's a really cool line to use because you're not really giving them a number, but you're putting it in into their court well enough for them to do something about it. Yeah, you know, I um I I created a program after running the Dare to Lead program for so many years. I ended up creating a program called Courageous Communication, which is about getting great and having hard conversations. And there's I wrote an ebook about it. You can download it from my website, that's a pretty robust book that kind of covers the whole framework. But one of the things that I cover in there is the five types of hard conversation. And one of the five types is I need to ask you. It's when we're having a hard conversation where we're asking for something outside of our comfort zone. And one of the examples is asking for a pay rise. And for those conversations, one of the things that I always like that my kind of guidance for it is acknowledge your fear to yourself and then set it aside. Don't try to not have it. Yeah, don't try to suppress it, but just go, yep, that is a true fact. I do feel scared to have that this conversation. And you go, I'll come back to you as soon as the conversation's over. You can you can sit over there, fear. I'll come back to you as soon as the conversation's over and we can have a cry or eat some popcorn or whatever we need to do. Acknowledge to self, consider the value exchange. When we're asking for a pay rise, we're not asking for a favor.

Frameworks For Hard Conversations

32:32

Yeah. So the value, the, and I have sample phrases throughout the whole thing. And so the sample phrase there is I'm really proud of the contributions I've made to this organization, such as X, Y, and Z. I'd like those increased contributions be reflected in my pay. So I'm asking for a pay rise of Q. Love it. Love it. And then you just wait for them to respond. And then you see what they say. Easy. That sounded way too easy. Also rehearse it before you go in. Like say it a few times. One of the things that happened, so you know, I ran TEDx Christchurch for a decade and I worked with hundreds of speakers. And I'd always say, Are you have you been rehearsing your talk and the oh yeah, yeah, I'm saying it to myself while I'm in the car? And I'm like, Are you saying it out loud? Until you say it out loud, until you taste the words, you don't know how the words are going to taste. And so practicing something out loud makes a massive difference in our comfort level when we go to have the actual conversation. That's really good. My mind is not ticking away, going, okay. Because the hardest conversations are usually the ones that we try to avoid and we leave them for the for the absolute last until we really have to do them. So is it something that you can help people through your program? Absolutely. You know, one of the things that I've noticed is that human beings are terrible at assessing risk. And the reason we're so terrible at assessing risk is that we put all of our efforts into assessing the risk of doing the thing, and virtually none of our efforts into assessing the risk of not doing the thing, of keeping on how we are. And so, for example, you know, you and I have to have a hard conversation. And I go, man, I really don't want to do this. Zebanisa, I'm so afraid of her. She's so intimidating. And, you know, she might get upset with me, she might be mad, she might yell at me, she might fire me, you know, I don't, what do I do? What do I do? And so I worry about all the things that are all the bad things that could happen when I go to have this conversation. And what I don't spend any time on is how much of my sacred, precious, non-renewable time am I spending now worrying about it instead of having the hard conversation. You know, when I run this program, I often talk to the participants before and after. And I ask questions like, what would it mean to you if you were able to have these conversations that you've been putting off? I've had people say things to me like, it would mean I could stop drinking so much. It would mean I wouldn't have a pit in my stomach all the time. It would mean I could sleep at night. Like this, we don't factor that in. It's tempting to avoid. We don't factor the cost to ourselves when we do avoid those conversations. And if we did, I think we'd be much more inclined to have them because we would recognize that we're suffering just as much from not having them as we are from doing the brave thing and having the conversation. But how do you teach that? How do you how do you teach people that? I mean, that's what the framework is for. Yeah. There's a there's a huge thing there, which is I don't want to have this conversation because I don't know how it's gonna go and I'm scared about how you're gonna react. And I and I feel like when I go in to have these conversations, what I get all the time. I I go in to have these conversations and I'm just gonna freeze because I don't know what to say. And so we break that down. Hard conversations are a skill, they're a muscle like every other muscle. You can learn it, you can practice it, you can get better at it, stronger at it, more familiar with it. And when we do that, it removes a lot of the mystery. And often, you know, the the thing that makes it scary is the unknown. And so, you know, the monster in the closet is scary because it doesn't have details, right? As soon as we open the closet door and turn the light on, we go, oh, it's just it's just a hat on a chair. Like that's why why was I so scared of this, right? It's the same with hard conversations. And so when we learn, okay, what type of conversation is this? Oh, okay, it's uh I need to talk to you about your behavior. Okay, great. What are what are the kind of phrases I might use for that? How do I engage in this conversation in a way that is constructive to changing behavior as opposed to I'm mad at you and I'm just gonna, you know, and now we're fighting? How do I make sure I'm invited? Okay, what if it's not? Or what if it's what if it's too late and I need to, you know, performance manage this person or let them go or whatever? Okay, that's a different type of hard conversation. That's I need to tell you, okay, great, I've got clarity. How do I need how do I deal with those conversations? There's a whole, you know, approach to that. And when we understand those things, then not only do these conversations become less mysterious, but in becoming less mysterious, they become less scary. No, absolutely agree. As you were talking, I was also thinking about the age of AI that we're living in and how does it all change all of this for the future generations? Because

AI, Sycophancy And Relationship Friction

37:16

what I'm finding is a lot of people now having those conversations with ChatGPT or Claude, you know, they might have they might share their feelings and they might get reassurance from ChatGPTs because the way they've been built is to constantly reassure you and tell you how great you are and how right you are, rightly or wrongly. So, how do you think the AI is changing the behavior of people? Or what do you see right now in your field? Yeah, it's a great question. So I'll preface this by saying I use AI all the time, and I have massive, massive, massive concerns about it. And one of the concerns I have is specifically what you're just describing. You know, right at the beginning of this conversation, uh, we talked about the earthquake and you asked about resilience. And I was talking about how every difficult situation is an opportunity for us to practice. When we engage with AI and it gives us reassurance or it tells us that we're right, or it, you know, practices they call it sycophancy, right? Like tells us how great we are, then what we're doing is we are removing our opportunities to practice. Now we're all we're human beings. My favorite definition of human is that we're all just imperfect meat sacks, stumbling through life. Yeah. We're human beings. If we can be lazy, we're gonna be. If we can avoid pain and discomfort, we're gonna. That's how we're wired, right? And so it's understandable if there is a mechanism that I can reach for that lets me avoid pain and discomfort, of course I'm gonna reach for it. I'm gonna go, Chat GPT, you know, Zebanisa and I had this, I had this argument. And what do you think? And Chat GPT is gonna say, you know, I really think you're right here. I'm going, oh yeah, that feels good. That feels a lot better than actually hashing it out and wondering what my role was in this situation, right? And so the concern that I have in that is that unless we understand that actually that interpersonal friction is the exact same as us going to the gym and lifting weights or going to aquafit or Zumba or whatever it is that we do to move our bodies and create tension and friction in our bodies so they stay strong and flexible. Our strength and flexibility in interpersonal relationships come from our ability to navigate challenge with each other. And the depth of our relationships increases to the degree that we've been able to work through discomfort together. And so, if there's one thing that I would tell people who are using AI, and like I said, I use it all the time, I'm not anti-AI. If there's one thing I would say to people is to appreciate that the path to deep, beautiful, connected relationships is via the interpersonal friction that we're going to encounter. And if we're using AI as we would understandably do, because we're just human beings, if we're trying to use AI to avoid that discomfort, we are missing out on the entire point of human relationships. I love that. I really, really love that. Because I feel like AI has a place in our society. There's definitely a lot of things that AI helps us to do faster, maybe better. But at the end of the day, AI is only as good as the user that's using their brain. So for me, I always uh I I usually have arguments with my AI going, are you sure you're right? I'm chill, I'm gonna challenge you on this, you know. I don't believe this is correct. And it's amazing how the more you challenge it, the more it learns that it does need to give you better answers next time. Because if you don't challenge it, it's just gonna give you that glossover and it's gonna make you feel good. And you're right, like it does make you feel good because it's it's the easiest option versus understanding where are your own shortfalls. What did you do wrong? And how can you improve that going forward? And how can you have those hard conversations? Yeah. AI is only as good as your own discernment. The way that I like to think about it is that it's like a robotic exoskeleton. It can make you stronger, faster, you know, more powerful, but you are the one wearing it and you are the one who decides where you want to go. And if you step on something or knock something over or whatever, it's on you. And that to me is a useful framing of it because it still requires us to be the ones going, oh, I'm the one stomping around here, you know, breaking things and stepping on small woodland creatures or whatever it might be. Oh, Kayla, the way I see you, you you've built successful companies, you you have this amazing emotional maturity and you're training the future leaders of the world in New Zealand. I want to know, I want to get inside your brain for a minute there and understand what does success actually feel like from the inside, and does it look like what you've imagined? That's an interesting question. I I I'd like to unpack it. And the first

Success, Purpose And Mortality

42:24

thing I'd like to unpack is the word success. And what I would say is that you know, success has many faces and many definitions. Some people measure success by money, some people measure it by titles or by awards or by recognitions or honors, some people measure it by family, some people measure it by physical accomplishment. There are so many definitions of it, and there's each definition is unique to that person. And I certainly don't feel like yeah, like for so if I think about my definition of success, I don't have any kind of definition of success that is a destination. Like I've made it, I've succeeded. But you mentioned in the bio, and it's interesting that the bio was pulled from well, would you say it was Chat GPT or Claude? Claude, yeah. I I'm a Claude user, definitely. But you mentioned the bio, my purpose in life. Sorry, forgive me. My purpose in life, which is to be an uplifting presence. And I chose that because it's a purpose that doesn't have a start and an end. It's a purpose that for me is about how I show up every day and whether I show up in a way that is generous and open and curious, and that people feel that they've been left better off because they've encountered me. Now I've I've failed at that many, many times. And, you know, you're probably people listening to this podcast who are like, really? Her. But that's the that's the kind of core. Driver for me. One of the things I think about a lot is my inevitable death. And I think I think it's really helpful, like beneficial to appreciate that we are all going to die in a minute. And success for me is if I died tomorrow, would I have left anything unsaid? Would I be proud of how I showed up? Would I be at peace with what I've been able to do? And because there is no, you know, there's no end game in any of it. You can, you know, break all sorts of records and then there'll be your own record will be there for you to break again, or someone else will come and break your record. Now you got to do it again. You know, there's no end game ever. And so for me, success is just about like, can I be at peace with what I see when I look in the mirror? And if I were to die tomorrow, would I be at peace with what I've been able to do with this short time that I've had? We only have such a short time here. So yeah, I don't know if that answers your question. We do. And are you at peace at the moment? Am I what at peace at the moment? I am. Thank you for asking. That's awesome. You know, it's funny when you were talking about death, a lot of the things I've achieved in life was always because I had that at the back of my head. My dad passed away when he was 44. So for me, I and I was only seven years old. My mom was 37 when he passed away. And for me, it was always the case of if my dad died so early, you know, a lot of things can happen. A lot of things can happen at such an uh unexpected way. And you know, you just never know what's around the corner. So for me, I always tried to live my life at large in terms of enjoying it, you know, regardless of what went on, sad moments, bad moments, whatever. I never tried to stick in those bad areas too long because I was like, well, I never I might die tomorrow. I don't want to die sad. So for me, it was always about making the positive out of every situation and looking forward, going, okay, what can I do now? What's next in terms of not just success, as you said, business or money, or you know, for me it was all always about uh enjoying the time I have on this earth, but also helping others around me have a more meaningful life and uplifting them. And it's funny how our phrases sort of match each other a little bit because I I gave a I gave a graduation speech last December at the university where I went to, and one of my phrases was around that you've got to lift each other, you know, because if if we all lift each other, the world is just gonna be such a better place for everyone to live in. And now that I have all these kids, I'm like, I can't leave the world a worse-off place. Like I gotta work harder now to leave the world a better place because I have social responsibility. I had this children, I owe it to them, you know. Like in uh Maori culture, they say that we've borrowed the land. It's from our from our future generation. Yeah. You've got to leave it a better place. Well, your children are lucky to have you. And I do think that coming to terms with our mortality, it might sound morbid or like, why would you want to think about that? It's so freeing. It's so freeing. You know, you go, Oh, we're all gonna be dead in a minute. Why would I be so upset about that? Why would I spend my time worrying about this other thing? And it's not to say that there are no worries or whatever, right? But but it's to just go, you know, like keep a little bit of perspective on it. Like we're here for such a brief moment, such a brief moment, and just to share like love and generosity and you know, whatever, whatever puny wisdom we might have to offer, like why not? You know, we're we're gonna be gone in just a moment anyway. I love this. If we were to leave our listeners with one final message from you, what would be the core message you want to leave the listeners with? Anything you like from any of your multiple heads. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna pull one. I'm not much for advice, right? I don't if whoever, if you are if you're listening to

Forgive Yourself Everything

48:32

this right now, I don't know you, I don't know your situation, I absolutely believe you are doing your best with whatever you are dealing with. And so I'm I'm on your side and and I'm cheering for you. I can say that I will the only advice that I'm ever willing to share is I first came up with when my best friend from uni had her first baby. And her mother reached out to me and said, Oh, we're pulling together a book of advice for her as she becomes a new mother. You know, can you send us something for this book? And I was like, What? What are you talking about? Why are you asking me? I'm not a mother. What do I know? I know nothing about having kids. And so I gave her advice. I sent her something and I stand by it to this day, and I stand by it for everybody, whether you're a parent or not a parent, or what everybody in life. My advice is forgive yourself everything. Forgive yourself everything. And with her in the context of becoming a mother, what I said was look, every single person I know who has kids before they had the kids, they had this fantasy of how it was gonna go. They were gonna be the great, this great, they were never gonna get angry, they were never gonna use the TV as a babysitter, they were never gonna bribe their kids with chocolate. And then the kid is born, and immediately all those ideas go completely out the window, and they're like, just shut up, stop screaming, whatever. And just forgive yourself everything. And it holds true in all the rest of life as well. You know, we have all these dreams about how we're gonna be and how smart and how fit we're gonna get up at five in the morning, we're gonna meditate, we're gonna go to the gym, we're gonna eat healthy, and we're gonna, you know, reconcile with our estranged parents or whatever it is, and just some sometimes those things happen and sometimes they don't. And for us just to forgive ourselves everything, we are just imperfect meat sacks, stumbling through life, we're all gonna be dead tomorrow, and just forgive yourself everything. I love that. I absolutely love that. I often try to think of will this matter in 12 months' time? Will this matter in five years' time? Like when I try to think of hard things that happened like five years ago, I'm like, I can't even remember that. Like, yeah, what was I so upset about back then? So, yeah, forgiving yourself. I think that's very important. I think that's that again, that's a skill to learn. I think that's a muscle to develop. It's I don't think we're easily born with that as human beings. Yeah, it takes practice. And the thing is, you know, if you go to the gym for the first time, you don't expect to be able to bench press 100 kilos on day one. You expect it's gonna be hard and you're gonna have to learn how to do it, and you're gonna have to, you know, overcome some mental hurdles before you start to see the progress. And the same is true with courage, the same is true with forgiveness, the same is true with hard conversations, right? These are all things that, like, okay, we shouldn't expect that day one, you know, I read a book about it, or I heard a podcast, or I attended one of Kyla's courses, you know, Dare to Lead or Courage Communication, and now I'm great at it. You know, these are things that we learn the skills. It's like having a personal trainer. You learn the exercises, and then you go have to go do the work, practice every day, get stronger at it, get better at it. And it does get better, absolutely. I love it. I love it. Kyla, thank you so much. You've been such a beautiful guest to have and sharing the knowledge and sharing your background, sharing what you want to bring to this world. It's just beautiful to have humans like you walking this earth. So I'm just grateful for that. Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you. Hope so. Thank you so much, Kyla, and wishing you a beautiful week ahead. Stay warm in Christchurch. Thank you.