Episode 388: Kylie Lewis of Of Kin
How can vulnerability and authenticity enhance your leadership style? In this episode, Fiona chats with Kylie Lewis, founder of Of Kin. She shares insights on leadership, personal growth and so much more. From her digital marketing roots to navigating business challenges, Kylie's wisdom shines through in this engaging conversation. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Kylie’s journey from digital marketing to leadership training
Misconceptions about leadership
Importance of continuous growth and learning
Strategies for creating a sense of belonging in virtual work environments
Challenges in workplace communication
Creating inclusive and open communication channels
Addressing communication gaps in remote teams
Recognizing the value of employee feedback
Acknowledging and appreciating employee strengths
Leadership beyond the workplace
Nurturing personal growth and resilience
Workshops and programs for leadership development
Resources for enhancing communication skills
Strategies for creating positive work environments
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
“I believe in that thing about what you are curious about and what gives you energy and paying attention to that. I've got kids at uni. I read this thing online and it said, “Don't worry about trying to choose what to do forever. Worry about thinking about what you want to do first.” It's that idea of where I'm at right now with what I know, the resources that I have, where I am in the world, what am I curious about, what gives me energy, what can I show up for, and what matters and having those questions. I followed the scent of that.”
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Welcome to episode 388 of the My Daily Business podcast. This episode is an interview and this is with somebody who I have known for quite a few years and somebody that I respect, admire, and look up to. I definitely know that you're going to get so much from this interview as I did even recording this interview and getting to talk to this person.
Before we get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the lands on which I meet these people and talk and record this podcast and that is the Woiwurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to remind you is that it is Group Coaching’s final time to apply. We kick off in early March 2024 and if you would like to be part of this, you can apply and find all the information at MyDailyBusiness.com/groupcoaching. You can always join the wait list or, if it's later in the year, apply for the next program that we are running. Let's get into our small business interview.
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I was trying to remember where I met this person for the first time and it was way back in 2016 when I was running an event at ACMI. I believe that a mutual friend of ours had invited this person to the event and, afterwards, we got chatting. Instantly, her warmth, friendliness, and this wonderful curiosity about life came through. In the years since, I have experienced that same warmth, generosity, and the most beautiful spirit so I had to invite her on to the podcast.
Who am I talking about? I'm talking about the wonderful Kylie Lewis, the founder of Of Kin, which many of you will know. I'm sure that many of you have also read her book, The Leap Stories, and maybe followed the blog for a long time and have followed Kylie through all the iterations of her business.
Kylie is a leadership expert and works with people on the scene to understand who we are as leaders. That doesn't necessarily mean just people in the executive or C-suite level, the MDs, or the CEOs of a business but rather any one of us, whether we have a business or we work in-house but just how we show up as leaders in our own lives. Also, in this case, because this is a business podcast, how we show up as leaders in our businesses.
It's a fascinating story of how she came up with the name Of Kin and what it has meant to her in terms of business over the years. Kylie and I both started in digital marketing and online worlds and she decided to remove herself from there and start her own business, bringing that same information to small business owners. Over time, the business has evolved and changed and adapted. She talks about in this episode how those changes came about and how it ruminated to a point that she was like, “Yes, this is where I'm going to direct myself in the business.”
We also talk about all sorts of things, what it was like to work and learn from Brené Brown and how those teachings have impacted the way that Kylie creates her business offerings. Also, we look at all sorts of things like what does it mean to be vulnerable? How can we create and foster a sense of belonging when we have remote staff or we have people working in different places, sometimes outside of a physical location? We talk about so many things.
Honestly, I was recording this particular podcast on a hot day and I had to finish at a certain time so that I could go and collect my children from school. Honestly, I was like, “I wish I could somehow add another three hours of conversation in.” Kylie is that type of person that you just want to keep learning from and growing with. It is such a delight for me to have her on this podcast. I had her down as a person to invite onto the podcast when I started this podcast years ago. It is absolutely wonderful to have her on.
Kylie reminded me that the last time that we'd recorded together was at the very start of the pandemic and lockdowns here in Melbourne. I had started a free Facebook group to have people in there to share how they were going in the middle of lockdown and pandemic. What I did was to invite people in to share their wisdom and Kylie was the very first person that I invited into that group.
We were laughing and looking at how much has changed over the years but also how much hasn't changed. The world is still in such a flux. We talk about that as well and what it means to be human in today's world and what it means particularly for business owners and dealing with everything that's going on in the world as well as trying to run a business and trying to show up as a good human, which Kylie is doing incredibly well at. Here is my interview with the wonderful Kylie Lewis from Of Kin.
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Welcome to the podcast, Kylie. How are you feeling about life right now?
Thanks for having me, Fiona. That's a difficult question to ask specifically on this day at this time that we're meeting but it's an important one to ask and not take so flippantly because the context in which we're meeting is pretty full. When you ask me the question, how am I feeling about life? I'm feeling very heavy-hearted for the multiple conflicts that are happening across the world that we're living through and particularly what's happening as we gather. I'm feeling very heavy-hearted about that.
I'm also feeling that paradoxical gratitude for being able to show up in my life each day, caring for my own family and helping them navigate into the various stages that they're all happening in their life, and also wondering what the year ahead lies. February is that landing-back-into-the-year after spending some time out of our routines and looking at a somewhat fresh slate ahead of us and thinking what's possible. How am I feeling about life being paradoxical?
I couldn't agree more. You've just summed it up so eloquently, which is something you're well known for and something that you do in your business. You take such deep things and complex ideas and you bring them in such a beautiful way. Tell us about your business. What is Of Kin? Why the name, when, why, and how did you start it?
I'm a leadership facilitator, trainer, educator, and coach. I work with teams and I work with leaders who come along to do public programs on leadership. Specifically, the one that I'm most heavily invested in at the moment is the Dare to Lead program based on the research of Brené Brown and also digging into what psychological safety looks like, feels like, and what are the behaviors of those based on the work of Amy Edmondson and Timothy Clark.
I run predominantly online programs for teams and I also do public programs for anybody who wants to come along and do that. I run webinars and workshops around topics of courage, vulnerability, leadership, rising after setbacks, living into values, what does trust look like, and understanding vulnerability, the things that make us human.
Before that, I was a digital strategist and I worked in digital for twenty years. I was left out to do my own thing. I was working in digital strategy until I came across Brené Brown's work. I went, “Do you know that degree that I got in psychology and sociology way back when?” I feel like listening to her. That's where I want to be.
I was where I was working and I was sitting in marketing overseeing this massive digital transformation project but I was looking over at HR doing training, education, and learning and I was feeling pulled towards that. The leap that I made to start my own business was doing what I was already doing but doing it on my terms and taking what I knew from the corporate world out to small businesses.
The funny thing was that the name was registered much earlier than that. Of Kin was an idea that I had while I was working in three jobs prior to that, that was a side hustle, which I wanted to make organic cotton t-shirts. I knew that to make them fair trade, sweatshop-free, organic, and all of that stuff, there would be a price point at that, that people who appreciated and understood the ethics behind consumption would be prepared to pay for.
They felt like kin, they felt like people who somewhat shared similar values and ideas. It was Next of Kin, I took off the Next and just had Of Kin. It popped that idea and then picked up the name. It works well when you're talking about social media and digital connections and online communities. It works just as well now in the work that I'm doing because it's all about our common humanity.
I had no idea about the t-shirts business. It reminds me of when I was about 18, I went on this journey questioning the faith that I'd been brought up in and everything else. I went on a big journey of reading all these different books and I remember one from the Dalai Lama, which talked about being present and thinking as small in detail as the thread that has been put into a button that is on your shirt and who did that and that we're all connected.
Everything that you said reminded me of that passage and me being like, “Yes, we are all connected. Our world is connected.” I love that so much. I love that whole story. There must have been a seed somewhere in you that did that and then as it changed and developed, it's still so perfectly aligned to everything that you're doing. I love asking people these questions because you get all these amazing answers. As you've said, it has changed over the years.
You got into Dr. Brené Brown's work and changed things but how do you decide to shift and what does that look like on a practical level? You used to do, back in the day, Instagram workshops, marketing workshops, business coaching, and then into more leadership and organizational stuff and the Brené Brown work. When do you decide to change and how do you even share that change with your audience?
It was a real iteration over time. The leap that I took to go out of working in corporate to doing something for myself was driven by a big 12 to 18 months before that of a lot of personal challenges and professional challenges. I got to the end of that period of time and thought, “I can't keep going the way that I'm going. Something has to change.” If I gave myself permission to think about that, what would it look like?
I was working for a brand that was an aspirational brand at the time and it encouraged you to dream. One of the products that we had was a 101 dreams journal and it was my favorite product. I drank the Kool Aid and thought, “What are the dreams that I have for my life?” That was years ago so my kids were still at primary school. I was thinking about the role model that I wanted to be for them and the lives that I was trying to help cultivate for them and the values felt for us.
I wanted them to believe in their judgment, to trust their instincts to cultivate curiosity and the courage to investigate what lights them up and to know that they can craft a life around that. Reaching this juncture where it was like, “I can't just do this anymore. I'm physically exhausted. I'm mentally spent. I've got this real itch to scratch.” The leap was made into doing what I already knew how to do but in a different environment. When I'd given myself the permission to do that, when I landed in that, it was like, “What lights me up? What gives me energy and that I enjoy doing and that I'm curious about?” Also, giving myself permission to do that.
Working in the area of digital, one year in digital is like a dog year in terms of the amount of change that you have to straddle so quickly, no sooner had I delivered an Instagram workshop and a new feature had been rolled out or there was different functionality or it was a brand-new way to do something. I got exhausted by that. I also started to see the whole game that social media is. I don't want to be part of that and I don't want to feel under the pressure to have to be across every single change and know how to do this. I was barely 1 or 2 steps ahead of everyone else.
I came across Brené’s TED Talk on the power of vulnerability and it touched a place in me that was everything that I had experienced in those last eighteen months but also probably the 42 years that had preceded that. I had studied psychology and sociology at university so it was already in me that I was curious about humanity and the way that we work, live, and grow together and what we need to do to understand about ourselves and how to have the relationships in our lives that we craved.
I worked in digital for a while and kept doing that and having fun but I was being pulled into this other direction that I recognized. This is an important part, what I think is missing in a lot of professional education is the humanizing of work and the human experience of working, particularly coming out of digital where it's 24/7 and where it's relentless innovations and cycles.
I was in retail so it's a constant cycle and you never get any downtime. We were getting sales reports three times a day. I was like, “I need to come up for breath at this point in my life and look at what's the legacy that I want to have? What do I want to invest my time in?” I want to claim my time and my energy to the things that I feel are important. I followed my curiosity and it was a bit of luck that I was in the right place at the right time.
Also, I took advantage of those moments and created a plan to say, “If I'm working in this field at the moment, what does the path look like to be able to shift?” I wrote The Leap Stories, the blog series about people who had made courageous career leaps as a way of me investigating how other people did that and sharing that with other people who also had similar questions and were curious like I was to help remind me that it is possible. It doesn't necessarily happen in one big leap, it's a lot of little leaps over time.
I did go into one-on-one coaching but I felt the pull to get a bit more scale happening. When you're working on something that you feel is important, impactful, and can help people where they are in their careers and lives, working one-on-one is powerful work but it's also slow work so I wanted to balance that out a little bit more.
Working into programs and having an opportunity to bring a group of different people together to also hear their experiences and learn from them at the same time of thinking about they're all going to now go back and share that or have some impact or conversations with all those people that are in their networks, that's where I moved to. I still do a little bit of one-on-one coaching but I have a little bit more of a balance now.
There’s much that I can relate to, particularly that digital-never-switch-off and then added that to retail. You and I both left at a similar time. You might've left a couple of years before but I can't even imagine being in those jobs now. The extra stuff of TikTok or YouTube, it's just constant. I hear you on so much of that.
You have mentioned that one of the things that you do a lot of now is The Dare to Lead workshops and you've trained with the amazing Brené Brown. How did you go from, “I watched her TED Talk like millions of other people around the globe,” to, “I'm going to train and take her teachings and then work them into my own business.” What was that like? Can you talk us through how utilizing a licensed framework or program works?
When I listened to that TED Talk and she was talking about vulnerability, it was not only resonant for all of the human stuff that was happening in my life behind-the-scenes but also vulnerability is social media and vulnerability is putting yourself out in the world. What I found was that it was complimentary to the training that I was giving so it wasn't just about, “Here’s tactically or practically how you create a piece of content and upload it.”
It was also the mindset that went along with it about recognizing that it feels quite vulnerable to put ourselves out there and to share our stories and to talk about the things that are important to us. It was quite complimentary in that way. Lucky, for Google, I'd heard this talk and it resonated with every cell in my body. I was like, “You have decoded what it means to be human. You are the only person that I know of in my lifetime that is sharing these insights and research in a way that is accessible, that makes sense to me, and that I understand. That helps me understand myself better and my relationships better.”
I was fortunate at that time that there was training available at that time. I had to go and become a certified coach in order to meet the credentials. To become a certified facilitator at that work, you had to apply for candidacy at that time. This was The Daring Way, which preceded Dare to Lead. You had to have a minimum entry-level requirement to even be considered for candidacy. It was a bit of a road to go, “I'm not going to necessarily go back and become a fully registered psychologist or social worker or after what does make sense? What's the path for me?”
Becoming a certified coach was the way that I went. Also, those skills are exceptionally helpful. Once I did that, I was able to apply to do the program and training, which was excellent training. After that period of time, you'd have to register with an organization that has a board of oversight and ethics and you need to have professional public liability insurance and professional indemnity insurance to be able to do that. You need to maintain that every year.
When Dare to Lead came out in 2018, we were offered to be able to become upskilled on that. That was such a blessing because I was working with Daring Greatly and Rising Strong Curriculum and trying to create it in this framework of what it would look like for businesses, workplaces, and teams. I have this thing that I'd hacked together called Brave Businesses. When Dare to Lead came out, it was like, now it gives it the credibility of looking through leadership and a business lens. I was off to the races when that happened.
I was in the right place at the right time to do it but I'd also made that opportunity and those choices earlier on to do that and to get curious. I believe in that thing about what you are curious about and what gives you energy and paying attention to that. I've got kids at uni. I read this thing online and it said, “Don't worry about trying to choose what to do forever, worry about thinking about what you want to do first.” It's that idea of where I'm at right now with what I know, the resources that I have, where I am in the world, what am I curious about? what gives me energy, what can I show up for, what matters, and having those questions. I followed the scent of that.
I can't even imagine what type of mum you must be to these kids at such an important age. You're so wonderful in terms of the way that you practice what you preach and such an example. I'm sure that your children are like, “Go, mum.” Also, later in life, they’d be like, “Wow, she did lead by example and show us what's possible.” I was talking to my neighbor who has gone into year eleven on my dog walk. I bumped into her and she was like, “I started year eleven. It's serious now.” I was like, “It's serious but you got the rest of your life.”
Don't think, with these next two years, “That's it. There's no change.” You can change and adapt. What you're curious about when you're 18 might be different to what you're curious about at 27. I love that you had those questions and let them light the way for you. Let's talk about leadership. What are some of the biggest or most common misconceptions about leadership and personal development that you encounter in your work? How do you address them in your coaching and your facilitation sessions?
One of the biggest things about leadership, and I still have my own internal biases of what I was brought up with, is thinking that leadership is something that happens out there and that is tied to a title rather than being a conscious choice and a practice. One thing that comes to mind when I think about leadership, I think of the saying about leading our lives. I often think that leadership is often categorized or boxed into something that we do with our career or is just done with work.
Leadership is how am I showing up consciously in my life in all arenas that I show up in? How am I making those decisions for the kind of person that I'm striving to become and to show up as and to be as authentic to myself as I possibly can in all areas of my life? One of the other misconceptions is that leadership is only something to do with work and not something to do in our lives. I keep coming back to that whole saying, you lead your life. What does that look like?
Another misconception is that leadership is about strength and stoicism rather than relationships, dialogues, self-awareness, connection, and safety. Part of my own internal bias is around thinking who is suitable as a leader. It's that whole thing, when I say Prime Minister, what's the first thing that comes to mind? It's a white man in a suit. That's what we've seen in Western cultures, at least. There's a misconception that we have to challenge that automatic bias that has built into that.
Leadership is about the kinds of relationships that we forge and what is made possible through those relationships. It’s the self-awareness that I have in consciously tending to those relationships in a way that brings out the best in people and in the potential for the work that we're doing together. Also, there's this idea that somehow, we arrive at leadership. It is like, “Maybe I've got the title, the position, the office, or whatever. I've kind of made it.” Leadership is a deliberate ongoing practice. You never really fully arrive.
It's like parenting, you never really arrive. You keep trying every day.
100%. Where am I in my life or how am I feeling about life? I'm having a real reckoning with what it looks like to be a parent of young adults. When my son finished high school and he was doing BCE during those two years of lockdown, it was like, “He's off into the world. What does that mean for me? What does that look like?”
There was a real grief associated with I don't have to enroll him into things and I don't have to take him shopping for clothes. I don't have to make him meals. It's this weird place of arriving and what that looks like. It’s that idea that we never fully arrive as a leader or as a parent or even a human being. One of my favorite sayings is that we are all a work in progress until the day we die and. That, to me, is something that I live by.
Also, a misconception about leadership is that it's loud and visible when it absolutely can be quiet and discerning. I love Susan Cain's work and researching what quiet leadership looks like. Also, we have this idea of leadership tied up with being perfect or having all the answers or always getting it right rather than it being a continual healthy striving towards excellence. It’s recognizing that we're going to make mistakes, we're going to stuff it up, and we're not going to know all the answers. We're going to need to lean into people and ask for help. We're going to make mistakes that we're going to need to go in and clean out. There are a couple of things.
There are so many great points there. I would say that you don't need to have staff to be a leader. That's one of the things that's interesting. I've recommended your workshops to numerous clients and some of them have gone and done it. It's always brilliant feedback, Kylie. I do have a couple of clients where I've said it and they've been like, “I don't have staff.” I'm like, “You're still a leader.” It’s this idea, “Unless I have a team of team,” or, “I only have 1 or 2 staff,” or, “I'm part of a duo that run this business.” It's like, “Anyone can be a leader.”
In that, because work life has changed, particularly so much since COVID as well and lockdowns and people are working remotely, what are some of the key ingredients for people who are reading who might be wanting to create that sense of belonging and connection with their teams but the teams are working remotely or no one's in the office at the same time or all of their staff might be in different countries? How do you create that sense of belonging and that connection and things that are maybe a little easier to do in person?
I appreciate the question but my mind is still back on that response that you have of people who say, “I'm not a leader,” or, “I don't lead people,” or, “I don't lead staff or I only have one.” I keep coming back to who's leading your life? How are you consciously leading your life? How are you consciously showing up with other people in relationships when you're working together to produce something or to have an impact or to affect some change. That whole idea that we lead others is only the domain of leadership.
That's why it's important we come back and we recognize, “I'm the leader of my life, first and foremost, before I lead anybody else or anything else.” How do I need to better understand how I show up to myself and in relationships with others? What could be helpful with skills around that? I wanted to go back and talk about that.
It is tied into this question around belonging because one of the things Brené talks beautifully about is that our sense of belonging with others can never be greater than the sense of belonging to ourselves first and foremost. It’s that sense of being true to who I am, knowing myself, and not betraying myself in order to try and fit in those places. Belonging, as she defines it, is a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, to get uncomfortable, and to learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. It's one of our most primitive needs, it shows up in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Love and belonging go hand in hand, both belong with belonging.
What does it look like to tend to relationships? What do we need in order to feel like we are seen, we are known, we are appreciated, and we are valued? That's a conversation that is worth having with your teams. You don't want to necessarily make assumptions that are one-size-fits-all for everybody or every team or every person. This is where the work on understanding psychological safety can be helpful.
Timothy Clark has this great model called The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. Psychological safety is about how safe it is for me to show up vulnerably in this organization? He talks about how safe is it for me to belong here. Do people know how to pronounce my name correctly? Are they interested in me as a person and not just as an employee? Are they engaging me with conversations that are relational and not just transactional? Are there opportunities to get to know and show appreciation for me as the human being I am? How safe is it for me to belong?
The second stage is how safe is it for me to be a learner? How safe is it for me to ask questions, admit that I don't know something, ask for help, and admit when I've made a mistake? It’s all of those things of how safe it is to be a learner and to recognize that we're all ongoing learners. The third stage is how safe is it for me to be a contributor, to contribute my ideas, speaking up with new ideas, asking questions that get us to think a bit differently and that you have a different point of view on something, or you can see a different way of doing something? How safe is it for me to speak up and contribute my ideas? Is that welcome?
The last one is how safe is it for me to challenge the status quo? How safe is it for me to push back and say, “Have we considered this? I'm worried that we're not being aligned with our values if we do this,” or, “I'm worried about the unforeseen consequences that this might have,” or, “I don't think we're addressing the core issue of why this is happening in the first place.” A useful framework for people to work on is how are we showing that people are safe to belong here and that we value them as human beings first and foremost?
How safe is it for them to be a learner? How safe is it for them to contribute and how safe is it for them to challenge? What are all the processes and mechanisms that we can put in place to ensure that we are addressing those human needs that we have? How do we run meetings? How do we get feedback? How do we give feedback? How do we make sure that we've got regular routines of checking in and regular rhythms of communication.
Also, ways of making sure that when people do have issues and concerns, they do feel that they will be heard and that is welcome in the service of continual improvement and in the service of building and fostering greater relationships. There's no one-size-fits-all. There are things like making sure that you do have moments for connecting with people and that it's not all just transactional all the time.
When you're working in a virtual environment, there's the potential for that to happen. Do you have a Slack channel that's just about sharing photos of your dogs and what you're having for lunch? Is there a virtual book club or places where we can coalesce not just on task related things but on stuff that is the humaneness of being together?
I'm editing my second book that's coming out. I was double-checking all the facts and I put this calculation and I went back and I was like, “Is that correct?” The average person, if they work 40 hours a week, between let's say 16 and 70-ish, is around 114,000 hours that we were at work. Let's say you're an employee of any business and you're in a company for nine years, that's tens of thousands of hours of your life.
As you were talking, I was thinking about some of the places that I've worked and I was like, “Dear God, there was no communication outside of, ‘Is this done? When is it done?’” If we think about meetings, it was hierarchical. Who could get into the meeting? “Why is that person in the meeting? Tell them to leave. They're not at our level.” There’s much that people can do and you gave so many amazing examples there. Many people reading will be like, “Oh.”
I only have one staff member who works every day and she works whatever hours she wants to work in the course of a week. I know, even with us, we'll get busy and we'll stop doing our one-to-ones and we've instigated them again. It’s that Zoom one-to-one and being like, “How are you?” She was like, “How are you?” I was like, “This and this is happening.” It's important, especially if you have remote stuff, to have that. You don't have, “We just bumped into each other making cups of tea in the coffee room in the morning.” You don't have that little conversation happening and it can get transactional like you talked about.
There was a team that I was working with that we're going through the Dare to Lead program and they're a remote team. We had people in New South Wales, Victoria, and WA and we were going through the Dare to Lead program. One of the things that we do in the program is we look at the things that get in the way of building a courageous culture in the organization. We did a bit of a survey based on some options and criteria from Brené’s research.
One of the top things that emerged from them was this idea of tying their self-worth to productivity. It was interesting and it was an invitation for them to kick off a conversation outside of training. One of the people said that part of the reason why he voted towards that being an issue was because they're working remotely was, they hadn't necessarily redefined what it looked like to show up at work. There was this idea that because when you physically show up into an office, you've already met part of an obligation, expectation, or boundary that you're physically present so that accounts for something.
If we haven't then spent the time to say, “If we don't have that environment, how do we define showing up?” In the absence of data, we will always make up stories. We will make up our own stories about what's acceptable and what's not acceptable and what are people thinking if I have taken an hour out of the afternoon to take my dog for a walk and pick up the kids from school. If we haven't spent some time going, “We're actually in this environment. What are some of our fears?”
A great tool of psychological safety is to have the fear conversation and say, “I'm afraid that people will think that I'm slacking off. I'm afraid that if I don't answer within 30 seconds, people don't think of me as an expert or whatever it is.” It’s to say, “These are the stories that I'm making up and the response to those stories at the moment is that I'm creating all this extra work for myself,” or, “I'm suspicious of other people,” or whatever it is.
That idea of what are the boundaries of what's okay and what's not okay given the context in which we operate now, let's revisit those, let's set them up, and have some common language. What are our non-negotiables? Where's the flexibility? What's some language that we use to check in? Where's the assumption of positive intent we have straight out of the bat before we jump in with judgment? Part of it was about redefining or getting clarity around what's okay and what's not okay and defining that for them and initiating that conversation.
The second thing was also making sure that their leaders had made sure that they understood the value and the strengths that they bring to the organization and spent some time giving feedback when things were going well and things that they appreciated and not just when they had a question or things didn't go well, for example. That comes down to making sure that you do know who your staff are. With this organization, a for-purpose organization, they were invested and the work that they do is meaningful.
Also, we can forget that the things that we are strong at, we often overlook because they feel easy for us and we forget how valuable they are. Sometimes we need people to remind us that for the things that we've felt maybe easy, therefore, “Am I working hard enough?” If it feels too easy, you're working within your zone of genius, you're working to your strengths, and we value that. If you're looking to be stretched, let us know. We see the strengths, the value, the characteristics, and the skills that you have and how valuable they are.
There's so much I want to say on that. The other part, and it goes to everything you were saying about leadership, is that it doesn't always have to come from the top down, that feedback. One of the nice things I remember about one of my last jobs was I was head of marketing and we were doing this event and there’s this wonderful woman who worked in the PR team. We'd got to the event and the floor was dusty, I had my outfit on, and I took my heels off because of heels, in general. I took them off and I was sweeping.
I remember this wonderful woman came up and she's like, “Fiona, what are you doing?” I was like, “This floor is filthy and people are coming soon.” She was like, “I love that you're such a doer. You didn't ask somebody else to do it. You were like, ‘This is a problem. I'm going to jump in.’” I always remember that feedback. You can have good feedback to anyone and that's a great work culture where people who are below you in the hierarchy of an organizational chart feel comfortable to say, “You're good at this,” or other things as well.
The other thing I was going to say is that fear question, it's a good thing that you can do even in any relationship. One of my good friends lives in Amsterdam so we do a lot of WhatsApp pretty much every single day. We saw each other in Majorca and we got this Airbnb. We had never really met so we’re then spending five days together. She said to me at one point, “I've got something going on in my head and I want to tell you because it might be wrong.”
There were a lot of cultural differences between someone from Australia and somebody from Amsterdam. It was good the way it was worded, as in, “I have this story in my head and now I'm going to tell you what the story is.” Ever since she said that, we say it all the time, “The story in my head is…” It's such a beautiful way to present something that you might be uncomfortable with like fear in a nice way if that makes sense.
One of the rumble starters that we have in the curriculum is recognizing that we all make up stories and we all have limited data points. In between those data points, we make up stories in order for that story to make sense to us, even if it's not factually correct. Our job isn't to take that story wholesale and run with it. Our job is to go, “This is the story that I'm making up and it's just a story. What do I need to do in order to check in with that?”
In saying something like, “This is the story I'm telling myself,” or, “This is the story I'm making up.” Some people balk at the idea, they think, “If some people said to me that they were making up a story, I would question them.” “This is what's going on for me. What's happening for me at this moment is that this is what I'm thinking or this is what is going for me and I want to check in with you about that.”
That's a recognition that I'm prepared to be wrong. I'm prepared for that story to be changed. Tell me the story that you're running with and let's compare our drafts. We're all running around making up stories all the time every day. We're bumping into each other's stories all the time. Language is powerful. Probably the biggest gift I think of Brené's work is giving language to talk about the difficult, murky, and bumpy places in our lives and being able to speak truth to them or talk about them with a little bit more clarity and getting specific and accurate about what we're saying.
We’re talking about emotional literacy. Emotional literacy is about paying attention to our emotions. At least my generation wasn't brought up to be encouraged to get curious about our emotions, to think, “What might this emotion be telling me?” To have a broad emotional vocabulary. The research says that while we can name a whole lot of emotions, when it comes to describing emotional experiences, most of us are limited to three, sad, mad, and glad.
If all we have is language to express sad, mad, and glad, and not the complexity of human life, we get stuck. Emotional literacy and self-awareness are all around trying to get more granular about the emotions that we experience. Am I sad? I might be sad but associated with that or maybe underneath that sadness might be disappointment, overwhelm, frustration, or grief. The more accurately that we can label our emotions, the more empowered we are to move through them and pay attention to what they might be telling us.
Susan David's work, Emotional Agility, has this great saying, “Emotions are data, not directives.” When we can get curious about the data of our emotions, that grows our self-awareness and it enables us to move through our own emotional landscape a little bit better and also increases our capacity for empathy for showing up with other people.
When we’re thinking about leadership, so much of it is tied up with our capacity to know ourselves well enough that when we show up and we have this weird feeling in our belly that we feel our emotions before we have cognition around them, we pay attention to that and we don't just try and push it aside. We go, “When I had that conversation with Fiona, there was this weird thing that was going on that I'm not quite sure what that's about. Let me sit with that and have that moment between stimulus and response where I can get curious in that space so I've got some greater agency of showing up in a way that serves who I want to be.”
I could talk to you for hours and hours. You have obviously been a wonderful mentor to people in business, in leadership, and in all sorts of ways. Can you share any mentors or books that have been instrumental? You're a huge reader. Who has helped you with developing yourself in your business?
Partly, when I think about the significant role models that I've had have been women in more senior positions, and they tended to be 10, 15, or 20 years older than me. I always valued their experience. Not every woman, I've got to say, not necessarily the qualifier but there have been particular women who I've fostered connections with that I've kept to this day and that we have been friends with for twenty years who I will call on for their advice and insight.
When I'm stuck with something, it’s being able to sit with me and talk it through with me and they also know me. They are the people that will also remind me of my skills and my values as well. Peers in other organizations that are doing similar roles to me. In my last role, I was desperate for a mentor because there was no one else in the organization doing my role or even who understood digital. It’s looking for other people doing what I was doing but laterally across the industry became helpful.
It was like, “I'm thinking about changing us to this email platform. What do you guys use? What research did you do?” That was helpful. Broader than that, my lineage. I think about the strong line of remarkable women that I have the great fortune of being birthed from. Life was difficult for these women so I draw strength from that. My uncle, who was a disability activist who made significant changes for people living with disability in Victoria in the ‘70s, ‘80, and ’90s is somebody that was powerful.
Growing up with Oprah, she's probably like the OG. She was having conversations, interviews, and human relation interest stories when I didn't see that happening anywhere else. Probably more recently, the work of Brené Brown has been significant. Playing Big by Tara Mohr is another book that I recommend.
The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz, which is a little bit old now, he was the first person that I came across talking about energy management and saying how important it was to manage all of our energy and how our physical energy, particularly our sleep, is the root of all of our energies. I read that book in the same summer that I read Lean In. I had such mixed emotions about that book because I was reading that book as I was wanting to lean out and felt like I had learned so far and that I was exhausted. That was a good book to help me find that balance.
I love the writing of Dan Pink. His book, A Whole New Mind, was probably one of those other books I read about that time that was counter cultural to the strong hustle, always on, and bro-tech culture that I had kind of come across in startups. Essentialism by Greg McKeown was life-changing. The one that I'm absolutely loving but I can only read a couple of pages at a time because I highlight absolutely everything then put it down is The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller.
We don't talk about grief enough. We're scared to talk about grief and the less we talk about it, the more control it has over our lives and kind of gets stuck in us. There's a lot to be grieving in the world right now and it serves no one to pretend otherwise. I'm loving that book and giving it away left, right, and center.
I love Power by Kemi Nekvapil, it's a brilliant book. Also, Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey. I love a good nap and I love how she's framed it up as an act of resistance and claimed that and given a completely different insight that pushes against capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism. I'm loving that. Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad, I loved the way that she delivered that and how it burst out of a 28-day Instagram challenge into a book and became a powerful education tool. There are all kinds of things in terms of books and lots of different podcasts.
There are so many. It's funny that you bring up Oprah because when you said about your own leadership and leading the life that you want, when I was much younger, I used to watch the Oprah Show with my mom. I remember she talked about how one of her driving mantras, quotes, or whatever in life is, “I'm the captain of my ship and I get to steer where I'm going.” I always remember that because my dad was a captain on a ship for a long time so it honed in.
There are so many questions I want to ask you and we’re running out of time. Right now, when we've had years of COVID, lockdowns, wars, cost of living crisis, and there's just so much going on and you've always had such sound and solid advice and you're such a good human, if you could give a snippet of advice to people right now who are feeling absolutely spent and at the end of their tether, what would you say?
First, I would acknowledge that that's an appropriate response for the conditions in which we're living and to validate your feelings. It can be easy to say others have it so much worse or so much harder. That can be true. Two things can be true at the same time. We don't need to minimize the stuff that we're going through in order to also still hold empathy and space for other things that are going on in the world.
It comes back to that idea of paradox that we can hold two competing things at the same time. I would say that you absolutely know that your feelings are valid and that there is an appropriate response to everything that we've been going through and continue to go through. Talk about them with an empathic listener. Find somebody who is going to sit with you in the hard truths about what's happening to you in your life and not shy away from those uncomfortable emotions and try to minimize them or fix them or compare them to other things.
One of the things that we talk about in the Dare to Lead program is this trap of comparative suffering that empathy is somehow a pizza where it only has eight slices. I can't give you one because that'll mean that I have less for everyone else. We can grow a bigger pizza with that. You don't have to do it alone and you shouldn't be doing them alone. We are hardwired to be in connection with other people. We're a social species. We've only ever survived by being in connection with other people.
It's when we hold on to that belief that we can do it alone that we run into real trouble. Coalesce with people who share your values and give yourselves permission to talk about the hard things and resist the temptation to try and fix it or try to offer advice and suggestions unless it's specifically asked for. For many of us, it's being witnessed and acknowledged and saying, “I get it. That is hard.” That can give us the validation of going, “That is the case and that is valid.”
When we are feeling spent and we resist acknowledging that that's how we're feeling, we can get stuck in it. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Also, feelings like that can also give us some data about what might be those next steps. They can guide us into exploring alternatives and new connections and making decisions that perhaps we wouldn't otherwise. If I hadn't felt completely spent at the end of 2012, I wouldn't have made that decision to think, “I don't want to be doing this anymore. I want there to be a different way and I'm going to follow my curiosity into investigating what that might look like.”
Self-compassion is always the answer, it's the root of everything. My favorite piece of the curriculum is to talk about self-compassion. When we can cultivate self-kindness over self-judgment, when we see that our struggles are part of a common humanity and not just ours, we can recognize, “How would I treat somebody feeling like this? How would I treat my best friend if they were feeling like this?”
“What advice or warmth or compassion would I offer them? What does it look like to offer that to myself? How can I treat myself with the same kind of kindness, warmth, and support that I would my best friend if they were feeling this way? What boundaries might I need to set that I haven't set before?” It's hard for people to set boundaries if they don't have a good level of self-compassion because they don't necessarily think they're worth it. Self-compassion, for me, is the root of everything.
Thank you. Finally, what are you most proud of so far in your journey in business?
I set my mind to making a career change and I was vulnerable enough to sit in the uncertainty of what that looked like. It wasn't a straight linear line. It was very much starting at one point and then that big messy bit and being spat out into the other end knowing that there's another big messy bit coming ahead. I'm still self-employed years later doing work that I know that makes people's lives braver and more loving.
If people are like, “I want to be in her orbit. I want to go to a workshop. I want to work with Kylie in some way.” What is next for you and where is the best place for people to connect with you?
My website is Ofkin.com. If you go in there, you'll see the different programs that I offer. There's a Shop where you can go in and enroll in a public program. I've got one coming up at the end of April 2024 but I also run programs in-house for companies and organizations and teams so you can send an inquiry there. I'm on Instagram, @Ofkin. I have a monthly newsletter that goes out so you can also subscribe at Ofkin.com/subscribe to be in my newsletter.
It's always so nice to catch up with you and we don't do it nearly enough. Thank you so much. Also, we're recording this in a 36-degree-day, you don't have a fan on, and I don't have a fan on so go, us. It's so appreciated. Thank you so much, Kylie.
From my rosy cheeks to yours, thank you for this opportunity. I absolutely love everything you do. It's been a thrill.
Bye.
Bye.
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Honestly, I could talk to Kylie for hours on end. She's one of those people that inspires, lights you up, and makes you think deeply, question things, and get curious. Those are just the best type of people to be in conversation and to be in life with. I'm thankful that Kylie is in my life and in your lives now through this podcast if you don't already know her. If you are keen to check out her upcoming workshops or look into how you might take some of her leadership programs and bring them into your place of work, you can find all the information at Ofkin.com. You can also reach out and connect with Kylie through Instagram, @Ofkin.
I would love to know as well what you took away most from this. What are you going to implement? What might change? What might you adapt based on this conversation all about leadership with Kylie from Ofkin? Of course, I'm going to talk about two things that came up for me. There was so much and I know that I will listen to this again when it comes out and I'm sure there'll be more things that speak to me.
The first that I'm going to highlight and I'm highlighting it because, in so many places that I worked prior to starting my own business, this was not a key priority, I would say, of that employment, and that was this idea of being psychologically safe in the workplace. We think about a sense of belonging and fostering this great culture. A lot of it comes down to those things that Kylie talked about, those sort of ideas of, “Can I contribute? Am I welcome here? Is my whole self welcome here? Am I seen as a human and not just this productivity exporting robot? Am I talked to as if I have other things going on in my life?”
I have to say, in some place that I've worked, and it hugely comes down to the leadership, funny enough, rather than necessarily that brand, or you might work in one place and have a great environment and then the leadership changes and then you work in the same place or somebody else comes in and has a horrible experience. In lots of the places that I've worked, a huge part of it was the productivity output and how much can you do? How late can you stay? How early can you come in? How much can we get out of you? How much can we squeeze out of you?
In certain places that I worked, different areas of my life were never discussed, in particular places, never being asked about my children or children at that time, or there was just no interest in who you are as a person outside. It was all about how quickly you can get through things and how much we can get out of you.
I would hope that the boats are shifting and the tides are changing but it's still a huge thing. A lot of people will still employ people to do these many tasks or get through this or, “How much can you get done? Am I paying you hourly? Etc. We don't take the time to just have that human interaction with people. I love that Kylie gave so many ideas for the questions that you, as the leader, can ask yourself in a business environment but also in your life about, “How am I fostering a sense of belonging and how am I bringing that psychologically safe environment to life?” That was the first one. She talked about Timothy Clark. I'm sure there are lots of other references that Kylie talks about in this podcast.
The other thing that spoke to me from my chat with Kylie is the idea of leadership in life and not just looking at it from a business perspective but also, “How am I showing up in life and how am I leading myself? What things are important to me and what are the things that need to be front and center and a priority for me?”
As I said, in the chat with Kylie, it reminded me of a quote, one that Oprah has talked about many times, and I remember hearing it when I was quite young and I have since looked it up to make sure that I have the exact quote. What she said is from Invictus by the poet, William Ernest Henley. The last stanza in that poem says, “It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
I probably was about 13 when I was watching an episode of Oprah with my mum and she said that and I remember looking it up. I was super into poetry at that time. My mum was a huge fan of poetry. My parents, being Irish, were quite into a lot of the Irish poets. We had different poetry on the walls. I remember, particularly in the kitchen, we had these two big poems up. I was quite into that. I remember it stuck with me, that idea of, “I can steer this ship. I can be the captain of my soul. I can have some agency over my fate.”
I know I'm saying that from a privileged position living in Australia, I'm a white woman, and I understand that. I understand that we cannot control everything that comes into our lives. Especially right now, there is conflict, there is war, and there are so many horrible and horrific things happening all over the world. I'm not for a minute being like, “You just need to believe that you’re the captain of your soul.”
For a lot of people reading this, you have a huge amount of agency and you have a huge amount of choice in how you show up in life. Sometimes, we can forget that in the humdrum of the day to day. I love that Kylie talked about that leadership of self and how we lead in our lives. It's something that we don't think about enough. As she said, we've all been conditioned, especially in the West, to think of leadership in a narrow confinement.
I would urge you to think about your own version of leadership and what does that look like? If you're interested in checking out the work that Kylie does, and it's such important work, and her workshops, you can find all of that at Ofkin.com. Over on Instagram, you can follow her and see what she's up to, @Ofkin. That’s it for this small business interview.
I want to again say a massive thank you to Kylie for this. I know that some of you reading will have taken part in the Business for Floods and Business for Bushfires fundraising activities that Kylie and I put on. She is the type of person that's like, “How can I help? What's happening? How can I help? How can I do more?” It comes across in everything that she does in business.
It was an absolute delight to listen to her. If you found this useful and enjoyed this interview, I would love it so much if you could leave a review, hit the stars, and help us get found by other small business owners who potentially need to learn about leadership in their lives right now. Thank you for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
