Story-telling for the Future with Devon Murphy-Davids

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Who do I want to be? What do I want to stand for? I'm not going to turn away from the hard things. I'm willing to do the long fight here until it works for everyone. It doesn't work for me. The context in which we're all living in can feel a little bit hopeless sometimes. People with extreme hunger, extreme devastation. I don't want to sound surface level. I just want to live a life where I can make as many people smile as possible. I am accountable completely to myself. I belong completely to myself. Who you are right now is fully and completely enough. Don't avoid regrets, aspire to have them.

Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. In every episode I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

I'm very excited to welcome in this week's special guest, Devin Murphy Davids. Devin is the new Chief Executive of Inspiring Stories, the Kiwi charity behind Festival for the Future. I'm super excited to be a keynote speaker and one of the workshop facilitators at this year's festival. I look forward to seeing some of you there, but for now, let's get on with the show. I hope you enjoy.

Devin, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you. It's so nice to be here, James. Thanks for having me.

Absolute pleasure. I'm so excited because you and I are actually going to get to connect very soon up in Wellington, up in the capital. I cannot wait. And it's for something really special called Festival Festival for the Future. Now let's chat a little bit about storytelling before we talk about Festival for the Future. So inspiring stories. That's where you're the CEO. So all of us love inspiring stories. I mean, I've got a seven year old boy and I love nothing more than reading him stories. In the evening. Sometimes I'll read it from a book, sometimes I'll just tell him stories from my childhood, some mythology from Ireland. And I love it. And I think that stories can move people. So where did your love for storytelling actually begin?

Yeah, it's an interesting one. I mean, I have to be really honest, like my relationship through my education journey with stories would have been probably the opposite than being inspired and connected. I grew up, you know, undiagnosed dyslexia and really struggling in our education system. And so stories for me really became about books and reading and something quite head focused. But when I started recognizing that my skill set was in relationship and connection and listening to people right throughout from child to probably really enhanced when I was in my like later teenage years, just recognizing that as I heard people tell their stories, tell their experiences, I could feel them start to weave together in me to inform wisdom, to inform critical thinking, to inform my own sense of identity. And so I think I learned about it really through, you know, the role of narrative and storytelling as opposed to some of the common misconceptions that stories and our relationships to stories is just by reading in private. It's actually the sitting around, like we, you know, in an indigenous format, it would be sitting around the fire, it would be sitting in the evenings together and telling stories to one another. And that's how so much history has been passed down. So much knowledge and wisdom, so much protocol and practice and tikanga and te ao mori perspective. It's all been through the narrating of stories of past. So I think that's really where it began for me. And I think so much of that is woven into the Kaupapa that we have at inspiring stories. It's how are we making sure that the journeys that so many people have been on that the intergenerational piece connects so that rangatahi can be held, young people can be held with wisdom, knowledge, learning and critical thinking.

It's incredible. And I look at our young New Zealanders and I worked in the educational environment for a long time and the school that I worked at was no different than many other schools around New Zealand in terms of some of our statistics around mental health, around suicide. And the school did a lot of great things around putting things in place to try and support the kids and the families. But I feel that it starts at home. Like a lot of what happens with our young children and our teenagers and 20 plus, it's all around what's happening at home. So what kind of stories, you know, should we be sharing with our young people to help them get through some of these difficult times?

Yeah, so I think there's a couple of them. I don't want to sound surface level when I start by saying very much it's stories of hope, but I do think that that is really the important place to start is let's make sure that the type of stories, the type of conversations, the type of attitudes that we're always considering, the role in which hopefulness plays, the context in which we're all living in, can feel little bit hopeless sometimes. You know, there's so much access to hopelessness. There's so much access to stories that are raising more and more concern about what the future looks like. You know, you just look at single topic of the weather events that have happened in Aotearoa in the last couple of months, and then the storytelling and the narrative around that. Although really important to tell of the impact, I think that it's only one part of the story and that if we leave out the hopefulness of or we leave out the consideration of problem solving and creativity and the kind of people that are out there doing things to change how things are as they stand every single day. And that is a lot about what Festival for the Future is, is how do we bring in having hard, truthful conversations around the state of the world, whilst also telling the other part of the story, which is what can be done, what can be created, how can we think in a new and different and innovative and collective way to start imagining a more hopeful future? So I think that's one part storytelling, but then the flip side of that, I think it is especially in that intergenerational piece where you're talking in the household and everyone's home situation or community situation or direct relationships look so different growing up, but I think honest and vulnerable. Like I have an incredible relationship with my parents. It wasn't always the easiest relationship, it wasn't always the most functioning relationship, but it always was a real and honest relationship. The kind of relationship where they were able to acknowledge when they didn't show up as their best ourselves and then want to look at restoration around that. And I think that this process of hope is actually really linked to restorative process. And I think it happens firstly, like so much of what I look at when I thought about the, you know, what is leadership to me or what is great performance, so much of it comes back to starting with that individual conversation to self and how do we restore and have a really thriving relationship with ourselves. Then the next layer is how do we have restored and thriving relationships with the people around us. And then I think it just totally just is a trickles out from there into the community, into our nation, and then into a global scale.

I love how you put that. And for you personally, that self, that kind of self love, that self awareness, self healing, where did that all start to unfold for you? Like, were there points in your life where you're like, oh, I need to take stock and I need to give myself some self love? Were there pivotal moments there?

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate. Navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

Yeah, there's been lots of pivotal moments and I think some of that is, you know, symptomatic of the fact that I do really believe we're in such a changing time. Like I would say as someone in her late 30s, that I'm sitting in between two very different generational thinking. I think we're standing at a time where what once saw a really thriving economy or once saw a thriving. What was once seen as, what was the measures of success for thriving now longer, no longer is relevant. You know, young people are not thriving to recreate the world that they're living into. They're really wanting to see change. And so when I look at that from my perspective, I think the growing pains that I've felt throughout my life have some been really individual growing pains. And then I think societal growing pains growing out of a lot of things that once were. And I think also too, we're reintroducing a lot of things that once were within indigenous practices. You know, I go back to that example I used around the change of the climate. You know, so much of what would be considered western practice almost is deemed irrelevant. And we see sort of the use of wetlands and, and allowing our natural environment to tell us who they want to be. So in which we can look at natural flood resistance. So that's just an example linked that one thing. And if I bring that back to my own personal story.

I think I can distinctly look throughout these moments where transformational identity has kind of shifted my own way of self expression. And so one example of that was being a young 17 year old, really knowing that what I currently had within my kitty was very limited in terms of knowledge of the world, knowledge of myself, knowledge of how I wanted to live in this world, world. And I got the opportunity to travel and live actually in the favelas in Brazil between the ages of 17 and just before I turned 18. And what was so pivotal in that moment was really down to kind of being confronted with some of the stark, you know, pain that is happening across the globe. People with extreme hunger, extreme devastation, breakdown of indigenous practice, where people have moved from, you know, the ways they once lived, trying to live in a city environment, you know, street kids, just all these things that I was witnessing as a young person. And it was a moment where I really had to ask myself, who do I want to be? What do I want to stand for? And it started really simple for me and I often kind of giggle and look back at this kind of real sweet ignorance that I had. But I kind of left that experience and was like, I just want to live a life where I can make as many people smile as possible. And it was really simple. But to have a grounded value within a sense of self and self love in such a way meant that then the decisions that came forth within life, I got something like a po, like a real pillar of self truth that I get to come back to and go, does this decision move me closer or further away to expressing that? And that has become more and more, I think, refined and sophisticated as I've gone along the way. Other moments that I've had that experience, I had the privilege to travel with a role that I had at World Vision years ago and I got to travel to an autonomous region of Bougainville just off the coast of Papua New guinea, got to see some really again, quite starkly difficult situations of where again, people have been struggling with that sense of identity, where the indigenous practice had been more or less wiped out and the western point of view had come in, but didn't suffice to the way of living. And so systemically, culturally, they were in a real pivotal moment post a civil war to try and figure out who they were as a people and how that reflected back to me was a moment again to just ask of myself, you know, what I'M going to live for? What am I going to stand for? What is my life going to be now that these stories that they had shared with me, I can't go back and pretend like I don't know what they're dealing with day to day. And that was a moment in time where for me I sort of created another self value which was I'm not going to turn away from the hard things, things I'm willing to do. The long fight here, you know, the change that this community is going to see isn't going to happen in two to five years. These are 20, 30, 50 years, you know, of.

You know, incremental change that needs to happen or incremental restorative practice that needs to happen. And that's when I sort of went, oh, I'm going to do this for the long haul. I'm going to do the hard mahi for the long haul. And then a third example of that has been a more recent example where you know, I actually at a really personal level started to relive look at who I am and my identity and some of my own sense of relationship and how to relate kind of came through that and I recognized that for a long time I had not been able to express and not been giving myself stress to express a queer identity and an identity of love and relationship and connection that understood myself and the role I played within the rainbow community. And that's been a really messy of, you know, journey and I'm probably still in the middle of figuring that all out. But I think what that had for me is another kind of deep set of value to then make decisions and, and journey with myself for and love myself on a deeper level. And that was really where I got to understand that actually why I had been so afraid to express that is that I had convinced myself that my identity belonged to my children or belonged to the relationship that I held, to my family, to my workplace. And I especially, I think as a woman I take that really deeply and seriously that I want to serve but recognizing how harmful the sense that I belong to somebody else. And so yeah, I think that that's been a really big moment for me to go actually I want to lead and drive myself from a place of I am accountable completely to myself and I belong completely to myself. And from that place love can flow out of me to others, but not in the compromise of filling my own cup and caring for my. So those are kind of three self moments and they're not all of them incomplete, but they have been really quite significant ones in my own journey and. And ones that I bring with real vulnerability to most places I. I show leadership in.

That's huge. And I just want to say a huge thank you for taking the time to share that and go deep with that, because that's not easy to share and be vulnerable and let us in to parts of your life that I imagine some of them will still be really raw and they would have been challenging to move through. So. So when you move through that and you embrace who you are and you feel like this is actually who I am, how do you feel when you wake up on a Monday morning? Now that you've said this is actually who I am and this is how I see my world, how do you feel waking up on a Monday?

Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on what Monday, but. Good question. I think it's. To me, where it stands now is I think the journeys that we take within ourselves are sometimes the longest ones. I think they'll be the constant ones. I don't think that there's any point in which we reach where we're like, aha, I fully know who I am completely. And I think when we get to that place, that's when we've, you know, I think like in any. Any example of incremental work, you know, when you think you've plateaued, that's actually when. When there's the least challenge, the least friction, that's actually when we're not actually performing at our best. It takes those things often to bring out the best in ourselves and takes the hard questions. So I feel like most Monday mornings I wake up with a run of really hard questions back to myself. A lot of them are questions of saying, you know, how do I express myself today that encompasses, you know, the deepest expression of my values. How do I allow myself to be somebody that is really proud of how I show up today? You know, and these are not simple things. They seem like simple concepts, but they're actually not easy practices to hold ourselves to every day. Another one is also to be like, how do I allow myself to live into a place where I show grace and empathy to myself and. Which reflects the kind of grace and empathy that I show others.

And I think it comes down to. I was also reflecting a lot on, you know, the role that fear plays in our lives. And it runs throughout everything we do, whether we are acknowledging that fear is there or not. You know, we are creatures that our natural instinct is to assess the risk of situations and figure out whether fight or Flight is going to be the reactive response to how we're going to show up in a situation or are we going to be responsive? And responsive is much more kind of from that deep sense of self. And I think that I've become more and more of a responsive person because I've had some hard conversations with myself and other people around me. And I think it's probably going to be, it's probably going to be one of the most dear quotes of my life. But it is that incredible quote that is by Marianne Williamson that is all about. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us the most. I think that often when I think about people in leadership and the role of vulnerability and empathy plays there. And if I think about people within the community, I think often what we see showing up when it's their best self is someone that has had a moment to recognize that instantly fear wants to take us and keep us and protect us. And they're people that have then gone past that fear to still show up. Maybe their fear is the lack of control. Maybe the fear is the how will I be perceived? Maybe the fear is, well, what if I'm not the one? What if I'm not the one to make the difference? But they've surpassed that fear and showed up anyway. And that's when I think light really gets to shine through us 100%.

And it's, it's interesting. We look at leadership and the evolution of leadership and you mentioned something just about, you know, that constant, never ending journey of asking yourself the questions and getting to know who you are as self. Well, I think leadership is the same. And people who get to the CEO destination or whatever title, they want to call it captain of the team and they think, hey, that's the end. I've done it while growing. Well, that's when complacency kicks in and then we all see what happens from there.

Yeah, I agree. And I also think that that's when ego has the most room to breathe because people relate. And I apologize for cutting you off, but I being new to the role of CEO, it's amazing how people also interact with you. Like you've made it, like finally you've arrived somewhere and you're just like, oh, I, I, I'm still asking the same questions in the morning. I, I still, you know, sometimes have, you know, no idea what to eat for breakfast. You know, you, you don't, you're, you're involved in your own incremental growth. You're not, you're not Having a massive step up in those moments. But I think that's where also the complacency leaves a lot of room for like if we put the protective mechanism, often the first one we go for is our ego that wants to protect us. And when that's at play, we're not really available for connection.

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100%. And when we think of, you know, I guess if I rewind a little bit and. And my partner Caroline really gets me. She really challenges my thinking. And she said, james, do you know anything about Gloria Steinem? I said, no, I don't. Tell me more. So, well, let's watch some programs, let's read some books. And then we started looking at all these different things. I hadn't considered why. Because I grew up in Ireland, I'm a white male. I hang out with my friends who are in this category here. And it really challenged my thinking and it got me thinking about what I see in boardrooms here in New Zealand and overseas. And I still see too much of the same thing in a boardroom and not enough diversity. With your experience here in New Zealand and doing the work that you're doing, where do you see it trending and what can we do to really make more diverse leadership groups across our country?

Yeah, I think maybe I'll be a self proclaimed radical in this space. I think that the. I do see that, that I would completely agree. I think that there's a little switch, but I think we're still only seeing. I think there's more intention around creating a bit of a moment where you look around the room and go, hey, did we all end up looking the same and having the same experiences? But equity has not caught up with intention to change. You know, there's still so many more people that are underrepresented in education. Underrepresented, and all these other statistics that would lead someone with experience to what we consider experience that's valid to the boardroom or experience valid to governance or leadership. And I think that's where we need to start really rethinking what actually brings value to those conversations. And I think one of the ones that's missing there is the question around, if we've all lived the same lives, how do we actually have access to creating something that works for everyone? Because I think the attitude has been for so long, if it works for me, it works. As opposed to until it works for everyone, it doesn't work for me. And I think that there's a lot of validity to taking sort of those hard skills and having them in the boardroom and then having lived experience and looking at those as valuable as those hard skills in a boardroom and stacking a board or stacking a leadership team with, with a mix of that. And some of that is going to take, you know, obviously that I think we're past the point where I don't think anyone's not got the level of self awareness where they're not noticing when there isn't diversity in the room. But I don't know if we've come to a place where there's enough motivation for creativity. And I think some of the resistance around that is still how we're interacting with power, that we're interacting with power as if, if power is lost like that, there's only enough power there. If one person has it and then relinquishes that power, then they're giving that power away to someone else. When how I love to relate to things like power and love and leadership is that actually they're regenerative, that actually the more of it that there is shared, the more of it that there is. And I think that there's this opportunity maybe for people that are sitting in that boardroom that have got multiple opportunities that look that way. I actually think the radical in me sees says maybe step down, maybe actually step away, or maybe use that for a short time to point the finger in the direction of where you think there is the missing voice at the table. And I think until we have that sort of courage around sharing power, that we are going to gain more the more we Offer space to power to others, then I think we're going to continue to see kind of a clustering of power and inequity in those kind of conversations around leadership.

So powerful. Thank you for sharing that. And yeah, it's interesting when I look around the world to differing countries and I just found out yesterday about, I think it's called brics, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. I didn't know that they were all in an alliance. I thought, okay, let me take a look at those countries and what the experience would be like to live in those countries. And I could see very different experience than what we get to live here in New Zealand and certainly where I was from in Ireland. So I think diversity in thinking, bringing more female leaders and young aspiring female leaders to the table, making sure that you've got gender diversity, we've got ethnic diversity, we've got ableism diversity, the list goes on. And I was chatting with Nabila Extabalan, so she is currently the COO of Walmart Canada. And we were talking about diversity and how it actually shows up on the financials and studies show again and again and again the more diverse an organization, the more profitable that organization is.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think it's because we know it's such a shared understanding that depends on whether you're in a not for profit space and you rely on funders or whether you're a commercial or government, whatever is that the more diversity of lived experience, the more creativity and the width in which you can think from the kind of. And also the challenge and the friction and the robust debate that happens within your, your staff force when there are people that are negotiating difference of thinking, difference of living, difference of seeing. And if that's held in a really healthy, rich cultural, you know, organizational cultural environment that actually encourages that we, we, you know, that there is actually something really valid to the. I agree to disagree. You know, that that's actually a really valid principle to say we don't need to all think the same way, but what we do have to have is a shared purpose and a shared, you know, a shared co puppet, something that keeps us all aware that we're all in the same waka. But we're bringing differing of thinking to that space. And so, you know, performance, you know, environments like that lead to performance, performance leads to, you know, resilient economic systems. And we can look at that being, I believe, transferable into every setting. We can look into whether it's the decisions we make in terms of how we vote the decisions on how we, how we employ people. And one thing that I've always been really interested in is how many, you know, I'll give the example in workspaces is that often we think that if things are neutral and you know, that we go, oh, but this is all inclusive. What we haven't recognized is often very inclusive of the typical PKEH experience. And our give recruitment is one of those examples where we go, oh well, everyone has equal opportunity to write a cv, send in a cover letter and then have a one on one interview. That's not, that's not context in any kind of cultural background. But it is, it's context in a background that says that an individual person's success is reliant solely on their individual experience. When. Yet if we look at MORI and PKEH and other indigenous cultures, what we don't recognize we're doing is self promotion at an individual level is so culturally uncomfortable for them. So we're asking them each time to go through that recruitment journey to leave their culture at the door. And then so often what I find almost ironic is then we're including cultural questions to that individual in a lot of these interviews. Like, you know, what's your experience in these kind of culturally diverse backgrounds? So we want to employ culturally diverse range of people for lots of different motivations, but we're not changing our systems that are actually allowing for people to not have to leave those cultural contexts at the door at the very first interaction with even being employed by us. And so this is the kind of, level of, kind of, I think, analysis and thinking we have to do right down to all the practices, all the behaviors. And it comes down to kind of, for me, the greatest phenomenon of leadership, which is that leadership isn't about being a person or a place with answers. It's about having the right questions. Are you asking the right questions? And so I use that example around diversity. Are you asking of yourself the right questions around diversity? Are the questions you're asking space level, where it's have we got diverse employment? Or you're asking the questions of are we making our employment practices inclusive of all people?

And that's really fascinating. I mean, I looked at your background, you've got Irish and IWI background. I just think that's incredible. Obviously me being Irish, I've traveled to New Zealand, I very much feel like a New Zealander. But there's certain things that I definitely, certainly I'm trying to work through and get better at. So I look back to Ireland and I Lived in Northern Ireland. So maybe three, 400 years ago, my relatives might have actually spoke Irish, like Gaelic, Irish language. I grew up speaking English because the British obviously took Northern Ireland away from Southern Ireland. And so there was always that. We almost kind of pushed the Southern Irish kind of heritage down underneath because it wasn't accepted in Britain. And now I come here, here, and I actually, I see so many amazing things with Iwi and see me so many amazing things with the language being embraced. Like my little boy, he knows way more tareo mori than I will ever know of Irish Gaelic. And it's just so incredible. And I want to embrace that. The one thing I want to try and do really well is make sure that when I start to embrace the language and embrace the culture here, the Maori culture, is I want to do it respect. And I think that's something I'm always trying to go like, is it appropriate for me to say morena? Or do people say, who's this Irish guy with the weird twang? Says Morena. So I guess for me, as a leader of, you know, my family and people around me and clients, I want to always try and embrace diversity, but make sure to do it in a respectful way. Do you have any advice for anybody else that might be listening right now?

Thinking I absolutely love this question, and I like to start with this, is that everyone's indigenous to some somewhere, like, you know, none of. I think that this.

I want to really start this conversation and this answer, and obviously it's not the direct question, but I think it's the context in which I always view this from is that, like, shame never has anyone show up willing or open and being held in a safe space to grow. Right? And I think that often what is coming with a lot of these restorative, you know, spaces for language, for indigenous practice.

Is that there's a lot of people that feel excluded from that process because there's an internal kind of shame or an internal kind of guilt that has. That flows up where they feel like even if they're not directly associated. And some of that's really important. It's important to not. To not be like, let's evolve past the place where they're like, oh, I didn't personally cause harm, so I'm not personally responsible. Because we're way past that. Like, we're. There's way too much, too much knowledge and information to access where that deep set kind of sense of bias no longer has a place. You know, we know better than that. So, okay, we need to Recognize that there's inherent privilege that comes with just what one person is born to and born with and looks like versus those that don't have it. And I've even started to challenge myself in using the word privilege. I don't see myself being privileged to be given, given maybe opportunities because I'm white presenting over those that don't have that. Actually, that's just about opportunity. But it's not a privilege, because I look at the word privilege as being a positive word, a word that holds positive outcome. And that, to me, is only going to be a privilege when everyone has the equal opportunity. So I have maybe opportunities that are afforded to me and have been afforded to me because of the background, the way I look, the way I speak. Even having English be my first language in a country that English is the first language for many people, you know, instantly gives me opportunity over those that are navigating three to four languages from a refugee background. But if I come back to what we sort of say before, what you were talking before of like, how do we respectfully engage with that? I think, you know, it is.

Checking that sense of guilt or shame at the door. It's not helped anyone, and it renders all of us probably a little bit inactive a lot of the time. I think, think that truly the best thing we can do is be in relationship to this. And if we look at how do we approach relationships. Well, we approach relationships curious when we're getting to know someone for the first time. We go in with curiosity, we go in with an openness, we go in with listening. We go in with a willingness to get things wrong. So, like, hang on, is this what I think I know about you? Oh, no, hang on. And there's an ease about relation relating to that. So I think that this process is about a process of relationship. And that is what, you know, kaupapa mori is. That is what te ao mori is. It's all about being in relationship. And I would say that participation is always better, but just don't be afraid to be corrected. You know, often what has come with those that have been afforded a lot of inherent opportunity is they don't have to live in discomfort often. And so when things they try, they have. When they go out and try things, and especially if they're trying things and growing their own sense of understanding or knowledge around, you know, what does it look like to participate? Well, in Te tiriti o waitangi at a personal level, what does it look like as an organization? What often comes is real surface Level, you know, stuff. Because what is. So what's happening under the surface is that owns their own sense of discomfort, that they might get it wrong discomfort if they get pushed back and they're not doing it quite right. You know. So I think at times people are making decisions around self participation, organization participation, all about.

You know, at a low risk level. But we've got to put something on the table here, something of real value because, you know, we, and you gave in a good example of this. Mori are these richly innovative, you know, resilient, brilliant, you know, thoughtful. They've, they're, they're leaders not only only in our own nation, but they're looked to across the globe as leaders of people that are restoring culture here. And if we can be led and look to them on multiple levels, I think that our country can become astonishing. You know, I think it can become an example of multiple things. Not just about, you know, the.

Good work that can be done around cultural, you know, biculturalism within the country. But actually if we just look at how Mori approach the relationship to Papatuanuku and the environment and the kind of respect that they hold to it. You know, if we were a country that was led by that in so many of our practices, we could be world leading in terms of environmental restoration and climate justice. So I think really if it. I know there was a lot in that answer, but really for me, I think it's like just let's not be afraid. Need of participating and getting it wrong. And if we're uncomfortable, it's often something we should be proud of. It's because we're participating at a level that is challenging us past our comfort zones. That is something to be proud of, not to be ashamed of.

That's such great advice. Thank you. For me personally, and I'm sure there's other listeners going, that was really helpful. I really do appreciate that. And let's talk about a little bit for, you know, with Festival for the Future, how you see that being helpful and what the whole purpose behind it is for our next generation of leaders.

Leaders, yeah. So it's something that I bring to all of my work and at a personal level. And it goes back to practices within Te Ao Mori, which is.

Our whakapapa, our genesis story, where things are created from, are held within the fabric of what they're possibly able to become. And yet I also rely on it as being, you know, I've done quite a lot of work within organizations that have been about strategic redirection, especially around engagement with Rangatahi and looking at new innovations and youth useful thinking. And so many organizations have got so wound up in doing the things the way they've always done things and lost such a sense of where they came from. And so I really wanted to start by answering the question here is, is that like Al Whakapapa as an organization, the kind of well in which we drink from as our kind of true genesis is a story of, of Guy Ryan, our founder, who was, you know, 23, I think, if I remember rightly, who looked around himself going, I really want to make a difference in the world, but I don't really know who to talk to about this. I don't, you know, I know I'm having this at like a small level with my friends. We know we want to do some bigger things, but how do we bring together everyone that thinks not the same, but how do we bring together people that think differently but care about the same things? And that's where Festival Future started and inspiring stories started. All from a young person looking around themselves, knowing that they were going to be limited in their potential if they didn't create something there where they could have robust, full.

Vibrant conversations about how do we do this together, collectively as a group of young people and intergenerationally. And it's, you know, gone throughout the last 11 years, just building and building on that. And so what we have today is, you know, one thing that's really exciting for us this year is it's the opening event of Takina, the new convention center down in Punaki. And it's linked to Te Papa. So you've already got it held in this really beautiful sense of Whakapapa and history there. And then what we wanting here is to have robust, sophisticated, multi dimensional conversations about the big issues we are facing as young people, as a whole nation and within our communities. And so for us, who is speaking at the event is just as important as who's sitting there listening, because the people that are listening are also part of the conversation. So we do a lot of work of making sure that people from all different lived experiences, all different regions, like we just had a group come through from south and now we can like proudly say that every single region in Aotearoa is represented at festival this year. And you know, we have real focus on, you know, that ethnic diversity, lived experience, diversity. Also in terms of, you know, these major intersections for Rangatahias is that you've got people that are at school, you've got people that are living in their regions, and haven't gone off to university or are working more locally or with their whnau know, for whatever reason that be, you've got people in the bigger cities, you've got grads and grad programs, you've got, you know, and so we've really been intentional about being like, whether you be a young professional or a young person that's working and serving and supporting your community at a grassroots level, everyone is invited at the table. Everyone's voice is just as important as anybody else's. And that without all those voices, we, we will not be able to achieve. Achieve imagining a future that is as innovative and as thoughtful and as.

Inclusive as it needs to be for us to move forward as a nation. And so that's what it is. It becomes this annual event. And one of the really beautiful things is that outside of festival, we run all sorts of moments of belonging and purpose and all these other discovery milestones for young people. But Festival for the Future becomes this big one where I've had maybe about five young people now say, oh, I participated five years ago and now I'm speaking on a panel or now I'm employed by the organization. Oh, no, I'm. Now I'm on your new youth advisory group. You know, so many young people use this as an annual event to actually go, oh, I had a dream for myself in this room one, two, three years ago. And now I'm able to reflect and see, you know, that I've actually been able to create that into reality for myself and for the people around me. And that, I think, at an individual level is really exciting. Exciting.

It is. You must be so proud. And I guess there might be a listener listening right now if they're listening to this within a day or two of us publishing this episode, it's before the event. So are there any tickets left?

There are, but we, we may be sold out. This might be one of the first years. But for those that want to come along to Festival for the Future, it's the 8th and 9th of June and it is down in, like I said, in punicky and Wellington. And so, yeah, if you are keen to head along, you can just do a Google search for Festival for the Future and I'm sure it will pop up. And don't be shy to come and see if you can grab a ticket to come along.

Yeah, please come and join us.

Yeah. And if not, if they are sold out at that time or you're looking and going, oh, I. I can't travel. That would be a barrier. We're also going to stream it online and make it accessible for everyone across the mall too. So that's amazing.

I want to make sure and put that in our show notes as well so that anybody wants to click through and get a ticket or they want to go watch the livestream or if they're listening to this many months of after, then they can go and actually check it out for next year as well and check in to see what inspiring stories are doing. And look, I want to be really mindful of your time as well. So if one last really important question. This is kind of the one question that I always love to leave to the end. And I'd like us both just to travel into the future. It's your very last day here on earth, many, many years into the future and a super young person that you love so much. It might, it might be a child or a grand, grandchild and they come up to you and they say, how can I lead my life on purpose? What would you have to say to them?

I think I would share with them, you know, the importance of integrity. You know, I think it's a word that we often relate to at quite a surface level. But the origin of the word means to be like a state of wholeness or complete. And I think that we have everything within us to intuitively, deeply access ourselves.

For some of us, fear comes in the way of that or other experiences. But I would say to that young person that if you were going to, to lead something now, have a really rich, honest conversation with yourself, you know, get into, get into a state of integrity with yourself, what does it look to like to be a whole and complete version of yourself now, knowing that, that tomorrow and change. But that leadership I think ultimately is best served when it's coming from a state of self expression. And that's what I would really say to them. Because I think that no leadership, no leader or no individual on earth should ever compromise their own sense of self, own sense of self expression for something that makes them feel like it's bigger than them. No, it's all interconnected. I really truly believe that like, like if you are driven in a deep sense of self, then that will overflow and then whatever you lead will be led from a place of deep sense of its purpose and then that will be able to be shared out. And I, I think that that's one of the keys to unlock, unlock great leadership, a great world and a great sense of connection with, with humanity really.

That's so beautiful and makes me Think of Bronnie Ware's book, the Top five Regrets of the Dying. And the number one regret, I believe was that the people who were on their deathbeds really regretted living their life based on what they thought other people thought of them. And so they spoke accordingly, they dressed accordingly, they got jobs accordingly, they studied accordingly and they really regretted that. And so I hear from you, it's like go into side, keep figuring out who you are and live life based on that.

Yeah, and. And not wait until you get to some sort of arrived place for when you're ready to be an expression of that, that who you are right now is fully and completely enough. And it doesn't mean it's going to be enough in five minutes time or five years time. I love the idea that instead of trying to live with no requirements regrets, we should absolutely be aspiring to live with regrets. When we relate to regrets as being a moment in time that who we are now is grown in such a way that we can look back retrospectively and know that we've got more to show up with, or more wisdom or more experience, or more love or more openness. But actually to celebrate those moments and not have regret be something to avoid. Because it's almost like then you avoid growth. If you stand 5 years time looking back on things and go, I don't regret anything, then it's probably an indication that you haven't grown in the last five years in a way that you don't have more to show up with. So holding a lightness to that and going, actually this is not about waiting for the perfect moment. This is about knowing that this moment is my time to show up as long as it comes from this place of a complete sense of connection to self rather than, like you said, being in, in being something that belongs to someone else. You belong to your colleagues, you belong to your relationships, you belong to your work, you know, you belong to yourself. And then expressing yourself naturally should come with those things that are right to connect with and lead into. And so yeah, I think that that's actually quite an aspiring way to live is don't avoid regrets, aspire to have them and then hold ourselves with grace when we feel them because they're uncomfortable. But again, that means that we're growing and we're grown.

So, so insightful, so powerful. And Devon, I think you are a powerhouse of a leader and I'm excited to connect with you at Taquina for the opening and for your amazing event. And I just want to say huge thanks for creating space today and your busy schedule to actually share some of your insights and thoughts on leadership. I look forward to this conversation continuing.

Kia Ora thank you so much James. I really appreciate it and thank you for such wonderful insightful questions that I'll probably be, you know we'll wake up tomorrow morning or next Monday morning go. Oh I should have probably have answered it that way.

You've been great.

Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate this time and to all the listeners, thanks for taking the opportunity to listen and hopefully we'll get a chance to connect with as many of you as possible in the future.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.