[Interview] Setting the Table, Tenure as a Strength, and Learning to Challenge | Francois Barton

How do you know if the way you're showing up as a leader is actually landing the way you mean it to?

Francois Barton has spent years learning to host, not control. As chief executive of New Zealand's largest CEO group, his job isn't to have the answers, it's to set the table and get out of the way. In this conversation he talks candidly about the moment a partner pointed out the gap between his intention and his impact, why tenure can sharpen a leader or dull them, and the shift he's now navigating: from curating conversations to challenging what's actually being said in them.

Francois Barton is chief executive of the Business Leaders' Health and Safety Forum, New Zealand's largest CEO membership group. More than 440 chief executives, representing over a quarter of the country's workforce, are part of it. Francois helped found the Forum back in 2009 and has led it since 2015. Twenty years working across business and government in policy, strategy and regulation shaped a belief that sits at the centre of his work: progress only comes when leaders confront difficult realities together.

You'll hear:

• Why Francois thinks of himself as a curator, not an expert
• How a spare afternoon with one visiting CEO turned into a Forum-wide way of connecting leaders
• What "the sweat's on the right back" taught him about caring less what people think
• Why tenure can be a strength or a trap, and what decides which
• How his partner's honest feedback exposed his own intention-impact gap
• Why he doesn't trust "skinny cooks" in leadership
• What's pulling him from hosting conversations toward challenging what's said in them

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Introduction

(02:05) - Catching up, turning 53

(04:18) - What Francois is still holding onto

(06:44) - Curating vs controlling (08:09) - The intention-impact gap (10:35) - Inside the Business Leaders' Health and Safety Forum

(15:12) - Does tenure sharpen or dull a leader?

(21:41) - What's missing in leaders who've gone stale

(24:15) - Why Francois doesn't trust "skinny cooks"

(27:37) - How the CEO connection lunches started

(30:30) - What Francois deliberately doesn't do as host

(33:58) - Where the real value actually lives

(38:15) - Risk, relationships, and resourcing

(41:21) - From curator to challenger

(44:46) - What surfaced in this conversation

(47:57) - Where to find Francois

(48:34) - Digby's reflection and sign-off

You can find Francois at:

Website: https://www.forum.org.nz/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francois-barton-6a040b11/

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/

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Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/