Lead with Courage
Together with your hosts Cherie and Andy Canning, you'll dive into the minds of the trailblazers, the risk takers and those who embrace life with a growth mindset .
Get ready for real and raw conversations where authentic truths are revealed, uncovering the struggles and resilience required to bounce back.
We invite you to see this podcast as your compass to embracing your own courage to live your biggest, best life!
Lead with Courage
Rudi Landmann | Embracing Your Authentic Self | Lead with Courage
Rudi Landmann is a husband, father, tech leader and personal transformation coach.
Rudi joins the podcast to share their own story about how having open discussions of love and kindness with his family created a safe space for self expression.
From being a stereotypical professional in an IT business, to modelling on the runway for Camila, and how their relationships are deeper and more authentic than they ever were before.
Navigating gender identity in a relationship can be a challenging path, and we are so grateful that Rudi has joined the podcast to share how they found their way to become their most authentic self.
Coaching with Rudi
Rudi Landmann Instagram
Rudi Landmann LinkedIN
RADIANCE Facebook Group
Did you enjoy the episode? Send us a text!
______________
Thanks for joining us on the Lead with Courage podcast, bought to you by Luminate Leadership. We trust this episode has given you some insights and joy to empower you live your biggest, best life.
If you enjoyed it, we'd be grateful if you like, share and subscribe to hear our future conversations.
To find out more about the work we do Luminate Leadership connect with us:
Luminate's Website and LinkedIn and on
Instagram : Luminate_Leadership and Cherie Canning
Until the next episode, we hope you live and Lead with Courage!
Cherie and Andy x
______________
Luminate Leadership is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional, or call lifeline on 13 11 14.
Hi, I'm Chloe Canning. Luminate Leadership acknowledges the traditional custodians on the land which we record this podcast, the Terrible and Yoguripi. We pay our respects to Elder's past, present and imaginary.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead with Courage, the podcast that celebrates the bold and inspiring stories of leaders making a difference. We're your hosts, andy and Cherie Canning, and together we'll dive into the minds of the trailblazers, the risk takers and those who embrace life with a growth mindset. On today's episode of Lead with Courage, we welcome Rudy Landerman. Rudy is a people leader in the tech industry and is also a personal transformation coach. I remember first meeting Rudy at a freelancing gems International Women's Day event and was absolutely fascinated by Rudy's presence the most beautiful Camille address you've ever seen. Over the years, I've gotten to know this beautiful human, rudy, and we are so happy that they have agreed to come on the podcast. Rudy found the courage to question something as deeply ingrained as their own gender identity, only to learn that the one Rudy was raised on is no longer how they identify themselves today. We are grateful for Rudy so generously sharing their story and the challenges and highlights of truly living life as your best, authentic self. Welcome.
Speaker 3:Rudy Rudy Landerman. Thank you very much for joining the Lead with Courage podcast.
Speaker 4:I'm very excited to be here. I love the podcast and I think there's some really important topics that come up.
Speaker 3:Thank you, we're so excited to have you here today, one of the first questions we love to lead with. I shouldn't say one of the first questions it's, by default, become the first question but I'd love to hear your take on leading with courage and what Lead with Courage means to you.
Speaker 4:For me, the idea of leading with courage is intrinsically bound up with openness, and that's being open and, I guess, by extension, honest with yourself, with the people that you interact with, and also the openness to be wrong, and that's, I think, in a leader. That's especially today, that's absolutely critical and nobody actually likes being wrong. You could ask any group of people and stick up your hands and no one's going to say, oh, I love being wrong.
Speaker 3:I really don't enjoy it. Fortunately, it doesn't happen that often to me. I've only been wrong a couple of times in my life.
Speaker 4:Excellent, and so if we're not in a safe environment to be able to do that, all kinds of bad things happen. That's when we get bad decisions. That's where we get disengagement from any business and it's actual mission and its purpose. We get over investment in things that don't matter. We need, as leaders, we need to continually question ourselves.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we do Beautiful, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I love that. It's the first perspective with that question about being wrong, and it's so true about that question and it's so important to question ourselves. And one of the things you said off air, the term you use was compassionate curiosity. I absolutely love that phrase. That's so beautiful and today I think that'll be a big part of the conversation we're going to have. I think you and I might have met Rudy maybe a year, a year and a half ago. I was trying to track back at one beautiful event or another here in Brisbane and, rudy, I just always notice you in your Camilla.
Speaker 2:I don't know too many people other than Fleur Madden that have as many Camillas as you which is just by the by, but beautiful and I find there's so much about you that every time I'm learning more about you and I'm seeing you that I'm just so fascinated and we'd love to share your story and about how you lead with courage for yourself and also in your business, with your coaching for your clients, but really how you're living an authentic life and maybe where it's come from and how it's grown into this place where you are today. So thank you for being here. Can you answer us? I guess one of the questions that came up at Ignite last week rather, was who is you know in certain name here? So who is Rudy?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a great question and it was a beautiful moment in the conference as well. I see myself through a number of different lenses and I think most people do. If I'd find myself in my work which we were encouraged not to do, yes, yes.
Speaker 4:But beyond that, I think we also define ourselves by the relationships around us, and so I am a husband to a beautiful wife, a father to two beautiful young boys, and I am a gender diverse person. So I was assigned male at birth, grew up with a male gender, only started questioning that in my 40s when a series of events took place that maybe really start questioning what how I fit into the world and into society. And I'm also neurodiverse, so I live with ASD and ADHD.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, thank you. Are you happy to go into what some of those moments were for you, that you started that curiosity?
Speaker 4:Yeah, definitely, and I guess the the, the compassionate curiosity that we were talking about before, I think also extends to a compassionate curiosity about ourselves and an openness to learning more about ourselves. This is that growth mindset. You know it requires us to be wrong about ourselves. Yes, yes.
Speaker 4:And so for me, the way that that played out was that. So my my career most of the last 20 years I've spent in the tech industry. I started out of all things and few people know this about me, but I was actually a mechanical engineer by training, grew deeply disillusioned with it, never really enjoyed the engineering, the culture of engineering, I suppose, and so I did all sorts of different things, but I gravitated back into into IT and software and I led the life of a stereotypical IT worker. I, you know, I, was completely sedentary in my in my job and in my hobbies. I ate a ate a steady diet of junk food, and you know, I was in really, really poor health and there came a point where I wanted to do something about that, and I always knew about myself that I never do things by halves more recently, because I am.
Speaker 4:The neurodivergence I mentioned earlier was diagnosed quite recently, and so I know that actually this is, this is actually characteristic of my neuro type, but I didn't know that at the time. All I know is that whenever I choose to do something, I go hard, and so I I lost basically half of my body weight. I went from never having moved in my life to being very active and physically fit, and when I looked at the results in the mirror, like when I was at my leanest and most athletic, and I found myself really reacting to that image and didn't know what to make of it. And I thought, well, you know, I'd done everything I set out to do. Why was I still uncomfortable with what I was seeing in the mirror and in photos? And again, there were just a couple of little clues that made me wonder is it the, is it the masculinity that I'm now seeing reflected in this athletic body? That's troubling me, and this was not a thought that had ever really occurred to me in my life.
Speaker 4:And so it was and and our society. You know it's still. It's still a contentious thing. You know it's still not a safe thing for people to question binary gender or question where they fall into a on the gender spectrum. And so I tried some things.
Speaker 4:I found that, even as I was, as I was discovering what kinds of physical exercise I liked, as part of that process you know I was I found myself gravitating to forms of fitness and exercise that are more stereotypically female. And that was what I was. You know, I was enjoying dance fitness classes and I was enjoying Pilates and yoga. These are not exclusively female, but they are certainly female dominated spaces.
Speaker 4:And then, you know, when I, when I needed athletic apparel for the first time in my, my life, I, I found myself really drawn to. I found myself drawn to Lorna Jane, yes, and there's a, there's a story there about. But you know, when I, when I, but everything was just one thing at a time, it wasn't like I thought, oh, maybe maybe I'm not comfortable with my, with the gender I've lived with for 40 plus years, maybe, you know, maybe that's what I have to do. It was more like just trying things and being open to what I discovered, and that what I did discover is that every time I took another step into a world that was stereotypically feminine or feminine coded, I just felt more comfortable and more happy.
Speaker 2:How empowering and just liberating I imagine that feeling to be.
Speaker 4:Well, absolutely, and and this is this is what I mean about openness to even being honest with yourself. And I think there does come a point when you start to realize that there is an authentic self that is wanting to express into the world. There comes a point where it becomes so profoundly uncomfortable to live with suppressing that that in some ways, it's like well, nothing that the world can throw at me is going to be worse than than this.
Speaker 2:It's, it's, it's reminded me of that quote that Lindsay Rice shared on the stage about the blooming and the bud. Do you remember me? Do you remember her sharing that quote I? Do I probably jotted it down as well.
Speaker 3:I've got it's in my favourites how much I loved it. And the day came when the risk to remain tight as a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's, that's 100% it. Thanks, lindsay, yes.
Speaker 2:So then, yeah, that's perfectly sounds to me exactly what you've just described. Yeah, beautiful, tell me what it was like walking into Lawn of Jane that first time.
Speaker 4:So what had happened was I had spotted a pair of tights that I absolutely wanted in the window after hours, and then I went home and Googled and tried to find the find something that matched that description, quickly found the the tights that were sold out online. Oh no.
Speaker 4:So I would have to go into the store. So, again, I just used to the the online. They used the website to try and find out. Guess what size I would be. Walked into the store requested exactly what I? You know what I, what I'd spotted, the pattern, the size. Hurriedly explained they were for my wife, did you? Yes? So the assistant offered me the matching bra as well, but I said no, no, just just what I've been, just what I've been sent in to get. It was scary. And the first time that I actually wore them to a, to a park run event, I literally put them on and took them off three times before I stepped out the door in them because I was scared. I was scared of what people would say or what people would think, or it was you know, and it's.
Speaker 4:It's just not something that you know. We we are not yet at a fully accepting inclusive society right now.
Speaker 2:No, no, we're not, and I and I I think that's a big part of why we're so thrilled to have you on our conversation on the podcast, because I think it's about education and compassionate curiosity for people to say, hey, like it's all okay, like we're all okay, we all belong, we all have a place, and to break down stigmas and barriers or questions, or can just educate. I think it's so important.
Speaker 4:I think there are two arms to it, and one of them is definitely that education, Like we need to to achieve diversity and inclusion, we need to understand what we're looking at. So education is fundamental. Beyond that, we also need connection, and so because it is I mean some people still manage it, but in general it's hard to hate people that we are connect, that we feel a connection to.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's very true.
Speaker 4:And so for me it's important to keep showing up and to keep. I think you, you both know how many events and things I go to, what my, what my social calendar looks like. But it's important not just because I get a lot of joy out of connection it's one of my highest values but also because I do see it as part of my message, which is that the more that we can build those connections, then the better the world becomes in general.
Speaker 2:And it's bigger than yourself, is what I'm hearing there. That it's yes for your connections, but it's bigger than yourself.
Speaker 4:And I think even at Luminate Cara said something similar right, that if it had just been for her she might not have bothered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she did Exactly that because it would be too hard, it was too much. It just be the emotional toll that she could have settled with not going there. I think it was fighting for the ability to appear remotely in council because you're breastfeeding at the time, but for anyone to appear remotely and she's like if it was just for me, I probably would have let it go, but I realized it was bigger than me and it was gonna pave a way for so many others for different reasons and how important that is.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I think that for somebody to, for me to show up in a way that is still, it doesn't have a lot of traction in our society. I mean, I'm not saying that people who see me are suddenly gonna question their gender or suddenly decide they're gonna present a different way, or that's not likely and it's not the point. The point is about everyone's individual authenticity. What is it that each one of us would like to do? What would we like to express? How would we like to be in the world, and what are we shutting off Because we are afraid of what somebody else might think? I mean, and those people aren't watching anyway, like this is the cruel irony of it is that most of the time, the people that we are so bothered about, like what are they gonna think? They're not even looking. They're worried about their own stuff.
Speaker 2:Isn't that the truth so often, in so many circumstances? Yeah, we're so concerned about the concerns of others, but they're not even there. They're not even noticing how long ago was the Lorna Jane tights, how long?
Speaker 4:ago, like that must be. I'd say that's seven years ago now, so it's quite a long time.
Speaker 2:Okay, so if we go back to that trying on the three times before you put them on over the next couple of years then what were some of those big moments for you? And the liberating and also maybe some of the scary moments, I suppose in there, if you're willing to share 100%.
Speaker 4:So the great joys have come through, like I said, just taking those little steps and realizing that I can actually, that this way of presenting in the world feels better to me, I feel more myself. I actually enjoy relating in the world in a more stereotypically feminine way and the tremendous love and acceptance that has surrounded me. Like look, I get trolled, I get people leaving nasty remarks on my social media, I get abused in the streets. For me, I'm in a good place where that stuff just slides off because I think, the way I see it, I've got this bubble of love around me.
Speaker 4:I've got so many people who are concerned about me and looking after me and loving me, that hate just kind of slides off and it doesn't bother me, except for the fact that I know that the next person that person attacks might not be in a good place, they might not have that bubble of love, they might be in a really dark place, and then you know and not in a good position to take whatever the troll or bigot is handing out.
Speaker 3:So you feel like that bubble of love. Is that something that you build over time, or is it something that you feel like you just sort of had with you throughout?
Speaker 4:A bit of both. Like I was, the bubble showed itself pretty quickly and I think, the Like. So I'd Even going back to that turning point with the Lorna Jane tights, just going out in public and worried what other people were going to think, and I mean, if anybody had any negative thoughts or impressions or whatever they didn't share them. So there was that and the. In fact, most people didn't even seem to notice or care and anyone. The only people who did were some of my female running friends who liked them. So you know, and it was and that was it Like, and I think that is that thing where we can very easily overplay the risk or overplay the negative reactions that we're expecting. So, yeah, the bubble of love formed very quickly and I felt very safe and very accepted, you know, by the people who know me, and that's coming back to why I'm saying that I think that connection is such an important part of any DEI initiative or strategy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm really curious and I think I've heard you speak of this before, but I'm really curious about your wife in the beginning as well Like how did you guys navigate through this together?
Speaker 4:I'm not proud of it. I was finding a lot of difficulty expressing what I was going through. I think both because number one, our language isn't really well adapted for this yet. We are only just evolving words for these concepts. Yes, so my gender identity now is non-binary but feminine expressing. But I didn't have the words for that, our language didn't have the words for that. In many ways, the language we even have now is still clumsy.
Speaker 4:So there's that, and I would say that my courage failed me. I would say that even for even in, you know, the closest, deepest, most intimate relationship in my life, I was scared and I was scared of what it could mean for us. And I was, and she was scared too. It turned out, as we talked, you know, she questioned, like, what does this mean for our marriage? What does it mean for our home? You know she was worried. Am I? You know, is this? Am I leaving? Am I? You know what is going on? And I didn't talk about it as much as I ideally would have liked to. You know, looking back, yes.
Speaker 4:And yeah, I don't think I handled it well.
Speaker 2:Thank you for your honesty. Yeah, that's hindsight's a gift sometimes, but also the lessons we get from it. How about now? Where do you feel it is now?
Speaker 4:I mean, we are so happy together. I mean, nothing has changed. Sometimes we all share wardrobe items, which is always handy, although we have quite different styles. The Camillas are a bit over the top for Laura. She's, and yeah, so we've found an equilibrium, and I think it's also that love conquers all that. You know that if we are so deeply invested in each other and in each other's lives that we just want what is best for each other and we've come through Beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 2:And how has it been, I guess, with the boys as well? How old are your?
Speaker 4:kids. So two boys, 11 years old and 10 years old, and this is another thing that scares me, because I mean they're fine and they're lovely, but you know, I think they're getting to a stage in life where it's likely that you know they will have classmates or people on the street or who knows who will offer opinions or potentially say nasty things, and so I don't know how that will play out for them. I'm worried about how it might play out for them. So I guess we're still coming to cross that bridge, but I guess they know me as me. Yes.
Speaker 4:And they love me as me.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I suppose if this journey from the first set of tights to now seven years and their age, that's just dad Like this is just dad yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's just kids, you know they can. It's a little bit. I remember speaking to Kara about this same concept in a different frame, but we were talking about racism and hate and love and just the importance of the role that we all play as parents. So, whether or not you know, whether you Like Kara, she's not an Indigenous woman, as you know, but then is raising Indigenous children. So how does she Like I haven't had these experiences that my kids might with say racism, so, but I need to learn to teach love and obviously that's just innate in her but in all of us, in all of us, the importance of kindness and love, compassion, courage, no matter what our circumstances, because, yeah, it's just such an important piece I think, no matter what the topic is for our kids to understand about kindness, I think that's.
Speaker 2:If you speak to Chloe, our daughter, she's like Mum, kindness is the most important thing. I'm like that's right, chloe, but yeah, it's self-kindness, kindness to others, it's so important. But I love this compassionate curiosity phrase that you've just I haven't used that before. I absolutely love that.
Speaker 4:Let me unpack that a little then, because, what. I think there are some problems here, and one of the problems that we have is that good and kind people often don't ask questions and they don't know what to say. And you know, I'm thinking back to Like I think the very first podcast interview I ever did was for Jess and Denda with her bells in business when that was going, I listened to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:And that came about because I had come to so many of her events and she had said Rudy, people keep asking me about you and I don't know what to say because I've never asked you. Yeah, do you want to come on the podcast?
Speaker 2:Yes, I literally remember that and that's how I kind of discovered Rudy, because she said I don't know what to say, I don't know how to refer to you, Is it? Yeah, with gender, and even then that was a few years ago, yeah, so I think maybe the language, as you've just said now, is evolving. I'm like oh, OK, what pronouns. And you know, and I remember her saying I'm stumbling over my words, but I want to say the right thing, and then you don't say anything at all because you don't want to offend. And, if I'm correct, I remember you saying to me and on that podcast, you're not going to offend if you're coming at things with the right intentions.
Speaker 4:It's about that compassionate curiosity 99.9% of the time, human beings can tell the difference between and you know a genuine question that's awkwardly asked versus someone who's trying to be mean or spiteful. And you know, sometimes we get it wrong. Right, sometimes we can misread people's intentions for better or for worse, but most of the time, most people can tell. Now, the problem, the paradox that we have, is that good and kind people like that conversation with Jess are afraid to say something because they don't want to hurt others. On the other hand, there are the trolls and bigots of the world who have no filter at all. They just say whatever they want because they don't care who they hurt or they're even intending harm.
Speaker 4:So what happens? We have a public discourse where good and kind people are silent for fear of offence and we have ill-intentioned people dominating the conversation. So that is a balance that needs to be redressed, and there was. I did a presentation for work cover earlier in the year as part of Ida Hobbit Day, and one of the facilitator One of the facilitators had a beautiful expression that I hadn't heard of before, which was that when we, in any situation where we are part of the more powerful group or we have the socio-economic, we have the social upper hand in a particular situation, we can actually lend comfort to somebody who's in a more disadvantaged position.
Speaker 4:So I mean because they're feeling that discomfort all the time. So to use an example relevant to me, so a trans or gender diverse person who turns up at an event is probably wondering like am I okay here? Are they going to tell me I'm not allowed in? Is somebody going to have a problem with me? What if I just stand at the back and just not engage? There can be a lot of profound discomfort For somebody who doesn't even quite know how to welcome that person into that space to take on the discomfort and say, no, you're okay. It's like that person is lending their comfort. They're saying, well, you don't be uncomfortable, I'll be uncomfortable for you. I will risk that and risk being wrong. It's that openness again to being wrong that even a well-intentioned person might actually say something deeply offensive and it might not be taken the right way because somebody's in a bad place. It's had a really terrible day and this is now the straw that breaks the camel's back. But that's the risk that that risk properly falls to the more advantaged party in the dialogue.
Speaker 3:I'm so grateful you said that I One of my bigger hesitations for wanting to do the lead with carriage podcast in the first place was just how much foot and mouth that I have sort of in life and it's not always my intention but it's sometimes just a suffer from the execution or, to use your word, before get it maybe a little bit clumsy. You know with when to when to deliver all the right words to say so, I think for the listeners out there and certainly for myself even in this podcast now, it makes me feel a little bit more at ease that you can maybe not get all the execution right, but you know for, as you said, 99% of people out there they'll see the intention, they'll see the intention being right, they'll receive that and they'll kind of round up in terms of assuming that that person was on the right track.
Speaker 4:Oh, I love the I love the round up analogy as well. I'll steal that. That's another good one. But you know, to put it into context, you know I sat down at a fabulous fun fashion lunch a couple of, a couple of years ago and I mean, you've probably seen this when I when I come to your stuff. But you know, I love when there's a, when there's a question, who do you want to be seated with on an event? I always just say surprise me, because I love meeting new people. Anyway.
Speaker 4:so I sat down next to to somebody I'd never never, met before and literally the first thing out of their mouth after we had exchanged names was so how long have you wanted to be a woman Like that's? Literally we went from exchanging names. They thought, oh, that's hashtag awkward. But again I could tell. I could tell it wasn't a mean spirited question, it wasn't like a dismissive or it wasn't intended to ridicule a bit little, it was curiosity. It was expressed in a way that you know displayed a certain amount of social awkwardness. But so you know, I think, as long as you're doing better than that, that's, that's, that's probably, you know, you're probably winning you kind of see that curiosity there, right Like it was the.
Speaker 3:You exchange pleasantries, there's a name exchange, there's the high nice to meet you, and then there's that that person just has a question and they just kind of want to go into it. Maybe they don't know the right terminology, but the intention is beautiful, and then it's easy enough to overlook that and engage.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, look, I was taken aback. It was like, yeah, even when you said that I was a bit taken aback and I'm like, oh well, that's a big broad assumption. But OK, and then we interesting question, but then we you know, and, but then it opens a dialogue.
Speaker 3:It opens a conversation.
Speaker 4:And, and you know when, I think that's still better than the alternative was. So they might have wanted that and never said anything and gone away. None the number, none the wiser.
Speaker 3:Yes, what kind of work, if any, I'm assuming work. But what kind of work have you done on yourself to get to that point where you can kind of have that proverbial, you know, if you like, slap across the face in terms of clumsy language or whatever it may be, but for you to sit there and kind of take it on? You know, take that confidence and take that deep breath and still engage, as opposed to slap them back, you know, with some other punchy line.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, I've got a look. I have done a lot of personal development. It's something that I really believe in investing in myself. That's why I'm a coach, because I realized the power of coaching and the transformative potential of that as a practice. But I also have a superpower, which is my autism.
Speaker 4:And when it's actually very it's very easy for me to treat even a remark like that as well. That's a request for information. I'll give them the information and there's so many, so many things that I'd valued about myself over you know, about personal qualities or traits or values that had been important to me and that when I got my autism diagnosis it made me realize oh, actually, that's the brainwiring I can actually thank. So I think it's a bit of both. I think I actually have a slight edge there. When the test results came back, my psychologist gave me the results and asked me how I feel about that and I said, well, it's just another piece of information about me, the way that my eyes are brown. And she laughed and said well, that is the most on the spectrum way to respond to that we could hope for from that.
Speaker 2:What initiated those tests or that inquiry?
Speaker 4:So what had happened was there were some areas of my life that were difficult for me and that I'd been working with a fantastic psychologist for quite some time on and we weren't making any headway, or very little headway, and I was saying, well, this isn't working for me. And she was saying, well, the treatment that we're taking here and the way that we're going, the therapy that we're using, these things are actually quite reliable. They work very well for most people.
Speaker 4:If they're not working for you and I believe you that they're not we need to ask ourselves why, and she said one of the possible explanations is that we know that some of these things don't work well for neurodiverse people. Would you be open to investigating that and so coming back to the openness again. For me it was an opportunity to learn something more about myself, hopefully make the world, have the world make a little bit more sense. And yes, it did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, beautiful. I love even the way that you've just reworded the approach about it's, not saying it is or it is and but it's like this could be. And what we've seen is this just the again, the curiosity, and go. Well, are you open? Yeah, I'm open. Let's just keep inquiring and keep finding out more. Isn't that just the ultimate in life? I think that that next layer of the onion that we peel away to learn more about ourselves and who we are and how we can show up in this crazy beautiful world that we live in, yeah, it's great.
Speaker 4:But I think it's also the flip side of that is why we encounter some of the hate and intolerance that we see in the world, because look, people leave nasty stuff on my social media, people abuse me in the streets, whatever.
Speaker 4:And number one, one of the first things I take away from that is thinking well, I mean, this is a horrible experience for me, but I bet it's an even more horrible experience for you because, as far as I can tell, like happy, well adjusted people going through their day don't invest a lot of energy into trying to hurt other people.
Speaker 4:So if that's where you're getting your sense of personal power or meaning in your day, like wow, okay. Yeah, this is horrible for me, but I bet you're having an even worse time right now. So there is an element of compassion that comes into that and saying, well, it's hard to be angry at that person, but at the same time, you wonder why and a lot of people ask this either rhetorically or why do people do that kind of thing? And I don't know, because I don't get it myself. But one thing I have observed or that I wondered about is that when we reach a particular stage in our life as adults, we have a sense that we kind of have some sort of idea of how the world works, how life or society or the universe is structured.
Speaker 4:Some of us, I think we have it more together than others, but we have this general idea.
Speaker 4:What can then happen, though, is that then you encounter something that is outside of your experience, outside of your model of how the world works.
Speaker 4:So if someone who's grown up in a generation or a cultural background where they think, well, men are like this and women are like that, and then, all of a sudden, whether it's in person or on social media, they encounter me and here's somebody with masculine body and facial features, but presenting with all the trappings of femininity, and at that point you can either decide not consciously or maybe some people do consciously but you're kind of confronted with this possibility that the way that I thought the world worked is wrong, like my mental model for the universe is wrong, or maybe it was right once, but it's no longer right, but there's this challenge to a sense of reality up against.
Speaker 4:Oh well, that is not, that's unexpected, maybe. Maybe the world isn't the way I thought it was. Maybe, you know, maybe there is more out there than I thought, and I did have one, really beautiful. This has only happened to me once in over the years, but I got this one message from somebody who I knew through social media and you know we'd connected over common interests and things and they had I mean they had quite different political views from mine, much more conservative, but you know I also really don't believe in an echo chamber.
Speaker 4:I do like having a diversity of people and opinions in my world and all of a sudden, all of I don't I stood this day. I don't know what prompted it, but they sent me a personal message on Facebook saying there's a lot of stuff that I have posted in public over the years that I now think must have been very hurtful to you and I'm sorry. Please understand that that's not who I am. I just didn't know any better yet and it was jaw dropping.
Speaker 4:I'm tearing up a little just recalling it, because at some point and I don't know specifically what it was and we haven't really ever delved into it, and I do tell the story with permission but something had shifted. They had seen something in my, in my posts and in my way of being in the world, and they had questioned and thought okay, well, maybe the way that I've been looking at things is not the whole story, and this is that openness to being wrong and this is so just yeah, it's transformative when we allow ourselves to be wrong or when we're open to the idea of being wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, I think that when yeah, I love hearing that and seeing the emotion that it invoked in you it's such a good reminder for us all to go. You can I think Layl Stone talks about cleaning it back up you know, like, if we have done, things, said, things acted in ways that in time whether that's years later, moments later to just own that and clean it up and circle back and clean it up, and that's actually very courageous. It's very courageous, it really is, yeah, and it can then shift and change perspective or change, change someone else's life too in a way or, you know, influence it in some way. It's powerful, so powerful.
Speaker 3:Rudy, just changing gears for a second and apologies, I don't know this the answer to this question beforehand but in regards to your workplace, how long have you been there for?
Speaker 4:So my day job is at Red Hat, which is a very large international software company. Not a lot of people outside the tech industry know about it because we do mostly very large scale like infrastructure and sort of enterprise scale software. People in Brisbane have often heard of us because we used to have naming rights on a building on North Key.
Speaker 2:Yes, on North Key, I know exactly where it is. Yeah, come off, coro, drive up that way.
Speaker 4:And I've actually been there in, so in IT terms, I've been there forever. I'm coming up on my 15th anniversary with Red Hat, which means that the tech industry has completely changed in the time that I've been there. One of the things that I love about Red Hat, which got me there and has kept me there is I guess it's relevant to our topic today because it's an open source company, and so what that means for people outside the software world to open source is a philosophy where so normally the source code that the actual computer language that programmers, software engineers, developers are writing is like a software company's most closely guarded secret, Like it's the recipe for code or it's the 11 secret herbs and spices.
Speaker 4:Like it is actually the software company's most precious intellectual property and it's carefully guarded, because if you had that code, you could duplicate the product. What Red Hat does, and has always done, is we take the source code for all of our products, including like we're a $5 billion company and our flagship product makes about 70% or 80% of that revenue. We take the source code for that and we publish it on the internet and say help yourselves.
Speaker 2:Wow, really.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and the open source movement is about that. It's the idea that anyone can take the code, improve it. There's a licensing condition on it that if you take our code and modify it, that you will publish your modifications under the same license and if we like it, we'll take it back. And in turn, our software is built from a lot of components, a lot of smaller pieces of software that people have released under similar licenses. Red Hat does stuff like buying. We actually take out a lot of software patents specifically so we can patent an idea and then say and so we own this idea and all of you can use it. So we actually are in this very aggressive process of taking patents and kind of turning them on themselves and saying well, now nobody can claim to exclusively own this idea because we've patented it and we've given it to the entire world. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 4:How generous. Well, but it's just a different way of doing business right. It is this the rising tide lifting all boats or whatever analogy you want to use there.
Speaker 4:But it's this idea that actually our knowledge and our technology expands faster when we share, like when we can show, we show our working and say this is why the software works how it does, and this is what that particular feature does and how we made it do that kind of thing. And someone else might come along and say, oh well, you know, but this would be even better, wouldn't it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I said oh yeah actually it would.
Speaker 2:It's almost like the ultimate corporate growth mindset. Yeah, it's like an abundance mindset. Yeah, the infinite versus finite, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's so great.
Speaker 4:And that philosophy is, you know, extremely yeah, it enlivens me. I think that that is the way that, in everything, we get better. And also, as a I guess sidebar to that, I'm an admin on English Wikipedia with tens of thousands of articles and edits under my belt Because of the same thing. Like Wikipedia is published under a similar license, it means that anyone can update it, correct it. If you want to download it and sell it, I mean good luck to you, go ahead and do that. But it's this idea of a common contribution and being able to again that what we know individually is nothing compared to what we know together and if we can all collaborate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. It's so good, it's so, so true. And in business, you know, it's like talking about the leaders not thinking they have to be the smartest person in the room and getting all the people around them that are going to contribute and really lift things up. And it's just looking at this on an even broader scale, right, a global scale.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I'm a people manager at Red Hat and right now I've got a team of technical translators who report to me, and so I mean, these are people who are when we're talking translation here, we're talking literal translation taking the software manuals and the user interfaces and making them available in languages other than English, particularly for the Japanese market, which is a very important market for us. And I'm not a Japanese speaker myself. I've got a vocabulary of probably 20 words, maybe I don't know much more than that, and yet I still have translators asking me questions about oh, should we do this this way or that way? And I go, I'm not a Japanese speaker.
Speaker 4:You are literally the expert here. I need you to make that decision, whether it's whether it's a choice I mean, it's not usually a choice of word, but it's a choice of strategies what do we prioritize out of all of the stuff that we have to get ready for the Japanese market? Like, what should we focus on first? So you tell me yeah, I'm literally the last person. You should be asking this question to.
Speaker 2:That's empowering for your people, though, too right, Like when they can then make those decisions. And yeah, how have you gone with, I think, Andy asking the question about how long you've been at Red Hat 15 years and then in your own personal journey over the last few years? How and this may or may not be appropriate to talk about, depending on the experience, Everything's appropriate.
Speaker 4:Yes, More I don't want to if there's any Compassionate curiosity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if people aren't, if the answer is, to an extent, you're still there. Yeah, I don't want to throw anyone in under any um throat purples.
Speaker 2:Look, but how? How has that been accepted? And? Um, I guess, how have you felt in being in your own skin and your own? Do you wear Camilla there? Um, only on special occasions.
Speaker 4:Okay, yeah, um, but honestly it's um. I would love to say that I'd love to tell you this long story now about how the tech industry is very progressive and very forward looking and very pragmatic and all those things. But, uh, and I think that's all true, at the same time, it's more that like it is so pragmatic that it was almost like a non-event, like right, like the idea that the boss is now wearing a dress is like so far removed from anything that my people or colleagues or workmates care about.
Speaker 4:That that it just just not even a thing. It's like, it's a whatever Like, so it's, it's more, it's less of an inclusion than an, than an indifference.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:And I'm saying that in a very loving way yeah, yeah, it's. And and in some ways I mean that if I had to imagine what an end goal would be like for for the world in terms of um DEI, that's almost it, right, so that that it's like where it's just not, and it's no more of an issue for for me to turn up wearing a dress than for a female bodied person to to turn up wearing a dress. Like it's just not even a, not even. Why do we care about that? Why do we care about that more, whether more than, for example, if I turned up wearing a black T shirt or a red T shirt like it's just not a thing, like just not something anybody cares about at that in that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on the flip side, I'm thinking about something that is really cool, about what you wear, because I want to. I've seen a few of these posts recently, but you have done a couple of catwalks.
Speaker 4:Yes, I'm a runway model now in as well as everything else.
Speaker 2:I love that so much. Tell us about how that's come about.
Speaker 4:It came about because so I have a amongst everything else, so I also have a theater background. I was a high school drama teacher for for many years and I love performance and I love, I'm very comfortable in that public space. And so what had? What had happened? I had actually done some runway training because I was interested I've always been interested in fashion and that the very. But then I never expected the very first runway that I actually did would be for Camilla. So, and it had happened specifically because the label was planning a show for the new season collection and Camilla's team had had shown her what they, what they had planned for the for the runway. And this was the morning before the show, and she said to them there's not enough diversity on this runway, fix it. Which is amazing. So they quickly scrambled, and you know there were the version of the story I've heard of. So there were a number of people who quickly thought of me and and were, and you know, reached out to me and so basically same day, you know, I had gone from a phone call to, like half an hour later, being actually being in the presence of the great designer herself and being and being having her choose outfits for me. I say you know when, when, the, when I woke up and rolled out a bed on Thursday morning, the idea that by lunchtime I'd be standing in my undies while Camilla Franks was picking out outfits for me, I mean, that's not how I thought Thursday was going to go, but so amazing. So that was the first. And then, you know, I've done a few since then. I've done it, I've got more coming up, so it's, it's just been, it's been wonderful again that you know, we are now in a, we're now in a space where diversity is being valued.
Speaker 4:And, look, the fashion industry does have a lot of problems still. There is still a lot of problems with what is represented. There's a lot of problems with, also intrinsic to the, the industry itself. I am a, I am an ambassador for mind your fashion, which is a, a charity that's looking to improve some of those, some of those things, by raising awareness and education inside the fashion industry of how we look after the mental health of workers.
Speaker 4:But I also see that, as in the fashion industry, we kind of have a special, there's a special responsibility, because we all wear clothes, I mean, apart from some weird hippies in the Gold Coast Interland.
Speaker 4:But I mean, most of us are wearing clothes most of the time and and they're an important part of how we express ourselves, and it's been an important part for me of how I express myself and I think that the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, by what the fashion industry chooses to showcase and represent, it therefore has a significant impact on society as a whole and, like, on all of us, because of what we see on, what we see on a runway, what we see in a catalog, what we see in advertising, and so it's important to me to so again, choosing to show up in that way and keep showing up in that way is part of a message as well. And I've just been, really I've been so humbled by the designers and the labels who have wanted to work with me and have wanted to use me as a model, and another high point was when I actually featured in the Lorna Jane campaign, so that had cut for me that was it was a full circle moment.
Speaker 4:It was a full circle moment the idea that this label had been important to my own, expressing myself, and then for them to see that and to say, yeah, yeah, come and represent us.
Speaker 2:And I've seen photos of you and Lorna together and, yeah, it's stunning. And even from a different perspective, from my own personal perspective. I'm a short, curvy woman who's never been skinny or thin or whatever other word, and so when you're talking about clothing and expressing yourself and the diversity of what's represented, whether that's gender, whether that's ethnicity, its shape, size, like it's all of it, isn't it? And it's so important because I remember growing up reading I mean my 40s now, so Dolly and Girlfriend and all the magazines and trying to find someone.
Speaker 2:I think the closest I ever found to people that I was like, oh, I'm kind of like them. I mean not because they're celebrities, but I think it was Tiffany Ambertheson from like 902, she had a really round face. I'm like, oh yeah, she looks like me not at all, but just the only person that maybe had more of a round face in the darker hair. And then Jerry Hallowell. I'm like, oh yeah, she's short. Now I've got the red hair, she's busty. Oh yeah, okay, I can relate, not just the skinny, tall one or whatever it was that I would never be, or body size aside, my height I'm just never gonna be tall. I'm just out of my control. But those things we don't realise the impact that they have on your mental models and the stories you tell yourself and your own acceptance, as I say, whether that's gender ethnicity or all of diversity, in whatever perspective, so important that we're talking about it, we're conscious of it Representation matters.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, one of my co-ambassadors for Mind your Fashion is a woman who has had both legs amputated at the knee and she models with her prosthetic legs obviously prosthetic legs and this happened in a public space so I can tell the story. But she had a. She actually had some really nasty person post comment on one of her photos. You're obviously just doing this for the attention. And she replied well, obviously, bitch, because it is about that representation.
Speaker 4:It is about showing up. It is about yes, we are doing it for the attention. Yes, because we are trying to change the way that. Change what's seen on the runway, change what's seen in a fashion campaign.
Speaker 2:Yes, there was a beautiful. I don't think it's the same person. It's not Lisa, is it the?
Speaker 4:lady, no, no, lisa's amazing as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lisa. I heard her speak at TEDx Brisbane last year and I've seen her post since, talking about almost like the ads. She's in a wheelchair and the ads of anything to do with disability was more like oh, if you drink and drive, you'll end up in a wheelchair. And she's like is that the only time people are seeing people in a chair? Is that this worst case scenario of how their life will be? She's like this is so offensive and we need to change.
Speaker 3:Dylan Allcott's spoken about that before. Yeah, actually maybe it was Dylan, but maybe both.
Speaker 2:And yeah, Dylan speaks a lot about that. And so, whatever the category, like we I don't know if this is too cliche, but I do believe it Like you can't be what you can't see 100%. And the Matilda's, they're a whole. Yeah right, like they're an example of this right now for young women, young people. You know, it's fantastic.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so there is a really there's almost a responsibility.
Speaker 4:There isto, when these opportunities have been extended to me and I think they're all genuine, because sometimes you do Not in any situation I've been in, but you know there is conversation, there's debate around tokenism or around how authentic is a representation, but you know what I think? Right now we'll take anything right. Yes, tokenism can be better than nothing as long as that's not the end of it, as long as we're still, as long as we are going somewhere as a society, somewhere kinder and somewhere more inclusive, then right now anything is better than, just not than invisibility.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad, I'm so grateful you've said that I had a conversation about the tokenism conversation last week at Ignite with someone and we were talking about, actually at Ignite 23, a beautiful client of ours who attended and she said I love the day. Really, you should be proud, Congratulations. One piece of feedback there was not a single woman of colour represented at Ignite 23. And she said and I know you, Cherie, and I know your intentions and for whatever reason, there wasn't, but I just wanted to, and she's an Indian woman and she's like I just wanted to share that perspective. And I remember sitting here planning Ignite 24 and said we need to be very conscious of our diversity. But we're not. We don't want to tick a box to pick someone to a tokenistic thing, but let's broaden our lenses, let's broaden our awareness of who can we find that is going to absolutely fit the bill, and also maybe an Indigenous woman or an immigrant woman. And I think we nailed it. We had three phenomenal in Ida, Alana and Wave Knee, but it wasn't to tick the box, but I was so grateful for someone bringing that awareness so it broadens our horizon. And then, in talking about that at the event with someone, we were saying, yeah, sometimes you don't want to invite someone to be there because it feels tokenistic, and then the conversation expanded to well, a considering it sounds so terrible, but that is better than nothing at all, and as long as it doesn't, it's exactly what you've just said is as long as it doesn't stop there and the intention is right and it's, but it's us.
Speaker 2:It's challenging I think. I think the learning for me is just challenging our own biases, because we've all got biases of and it may not be A cute little kid in the hallways here I feel like it's the unconscious bias that we may have around who's in our circle, and broadening that view and broadening that circling Compassionately curious who else can we learn from? What other voices do we need to hear in the room? And then what can we learn from them? And then, I believe, with the right intention, it builds and then those voices become broader and more diverse, naturally. But sometimes you just workplaces, teams, advertising, whatever it might be. It's just taking the first step and opening the door to what else can we learn and keep going from there? Absolutely.
Speaker 4:I was involved with a piece of postgraduate work in psychology from a very prominent Australian university, who will remain nameless, because as one of the topics that they looked at in this postgrad by coursework work was trans and gender diverse people, and that unit, or that piece of the unit, was taught without hearing from a single trans or gender diverse person, and I think in 2023, especially in a higher education setting, or we're not hard to find, and so how this could still happen is a bit mind boggling, and I offered that feedback. Maybe, when this is taught in future, maybe you should find somebody to actually talk to your student body From lived experience From lived experience, because the fact that you're not is kind of weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are we sharing if no one's actually had the lived experience? What are they actually discussing?
Speaker 4:And so it's exactly what you're saying about wanting to expand the circle and to hear from other voices. I mean 100%. When you're actually talking about that group of people, then you absolutely should include the people you're talking about. But in general it's like that open source principle that what we know together is more important than what any of us knows individually.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, so powerful and so important.
Speaker 3:Rudy in your, I guess, workplace and the relationships that you keep in life. Now, as you've kind of gone through the journey that you've been on to find the truest, authentic version of Rudy, how has your I guess, leadership style or your relationship changed, relationships changed along that way? Could you talk maybe a little bit about that?
Speaker 4:I'm thinking as you're asking the question. I'm struggling to actually think of a way that it has changed. Okay, cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the answer in itself.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think so. I think that, as you know, both as a people leader, my own discovery of my gender identity, or expanding my gender identity, has not really. I don't think that it's changed anything. And again, with my personal relationships, I mean, apart from, as I've said, the difficulty or the uncertainty that Laura and I went through, I don't know that it has changed. In fact, I guess in some ways I'm probably the worst person to ask that question. You might have been better at asking it to some of my friends or team members whether they think it changed me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, beautiful, I appreciate the answer. I think in one hand I had a perception of one thing, and it probably just solidified that, yeah, it is the outside looking in rather than the inside looking out. So what was your?
Speaker 4:perception. What did you wonder?
Speaker 3:I wonder whether you're accounting for how people grow over time in development themselves, whether there were some aspects of, say, the way that you used to lead you know kind of seven or eight years ago, before the Warner Jane encounter and before you went on the park run, how you used to lead before. That might be a bit different to today, just based on how you see other people in your team, how you engage with them, how you look at your friends I guess empathy and compassion in that way versus what it is now. I was interested to see if there was a journey there, but it probably solidifies that if there wasn't necessarily, then it's. You are just the version of you you've been that all along and that necessarily hasn't, you know, had like a significant degree of a turn.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that's the case. I mean I would say that certainly there's. I've learned a lot more as a leader over the time, but over that span of seven years, but I don't kind of, I don't hitch it to the self-discovery like I think. You know I'm a more experienced leader now I'm there's a, but I've always I think it's always been the business of people, leadership. That has always interested me and inspired me and simply because so when when my the elder of my two boys was I don't know about four or five and came back from at school, they must have been talking about you know what their parents do for an occupation and he asked me what I do and I said I'm a manager.
Speaker 4:He said what's that? I thought oh, how do you? You know that Reddit thing explained like I'm five. Yeah, yeah, yeah he was an opportunity to literally explain like he was five, because he was and I said I'm going to have to think about that and and come back to you. But what I came back with I was quite proud of and I still believe it to be true. And I say I told him that a manager is a person who helps people get better at what they do.
Speaker 2:Hmm, beautiful.
Speaker 3:It's a beautiful description. I think it's a good metaphor for life, isn't it? Sometimes I'm certainly guilty of overcomplicating the, the, the, quite simple, and it's like I could just help people. Just get a little bit better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great, I love that. I love that and I think, then, what we do in our business being leadership developers exactly that I think. When Chloe's asked me, I'm trying to remember exactly the words, but I think I remember saying something like I speak with people to make them happy about who they are and be there and be really great in their jobs.
Speaker 4:You know, it's like how do you make it really simple? Yeah, that's it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's, I know we. I want to remind myself to speak more like I'm speaking to a five or six year old, because it does simplify things and I think it gains greater perspective and it really is quite grounding.
Speaker 4:Because it is that people aspect right and and look there are. I mean I've had incredible program and project managers who report, who've reported to me. I admire those skills because there's a skill sets I don't have. I the way that, the way that you know, there are different styles of management, there are different management roles and responsibilities as a people manager. That's what attracts me to it and, and I think the curiosity about people and listening to people and listening to the best ideas is has always been like fundamental to my, my leadership style.
Speaker 3:Yeah, beautiful, thank you. One last question for you today, if, if, that's okay and then we'll. Yeah sure, let you carry on with the rest of your day Is what is the kindness thing that someone has done for you?
Speaker 4:I saw this question come through on the, on the email, and it's it's hard because there are there are so many, so many moments and I think you know, I think, if I think just about the last few years, certainly the, the invitation to come up on that on that runway and represent a, a brand who I deeply love, but also for the, the owner and the, the namesake and creator of that brand, to for it to be so important to her that representation that that runway had had diversity, diverse representation on it and you know, has taking a risk, I guess, in in the sense of being able to to stand up for that, for that representation. That was an incredibly kind thing for her to do, big shout out to Camilla yeah big shout out to.
Speaker 3:Camilla, it sure was. Your dresses are beautiful, like they're so good. I know Shari often, often, mentions it, probably because she just wants to have the same wardrobe that you do.
Speaker 2:Well, we were. We were talking about it the other night, and I was like I've only got two Camillas at the moment.
Speaker 4:You can't stop it.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 4:It is. It is an addiction. I mean it's better than some addictions.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's true, there's definitely worse things. Well, rudy, I'm so grateful for you coming and sharing about what's important, what we can learn about your own journey. Thank you for your time and, you know, one of my wishes is that more people could be more comfortable in their own skin and who they are and their own identity. The more that we, as human beings, can love and accept ourselves, then we love and accept more others around us. And yeah, it's just, it's power. So, thank you for being you, thank you for being part of our community and keep doing the amazing work that you're doing in the world. And yeah, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Rudy.
Speaker 2:Thanks for joining us on the Lead with Courage podcast. We illuminate leadership and it's our mission to inspire and grow the leaders of today to create a better tomorrow. We hope and trust that this episode has given you some insights and joy to empower you to live your biggest, best life. If you did enjoy the episode, we'd be so grateful for you to rate and share wherever you listen to this podcast. And until next time, go and lead with courage. Illuminate leadership is not a licensed mental health service or a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. Any conversation in this podcast is general in nature and if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline on 13-11-14.
