‘About Me’
as usual

After gaining an Honours degree in Anthropology & Social Geography, I entered a career in Human Resources in 2000. Starting in the Public Sector in Wellington I worked my way up the pecking order via various roles across the Ministry of Social Development and State Services Commission - the latter in sector-wide project roles and developing the leadership capability of 2nd & 3rd tier leaders.

In 2007, I moved to Deloitte managing HR consulting projects across New Zealand and working on several international engagements in Australia and the Middle East.

With a growing young family and wanting to be closer-to-home I took a role as the HR Director of a large not-for-profit with 1,200 staff across the lower South Island establishing a people strategy and developing an HR service that took a lead role in making the organisation a better place to work for staff striving to help the disadvantaged lead better, more fulfilling lives.

2013 saw the establishment of my boutique leadership development practice, LeadingIdeas. This was my launchpad into working exclusively with leaders of larger service-oriented organisations keen to develop cultures of engaged & enabled staff in what I call RAW - Radically Authentic Workplaces.

LeadingIdeas Ltd morphed into callummckirdy.com in 2017, when I decided to take a stand for the Human Resources profession and work with dedicated HR Leaders, teams and practitioners committed to finally delivering the full potential of the people profession into organisations. Nobody was doing this at the time - the developers of people had a plethora of technical HR training available to them, but nothing designed to help then actually BE better people in the process of doing HR.

Continuing to partner with the HR profession, this work morphed some more into helping organisations harness the power of hidden difference and different thinking - in particular around the emerging D&I space of maximising the experience and performance of those with neurodiverse conditions such as ADHD, Autism and Dyslexia.

Post-COVID my conference speaking, coaching and workshop facilitation has niched further into helping people be seen, heard and included at work. This is often lumped into the amorphous ‘DEIB’ space because I speak about how teams work best when they harness their differences, diverge as well as converge, and when colleagues believe they belong with and matter too each other.

I reckon I’ve found my calling here.

My life at the edge
of the bell-curve

I’m Dyslexic and ADHD-positive (among other things😉) - a combo that makes life a little interesting, frustrating and exciting. I have an awkwardly visceral empathy response and a deep memory for experiences with people. I’m rubbish with names but I never forget a face nor how the owner of said face made me feel. Ever.

I was the kid with too much energy - the fidgety lad on the mat, the jumper-off-roofs who could run all day and never slow down. Maybe I’ve blocked it out but I don’t recall being disruptive. School reports certainly referred to my supposed need to “try harder”. I tried alright, but it didn’t really work. Since my teens I’ve been a competitive cyclist, long-distance triathlete, ultra-marathon runner …….. and yet I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until my early 40s. How is that possible?!

Probably my cunning ability to hide who I was in order to fit-in to the norms and expectations of a world not designed for minds like mine, and I grew up desperate to fit in knowing I didn’t, couldn’t and might never fit. Society and the systems that govern it have all been built by the masses for the masses, and I simply don’t naturally fit in to some of the norms of society. I’ve had to find my own ways to make me fit. This is what I mean by living at the edge of the bell-curve. This also means I believed I had to ‘play the game’, which meant not being 100% me.

I was scared of my mind working differently to others. I simply didn’t think about the world, people, places, ice-cream, the feeling of certain fabrics or what ‘cool’ looked like the way those around me seemed too. So I faked it. I got really good at it … a little too good at it. 😬

I think a little differently to most and that allows me to see opportunities others miss. I’m a dreamer and a connector of seemingly random ideas. I’m a curious questioner interested in what’s possible and why people behave the way they do in a given situation. People fascinate me.

I believe in the power of kindness; that everyone matters. I believe we are not our pasts, and our futures are up for the making.

Its a real shame we stifle our powers to imagine because of some misguided belief it’s not mature or professional to let our imaginations run wild. This is where true innovation comes from.

I love a good bedtime story too - I listen too rather than read books, which allows me to imagine. You see, I may not be able to read a book very well, but I can read a room …. and that’s what people pay me for.

I love to observe the dynamic between people in groups and have a knack for predicting & preempting how people are going to behave before, during and after change. I simply GET people.

I’m great at helping people recognise, own and step-in to their potential. I see people hiding in organisations like I did all the time. I know all the ways to hide (at work and in life) and I make it ok to talk about what people hide from and how, together, they can come out from that hiding place and play a greater role in their teams, their organisations and maybe even deeper into their lives.