Bold Followership

Well, hey there, Cadre. Happy Monday. Happy professional development day here on our live stream schedule. Happy fresh week. If you are a person who starts the week with with work and what you do for vocation and call on Mondays, happy new week. Whatever's going on, wherever you are, I hope there is some good energy supporting you. Hey, my name is JC Lippold. I wear a lot of hats, but one of them is as a leadership development coach consultant. I live a lot of my life in support of people who are in the sphere of professional development.

So here on professional development day, on Mondays. I know you've already had the chance today to check out Luke and Jean and Matt. Coming up later today, you also have the opportunity to check out live streams from Daryl, Doctor David, so many opportunities to go ahead and take small amounts of your time to go ahead and connect, to think, to learn. Hi, crew. Serena, it's nice to see you. My friend, Colleen Shannon. Alec. Bravo. Bravo. On taking a little bit of time to consider you, to consider how you are putting yourself into the world and the impact that that has.

Speak, wonder. I feel like I haven't chatted with you in at least 24 to 48 hours, so I'm glad that we are getting back on, on schedule here. So what's this live stream about on a day where we talk about professional development, and so often in our work world, it's all about lead. Lead. Be out front, be the inspire, be the one with the fresh idea. All of a sudden, you see the opportunity here to think about following. Yeah. Think about all the times that you are not in the seat of leader, where you're not the solo decision maker, where you're not the only one who has the power or the prowess in a situation.

Maybe you're the one without the answer, or maybe you're looking at a system where you simply are not ever in that seat of leadership. How do you have an impact? So I spent my graduate studies. It's a leadership degree, but I spent my time looking at the act of following and how do we take it to heart? So another one of the hats I wear is as a theater director, I spend a lot of time educating young people on how to tell stories through the craft of theatre. Right now I'm working on a production of Matilda Junior at Stages Theatre Company in Hopkins, Minnesota, and I am the music director.

So I spend a lot of time working on harmonies and dissonance, on the moments of our ability to make sounds that are big, sounds that are small. And tonight, literally tonight, I'm gonna be walking him through this exercise. So maybe do it with me right now. Set up your phone if you're holding onto it, if you can put it down safely. And put your hands where my hands are on the screen. Okay. Like, put your hands where you see my hands. And as my hands move, move your hands, too. Yeah. So where you see a hand, plop your hand there.

If I move faster, pa pa, you need to move that way, too. If all of a sudden I move in an unexpected way, try to catch up and follow. If I move closer or if I move farther away, follow the lead and stop. How'd you do? How did you do in attempting to follow where my hands were leading? Now, luckily, the actors tonight are going to be able to be in space with each other, so they're going to be able to maybe read more body movement and breath and energy. They're going to be able to see if someone's getting ready to do something sneaky.

But the first time we do this exercise, I tell them they cannot put any pressure on their partner's hands, so they can't push into one another. They can only shadow. And the second time, I tell them to place themselves in a posture where they can push into each other's hands. And then as we do this exercise again, it is so much more possible to follow where the leader is guiding you. Placing a little bit of pressure on the leader as the follower allows you to accomplish the goal of staying in line, of staying in step with where the person who is leading the story is bringing you to.

I use this exercise to teach people how to make harmony happen. Harmony is not two people doing two things independently. It's two people realizing that when they do those things together, it creates a buzz, it creates a relationship. Let's say we're trying to create dissonance, right? Two sounds that when we hear them together, make you nervous, make you stressed on purpose. Think about the time you're trying to make harmony. Two sounds that when they ring together, it creates a fuller sound, a positive sound of joy, of color.

When you're in a space of followership, do you try to follow by being disconnected, or do you push into that leader with questions, with response, with idea, with critique, with feedback? My invitation today is to do the latter. Following is not a passive act. Following is not a tiptoeing around the person who is doing. And you are the person attempting not to disrupt their path. Because what do leaders need from you? They need your eyes. They need your input. They need you to be the positive friction within the situation so they have greater awareness of where you are going today.

Jules I'm glad that I made you laugh. Shannon I love that I make you feel like a kid in the best of ways. Kids know how to follow. Kids know how to lean into the opportunity to be a part of something, you within your organization, you within your family structure, you within your neighborhood. How often do you take your role of followership seriously? How often do you put on your big follower pants and go, I'm going to follow the heck out of this situation and what comes from those moments because we'll also say some leaders are afraid to lead people who are actively following.

Teach them otherwise. Teach them your value. Teach them that to have followers makes leading possible. A leader with no followers is nothing but a lone nut. As one of my favorite thought leaders, Derek Sivers says, there's a lot of leaders in the world who are afraid to have followers. Be a follower that teaches leaders how to lead, speak wonder jewel, Shannon T. Norton crew wherever you are Serena, Alec, thank you. Thank you for allowing me to lead this moment and then by your comments to open you up to consider how you act differently throughout the rest of your day.

Again, you're going to see a few other curators today. I mentioned them earlier on, but then tomorrow we move into our community today, and then Wednesday we move into our internal work and our mental wellbeing development Thursday and Friday, caregiving and grief Saturday and Sunday. The compliment to today we work professionally on Mondays and we work internally, personally on Saturdays and Sundays. And then we start all over again. Allow us to be great leaders. Cadre Sphere tell us what you need.

Share your comments, your ideas, your thoughts. Be bold followers today and every day. Y'all will talk to you soon. Have a good one.