Bold Followership

Well, hey, everybody. Happy Monday. It's always nice to say hello, Cadre. This is professional development day. So as you start out your week, if you have a traditional workweek, Monday through Friday, what a great day to go ahead and spend some time thinking about how you do the things that you do with your life, with your work, how you become a person who can influence others and lead others, a person who can create things that maybe haven't been in existence before. Perhaps you are the person who is supporting something that already is in existence.

That is great. So I always sign in a little bit early to greet all y'all who are showing up. So as your names flicker on my screen, I'd love for you to see the energy it's giving me. Russell, nice to see you, my friend, wherever you are. If you are in the middle of snowy Minnesota, if you are down south in Texas or out east in North Carolina, if you feel like saying happy Monday with an exclamation point, or if you're more like, you know, I really don't have exclamation points in my energy tank right now.

Maybe you're full of question marks or dot dot dots. That's good. That's okay. So my name is JC Lippold. If we've never shared space or time together before, thank you for the opportunity for spending time with you. That is a gift. It is very much a gift to spend time with you. And if that makes you a little uncomfortable, I'm okay with that. You are a world changer, whether you're sitting at the top of a mountain, whether you are the bringer of new ideas into the world, or whether you're someone who feels in the middle or stuck or in support of other people's ideas.

When I come on to Cadre on Mondays, I talk about one of my favorite concepts, followership. So I have a master's of arts in leadership, but I was the squeaky wheel throughout my graduate studies, always looking at the other side of that relationship. com or any other place where you can buy bunches of books, if you type in the word leadership, ooh, you can find tons and tons and tons of books on how to become the leader. If you type in the word followership, there's a handful. And in reality, leave it to human beings to focus on being leaders when the majority of the time, we exist in the seat of follower, right?

Even when you are the leader, the COO, the SVP, the entrepreneur, the one to start the conversation, the one with a fresh idea. How far do you get without someone joining fold with you? Derek Sivers says it's that first follower who turns the lone nut into a leader. Check out Derek Sievers TED talk. It's about three minutes long. How to start a movement. It's great, but today I'm going to follow in the teaching of another one of my favorite TeD talkers. Her name is doctor Jane Bentley. She works with music in the caretaking of individuals.

So she's uses music in a therapeutic and a healing way. And she has a wonderful TED talk called the art of following. Throughout this TED talk, everybody in the audience, she turns into an orchestra because she starts by saying that we often hear that leaders never follow. But then she brings up the idea of symphonic orchestra, the world's best musicians, and that their job is to do what? To follow the conductor without the musicians makes silence. The conductor with an orchestra of bold followers, of precise, masterful followers, can change the world, can literally create the soundscape for the world in which we live in.

So all y'all who are listening today, can you go ahead and type in the chat for me? And it may take you a moment to think of this, since we aren't often prompted to think about ways that we impact the world in our following. But can you share the number one way that you impact the world as a follower? Go and think about it for a moment. You're not in the seat of leader, but you're in the seat of follower. Someone else has the. Has the power, someone else has the direction. What's the number one situation you can think of where you go, gosh, I follow the heck out of that person or out of that movement or that idea.

Yeah. Right. Being able to receive dream big 30 just said being active listener. Right. Someone who is not only receiving, but someone who is doing something with what they're receiving. Keep throwing those ideas into the chat. Jules says, is that grief supporting Jules? Supporting. Got it. Yeah. Being the supporter of musicians. Right. DJ Kirkuby, I saw you sign in and I took it right from you. I listen and I receive their message. DJ Kirkby is an individual who will soundscape. So I work with DJ Kirkby quite a bit.

You can check DJ Kirkby out on Wednesdays here on Cadre, but I'll create a movement experience in that room. I'm kind of the leader, and all of a sudden, DJ Kirkby starts weaving in music that she is feeling, meets the energy of the room. The cool thing is then I hand the leadership to DJ Kirkby. And then I shape the movement in the room to the music that I'm hearing. So, Doctor Jane Bentley, the art of following. I'm going to share five tips that she gives once she turns this TED talk audience into an orchestra.

I wrote them down like a good follower does. First, she says, the tip of perception. Use all of your channels of information when you are following. Your perspective on what's happening is very different from the leader and from the other followers. So you being able to share your perception of what's going on can greatly impact the direction of where things are going in your organization. Your perspective not only is worthy, but it's unique and powerful within its worthiness. So when you go, hey, I may be the only one who sees things this way.

Ooh, when I'm a leader, those are the people that I'm waiting to listen to. Number two, attention. Pay attention and continually adjust. If the leader is saying, hey, everybody, let's do this. But only 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 or 99% of the followers are paying attention. It's hard to know if the leader within that relationship is calibrating most precisely and most correctly to what the followers are providing. So be attentive in what's happening together. Have you ever made music or maybe been on a sports team?

I live in the twin cities of Minnesota, and one of my friends sons just won the state high school league basketball tournament, and I'm a former high school tennis coach, and I had the opportunity to go to state and have all those really, like, life changing, exciting moments. And as I was watching my friend's son go through this journey, through sections and state and winning the big championship, I texted all my old players from 15 years ago. I was like, wow. You still feel it? I still feel it.

Groups of people who are attentively moving together, that's a following act, not a leading act. Okay, number three, reorientation. Get out of your own way. How often in the sea to follow do we feel powerless, as opposed to acknowledging where we are and where we can go and the ability we have to reorient ourselves to a process. Sometimes we have to be the follower who is speaking. Sometimes we have to be the follower who's listening. Sometimes we have to be the follower who is being the squeaky wheel or the number one cheerleader in order for us to keep moving.

Are you continuously reorienting yourself within the movement? Two more. So I'll recap. Number one, perception. Use your channels of perception so you know where you are. Number two, pay attention. Be precise. And when and how you have to move. Number three, reorient yourself when you have to move, do it. Number four, integration. Not you along with the other followers, but all of you into the process. It's really hard to lead when you don't feel like your followers are in it. Head and heart and spirit and body, right to the place where they go.

You know, you are the one telling us where to go. You're the one with that 50,000 foot view, looking down and seeing where we're going. But when you have followers who integrate all of themselves into the process, that's when stuff can start to happen. And then lastly, inspiration. Understand that followership is not a passive act. Followership is not something that happens to you. It happens through you. I'm sorry, leaders. The amount of time that you are actually in the seat of leading right where you're the one who is making all the decisions, is very few.

We're continuously going, how do I de center myself? How do I take in? How do I adjust? How do I become influenced by those people around me so then we can move as one. You may be the eyes in a moment. Who are your ears? You may be the heart in the moment. Who's your brain? Speak. Wonder says. I could say I'm a follower of senior citizens because I'm in the demographic. I go see my mom at the care home, and I'm blessedly drenched in the wisdom of elders. Yeah, right. Speak. Wonder if I zoom out even further there.

You are the follower of the people that you are associated with and that you spend time with. We are all influenced by one another. Let's talk about another popular word in culture right now, influencer. The idea of influencership has convinced some people that they don't have influence. Y'all. You all have influence. I think the scary thing about the world right now is some people don't take their influence seriously, so they throw their ideas into the world as if no one's going to listen or no one's going to be inspired or hurt by them.

You are always in a space of influence, and at the same time, your leader and your follower, both of selves are always right there. So I encourage you as me being a good follower right now. Doctor Jane Bentley's message is really powerful to me as she stands on stage and waves her arms and tells people in the audience to make different sounds with their name tag and their pen, and to grab credit cards out of their wallet so they could go if she was standing on stage and no one was listening to her.

Is she actually a leader? Leaders out there? Are there actually people who are following you? And if not, how do you lead the way? How do you show the world how to follow so you can bring it to different places, to new places, to needed places? Have a good one. We'll talk to you later.