Bold Followership

Well, hey there, Cadre. Happy Monday again. If we shared a little bit of time earlier on today, it's nice to see you. I missed you. And if this is our first time together today, by golly, it's been a while. It is professional development day here in the Cadre sphere. And that means, in the way that I talk about professional development, this is the day that we talk about what we do with our lives in comparison to Saturday, on our personal development day, when we talk about who we are in our lives.

So it's so much fun when I see familiar names joining the live streams. But I'll even say, as I love saying on Tuesdays on our building community days, I love even more so when I see names that I do not recognize joining. So to all of you that I recognize, hey, how's it going? And to those of you that I do not recognize, by golly, you are doing what I think is our job here at Cadre, and that is truly creating a verb rather than a noun. Community. And this journey of understanding our life is an evolution.

So hopefully you've had time to check out some live streams today. And if you haven't, congrats, you've been busy. But check out my friends Luke and Gene and Matt, or maybe you check out some more live streams coming up later on today. But this is bold followership. Normally, when we think about professional development, we think about things like leadership. We think about things like development and climbing that mountain and entrepreneurial ship and having the idea that hasn't been had yet. And 1% better and bigger.

Stronger, harder, faster, deeper. The american dream. Go, go, go. Climb, climb, climb. Harder, faster. Come on, let's do it. And all those things are wonderful. They really are. But I want you to consider for a moment, how often are you not in the seat of driver? How often are you not in the seat of leader? And even if you are in the seat of leader all of the time, how often are you not leading when you are in the seat of leader? Hey, listeners, listeners. You have to be really good at not leading in those moments.

Hey, quarterback. Hey, CEO. You have to learn how to be masterful when the ball is not in your control. So I'm going to speak out of the workplace for a little bit. I'm going to speak out of the corporation or out of the skyscraper or out of the boardroom for a little bit today. I'm going to speak from the tennis court, and I'm going to speak from the stage. So, in previous lives, well, in a previous life, I was a prep tennis coach. I have state champions, I have all Americans who are near and dear to my.

He gave me the hardest worker award three years in a row. And he told me, it's because, JC, I put you on the varsity team because you're not good enough to be here as a player. But you work harder than the nine guys who are good enough to be here. And you make them play better because they look at you and they go, wow, we better work harder than the guy who's not good enough to be here. I kind of loved that. And then three months later, he hired me as an 18 year old to be on his coaching staff. He retired three months later and I took over the varsity team as a 19 year old head coach.

And that's exactly where I was supposed to be. I've been a professional coach for. Since. Since I was 19 years old. And I've been a prep coach since I was 15. Anyways, tennis is a sport where there's either one person on that team or there's two. And one of the things I would often do on my two person teams, on my doubles teams, is I would connect them together with an eleven and a half foot rope. Now, this rope would be able to be broken, so if they would not be moving together, it'd be velcroed and they would rip apart.

So it would be non violent, right? But they would have a little tug if they would, in essence, be two people leading their own path. Two people playing individualistically, rather than two people learning how to exist in. In co followership of one another. And it was so wonderful to watch their ability to become aware of one another. Imagine if every single person in your organization, now, again, it gets complex, right? If your organization is three people, 300 people, 3000 people, 30,000 people, they have to understand the tug of and who is actually doing the tugging at any point.

But my invitation for you today, the tactical and the practical, the takeaway, the simple thing that you can do is to consider who has the tug at any given moment. If you are the all the time leader, consider when by definition, you being the leader is you giving the permission, you saying to the follower that they actually have to be the one doing the tugging in the moment. They are the one who has to have the voice. They are the one who has to be the SME, the subject matter expert. They are the one who has to do the tug.

They are the one who has to say, hey, leader, you are wrong in this moment, because then all of a sudden, people start understanding where to go. Now, another role that I take is I'm a theater educator, I'm a theater director, and I often make this case. I have a wonderful production of Matilda Junior that closes in six days and it's been running for 32 performances. There's eight left. And many, many weeks ago, I said to the cast, I'm like, hey, who is the hardest job in this show? And some people would say, Matilda Trunchbowl, XYZ.

And I'd be like, nah, guess again, guess again, guess again. And obviously I'm going from the seat of leader here. I had an idea in my head and they had to guess what I thought the right answer was. And I made the point that I thought it was the people in the cast who were the ensemble members. The ones without names, the ones without tracks written into the script, the ones without do this. Here is your story, here is your arc, here is where you are going. Because what do those people have to do?

They have to read literally in between the lines. Their story, their direction is in following where the protagonists and the antagonists are telling them where to go. So I ask you today, if you are lost leaders, those of you who are wondering, where are you supposed to go? Maybe the answer is within your follower path. Maybe you need to look at where the leaders are going and to see what that says into your heart and into your brain. Not in a fluffy way, but when they go, Pa. And then all of a sudden your heart goes, Nya.

And they go and your brain goes and you respond to those things, you'll see. Paella 204 825 said good afternoon in the chat. On Wednesdays, paella has a wonderful livestream called Paella. What's the name of your livestream? Is it own your path? Correct me if I'm wrong, own your path. But it's all about going, huh? What is life showing me and how do I respond accordingly? Steven, who's also on the live stream here, going to be starting on professional development day as a live stream contributor as well.

And again, someone who has extensive experience in many pathways. The cool thing is we are contributors. We're not tell you what to doers. We may be experts within certain areas of, of knowledge, but we're not experts of you. We actually don't know anything about you. We don't know answers to anything about what you're going through. What we may be able to do is to say, here's how we've followed where things in our life have been leading us to go to. So are you a chro of an organization? Are you the leader of a family structure?

Are you attempting to figure out what you're gonna have for lunch today? I bet there are leader voices. I bet there are title characters in your story. I bet there's forces that are tied to an eleven and a half foot rope that are inviting you to go in a certain direction. What? If you listen to those voices today, I cannot wait to see you tomorrow morning. m. Central standard time. And then we get to go ahead and look at the outward facing click tomorrow as well. Y'all, I appreciate you so much, and we will see you next time.

Bye.