Bold Followership

Hey. Hey, Cadre. Gosh, I feel like I haven't seen you in 5 hours. Because I haven't. On Mondays, we talk about professional growth, professional development, professional walking down the road. And at this time I, my name's JC Lippold. If we've never shared time and space together before, thank you for the opportunity to do so. I look at the world from the seat of an observer. I look at the seat, the world from the seat of what's going on around me. And how can I help it exist in the way that it is existing?

How can I amplify, how can I make people more aware of the things that are happening right now? Do I need to lead? Do I need to point? Do I need to follow? Do I need to bring awareness to something? So I think on a day of professional growth, professional development, professional progression, that it only makes sense that I would maybe balance it out by talking about following. Because especially where so many of our current Cadre friends are located in the western half of the world, we often talk about leading and so many of our, of our partners are in organizations, right?

And we often think about businesses as this way. We walk in at the bottom and we attempt to get to the top. We walk in as a follower and we attempt to figure out how we can become someone who leads. I'm going to take the follower conversation from a different place today, though. So last week I was sitting around a group, a table with a group of people whose vocation, whose job is to coach others. And as I get to start the conversation question, everyone was asked, what's your favorite part of, what was your, what is your favorite part of the coaching journey?

And about eight or nine people went before me and they all spoke about the aha, accelerating moments, the moments where the coachee figures it out. The moment where they go, I got it. The moment where they move forward, where they stand up, where they accomplish the goal, where maybe they failed, but then they succeeded where they thought they couldn't and then they did. And then it comes to me and I go with this cheesy smile on my face and I go, my favorite moment is when they fall backwards, when they fall down, when they mess up, and with this smile on my face, I go, yes, you're going backwards.

And I just stop. And I don't say anything else. And I let them figure it out. I let them figure it out. They hear me saying, you're messing up, you're failing. But I'm saying it with a lot of joy and positivity. In my voice, all the energy leaving my body is positive, but all the energy within their action is negative. They are regressing, and I am positive. Here's the deal, everybody. Progression is really great. Here's the headline for the day. Regression is really great. Stagnant is scary. Stagnant is scary.

Progression is a sign that we're doing the stuff. And I think that's sometimes where leaders suck. Leaders get stuck in the. Let's go, let's go. Here's the four steps to success. Here's the plan, here's the vision, here's this, so on and so forth. And it's often the followers who, who are head down, who are doing the work, who are showing up, who get it. They're in the cogs, they're in the nitty and the gritty. I'll go sports analogy for a second. Early on this year, the Minnesota Twins won twelve games in a row.

It was fun. It was cool. The Minnesota Timberwolves have lost three games in a row. And right now, the energy in Minnesota is kind of like, uh oh. There's no way we can win four games in a row. Why? Because there's no team that has ever come back from zero three in a seven game series to win four three. I go. It's all semantics. There are many teams that have won four games in a row in the NBA, and there are at least one team in the state of Minnesota that have won twelve games in a row in the last 60 days.

It's just how we think about it. Right now, Minnesota is in a micro state of regression. But in the last seven days, Minnesota has been in a state of progression. The leaders, the loud voices may be going, but there are followers out here. You want to know what those are? The voices to listen to. Sometimes those quiet voices, those voices that often don't have the microphone. So if you hear those loud voices, those loud voices are saying something that don't seem to be guiding you in a place that are bringing you joy and light.

Here's my recommendation. Don't listen to them. And if you don't know where the other voice is, here's my recommendation today. Listen to the opposite of what the voice that you're hearing is saying. If the rational voice or the loud voice is leading you to a negative place, do the opposite. Quite often, that's what the quiet follower is telling you to do. And quite often, the quiet follower that's supposed to be you. Everybody today is one of those often quiet days in the professional realm. And often on the quiet days.

In the professional realm, it's a good day to rest sometimes. But today may be a good day to work. Today may be a good day to whiteboard. Today may be a good day for you to go. Huh? There's no one in the proverbial workspace. So what if you got in there? What if you took one, two, three steps today? Or no steps or a hundred steps? I don't know. I don't know your context, but I bet you do. Do what you need to do today and remember, progression. Good stuff. Regression, good stuff. Stagnants. Scary.

Have a good one, y'all. I'll see you for another double shot tomorrow. Have a good one, y'all. See you later.