Leading with Authenticity

Happy Monday, everybody. My name is Jean Nichols. I'm one of the contributors here with Cadre. I'm excited to be here with all of you today. Coming into you from Minneapolis, Minnesota. If you've dialed into other live streams that I've done, you probably already know that. But I travel a lot, so I always like to say where I'm at in a given day. Not sure where all of you live, but if you're dialing in now or you dial in later, as I said, I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but we're on a smoke alert.

So the wildfires in Canada, the winds are blowing all the smoke down to Minneapolis area. So that's something new happening. Good morning. Good morning, catty mama. Does this mean that you have a cat? Are you a cat person? Good morning. Speak wonder. I have a treat for you today. Hello, Jocelyn. Hi, Shannon. Welcome. Nice to have you all here. My name is Jean Nichols. I'm really excited to be with you on this beautiful Monday. I was just mentioning, if you can, I'd love for you to pop in the chat to say where you're dialing in from today.

Sometimes we travel, sometimes you're from home. I'm from Minneapolis. I'm in Minneapolis today, and I was commenting on how it's a little hazy today. So I don't know where all of you live, but if you live in Minnesota, the air quality is, like, not great today. So I was gonna go for a run this morning. I start marathon training this week and was advised not to do that. South Carolina, amazing. Because the fires from Canada, all of the smoke is blowing into and in through Minneapolis and Minnesota.

Right now, Erie, Pennsylvania. I love that. I love that. Someday I'm gonna invite everybody to take a photo of their favorite spot where they live and post it in the comments. Maybe I'll do that today. Or a photo of where you are and something that brings you joy in your environment. Sunny and 65, it's like hazy, smoky, hazy and 61. So I'll take it. So on this Monday and every Monday right now, especially through the month of May, I thought I'd change things up a little bit and talk about leading with authenticity.

Now, when I say the phrase leading with authenticity, for those of you on the call, if you are willing and able, not driving a vehicle. So no texting and driving, but if you're willing to type in the chat what you think, what you feel when you hear the phrase leading with authenticity, I would love to hear what it means to you. Now, I mentioned this last week as well, but I want to keep asking that question. So it really starts to change our perspective, and we really can start to think about it internally a little more.

But I pulled out one of my little books, and I just wanted to say a little phrase for speak wonder. It's called little by little. There's nice little poems or little phrases inside here, but the one that I pulled out for today is imperfection is a definition of beauty. So I'm just going to say that again. Imperfection is the definition of beauty. Now, how does that align with leading authenticity authentically? We are perfectly imperfect. Every single one of us, all of us contributors that are on this call, we all start by being human, and humans, by design, are imperfect.

We are whatever body shape or style we are. We have gangly heads, we have a bobbly head. We've got long limbs that move us forward and backwards. And every single one of us is perfectly unique. And so when we think about leading with authenticity, there's no right way, there's no one way, there's no perfect way. And when I use the word leader, I use it specifically because leaders don't mean a title in a job. It doesn't mean that if you are the CEO, by default, you're the leader, or a natural leader, you might be.

It doesn't mean if you're a manager, that you are a leader. The number of people that I've worked with, and especially recently, this has come up a lot with colleagues, with friends, with clients, I've heard the phrase a lot. I work for someone who micromanages. I work for somebody who is very task oriented, or they're only asking me questions about. About the details of what it is that I'm trying to do and what. When I ask them a follow up question and I say, well, what does a leader mean to you?

Or are they a leader? They say no, and I ask them why, and they say it's because there's no vision, there's no purpose. I don't know where we're going. They're not inspiring me. They just micromanage me. And that feels really deflating. And so I take a pause when I hear that so that I can continue to ask more questions around, you know, the person that I'm talking to or about the manager. Because sometimes when we're leading from a place of our own strengths, we might have a conflict in what that means for one another.

Meaning, if I'm very detail oriented, then how I manage my team might be by getting into the details or into the weeds. That's natural to me. So how I perceive leading is by getting into the details how someone else who. Hi, Luke, coming in from Minnesota. I love it when I'm leading from a place of my strengths, and maybe I am very strategic, thinking it might be more natural for me to lead with a vision or asking questions about the big picture or the whole. Speak, wonder says in here, an authentic leader listens not just with their ears, but with their eyes.

They make eye contact with the person who is speaking. I love that speak, wonder. Thank you for sharing that. Authentic leadership can mean something very different for each of us based on our individual strengths, based on our experiences, our preferred work styles. So when we think about those leaders and we think about the fact that every single person that's joined on the call so far today and every person that might listen in later today or in future days, we are all leaders. I have someone on my team who's brand new, who started to see some gaps in how we do some of the things at our fitness studio.

And instead of asking for my permission, they just started leaning in and reorganizing some things, started asking other people on the team what they thought about how a certain process was going or how our social media was going. And then they came back to me and they said, I've talked to everybody, and here's what I'd like to do. And they presented me with information and a plan of what they'd like to do. So in that instance, I would love to hear from you. Do you see that person as a leader, as someone who, in this instance, now feels like I'm the manager?

I was very inspired by that because they went to all of the individuals on the team. They collected a lot of information. They did exactly what speak, wonder shared. They listened, and they listened with compassion to try to understand how we can make our community stronger, how we can improve our experience for our members. Then they took the initiative, without my prompting, without even my knowing, to say, here's kind of a punch list. Can we do any of this? Because I think it would do x, y, and z for the team or our members.

And if you don't know, one of the businesses that I have is a small indoor cycling studio. So we do spin classes, workout classes for people, and I have a lot of instructors. I have people that do sales. I have people that help us on the times that we're open and when we have classes. So authentic leadership, in this perspective is really about identifying what's innate to you and leaning into that. If you do manage people. How you can lead with authenticity is about listening exactly what speak wonder said.

Taking a poll, understanding your team, listening actively, maybe that means taking notes. Maybe that means reframing what your team members have said to you so that they can see that you're trying to understand. My book for this week, and as I mentioned last week, I'm kind of a book geek, is from Simon Sinek, and I don't know if you've read it, but it's called leaders eat last. And one of the things that I put that I identified in here, that is the antithesis of leading with authenticity is the key topic that says bad cultures breed bad leaders.

So what they're implying in here is that when we're looking for a change, when we're trying to inspire a change, sometimes it starts with building trust, sometimes it starts with building out and assessing what is the culture that we have today, what is the culture that we want to create, and then identifying the gaps between where we are and where we want to be. If we're leading with authenticity, if we're leading from a place that says, I need to take a step back, set the vision of where we want to be, I don't have to do that alone.

As an individual on a team, or in a company or an organization, I have the possibility to lead. By definition, in a dictionary, a leader isn't a manager. It's not tied to a hierarchy. A leader is someone that can inspire people to action. A leader is someone who can create an invitation and a space for people to move forward towards a common goal. That doesn't mean I'm a manager. So when we're thinking about leading with authenticity, when we're thinking about what are some of the steps that we can create to become that leader, we can assess our culture, what is the work environment that we work in?

What is the goal of the type of culture we want to be, the type of organization that we want to be. Simon Sinek, his first book is called start with why. I love starting with that book because it grounds us in our center place, and then we create actions around that speak. Wonder says authentic leaders are not lone rangers. I love that. Exactly. You can't lead a party of one. So in order for us to make a movement, whether it's in our work, it's in our personal lives, it's in our communities, it requires us to be a part of something.

And there are times where maybe we lead and maybe we follow. There are times where maybe we don't need to lead because somebody there is doing a really great job. Or maybe there is a leader, a perceived leader who's missing the connection with the community that they're trying to lead the team, they're trying to lead. So maybe in that moment of time, I take a step forward and I raise my hand and I say, hey, what if we tried this? Or hey, individual. Maybe it's speak wonder. And I say, this doesn't seem to be working.

Here are a couple of ideas. Can we try something new to really keep moving forward? Sometimes leading is just finding that you feel that innate passion bubbling up inside of you, that something can be better and you are able to contribute. And then you raise your hand, you take the step forward. It requires you to be in a space that you feel trusted, you feel welcomed, you feel is open and available. So when we think about bad cultures creating bad leaders, that can also just mean that we don't feel safe, to be able to raise our hand, to speak up, to inspire, to move.

And in those moments, we have some choices. Is there something that we can do? Can we be the employee that I mentioned on my team earlier that took a poll of the team without me, which I'm the boss, it doesn't mean I'm the leader, always, right? I want my team to feel that they have the space to step in and create the change for our community that we need to make, because I'm not always going to know the right answer. So maybe creating that culture is one step at a time. Maybe it's one person feeling brave, that they can see the landscape and they know that there can be something better tomorrow than what it is today.

And they want to make the change because they feel that passion, they feel that purpose. And maybe sometimes that's you, maybe sometimes that's you saying to your boss, your manager, if you have one, or a business partner, something doesn't feel right. Can we do something more? I have an idea. And when we do that in a way that is authentic and when we understand who we're communicating with, and we can say it in a way that presents our passion, our purpose, our excitement, our vision, that neutralizes when someone else might become defensive because maybe they are the perceived leader.

An example would be you have a manager. A lot of time managers believe that they are leaders. That's not always the case, but sometimes they just have untapped potential. So when we can have the courage to step up and raise our hand and say, hey, something can be better, something can be more, we can do it from a place of kindness, compassion, listening not just with our ears, but with our eyes and our whole selves, and then presenting information in a way that can be exciting, motivating on point.

It doesn't have to be fluffy. It doesn't have to mean that it is pie in the sky. It can be specific and we can say it in a way that can help build bridges versus break bridges so that we can move forward. Even if it's me as an employee going to my manager and saying there's a way we can do something better. Let's do this together. How can I help? So I'd love to hear from you in the comments of the chat today or later, other ways in which you've led authentically, times when you have led authentically, even times when you tried to lead authentically and you got pushback or resistance and maybe how you got through that.

I'll post something in the comments to start a conversation. I would love to see what you have to say as well. I hope you have an incredible day. If you have any questions, feel free to type them in. I always check in throughout the day and the week to see if there's any questions to respond to or conversations to engage in, and I look forward to seeing you again. Check out later today. We have another amazing speaker at noon. Dial in. Learn some more stuff. Take a little bit of time every day for you to continue to grow, to learn, to expand.

I hope you have an amazing Monday and I'll see you all soon. Bye.