Leading with Authenticity

Happy Monday, everybody. My name is Jean Mitchells, here for leading with authenticity on this amazing Monday. Also on a perfect Monday, coming in a little late. We know how Mondays go sometimes one call after the other, one piece of work after the next, and we get lost in the moment and we find that we lose track of time. I don't know if you're like me, but sometimes I miss my little timers. Good morning, Katie. Happy Monday. It might be afternoon, depending on where you're at. Where are you calling in from today?

Katie, if you're not driving your cardinal, I am coming to you from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I apologize that I'm coming in a little late. Good morning, Jules. I think we can all relate to the Mondays. We did whatever we did over the weekend, and Monday hits hard. And inevitably there seems to be a plot twist and our schedule starts to get a little wonky, a little crazy. But we always, always step up and we always do our best, right? So on this amazing Monday, talking about leading with authenticity, computers down, resources available, I wanted to lean into the concept of.

Well, first, also ask the question, how many of us on the call actually manage people? Not everybody that will be in these calls do manage people. Ooh, that sounds exciting, Jules. But many of us do and some of us don't. And so when I think about leading with authenticity, I think about it in two realms. One, as us as an individual, and we can be a leader without actually managing people. And then two, we are. Oftentimes there are some of us who are managers of people. And so today, I wanted to just kind of graze between both spaces because some of us may have an aspiration to become a manager of people.

And what I've discovered, as I've worked with a lot of individuals who are either aspiring to become managers or people who are currently managers, not everybody wants to manage people. Just gonna let that hang out there. We might be really great at what we do. We might love what we do. And in my opinion, sometimes I think the model for promoting people is flawed. Because if I am doing my job great and you want to promote me, the next level often becomes a manager, a director or supervisor, or some hierarchy structure that says, says, you are doing such a great job that you must naturally be great at leading teams.

So we are going to promote you. And now here you go. You have a team of people to lead, and then they walk away. Some organizations are really good at having training development for new managers. Some organizations are nothing. Every organization is different. And every organization is different based on its culture. And its leaders, and we all know that those are going to change over time. So if you are someone who aspires to lead people, my first question in that instance is always, why? Is it because you want a promotion and a pay increase, which are all great motivators, or is it because you feel an innate passion to mentor, to lead, to coach, to enable people and draw out of people to do more of what they're really great at?

And some days you might answer the question differently based on what you're experiencing in your job on that day. So for me, I've known since I have been really young that I love teaching people and coaching people. It's been innate to me. I feel energized on the days that I get to have those moments. But I also recognize that there are many people who are not like me. And so when I'm coaching people or managing people, it requires me to be really curious, and it requires me to take a pause because I jean, have my natural preference of how I like to do my work.

I love to collaborate with people. I love to have a lot of ideas, and not all ideas are great ideas. I love to ask a lot of questions about the direction that we're going and why we're going there, so that I can understand how different people might perceive where we're going. And that works great for me. Until it doesn't. Right? There's always an until it doesn't. And it's always remembering that what we do now will come back to us in the future. Right? And so if right now I'm finding that I really enjoy having those coaching conversations, do I enjoy receiving those coaching conversations?

So it isn't just a one track deal, right. We need to be able to recognize that there are different personality styles. We need to recognize there are different communication styles. We need to recognize that what motivates me as an employee or a team member or a leader may not motivate the people that I work with or the people that I manage. So whether you manage people or not, all of these things come into play, right? Whether you manage people or you don't manage people, we will always have very different types of people.

We need to communicate and work with. They're not all going to think like us. In one of the assessments that I work with, there's a one in 33 million chance that you and anyone else are going to have the same top themes in the same order. And that doesn't include anything about how we grew up, what education we had, what job experiences we had what managers we had who supported us or didn't support us. So we are perfectly unique individuals. So when I think about leading a team of people, whether it's I have direct influence or indirect influence over the work that's happening.

And I wear both hats, I jean wear both hats. I manage a team of people at our spin studio and I am a consultant. So I indirectly manage a large group of people that don't report to me, don't have any accountability to me. So I need to inspire them to do the things that we need to do to move our project and our work forward. So I always go back to a foundational or foundational element. For me, it's always about being curious. I talked yesterday on Sunday in me time about finding our breath, and I posted our comments today about taking a breath.

And why I wanted to bring that breath into right now is sometimes when we're in conversations with people that maybe don't think like us or maybe we're in an emergency situation, either in a project or in our day, and when we get into that fight or flight mode, we have one track in how we think and it's our way of thinking. That could mean that you are very deliberative in how you approach your tasks. That could mean that you need a plan and all of the details of that plan. That could mean that you need to understand every single person that's impacted by whatever it is that's going wrong.

Think about over the weekend. If you had to take a flight somewhere, maybe you were on Delta, use them as an example. Microsoft had a really big issue in the technology and Delta had to cancel all of these flights. And in those very, what I'll call pressure cooker moments, we default to our natural strengths. So if my gene natural strength is to ask a lot of questions and I am peppering someone with high responsibility, meaning that they take very much big pride in their work. We all do. But sometimes people high responsibility have a little extra.

And when they say they're going to get something done, they always will get it done, probably early. And if I come in starting to ask a whole bunch of questions because I'm curious, I'm a learner, I am strategic thinking. I'm worried about all of the people on our teams. To that person we might be in conflict because their priority is the task and what are the immediate tasks that we can get done to solve this problem. So right out of the gates, my preference and this individual's preference might be slightly different.

No, I don't work for Delta. I also don't work for Microsoft. I'm just using it as an example. But in those heated situations is when we have the greatest opportunity for conflict. And when we are managing people, we think in a very one tracked way, in fire drill situations, and we might forget that somebody that we manage or somebody that we work with is where somebody that manages us could think very differently and have a very different need to solve a crisis situation than we do. But what's great about that is if we invest the time before those crisis situations to understand and become curious about one another and how we work, how we communicate best when we get to those crisis situations, and when we allow ourselves the opportunity to take a breath and breathe, it allows us to calm down whatever emotion that we're feeling.

It allows us to remember that the person that I'm working with, we both have the same end goal in mind. Serve our customer, solve the problem, achieve those goals. How we do that might be extremely different. And we've worked together well in the past, we will work together well in the future. How do we work together right now? And so I invite taking a breath in those instances, because when I find I breathe, it allows me to disconnect from the thoughts and the emotion of the situation. It allows me to break that focus and divert for 1 minute, 30 seconds.

And when I find that simple diversion, it allows me to think a little bit differently, a little bit more clearly, and I can go back to my curiosity. Okay, we're not seeing eye to eye. We've gotten through this in the past. What do we need right now? What do you need versus what do I need and how do we work through this? Quickly? Divide and conquer. Go. So whether you manage people, which is where I started the conversation, do you manage people or you don't? Starting from a place of curiosity, even in a crisis situation, when we can contain our emotion because we're humans, we will be passionate, we will get frustrated, we will get angry, we will find joy, we will laugh, we will do all of those things.

But when we can remember that the person on the other side of the equation is similar to us because they are also human, who is passionate? Who is motivated, who will experience joy, who will experience anger, we can start to then become more curious in how we can solve and move forward together. And sometimes all it requires is one of us to take a breath. And when we take that breath, maybe the solution is we can't talk about this right now. Let's come back in five minutes. Let's come back in ten minutes.

Let's go do one thing and then come back and see how far we've made it and agree to do that. I started the conversation also saying that when we manage people, it is sometimes not something that we've chosen to do. We may want to get that promotion, we might want to get that recognition, that pay increase. But as I mentioned, I believe sometimes our system is flawed. We promote people because we believe in them, we see something great in them, but we don't often set them up for success on what's required next.

Not just doing the job, but also inspiring, setting a vision, holding people accountable, performance managing, coaching other people to move forward with us. And a lot of times we will inherit who that team is going to be. We're not choosing them. And when we do hire people, we actually don't want to hire people just like us. We might think that we want that, but we don't because we won't get any new ways of thinking. We move forward in our work and our work will always change. Always change. What you do today will be different than what you do a year from now.

Even if technically you have the same job description, something will shift and adjust. So as we are leaning into leading with authenticity, as we're leaning into managing people or collaborating with people, having direct influence versus indirect influence, I always go back to the foundation of curiosity. And the more curious I can be about the people that I get to work with. When we're not in a crisis situation and allow us to create that human connection, the easier it will be to navigate. When we're in a crisis, the easier it'll be for us to get to a place where we remember that on the other side of the equation is a human too that thinks differently than I do, has different needs, has different gifts and talents than I do.

So sometimes it just requires us to get out of our own way, take a breath and remember that we aren't working in isolation, even though many of us might like to. That's not reality. And for us to be a better version of ourselves working on a team, it requires simply for one person in the equation to become more curious whether you are a manager of people or not. And if you are somebody who is looking to get promoted into becoming a manager, my question goes back to you again. Why are you excited about coaching people, performance managing people, developing people?

If yes, then start learning how to do that now, because it will be the skill that you need eventually. If that isn't something that excites you, but promotion and movement does. I still invite you to learn how to be more curious about people today, how to identify and understand people who have different ways of thinking than you. Lean into what it might require you from an extra energy effort to manage people that are going to be very different than you. So on this Monday, I'm going to kick it off by just saying happy Monday.

I put a little breath exercise in the comments today because we will inevitably need to take a slowed down breathe. And if you're looking to become that manager, or are that manager and you want to lean in more, start with curiosity. Start to be more curious. And it doesn't have to always be personal. You don't need to necessarily know a life story, but what you do need is to understand how people communicate, what helps them spiral up versus spiral down, what will help you to create a connection that will enable forward progress.

So I'd love to hear from you, if you do manage people, what you have found as techniques or tricks or books or resources you've used to become a better leader or manager. If you're someone who is aspiring to become that leader or manager, what questions do you have? What challenges are you facing? Where might you want to grow? Post it in the comments. I look at all of them. I will go back through and read it, and when we find some commonalities, I'll also post them in the comments with some insights and invite a discussion or go post it out there for a discussion for everybody.

I hope you have a great day. If you have some extra time, pop off for nine minutes and come back in at noon for the next little Cadre live chat. I hope you have a great day and I will talk to you all soon.