Leading With Authenticity

Hello, everyone. Happy labor day. Happy day where many of us have the day off. I contemplated whether or not to have the livestream today because so many people have today off. However, I decided to do a little later in the day instead. I happen to be sitting by a window that's open and my hair is gonna blow. Hello, Rebecca. Happy Monday. Hello, Jules. Hello, Luke. Happy Monday. I hope you all are having an amazing day today. Amazing seems to be my common word, but it's the word that I really, really like.

I don't know why. I use it probably too often, and I'm okay with it. I'm just gonna own it. But today I wanted to talk about, as we're talking about authentic leadership and or leading authentically, I had the luxury of sitting down with fellow Cadre leader JC this morning. And I always love when we get to have conversations because we sit down, we barely say hello, and we start talking about the world like everything underneath the sun. And before you know it, 2 hours goes by and we recognize that we need to go on with the rest of our day.

Hi, Jamie. Welcome. And one of the many, many things I love about JC. If you ever get to sit down and have an in person conversation with him or join him on any of the Cadre episodes, you will always feel seen, you will always feel connected, and you will always feel gratitude when you walk away from a conversation with him. And if you don't feel one of those three with him, call me. Let's have a conversation. Sum things up. But the reason why I mentioned that is when we think about leading, there are so many different ways we can consider what that word means.

And what I loved about our conversation today is JC and I, we show up very similarly and very differently. Both of us have been Lululemon ambassadors. He is one that is one of the previous ambassadors. I'm a current Lululemon ambassador. And why I bring that up is because in our conversation, we were talking about pluralisms. Say that word five times fast and tell me how it goes. Pluralisms, I will say it twice. That's all you get. And what that means is. And it's very similar for all of us. We are multidimensional people.

We wear many hats. We have a passion, we have a purpose. That passion, that purpose might change or evolve depending on the many things. Life changes, grief, family changes, job changes, moving to different cities. So we will evolve every single day. We continue to evolve every single day. Our bodies will shed a layer of skin, or we'll lose hair, or we'll grow new hair or we'll grow new cells. So the physical person that we are today is very different than the physical person we were five years ago.

And so when I think about the word pluralisms and what that means or represents to me, it's about the many different hats that we show. And sometimes we can only show one hat at a time because it's all the receiver can handle. So I, Jean, am a coach. I am a Cadre conversationalist. I am a spin instructor, I'm a soundbath therapist. And my list could go on of just things I do. And that doesn't even include the fact that, you know, we have many other roles in our life and our day. But the one thing that remains true and the one thing that I was reminded of sitting and having a conversation with JC today is the power of connection.

And I think we forget how strong that connection is and how strong that power is in connecting to other human beings, whether it's through Cadre and getting to know people as they pop into a live stream, or you drive comments and conversation in the comments, or you engage with any of the hosts of these conversations in some way, shape, or form, but it goes also beyond that. Right? So the thing that JC and I both have common, besides many things, is we're really good at connecting people. And. And being a leader doesn't always mean I sit at my desk, I take the phone calls from my team, I do what my boss says on a day to day basis.

What that means is that we also need to expand out, expand into our community, connect the dots, connect our community. The number of times sitting in a conversation with only JC, where one of us might say, hey, do you know this person? Oh, you don't? You should follow them on Instagram or let me introduce you to them. Because our brain instantaneously says, wow, these are two cool people, and they need to know each other because they might do something cool together. And we forget that sometimes we get so busy in our day to day every day that sometimes we forget about the power of just going to coffee or lunch with somebody, or going to tea, going to breakfast, maybe going in and doing a movement together.

And it doesn't mean workout, it means a movement. Maybe it's a walk. And through those moments in time, we create deeper connections, but we also have the opportunity to create a spider web of people who can be in our network that maybe we don't talk to every week or every day, but maybe we talk to them once a year when I'm working with a lot of my clients, I'll often ask them who is their network? And I think about it in terms of the circles of like a bullseye. So you have all the rings around the outside.

That might be your one year connection, people you might have the next layer in, and that might be your once a quarter people that you connect with. And maybe your bullseye is the people that you connect with once a day, once a week, once a month, however, that looks like for you. But at any point in time, you can go in and out of that ring based on what it is that you might need. Also based on who might need to connect with whom to do something great. When I worked at Best Buy a long time ago, past life, I'm a recovering finance professional.

I like to say I worked at Best Buy, and in my role there, it wasn't just about the team that I supported. It was, how do I connect the dots across the organization? So that when I'm solving one problem, I might be able to pull a string to solve other problems as well. And that required me to get uncomfortable going out and meeting other people in other groups or different business areas. And it required me to also get really vulnerable about the work that I'm doing or my position in the organization, maybe my goals or my purpose, and being able to have that conversation and share more about who I am in my space.

And at the time, I was a senior financial analyst, and oftentimes I had to talk to directors or vice presidents. And that can be really intimidating until we remember that every single person I talked to is just that, another human. And at some point in their career, when they stripped off all of the hats and the layers that they had, they sat in my shoes at one point in time. So how does this circle back into pluralisms? For me, it's about what are all the different layers that I have. And it's about being able to show up and not only offer one, but seeing what the situation the conversation might need and then identifying who are the people that I want to connect to?

Who are the people that I want to learn from? Where do I want to grow from? It's funny, there's a word called networking. When you hear that word, how many of you kind of go, that feels a little awkward. Car salesy. One of the bosses that I used to work for, a brilliant, brilliant person who I studied from, and I got to be on his team. His name is Marcus Buckingham. He is a thought leader. If you want to listen to some of his videos, he talks from a very strengths based perspective, has done many years of research, many presentations, helped to create two inventories, personality inventories.

And if you find him on instagram, it's just Arcusbuckingham. And he puts a lot of reels out there so you can listen and learn. But the one thing that I always, that always with me, especially working with him, is if anybody ever said the word networking, he literally would like, cringe. Because networking to him felt like a pass through. It felt disingenuous. It felt like, you know, for lack of wanting to sound cheesy, a car salesperson approach to getting to know people. So you find out just a little bit to get to a sale and then you go forward.

And no offense if anybody sells cars, because there's a need for that, right? But it really was is more about identifying how to connect with people at a deeper level, to get to know them at a little better level. So that when you walk away, each of you feels a shift, hopefully in this instance, a positive shift. But each of you has the opportunity or the possibility to connect on a more of a real level. And that might require you sharing one of your many hats. So, as I mentioned, both JC and I were consultants.

We're in fitness, we're creators. Come up with new ideas and ways to get people to come together to move. And the list could probably go on for us, but it probably could go on for you, too. And so how might we, as we are leading from our own centered place, whatever that means for you, whatever that means for the other people on this session, whatever this means for other people that you work with, each of us is going to have a unique way in how we show up. Each of us is going to have a very unique way in how we connect with people and how we pay that connection forward.

But what I found is the more times you put yourself into those conversations where you're meeting somebody new or you're rekindling an old relationship with an old mentor, an old manager, an old colleague, you learn more about who they are and what path they've gone down, they learn more about you and what path you've gone down. And then, in essence, you have an innate opportunity to maybe create something new, either together, maybe they have an opportunity that you're itching to get into, or maybe, just maybe, you know, somebody who might be looking for that opportunity and you can pay that forward.

So it's always fascinating that we get to be the hub of connection. Whatever day we're having, whatever story has been written for us in this moment, in this chapter, we always have the opportunity to connect in a new, beautiful, and brilliant way. We always have the opportunity to receive in that connection. We always have the opportunity to share in that connection. And we always have the opportunity to maybe pay something forward. One of the things that I also like to do when I'm thinking about those connections and the multi dimensions of each relationship is once a week I like to come across an article or maybe it's an Instagram reel or if you're on different social media platforms, or a book I read and reach out to somebody who I think in my network or in my sphere of relationships, that might find value from that.

Maybe I just took a new class, or maybe I read a different book, but I try to at least once a week. Now, I might do this more, but I try to find something that is going to inspire somebody else and send it off to them. Now, here's my caveat. I don't just blanket hit send, or if I'm thinking about an Instagram reel that inspired me. I don't just blanket hint send and let it sit out there. I'll add a couple of reasons why I think they might like it, or a couple of reasons why maybe it inspired me.

And the reason that I do that is so that I can broaden that connection with that individual. So that we maybe open a door to a conversation around something that we may not have otherwise talked about, but also so the other person on the end feels seen. Even if I miss the mark slightly, they still feel seen. They feel recognized. They find that somebody is thinking about them. And isn't that what connection's all about? Isn't that what humanness is about? Seeing and being seen, hearing and being heard, feeling and being felt, right?

So on this beautiful Monday, happy Labor Day. Wherever you are, whatever your mindset is, maybe it doesn't feel like amazing day. We're here for you. Or maybe it does and you just want to share it with someone. I simply invite you to discover and rediscover new and creative ways.