Cadre Today and Bold Followership

Well, hey, good morning, Cadre. How are you? Another Monday. How is it here already? I hope you're doing good. And you know that if you're not doing good, that's okay too. Especially with any stressors that are presenting you this week, any extra work or any curveballs, anything from the inside that you're feeling or anything from the outside that you're dealing with, all of these things are going to change. The answer to the question, hey, how are you doing? But one thing that isn't going to change, Mel and Jules, is that how you are doing is not going to change how wonderful you are in the Cadre sphere or how much you have to give to others.

Simply by showing up and taking care of yourself for a little bit, the world changes and Cadre provides you resources and a community to deal with a changing world. That sounds pretty great, eh? So on Mondays, what do we focus on in the livestream world? Here in Cadre, we focus on the idea of professional development. Here's how I talk about what that is. I like comparing it to Saturdays when we talk about personal development. Saturdays we work on strengthening, growing, fostering who you are. And on Mondays today we talk about focusing on what you do.

Professional development is all about what you do. Personal development is all about who you are. And like everything, it always venn diagrams, it always crosses over at certain places and you go, wow. If I work on myself personally in this way, it's also going to help me professionally this way, right? Anila, nice to see you my friend. So quite often on Mondays I talk about the idea of following. It lights me up. Why? Because I often think the world invites us to. When we think about being the professional, when we focusing on doing what we do, the answer is always, you need to lead.

You need to lead, you need to be the one leading. You need to be at the top. And my kind of rational, analytical brain goes, well, if everybody's trying to be at the top, who are they actually on top of? And number two, if everybody's always trying to lead, who or what are they leading? I think that's one of the biggest struggles in the world, right? If, if, if, if following is seen as bad or passive or weak and you're a leader, those don't sound like the followers that you're going to want. That doesn't sound like the tools that you want in your tool bag to build the good stuff that you're.

I mean again, like, like Anila, I'll, I'll use what you're doing right now. As a great example, Anila says, I'm making kiddo lunch and. And feeding my soul with your inspiration. Oh, Anila, you are. You are such a light and giver to others. Hey, Speak. Wonder. I didn't see a sneak in. But think about that first thing. Anila is making lunch for kids. That is a really great way to ensure that someone else in the world is being impacted by your work. Right? You are. You are following. You are providing sustenance for somebody else to do great things.

So where are you making lunch for other people in this world? Where are you providing the sustenance for someone to execute, to bring to life their plan, their mission, their vision, their purpose, all of that? Because if we're all too busy to find time to make lunch for one another, I don't think anybody professionally develops. I think people think that they professionally develop because they're working really hard at it. But if we think about the return on that investment. What is it? Here's something I experienced that exemplifies this point that makes me go, ah.

I was scrolling through the LinkedIn yesterday and I saw a mentor and a colleague of mine named Therese, and she shared a post where she was leading an exercise. And this. This is an exercise where by using yarn, balls of yarn, it invites people to understand how many, first of all, how many potential connections exist within the community that they're currently a part of. So let's say you're in a work meeting and you have 40 people at this meeting. This yarn exercise would be connecting these 40 people.

And they would throw the ball of yarn to one another and it would get messy and people would drop the ball, and people would feel bad that they dropped the ball, and then they would want to apologize. Like in all of these things are teaching moments. But sooner or later, you would have this web of yarn literally, like, visually tactically connecting these people. And then. And then Terese would make the point. It's like, ah, all of these connections are things we can tap into today as we prepare to meet.

It's a great tool to help people move through disdain or trauma or separation or conflict. But it's also a great way to learn a lot about one another. And Therese shared a picture of this exercise that she was facilitating. You want to know something really cool? That made my day? Therese learned about this exercise when I led it in a room full of powerful, powerful female executives at Fanduel a couple of years ago. Theresa and I were working on this conference together for Fanduel. And there's a room of 200 high powered female executives who are literally changing the world.

And this conference started out with me leading this yarn exercise. And we had balls of yarn flying around the room. And all of a sudden these 200 women are connected in this web. And Therese came up to me afterwards, she's like, what was that exercise like? Tell me. I was like, oh, it's something I came up with. I do it all the time. It's highly malleable. You can use it in any situation. And Therese asked me to kind of teach. Teach this exercise to her so she could share it with other people. Do you want to know how good it felt to see Therese sharing an exercise that I've crafted in my own world?

To know that now that exercise is being used in another place, I felt really good. It helped me go, huh? I'm onto something here. You know, I'm the yarn exercise guy. Not because I said I'm the yarn exercise guy, but because other people are sharing. Hey, you know what? The thing you just did, I thought it was powerful. Or how about this? You know that thing you just did? I have some feedback that may not be positive, but I want to share it with you because I really engaged in what you just did, leader, and I want to provide you something back.

Feedback, positive and negative, is actually all positive. If we create a culture where we can see that feedback is the way that say, hey, I see you. I engaged with you. And here is, here is the response to that. So how can you help someone else in this world by making them a little lunch? By giving them something that is going to nourish their way, that is going to give them perspective they currently don't have. It's going to make them feel home. That's going to make them feel connected. It's my invitation for you today.

You know what? Luke's coming up In, I think 9:00 Central Standard time this morning. But then, golly, the Monday lineup is always a special one. Check it out and if you go, gosh, I'm not a big live stream person. Great. Check out the pre recorded content. You're going to find some pretty remarkable humans dropping different lengths of consumable material and thought that's coming from them. That may be your lunch for today. And if it is, I invite you to make lunch right back to him. All right, y'all, we'll talk to you later.

Bye.