Leading With Authenticity

Hello, everybody. Happy Monday. Jean Nicholls here. Hope you're having a great day. Great start to your day. Gonna hang out for a few seconds here, just waiting for everybody to come on in and join us in our little coffee time. Maybe you don't drink coffee. I drink tea. I also find that I move a lot side to side. But it is Monday and it is a beautiful Monday. It can be a not beautiful Monday. That's okay too. But I'm excited to be here with you guys. Dialing in, chatting in. Hello, good morning, welcome.

Nice to have you here. Hello. Speak Wonder. I love that you come flying in and your heart right away. Yay, Monday. We're here. Hello to you. Good morning, Jules. You coming to Minneapolis anytime soon? What's your February schedule like? So as we pop on in here, I'm simply going to offer the same Monday invitation. What is a word or phrase that explains how you're feeling right now in this moment? So our topic every week on Mondays around professional development is leading with authenticity. And in order for us to do that, we need to be really clear on how we are doing and feeling in this particular moment.

Major is doing great. He's kind of hiding off to the side a little bit. Speak Wonder Scared. If you would like to share more about that, I would always love to hold space with you and hear more today on this Monday, I am feeling grateful. I'm feeling gratitude for some things that I accomplished over the weekend that I was finding mentally challenged. And I'm grateful for some space and time this morning to do some writing. Speak Wonder. I am going to start doing more intentional time to write. So I'm allowing space on Monday mornings to be my writing time.

But today, as we dive on in and would love to hear more from all of you as you come in either live or on replay. Jules, I'm bummed that I won't see you until May, but I'll be excited in May when you arrive. So today I want to talk to us about something that may or may not be unique but emotionally irritated. Hold on because I having knee issues. Oh, I'm sorry to hear you have to have an MRI and Speak Wonder. You have an in person speaking engagement and you usually feel slightly terrified just before.

I love that. If you didn't feel slightly terrified before, I might actually question whether or not you should be speaking. I also find that when I do large presentations or workshops with groups, I've been an emcee of conferences with a thousand plus people. I've done a lot of presentations in Rooms of hundreds. If you didn't find a little nerve about what you had to do, I would question, why are you doing it? Because when we are so passionate about the things that we do, it will spark that emotion in us.

And I love that. I'm also sad to hear that, Jules, you have to have an MRI on your knee because I know how hard you've been trying to get more exercise and more walks in. Just trust the process. Trust the process that maybe something is requiring you or asking you to slow down. Maybe. So today I wanted to bring in one of my books. I'm a book geek, if you didn't already know. And the book for today is called Multipliers. And the reason I'm bringing this in is it actually popped into my head. It's been on my bookshelf for years.

You can see I'm one of those people that when I get energized by what I'm reading, I want to mark different spots. And yes, I draw little pictures in the corners and sometimes I will underline I am that person. So some books I just don't pay forward because I feel bad for the person that gets it next. But it helps me to remember key things. So on Friday, I was in a conversation with one of my clients and we're mapping out a strategy for a lot of changes that, that my client wants to make in this really small company.

There's 30 people. They're going to try to grow to 49 people in the next year or two. So they have some heavy lifting to do. And my role is to come in and help them implement a new technology that they can help use for performance management and then help do a lot of business strategy work with them and coaching their leaders and doing some training and development for their 30 person organization. So it's, it's a lot for this group. It's a big investment. But as I was talking to my client, this book popped into my brain.

And my client, who's actually been a friend of mine also for a really long time, added it to her list and did a date night on Friday with her husband to go to a bookstore and bought this book. But why I wanted to bring this book up today, especially in leading with authenticity, is this book has a really nice way. It's not overly complicated. And what's funny about it is a lot of the concepts probably aren't brand new. But what is new is it's a fresh perspective on how to think about leaders that lift us up and leaders that pull us down and then allowing us the opportunity to decide what kind of leader we want to be.

Now, here's what's really cool. You can try to be the best leader on the planet in your life, in your work, as a parent, as a sibling, as a child. And no matter what happens, no matter what you do, what effort you put in there, for some people, you will be a multiplier. You will be the best leader they've ever worked for, the best human they've ever come in contact with. And for some people, you might be a diminisher no matter how hard you try. And sometimes that can just be where they're at in their journey, in their career, and they're learning.

Sometimes that can simply be that your approach is just different than their approach. And it's not that you've done anything wrong. It's not that they're a bad employee or a friend. It just means you have differences. But here's what I believe to be true, is that even if you are a multiplier, and even if maybe your style might be draining to someone else, that person will see you trying, trying to meet them where they're at, trying to see their perspective, their lens, which might be your blind spot.

And I put my hand on the back of my head because these are blind spots, and every single human on the planet has them. So no matter how much we try, how much effort we put in, we'll always have a blind spot. And it will always require someone to recognize that maybe we're in our blind spot and we're not really trying to be a jerk. Right. Because at the end of the day, we're not really trying to be a jerk or a bad boss or cause conflict. We just might not be able to see what we don't see. Right. So in this book, they talk about multipliers and then they talk about diminishers.

So a multiplier is someone who attracts talent or they're a liberator. So attracting talent and. Yep, I'm going to read these from my book because I want to get them right. And I think it's important that you hear the words of the author, a talent magnet. They attract talented people and help apply them at their highest point of contribution. Think about that. What if you could bring somebody into your team, bring somebody into your life and advocate for them, lift them up so that they are at the point of giving their highest contribution?

Has somebody done that for you? If yes, I would love for you to type in the chat how you felt when you had someone that you worked with, someone in your life as a. A mentor maybe, or a coach, that lifted you to the highest point of your contribution. I've had a manager that did that for me. I've had several. I've been very lucky. And this one in particular, she created pathways for me to maximize on my strengths. In this particular role, I was able to work with different business units across a large company and help design models and technologies.

They allowed me if I got all my work done, and I kept meeting or exceeding expectations. I got to travel around the country doing presentations to CEOs and CFOs about how they could think about running their businesses differently because of a technology. This person tapped into my soul. I felt like they could see my soul, and they unleashed that for me, which then allowed me to have the courage to do a lot of other things down the road. Talent magnets, the liberator. They create a pretty intense environment that requires people's best thinking and best work.

Those people allow you to feel that pressure, but yet feel supported and know at the end of the day that you're contributing to something great. I've had some clients that have worked in nonprofits that have been those liberators. Gosh, they work hard, and they really have high expectations of their team. But at the end of the day, they felt successful. They celebrated those successes. Their approach was different than mine, but that's okay. That's what made them great. We don't all have to have the same approach to lead.

Great. The challenger. They define an opportunity that causes people to stretch. Those ones get you right. Those are the bosses that see your potential, and they throw you into those stretch opportunities. And you're like, man, I don't know if I can do this. And then somehow they gently keep nudging you, and you come out the other side and you're like, wow, what's that, Right? Maybe you've had a challenger. The debate maker. This one is yummy. They drive sound decisions through rigorous debate. You ever had a manager like that or a boss or a leader like that?

I'm not gonna lie. That one's not my favorite, because I am conflict avoidant at its best. But I do love this type of leader. Because even for someone like me that can shut down in a conflict or a debate that feels too intense or too targeted, they have an innate ability to help it feel less yuck. I don't know how else to say that, but they have a way of helping you feel like that debate is really healthy. And you just contributed to something bigger. And they elicit your ideas not because they want to shame you and how you think, but because they want to take what you're thinking and expand on it and make it part of the whole.

Those are the sneaky ones, I tell you. And they have the investor, they give other people the ownership refer results and invest in their success. They're not in it because they want their name stamped on something great. They're in it because they want the team to be stamped on something great. So if you've had any of these types or styles of managers, I would love for you to type in the chat. And just how did they make you feel? How did they help support your career growth? Help you get to where you are today?

Because I tell you, the multipliers that I've had in my career have definitely helped me. I could give you example after example of example of how they helped me. But I will also share that some of the diminishers have helped me as well, because they helped me to realize who I didn't want to be when I became a leader and how I didn't want to show up. And that's equally as important. But it also reminded me that sometimes I might show up that way unintentionally, because maybe I'm overstressed. Maybe there's too much on my plate and I am leading with blinders on.

I've hit my blind spots, but I just keep charging anyway because there's too much to do. So the reality is, at any point in time, we can be a multiplier and we can be a diminisher. So I'm going to quickly go through these. A diminisher, an umpire, builder, it hoards resources and they under utilize their talent because they want to be seen more. Right? They don't want to lose that talent because that talent is working really effectively and efficiently. Or maybe they're getting a lot of accolades and it feels good because they've never led a team like this before.

The tyrant. I always think the naming conventions are quite funny. The tyrant. I feel like I should do a voice with that one. They create a tense environment that suppress people's thinking and capability. They push you down so they can rise up. Now, sometimes, again, let's assume positive intent because the tyrant is the opposite of the liberator. Liberator creates an intense environment, requires people's best thinking and work. But if there's a slight nuance in there where I'm overstressed, I could become a tyrant and not even know until the aftermath has happened.

Right. So there's a fine line between them. The know it all. They give directives that showcase how much they know. I think we've all seen or experienced people like that. But has there ever been a time in your life that you've been that? Unfortunately, I can say yes, maybe we all can. And it's unintentional. I will assume positive intent. I'll assume that most people don't try to be this way intentionally. But maybe they're just unaware. Maybe they're stressed, maybe they're grieving. Maybe they have something happening at home that is so intense or so heartfelt that in the office, at work, they don't realize that that's how they're showing up.

The decision maker makes centralized, abrupt decisions that confuse the organization. I hope I haven't done that one. Maybe I have, but I can check the box in having had worked for one. And the micromanager. Oh, this one gets under my skin. Drives results through their personal involvement. I worked for a micromanager one time. That was brutal. I think that's why I decided to quit Corporate America and start my own company. It was horrible. But they would come over and put post it notes on my desk of things I needed to get done in a day and by what time during my day because they didn't understand the work that I did and they didn't understand the time that it took to do the work that I did or the input that I needed or that was required for me to get things done.

And someone who's highly adaptable. I flex all day long. I'll get everything that needs to get done when it needs to get done. But to tell me what time of day I have to have it done by my brain just doesn't work that way. But I appreciate it. So as you can see, we can lift people up, we can squash people sometimes we can squish people because our needs aren't being met. So sit with that for just a second. It's possible that we're so much in overdrive in our personal life at home, maybe caretaking, maybe we're sick and we don't want people to know that we're sick.

Maybe we're going through an MRI because our knee hurts, but we don't want to over share that at work because we want to show up strong, right? So at any point in time we could be a multiplier or diminisher. However, if we know what it feels like to work for a multiplier, and speak Wonder is said in there. A liberator and a debater, maybe a diminisher, but it's really starting to understand and put into perspective how am I choosing to show up today? So when I ask you on the call when we first start in, how are you feeling right now, today?

That's a really big bold question if you sit with it for a second. Because what happens next after this little check in on Cadre could be an opportunity for you to shift into that multiplier mode or it could mean you're on track for diminishing it unintentionally. So we do have those opportunities every single day. I will take a photo of this, I'll put it in the comments and I would love for you to share anything that might resonate with you about multiplier and diminishers either as you as a leader or you as someone who has worked for any of these.

How might they expand you and help you grow and create? How might you leverage what you don't like and change the script, change the story so that you can show up differently as a leader in your life? So my pop quiz question for today because sometimes I like to do trivia. If you look at my hat, it's a Gibson guitar hat. Where might be the only Gibson guitar store that you can find. Type it in the chat. Love to hear from you. One of my besties works for this company in a particular city that I'm not going to share.

I'll come back in later and I'll post it in the chat. I'll let you know. No googling, no cheating, just throw some guesses out there. I hope you have the best day. Tell me what you loved. Check out the other contributors today before I go. I'm just going to read this one out. Jules woke up and was focused and energized and then walked on the treadmill and it went downhill from now it's time to change that focus. Speak Wonder, you guess Cleveland. Sorry, not sorry. I'll give one more guess. Anyone else want to pop in here with one guess?

One city of where you think Gibson guitar is and if you ever have a chance to go here, you have to go to the store. It is beautiful. Yum. Awesome guitars rotating around the ceilings. All right, I'm going to tell you it's Nashville so go check it out. Have the best day everybody. I'll talk to you soon.