Leading With Authenticity

Good morning. Happy Monday. My name is Jean Mitchells. I'm laughing because my dog came charging in with his toy, wanting to play as I'm jumping on. Good morning, Kay Barrick. How you doing today? Hope you're having a great Monday. Where are you from? Where are you located? I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's a beautiful, frigid day. Sun is shining. I have my lovely supervisor sitting off to the side over here. His name is Major Golden Retriever. As we jump in on Mondays, I lead with authenticity.

That's the name of our chat today. And today's topic is really going to be about community and how do we lead through community. So I am a coach. I work in with. I'm a consultant. Hello, Ray. Ray, Happy Monday. I do a lot of work with large organizations as well as small ones. Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Oh, what a beautiful place. I have been to Charleston. I love it there. It's gorgeous. Good morning, Jules. I'm hoping that in South Carolina the weather is a little more warm than it is here in lovely Minnesota.

So today I want to talk specifically about spaces and community. So there's two kind of seemingly spread topics, but as a coach, as a consultant, as a fellow contributor. Oh, you're working from a coffee shop today. Oh, I love that because we're talking about spaces today and community. So I'm going to just kick in with a little thing that I pulled out here. I'm going to see if Speak Wonder joins us today because I have some words for her if we do. But why? I want to talk about spaces and community.

Two things. One, if I were to ask you right now whether you work at a desk or at home, what is on your space? What do you have on your desk? Where do you find that you work the best? Type it in the chat. Tell me more. Jules, you're working from a coffee shop and I don't hear that from you often. So I'm excited to hear more about this. But what spaces do you find that you can do your best work? Where do you feel the most creative spaces are important? So I'm going to give you a little glance into some of my space.

And before I do that, I'm going to explain that why I think spaces are important to talk about, especially as you're leading with authenticity. It's really important that we can create a space that we can be the most effective, that can help us reset, that can help us to focus when we need to focus. And that might not always be the same space. So today I Have a stand up desk. I have a sit down desk and I'm standing at my stand up desk today where I have a nice little monitor. Now I want to show you this and it's going to look a little bit messy, but I'm okay with that.

So on my little stand up desk I have a few things. I have some crystals, I have a plant, I have a deck of cards that are ritual cards and I have these nice little visuals for meditation. So here's why my space is like this on my stand up desk. Oh, I also have a candle. Now here's why my space is set up this way. Most often when I'm doing my stand up desk, I am standing on a rubber mat that I didn't show you that has places to stretch my leg and to roll out my feet, massage my feet, has these little hard balls on there.

Because I move a lot and I find when I am trying to focus and when I use my stand up desk it's really intentional because one, I feel stuck or I feel confined sometimes sitting and so standing allows me to move. I move a lot. I need to stretch my body, stretch my legs. When I do that, that sensation of stretching somehow helps my brain to focus a little bit differently. Now in these spaces I have crystals. I work with crystals for one of my jobs. But also what I find is on my other desk I have these little hand puzzles that I use.

So when I'm really trying to solve problems or I'm really trying to be creative, I find I fidget. And so I want to have things that are going to feel good in my hands that are going to be things that I can use as a no brainer. Meaning that if I'm holding it, I don't actually really have to think about it. So sometimes those little hand puzzles you see at Christmas for like Secret Santa gifts or putting in stocking stuffers, I'll get those sometimes. Because those little puzzles I can solve them or put them back together.

I don't really have to think about it and I don't care about the result. It's more about the fact that I have something tactile in my hands and doing that helps me to think I'm weird. We all have our uniqueness, right? I have little things like this on my desk that are little puzzles that when I find that I'm getting too focused on something, I like to look and stare at some beautiful art like this. And if you get your eyes all fuzzy and you stare at it for a little while, it's actually a meditative tool.

And when I do this, what I find is it allows me to suspend my thinking for a little while so that I can create a new space and maybe solve that problem differently or help get unstuck a little bit. Some days I need a little motivation before I get started or while I'm in it, I might be feeling drained. So having my deck of inspiration cards that I can sit and I can pull a card and I can read through and find maybe a hidden message that I needed at that point in time also helps me to just get unfocused.

And I just like having plants. And I have a candle on my desk, so I might change the scents up so that I have, you know, maybe something citrusy if I'm trying to really get excited or really trying to open my mind and wake up a little bit. And maybe if I'm on some really tense meetings where I know we're going to be online for a long time or that where we're solving problems and there's a lot of big personalities, I might light a lavender calendar, calendar, candle or have just some essential oils or like a little spray so that I can change up the scent in the room because those things will help me to remember to just find some calm.

Because in those moments we can all get a little too tense or anxious. So what's in your space? I also find that, like, share type in the chat. Tell me, what do you have on your desk and why might you have it there? Jule says she has a hot pink stress ball that you can squeeze or bounce lightly on your desk. Yeah, something that can help you create movement or a sensation of change. That's what those items are designed for. They might help us think, they might help us solve. So spaces are really important now.

I often go and work at coffee shops. This is going to sound crazy, but if I really need to focus on writing something or if I really just have to get something done and I need to just focus in. So it's not a creative space necessarily for me. It's really my focus, focus space. I actually will go to a coffee shop and here's why. I work from home a lot. And while if I go into an office, I might feel a little confined, but it's important. Sometimes when I go into my client sites or if you have to go to an office, it's important to keep those connections.

So I find that when I go to coffee shops, I have three that are my favorite, and I find when I go to them I feel like I have that sense of community that I'm looking for now. They might not be able to help me solve my problems with what I'm working on in my work, but I feel like I have a sense of belonging. Sometimes I get to know my name, or we have a simple smile where we recognize each other. I might see other people that I've seen before, or I know other people that have small businesses that go to the same coffee shops.

So I feel that sense of belonging and that sense of community with my work. I also have a friend group, and we all have different jobs, different companies, but one day, at least a month, or it used to be every Friday, but we've gotten different jobs and different work and schedules. We would all meet at the same coffee shop and we'd sit at a big table. And if you saw us, you would think that we were an intact team working off site for the day, but we weren't. We were just a group of friends that wanted to be able to have that sense of community.

The people that if something's frustrating us, we can put our computers on mute and we can just talk to one another and maybe get new ways of thinking or new ideas on how to solve the problems that we're working at. Because sometimes our fresh perspective can give us that little leap that we need. But also it helps us to feel like we have a sense of community around us. And isn't that part of what it's about being in our jobs? Going from working in an office to working remote was one of the hardest transitions for people.

I was working with a really big team at that time and worked with a series of leaders, and we had to redefine how we built team, redefine how we created connection and community in our work from the simple element of everybody had to go home. But so many times people need other people. They love that energy in that space because they feel like they're a part of something. Now, maybe we don't look at work as being a part of a community, but if you break it down, our teams are a community. Now, we may or may not like everybody on our team, but do we like all our neighbors?

We may or may not, but we connect with them. They're humans. We have that connection. We have that opportunity to collaborate, to do something bold. So when I think about leading authentically in my days and I have teams, we talk about teams. Sometimes we talk about individuals. How am I showing up today? So for today, my invitation to you is to take a look at the two things that can really have a positive and or negative impact on how you do your work, your space and your community. The community that you create, not the community we volunteer in and that we work really hard with, but the community that we work within that lifts us up to help us do better work, or the community that we need to surround ourself with so that we can feel not alone in our work.

Jules, you're sitting at a coffee shop today. Would you mind typing in the chat how you feel in the coffee shop right now? Kay Barrick, you're over there in South Carolina and you dialed in today. We Cadre are a community of people that come together to have a conversation, to listen, to, learn to interact. So tell us more about what it is that you love in your spaces, what spaces you create so that you feel connected, you feel creative, you feel focused. And note that not all spaces are going to be the same, but if we use them intentionally, if we understand what we need in our space.

My sit down desk looks very different. It has some crystals, it also has a plant and it also has some essential oils. But when I'm sitting, it's a very different feeling in my body and I use that space differently. I have paper all over that I can draw and write on because I not only can sit here, but then I need to stretch and put all my post it notes up all over the place because I cluster things, I cluster ideas, I cluster work, and that helps me work through standing. I do something different at a coffee shop.

I do something different. Now, if you're in an office, how often do you get up from your desk and go sit in one of those little places where you can close a door? Unless you have a door in your office. Or how often do you walk down to the cafeteria or an open space and maybe sit in that space? Or maybe you never do, but you've thought about it. What if today you took the time to grab what you need and go work in that space and test it out? Trial and error. Sitting in a coffee shop, you might journal versus write.

The atmosphere, the music, random conversations. You may not talk to anybody, but you get to hear that buzz, right? And it just feels a little different. So today, on this beautiful Monday, my invitation to you is to really think about your space. Does it need a cleaning? Are there some things that don't work for you anymore? Or can you shake it up a little bit? Can you move around? Can you create another space, a different space? So how might we be more intentional with our space? And understanding where we do our best work and what we need around us to do our best work.

And everything that we do in our work isn't the same. Conference calls are very different than working time. Answering emails are very different than creating a slide deck. Right. So whatever it is that you do, whether you write, whether you create, whether you lead, spaces are all the different. They're all different things that we need. So I'm going to leave you with a little poem today. It's from this cool book from Young Pueblo. He has a very great series of books. This one's clarity and connection.

Sometimes it takes your heartbreaking a few times for you to become independent in important and healthy ways. Heartbreak shows you that your self worth and wholeness should not depend on another's words or love. Use the herd as a map that leads inward to pursue your healing and ignite your self love. So today, when we're creating our spaces, when we are finding our communities that we can work in, be surrounded by that is an act of igniting self love. And that was the intention of the words for today.

So I hope you find that connection. We have some more additional amazing Cadre speakers. Dial in. Listen up. Go back and find your favorites. Listen to them on replay. Find your favorites and bookmark them. So I hope you have the best Monday. Thanks for tuning in. I went a little long today. If you're still here. Thank you. Mwah. Someone hasn't told you that they're proud of you lately. I just want you to know I'm proud of you today. Have the best day.