Leading With Authenticity: The Dance Of Leading With Balance

Good morning, Cadre family. How are we doing today? Are we having a good Monday? Are we off to a good start today? As you come on in today, I'll simply invite you to take a breath. Hi, Speak wonder. How are you doing today? Hello, Kubrick. Hello, Amar. Hi, Elise. How are we doing today? Happy Monday. We're here. So if we haven't had time together before, my name is Jean. Welcome to Monday. Leading with authenticity and leading with balance. My name is Jean Mitchells, and I'm excited to be here. So on this beautiful, beautiful morning, I'm going to invite you to take a deep breath.

You made it. You're here. Maybe type what coast you're on, or if you're in the middle, like, where are you calling in from today? You can do it by time zones. Even if you wanted to shake it up a little, this is my more landscape for you today. I figured, what better way to talk about balance than to think about the outdoors? Sweet Wonder Major's not with me. I'm so sad he's not with me this morning. I happened to go out this morning, do some paddle boarding, so I'm just coming off the lake. If we hadn't come off the lake, I would have been on the lake calling in today.

But I'm here on this amazing Monday, and we are gonna chat about some balance things. So before I start that, though, I'm gonna make sure I don't kill my paddle board by deflating it too far. So this morning, leading with authenticity and creating space for balance. Why am I outside on a Monday morning at 10am My time, paddleboarding? Well, a couple of reasons. One, I find that when I start my day with some type of outdoor activity, whether it's the winter, whether it's walking Major my dog, whether it's coming out to paddle board, I have my best ideas.

I find more calm. I create more space for myself to really start into the week, but start into my day. And so when I think about the fact that I have a team of 20, 25 people at our Spin studio, I work with clients every day. I may not have a direct team when I'm working on my client work, but I have a lot of influence with the leaders on the teams. And for me, finding balance with my leadership is twofold. One, it's modeling the way. So if I think about what I want for my teams, I want my teams.

That's a very I statement. My intention as a leader for teams is to create space for them to grow, to fail, to learn, to expand but also for them to have their own sense of balance. If I think specifically just about my team at Psycho Bar, most of my team is somewhere between the ages of 25 and I think roughly mid 30s, maybe a couple poking into the 50s. It doesn't even matter age wise. But what it means is that I have a team of people that haven't. They haven't led a team before or they haven't, you know, had the same responsibilities.

So even though almost all of them, except for one, work for our studio part time, it's really important to me that I can model the way for them even in all the other work that I do. So finding balance in a time where mental health is so important as we know if we don't allow ourselves to create some boundaries, then our own mental health can start to spiral. And if we are, yeah, they are young and. But if we aren't creating a space for them to, we aren't creating a space for ourselves to set boundaries, then what am I modeling for my team?

If I coach my clients and I invite them to create space for the teams, but I don't do that for myself, what am I modeling for them? So we learn most oftentimes people best from the people around us. Our behaviors are shaped by that. So if we see our managers sending emails out at 1am how many of us have a panic attack like, oh wow, I should be emailing at 1am no, you should never. And you should Never respond at 1am if you're getting an email that late. But what I've been able to coach some managers and leaders do is how to schedule emails.

Schedule use the timer, use the scheduler tool so that even if for whatever reason they're upworking that night, they aren't reinforcing the pattern, the behavior, the expectation that their team doesn't get to sleep at night or have balance in their own ways. So it's really important, I think, in my perspective when I coach my clients, when I lead my teams, that I create space and time to have those boundaries. And I model that for the team. I'll tell you a story. So I'll keep it specific to my spin studio because it sometimes I can talk about a lot of different areas and that can be confusing.

So my mom passed away about a year and a half ago now. I taught a spin class too soon. So my mom had passed. The team knew it, my clients knew it, everybody knew it. And everybody was like, take space and time. And I such a great sense of responsibility and passion for my team and my community and all the people that I work with. And I took a few days, I took a week, maybe a few days, and I was like, nope, I'm good, I'm good. And I went back to the studio. It was a 6am I got ready for my class and I was like, something just feels off.

And I taught my spin class and at the end of my spin class and about halfway through my spin class, I felt like my heart was bottoming and out and I felt like I couldn't find the words. And people are there because they, they want to feel a sense of community, but they also want to feel inspired and pushed and, and I wanted to share too much about how I felt. And it probably wasn't too much for this group because they're my regulars and, and they know what I'm going through. But I finished that class and felt like it was the worst class ever.

I couldn't give what I was so used to giving. And I got off the bike and during my stretch I said, this is the last class I'm going to teach for a while and I don't know when I'm going to come back, but you have amazing instructors, we have the best team, and you will be in good hands until I return. And everybody was just shocked. They were stunned. I think I was stunned that I said that out loud. My manager that was outside came in the room and she's like, are you okay? Did something happen? Sorry, there's a vehicle coming.

And I said, yeah, I'm fine. I said, I'm just too sad. My heart's not ready, My heart's not here. And you guys deserve to have all of me, all of my heart. So I went off the bike, I came off the bike and I subbed out my classes for the next two weeks. And in two weeks after that I checked in with myself to see, see where I was at. And I started by taking class to see if I felt like I could be there. And I couldn't yet. So I took another week. So we do what we need to do to set those boundaries. But what I learned along the way is my team felt like they had permission to ask for a timeout.

So what we have in place now with my team is this thing called tap out. And when I watch the team, I watch them really close and I can see when they're showing up to teach their rides and they're really excited and I can see when their outside world is too strong. As I mentioned, this is a part time job for everybody on our team except for one person. And so that can be a lot. And so every month we have a manager call and an instructor call and I say the thing, do you need to tap out? And if I need to tap out, I'll let them know, like, I'm tapping out.

This weekend I'm going to get a sub. I just don't have it. I start too thin. Last four, eight months I've traveled to, I've been in four different countries running marathons. And sometimes I just get tired. So I tap out. So I tap out when I need to tap out. As a leader, what that allows my team to do is to stand up taller. Because sometimes as managers or parents, we can hover. We can take on the things to try to oversimplify things for our teams, for our people. And when we give them the space, space, they have the space to grow.

They have the space to struggle, to fail, to question, to learn, to lead all the things. So if we create boundaries and balance for ourselves, we model that for a generation that's coming up next of leaders. And how do we want them to lead? Do we want them to lead by being on all the time 24 7, or do we want them to leave lead finding balance? So my perspective and how I coach all my consulting clients, how I work with my teams when I'm on projects, when I leader, co lead our Cycle Bar studio, I work really hard to model what it's like to have balance.

So that means on a Monday when I'm feeling like I need a little extra time out, I head to the lake, I go paddle board, sometimes I take a guest and I give myself that space and time so I can come back stronger mentally, physically, emotionally. So my invitation to you is to take that time, find that balance, set that boundary. Because when you do that for you, you model it for your kids, you model it for your family, you model it for your community, you model it for the teams that you. And if you're not a leader of people, if you set boundaries for yourself, if you create balance for yourself, people around you might feel really uncomfortable.

They might wonder why you get to do that. And then you tell them why. You share your story of how maybe you had a leader once that did this and that inspired you and that's how you want to lead one day. We don't always have to manage people, but we do need to figure out how to lead through our own ways of balance. Because whether you manage people or not, whether you're a mom, a dad, or not a sister, a brother, an aunt, an uncle, any of those things. People are watching you. People are inspired by you.

People are looking to you for maybe what should they do next without being able to have the voice to ask that question. So, Monday, Balance How We Feeling Team? If you have questions, you have thoughts, you have ideas on how you create balance in your life, pop them in here, leave a chat, ask a question. I'll come back and listen. I always do. And most importantly, last key message. If you live in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, wherever you're at, if you can get to Minneapolis, Minnesota on Sunday, this coming Sunday, 9am Come meet with us at the Fragment coffee shop at 9am we'll have Cadre contributors like myself there live.

We'll do a little mini sound bath. It's Jewel's birthday weekend. She's flying, driving down. So we're gonna celebrate a birthday and we're gonna connect in person, go for a walk by the river, hang outside for a little bit, have a cup of coffee and just have an in person conversation about balance and how we're feeling and doing. So I hope you all have the best day. I'm sending you all the magic from the lake. Get out and move today. Even if it's raining, Go play in a rain puddle. And I hope you have the best day.

We'll see you all soon.