Leading With Authenticity: Meaningful connections

Hey, everybody, it's Monday. Here we are back at it, starting our weeks. Maybe some of us don't work on Mondays, so for you, maybe it's your weekend. I think Monday should be a weekend day or simulate a weekend day. Hello, update. Happy Monday. How are you today as you're joining in this beautiful day. Hey, Jules. Hello, Amar. How we doing today? As you come on into the live stream, my invitation to you is to type in the chat. How you doing today? How are you feeling? Hi, T. Brown. What's new? What's exciting?

What are you looking forward to? Any of those things count? So just type in the chat. How are you feeling? Hello, Rachel. What's new? What are you excited about? Any of those things? I'd love to hear from you. So if we've never been together before, my name is Jean. I am here here on Mondays, and I'm excited to be here next Monday. I'll actually be coming in from the Los Angeles area. I'm going to see some family. Amar, looking forward to school this fall. Feeling great and excited to start studying social work.

I love that. Amazing. Thank you for being here, Rachel. Grateful to have power again after it went out last night. Are you in Minneapolis, Rachel? Cause those storms last night were legit crazy. But I don't think my power went out. At least I. I don't know if it did. And if it. If it did, I'll figure that out. Driving three hours to go to a doctor's appointment. Jules, in for the long haul. What's your podcast that you're listening to? And don't text and drive. Goodness, you're a children. Texas.

Oh, man. You guys also get some really big storms down there. So today we're coming in. Today is around leading with authenticity. And I look at that in two ways. One, as a leader of a team, but also, how do we lead in our lives as a human? Because whether or not we manage people, we are always interacting with people and we are always in charge of our own selves, least leading through our own lives. And so how might we do that authentically in our own space, but also as we lead teams or manage people or manage volunteer events, you know, it doesn't always have to be that workspace.

It can be something that we are volunteering or passionate about or those times that we feel so strongly that something can be done better and we raise our hand. Good morning, Speak Wonder. So this morning, it is really about leading with authenticity, but also doing it by making meaningful connections. So I'm pausing intentionally on that Meaningful connections. I want you to think in your day, in your life, what meaningful connections do you have today? Maybe it's a lifelong connection. Maybe it's a brand new connection.

So do you have, when I say that phrase, meaningful connection, do you have someone or someone's multiple people that you think of right away? And if yes, type in the chat if you're willing. What makes that particular connection meaningful? Are they helping you find a job? Do they mentor you? What about that connection is meaningful? So I'll share a couple of examples for you. In my work, I would say there are few. Rachel, I'm sorry to hear that. But we're going to talk through some things and maybe we can get that back for you or you can send me a note at dreambag30 on Instagram and we can chat more like, whatever, whatever will support you.

I'm in. So when I think about meaningful connections for me, I can think of one person specifically right away. And I feel blessed because I feel like I have a few. But over time, those connections evolve and as you go through different life experiences, those connections will evolve. Some will let go. So Rachel's in a transitionary position potentially. Right. And some will grow in a way that maybe we didn't expect. Speak Wonder holding your one year old sleeping grandson right now. Oh, that's a beautiful connection.

I love that. Congratulations. So the meaningful connection I'm going to share is with someone who became a mentor of mine and I didn't know at the time that was going to happen. So I think back many years when I was working in corporate finance and I was working at a company called Best Buy. You probably have heard of that. Maybe, maybe not. And when I was working in this job, I just remember it was new in the job and you know, when you come in new, you're the kind of the underdog and maybe you get stuck with some of the work that nobody wants or you're really trying to make a good impression.

And so at the time I was in finance and I was working with a technology and it was budget season. So I drew the lucky straw that I got to go in at midnight to take down the system to make my updates and republish. So every night we had to do that until the technology could publish on its own. Like it needed to evolve, it just hadn't evolved yet. And I remember being at work at like 12:30 at night or in the morning and I'm doing my thing and I get a DM come across my screen and it's from somebody Else who is new, but level wise, he's a couple levels higher than I am.

His name is Paul and he would be like, he would call me Nichols. So my last name is Nicholls. And he'd be like, Nichols, what are you doing up so late? And I'd be like, done, what are you doing up so late? And we would just have this like kind fun banter because he's working from home, I'm sitting in the office. And we just developed kind of that conversation because I was the voice behind the technology, answering everybody's questions. And so eventually over time in this working relationship, he became, he became a mentor of mine.

So fast forward about four or five years, he got promoted, I got promoted into a senior, senior financial analyst position. He was a director, senior director at the time. And every quarter he would make it an intention to check in with me, see what my goals were, see what I wanted to do next. And since I had evolved in this technology, I became kind of his right hand person because anytime he wanted to build some models for his teams, he would call me and then he'd call my boss and then I would get to do some side work that would help me grow and expand my career.

And one day he like came, came across my desk, big tall guy, would throw my stuffed animals at me and then duck and hide, like I didn't know it was him. And on this particular day, he threw the stuffed animal down on my desk, like tipped it and I started crying and he was like, mitchell's conference room, now he's a big guy, don't mess with him. So I got up and I went in the conference room and I started to explain to him because he cared about what was happening in my experience. And I had a new manager and it wasn't going very well.

They didn't understand the work that I did. They didn't understand the work that they were doing. And I was trying to do my best and I had always gotten really good reviews for my work, but it was really, really hard. And so he gave me language that I could use in my one on ones. And then he started exploring different opportunities for me. I didn't even know he was doing this until I got an email one day from a manager in a different department that said she wanted to interview me for a job. And I was like, what's happening?

I didn't apply for anything. And I met with this person. She told me that Paul was her mentor. Also said that I would be a really great asset on our team. Lo and behold, I got to move into a new position. Fast forward this is probably 15 years ago. Fast forward the same individual would get promoted into VP positions. I started my own company doing coaching and consulting work and he would call me when he needed help learning how to understand his team.