Leading With Authenticity - Believing In Your Strengths

Happy Monday, everybody. Excited to be here. My name is Jean Mitchells. Chatting with you about leading with authenticity. Leading from a place of strikes, believing in your strengths. So on this amazing Monday, I'm going to give people a few moments to pop on in. Don't worry, I'm not going to start singing. That wouldn't be good for anybody. But I do have a major sighting. He is right here demanding more pets as he does. And you know what? If I get to come back, I'm coming back as a golden retriever.

Hi, Mary. Good morning. Happy Monday. Nice to have you here. Excited to have everyone jumping in to our Cadre sphere this morning. If we haven't met before, my name is Jean Mitchells. Hi, Luke. Good morning. Good morning. I have my assistant monitoring for today. Clearly my supervisor is on break. So here we are on this beautiful Monday. Leading with authenticity, having a conversation around. Leading from a place of strengths, believing in your strengths. Now, on this amazing Monday, I'm going to simply invite you to type in the chat.

How do you feel right now in this very moment? What is your goal for this week? But really, most importantly, what do you feel right now? So if you could type it in the chat. Amazing. Or if you just want to take a deep breath and feel what you feel and not have to share, that's awesome too. Go for that. So for me this morning, I feel present. Now I am being very intentional. I'm starting a 21 day practice. 21 seems to be the magic number of where we can create a new habit. And so my 21 day practice will get altered slightly on a couple of days of the week because I teach spin classes really early.

So I'm going to do my best on those days. But I bought this blanket cup and the reason why I bought this blue cup, I bought it at an art fair, was the first time I was in Japan. My dad was stationed in Japan and he was very excited that I was going to be there. And I was trying to find the most perfect gift for him. It meant so much to me that I find the most perfect gift for him. And it got to the point where we are at our last stop on our last day and we're at this beautiful, beautiful shrine, Beautiful shrine.

And I'm crying. And the lady that we were with that was kind of our organizer, she's like, jean, what's wrong? And I was like, I've spent all this time here in Japan. We've done great things. We were there for a tennis exchange. We've seen beautiful places Good morning update. If you're willing, type in the chat how you feel right now. So I was, like, so upset, and I explained to her that my dad had been in Japan. He's been sharing stories with me all week long. Every night, my homestay mom and I would go to the computer because my dad would send us an email of his memories from being in Japan when he was stationed here.

And he loved Japan, talked about it all the time, especially even more at the end. He had Alzheimer's. Those are the memories that he had, which were beautiful. And so I was just upset. And she was like, gene, he's your dad. He's gonna love anything you get him. And so I made my rounds one more time through this gift shop, and I found this little tiny blue mug. And that's what I landed on. And I was crying. I was mortified that I was getting my dad a teacup. So I get home, fast forward, I see my dad and I have all these little gifts that we had received, and I shared all of them with him because we were welcomed by the city, our group, because we were there for a 10x exchange.

And then I get to the last gift, and I literally immediately start to cry. I was like, dad, I'm so sorry. Like, I was trying to find you the perfect gift. And he opened the gift and he started crying. This is getting somewhere, I promise. He started crying. And he grabbed this mug and he held it with his hands, and he had really big, kind hands. And he wrapped around it and he started explaining to me how the Japanese had their tea time. And it was the most beautiful ceremony he had ever experienced.

And he had been looking for a mug for a long time. And then he explained to me about the color blue. And the whole experience just reminded me that the universe, your soul, your spirit, your connections will always ground you in finding exactly what you need when you need it. And so my 21 day ceremony is doing a cacao ceremony every morning for 21 days. And in a cacao ceremony, it's about opening up your heart and it's about having gratitude. And so I'm using a blue cup that I found because when he passed away, I wasn't able to find the blue cup again.

But I found one at an art fair recently. And so every morning for 21 days, I'm doing a heart opening ceremony of gratitude using the blue cup that connects me to my dad. Now, how does that fit in with our theme for today? Fits in quite nicely, actually. But I'm gonna offer an invitation to you. If there's a ceremony, if there's a practice for 21 days, what might that be for you? What might you be willing to invest in you for 21 days? I'm just gonna let that hang out there. You don't have to do anything with it.

But I will come back to it in a future conversation. So just know that this is coming. And remember my blue cup. Now, when we're leading from a place of strengths, one of the things that I've realized is as a leader, and I'm going to specifically talk about our indoor cycling studio, and I'm going to specifically talk about leading a team at our studio and an experience that I had recently. So why this ceremony to me is really important is it's helping me get back to myself again. I feel like there's been a period of time where I've been running around like a rat.

Like that little hamster wheel, right? I was a little kid and I had the hamster once and it had a hamster wheel and it just kept running in there. So I felt like that for a little while now. Like I'm just running around through that hamster wheel, doing everything for everyone. But it's funny because I coach everybody to remind themselves that you have to put your oxygen mask on first. And in order for you to be your best self, to be your best parent, to be your best individual self, your best child, your best friend, partner, spouse, sibling, all of the things to be your best self as a leader of a team, to be your best self as an employer or team member, you need to put your oxygen mask on first.

And somewhere along the way, I felt like it was more important to put on everybody else's oxygen mask first instead of my own. And what happens in those moments is that I don't always show up as my best self. So one of my strengths is leading with gratitude. Now, here's why the story about my team comes into play. There are other small businesses and small businesses owners, and when you're in fitness or I think it's actually any business, it doesn't matter. We all go through a period of time where we feel imposter syndrome, right?

Social media can throw at us all these, you know, for me as a spin instructor, badass spin instructors who dance and they do all these things, and then I'm like, wow, maybe I need to be more like that to give more energy to my classes. And then I try it and I fail miserably at it. And some of it works because I didn't realize I could tap into that possibility for myself. But what I recognized is I was watching some different posts about leaders at different places and I started to get really down on myself and I started to feel like, wow, well, I'm not a badass.

I don't say the F word and I don't. I do have some tattoos, but I'm not like laden in tattoos that give you that edgy, make you feel like you're edgy. The list just went on and on and on of all the things that I'm not and what I was seeing in these other people and reading and comments and feedback about those other people. And I was like, yeah, I'm not any of that. Wow, maybe I should be. Maybe I'm doing a disservice to my team by not being more edgy, not being more gritty, not being more present at our studio.

Because what I try to do is allow our team to grow organically and set the bumpers for them and lean in when they need me or guide through or lead by example. And I was like, well, maybe that's not enough for my team. So I started a spiral, really. And. And then I went into the studio one day and I looked around everybody on our team and I started reading through the comments at our studio about what people have to say, not just about me, because I also realized that I don't want to be that, that face person most of the time at our studio.

Most people that come into the studio don't know that I'm one of the co owners and that's by design. I'm an instructor. I'm part of a team now. When it's necessary for me to put on my owner hat, I will, I'll performance manage the team. I'll do corrections, course corrections where necessary. I'll answer the questions that are the hard questions. But that's not always what is needed. So as I walked around the studio, I realized that we have a team of really kind, passionate, intentional purpose, living, purpose driven individuals.

And that's what I realized is my strength. My strength is seeing the goodness in people and helping to draw that out. Helping to tap into what is that tiny little speck of a diamond and helping to brush off the coal because there's something really beautiful in there. And when we get to that diamond, that diamond is going to supersede everybody's expectations, even that own individuals. So my role as a leader, my strength is to lead from a place of gratitude. My strength is to lead as a strong coach.

A mentor, a visionary, Someone who isn't afraid to have a crazy idea or hear a crazy idea and say, let's go for it. It. It's probably why I love Luke so much, because I can throw a crazy idea at him. He's like, yeah, let's do it. If it works, great. If it doesn't, we'll pivot. My word is plot twist, but that's what my strengths as a leader are. So when I look across at other studio owners or I look at the people in finance, so I have a finance and technology background. I look at my old peers who have become VPs and CFOs, and I think, gosh, what if I would have done what my other path was?

It would have been great. But here's the deal. I'm not there. So if I keep what if ing something old, I might miss what's right ahead of me. So my strengths are the fact that I did work in corporate finance, that I am a coach, and I've taken a bazillion certifications because I'm so curious. And then I decided to get a master's degree that wasn't an MBA in finance, which is what all my mentors told me to do. I got one in innovation and design thinking so I could tap into more people to draw out the best in them.

In business, in coaching, in community, in life. I became a Reiki master because I want to meet people where they're at. And sometimes that requires us to let go of an old version of ourselves, to step into the new, best version of ourselves. So it took me some time to believe in my strengths, but there are so many times that I believe as we are evolving, as we are breaking out of that new cocoon. Thinking of the imagery of a butterfly, right? A butterfly has to go through the pain and the spirit struggle and the challenge of metamorphosis, of going from this cute little squiggly bug that transitions into this beautiful cocoon where it hibernates and it decides what strengths is it going to need to shine this time?

And then it goes through the effort of busting out of that cocoon, and here's what's going on. Cool. If I saw a cocoon and I saw a little butterfly breaking out of it, if I saw a little egg of a bird trying to break out of that cocoon and I helped it, that little thing would die. Why? Not because I wasn't trying to gratefully help it, but because it has to do the work itself, to feel fulfilled, to create the strength to step into the next version of itself. So as I, Jean, go through my entire spiral of imposter syndrome and feeling like I'm not enough and grasping onto something new to learn, to get to the point where I can take a pause and say, for the next 21 days, I'm going to step back into myself and I'm going to recognize and I'm going to lead from a place of gratitude.

I'm going to lead lead from a place of seeing beyond what somebody else can see in themselves. That's when I live into my own strengths. But here's what's incredible. Nikki on here, Mary on here, Luke on here, Jewel, everyone that pops in here, whether you manage people or you manage your day doesn't matter. When you tap into your strengths and when you can believe that the strengths that you innately have are more than enough and you take the time to invest in those, you take the time to lead from that place, we, all of us around you, get to see the best version of you.

We don't need another leader that leads as a badass. We have a lot of those. We don't need another leader that's going to be only a visionary. We have those people. What we need is the leader that you have within you and the strengths that you have within you. Because that combination of everything you learn, everything you experience is perfectly unique to you. And that's what we need and we need more of that. So for 21 days with my blue cup, that reminds me of Japan, reminds me of ceremony, and takes me on a journey of heart opening gratitude.

That is me coming back into myself. That is me remembering what my strengths are and that the world needs my strengths just as much as the world needs your strengths. And the world needs you to lead from the only place that you know and that is from your heart and everything else that you've taken on that journey with you. So let's crack out of that cocoon together, let's do the work and let's rise and shine together in this beautiful space of our own intentional leadership where we lead authentically with ourselves.

I hope you all have the best day. If you want to go on a 21 day journey with me, type it in the chat. I promise I come back and listen. But I just love hearing from you. So go out there, enjoy the day, breathe and take a moment for yourself or maybe take two more Cadre moments for yourself. That's only 4% of your day. Why not invest in you that way? Have the best day everybody. We'll see you soon.