Leadership Is For Everyone

Each of us are leading, whether we want to admit it or not. What is it that made being held by 11 people while I cried made me a better leader? It's like being on a river and you're a boatman. If you are not listening to and following the river, you are screwed. Listen to the calling and follow it. Welcome to the Art of Accomplishment, where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease. Today, we're going to talk about leadership and how everybody is a leader in their lives, whether you recognize it or not. Joe, you often say that leadership is for everyone. What does that mean? Yeah, it means literally that everybody is leading. A lot of the thing about leadership is that people don't admit it to themselves. So when we're talking about leadership here, we're talking about the quality that is in all of us. We are not talking about you've been given a title or you have some sort of control or apparent control over other people. Yeah, so another way of saying that is we're talking about the way of being that leadership is not the assignment of leadership, the assignment of authority. Correct. Yeah, that's right. And I think that the most important thing about outside of everybody's actually always leading and to recognize that is to think about leadership as we all want to lead a great life. We all want to follow our convictions. And they actually are one in the same thing. Yeah, I like how you just said lead and follow. So can you unpack that a little bit? Yeah. So the thing about great leaders is that they follow. They have a strong sense of conviction over what they think to be the way or what's right or anything like that. They have this strong sense of conviction. And leadership begins by listening to that in yourself and following that. Being able to listen to the thing that you think that you have conviction over, listen to the calling and follow it. Now, that doesn't have to be like a big calling, like I'm going to save the world or I'm going to free all the people of like the war-torn country. It can be just like I am really convinced that this thing like changing the order of operations in the postal service. Yeah. I believe in this and I'm going to follow that belief. So the very act of leadership that is following, you can't really separate them because there is no leader that everybody's like, yeah, I love your leadership because you never follow what you think is right. You know, even if what you think is right is to try to make everybody happy and you're following that, even if that's the case, people will follow that. But what they will not follow is somebody who's actually not, doesn't have some level of conviction over what they're doing. And it doesn't even need to be conviction like this is right, this is wrong. It's just I know this process. I know that this is the way I want to go. Yeah. So what's the distinction then between conviction and say hard-headedness? Sometimes there is no distinction. Like we will follow hard-headedness because there is a conviction to it. Hard-headedness is just not. Hard-headedness is just not the most effective form of conviction. Meaning that a really effective form of conviction is I know that this is where we want to be. I know that this is where I want to be. This is the kind of life I want to live. I'm not going to be really hard-headed about how I get there. Right? So you could say Martin Luther King was hard-headed about civil rights. Hard-headed about being treated in an equal manner no matter what color skin. But how he got there, listening, the interaction, having the emotional intelligence to interact with people, none of that was hard-headed. But he had conviction in his process. He had conviction in where he wanted to land. Okay. So I want to reconcile this with something here. So when I first signed up for the first 18-month course that I did with you, I was like, oh, great. This is a leadership course. I'm going to learn to lead. I'll probably learn some things about raising money. I'm going to learn some things about being a CEO, inspiring people, having a vision, stepping in with conviction. And what I got was being held by 11 people for an hour while I cried. And somehow that actually did lead to me stepping more into leadership in my life and in my organization and in this organization, ultimately. And so how do those two things rectify there? Yeah. So there's a lot of studies that show that leadership and how good of a leader you are has a lot to do with your confidence. And so I think that's one of the things that I've learned over the years is that there's a lot of studies that show that leadership and how good of a leader you are has a lot to do with your confidence. "What, I'm this leader, you paid the money It's like, you don't think that I'm responsible for my own experience? And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Like, whoa. Holy. You know, it was, oh, right. I am disempowering this person. I am assuming that they are not responsible for themselves. Wow. Which is a very different thing from like shirking responsibility yourself. There's a different thing that is, I'm not responsible. Which is just not owning the authority in a different way. Exactly. Yeah. Not owning the leadership in a different way. I'm not responsible. Yeah. Yeah. And, but there's another side of it, which is like, I am now responsible for all these people that I'm leading. Yeah. No, they made a choice. They led themselves to you to, and they led themselves to follow you. And so, so that, and even there's, there's this great internet phenomenon. I think it's a while ago. But it was this whole thing about how it's the same. It's like the second person who actually creates the. The first follower. The first follower creates more, is often more leadership than the person doing it. And it's like somebody dancing at a concert. They're just going crazy. And everybody's just watching for an extended period of time. And then one other person joins to dance. And then, boom, hundreds of people there like immediately. I love that video so much. So do I. Yeah. And so it's, it's like, it's every, every one of those people. Led the first person, the second person, everybody else, everyone made it easier for everybody else to dance. Yeah. So something also interesting in that, in that piece is that if you are making yourself, if, if I were to take a leadership role and fail, if I were to make myself responsible for everything that would happen and as a result, I don't step into that role, then I actually already am making myself responsible for everything that's happening. So like either way. Either way. I'm in the, I'm in the leadership authority position, but I'm just frozen in it rather than fluidly moving into it and owning it. That's a great, that is such a great point. So, right. The other piece about it is somebody who is not owning their leadership in this situation or doesn't want to step into a bigger leadership position. Typically, what, one of the things that's pretty certain about them is they're blaming other people. So plenty of leaders blame other people. I'm not saying that that's not the case. So it's like every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square. There are definitely leaders who blame other people, but if somebody is very scared to step into leadership, they are blaming other people. They're, they're expecting the authority to be handed to them or the leadership to be handed to them. And they are upset that it's not being handed to them. Or. Or they are blaming other folks for their reality, for what the way they've led their life. And so they don't want to be the person who is blamed by others. They're projecting that blame that they put onto others that it's going to be on them if they step into conscious leadership. Yeah. So that they're seeing through a lens of blame and the not stepping into the leadership is a way of them trying to stay safe and avoid the blame. Correct. But it's actually creating a world in which there's a lot of blame to go around because they're not getting what they want. They're not seeing the changes that they want to see. Yeah. To be made and they are disempowering themselves and they're likely to feel disempowered by those around them. Yeah. Regardless of what's happening, whether they're being disempowered or not in those. Yeah. And one of the things that I'll see when that's, when that's occurring inside of an organization is somebody will say, there's something wrong here. Nobody's listening to me. Why isn't everybody listening? And now you're upset at me for saying that there's something wrong here. That will be like a common thing that gets played out. And one thing is they're not taking the leadership. They're not taking the leadership to actually go fix the problem. So in our organization, that generally just does not get rewarded at all because we follow leadership. We do not follow blame. So if that person was like, that's wrong and I'm going to go fix it. Fantastic. Go, go fix. We'll all follow you. Well, I'll just like I followed Mun into doing live podcasts or like this whole setup that we're in right now. All Mun. Not, I didn't want to do it. But that conviction is there. Taking responsibility is there. That leadership is there. I'm following it. So that's, that's one piece to it. I mean, that's kind of calling you back to times where I've been standing on a cliff with a group of people, a self-organized group that may have just decided, hey, let's go do this jump together. And the conditions are poor. And one person might blame and be like, what do you guys think? Like, what are you thinking? These conditions are terrible. And another person might just say, oh. This doesn't work for me. I'm going down. Right. The second one's the leader. Yeah, yeah. That person's the leader. Totally. Yeah. That's a cool one. Yeah. Because when I think about that, yeah, I can see that in multiple areas. It's the same way in a marriage. The person who's blaming is really saying, you take leadership. You are the leader. You're taking leadership. Blame is acknowledging the leadership of somebody else and giving yours away. There's this great saying that says it. At the beginning of the journey, you blame others. In the middle of the journey, you blame yourself. At the end, there is no blame. And definitely, the more you move in that direction, the better your leadership becomes, which is, I think, another reason why that 18-month course really helps people become a leader because it's really pulling the blame out of the system, blaming others, blaming yourself. It's really pulling that blame out of the system and just dealing with life as it is, not blaming anybody for it. Yeah. It also was. It was largely about following. It was about listening to what's needed next. And that's what really, I have seen, produces the best work from a team, is if whoever's next contribution is the perfect contribution for that moment, steps forward in exactly that moment, it works way better than if somebody's there directing the whole thing. There's a lot of things that make great leadership. One of the things that I think, the model I think about often, there's many models, and I think the core is that you're first. You're following. And so you're following yourself, but you're also, if you're in an organization or if you're in a movement, it's like being on a river and you're a boatman. And part of your job is to manipulate the river and the boat. And part of your job is to follow the river. Right? Like, I assume it's the same with the wind if you're jumping off of a cliff, right? Yeah. And at the same time, occasionally your job is to manipulate the river or the boat a little bit so that you can follow the river better. And similarly, in an organization, following the river is really important, which is just what I did with Munn or a hundred other times where somebody had conviction and I didn't believe in it. So there's that. But the more refined thing is acting from view is obviously a really great thing for leadership. Because it is, that's the emotional intelligence piece that we talked about. It's the piece of, oh, I'm listening to people and they feel heard and they feel seen. And so they want to be a part of this thing that's happening in this organization or be in the team that I'm in. So from view for people who are just entering this podcast for the first time, vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder inside of relationships to create more connection. The more connected a team is, is what we teach in the connection course. The more connected the team is, obviously the leader behind that connection is somebody, something that people want to follow. But the other, the other model that I think about often is called SAVE. And it's S stands for self-development, meaning that if that leader, if in your leadership, in that culture, people feel like they're better this year than they are last year, that they are constantly improving as people, they're going to stay. The second is autonomy. Where people feel like they actually are in control of their own world. That when they do have initiative, it gets followed. When they do take leadership, it's followed. That level of autonomy. You need to create alignment, but you need that level of autonomy for people. V is vision. Vision means, oh, here's where we're going to be. This is the world I see that is possible for us. That's like the very beginning of vision. The second part of vision is the context. If you, let me share all the context of what makes me do this. Because this is where we're headed. So oftentimes, most of the miscommunication that happens in an organization or what pisses somebody off with the leaders, they don't actually know what the leader's thinking, how they came to the conclusion. They didn't feel like they were a part of that process. That's where a lot of the rub happens. And so vision is that. But vision at its purest sense is the leader's acting as if the reality that they're looking to live in is already existent. So an example of this, back to Martin Luther King, his vision was equality, that people would be treated equally. He acted as if he were already being treated equally. He acted as if his voice was just as important. So it's like acting as if the thing that you're working towards is already in existence. It's like a very deep form of vision. Sort of, in other words, like leadership being, what you're willing to put up with, allow that's such a good one yes yeah we can come back to that because i do want to come back to that because that's yeah um and then there's the e with it which is esteem means appreciation it means you're you're treating somebody with respect and appreciate all the ways that you're working with them increases their their esteem of themselves and of the organization so you're working on the esteem and so if you do those things you're a great leader if you do those things people want to keep on being with you in the organization and you'll notice that in that part of that is that you're following other everybody else's leadership because of that autonomy it's part of how that all works yeah yeah and following another word for that is listening like you're listening to yeah right at the same time as you're seeing the leadership and others and you are holding the reality field that everybody steps into their leadership yeah you're also listening for where there is leadership so that you can attune to that and you can yeah you can enlist that into the into the broader scheme and bring it into context yeah if i walk into a group and i see oh they are all feeling better about themselves they're all following their truth they're all like leadership is moving around there's autonomy that the right person is leaning at the right moment who doesn't want to be a part of that that quote that you said i always interpreted that in this very particular way where i thought that meant that as a leader which i agree with um as a leader what you put up with is the quality of your leadership i will not put up with defensiveness or i will not put up with this level of performance or whatever but it can be taken a different way which is the way you're describing it as the person on the cliff saying this isn't right i'm walking away i'm not putting up with this and and i that just when i thought about that that just kind of blew my mind that it's it's it's saying that i am i have like an internal integrity which by the way the studies show that that internal integrity or that moral compass is one of the things that we look for in our leaders that make for great leaders and that's another way of saying like what you'll put up with it's not just performance not just accountability yeah clarity yeah clarity values exactly principles yeah and but notice out of everything that we've talked about what isn't necessary in leadership is to be right and most people think or controlling or controlling they feel like they have to be right they feel like they have to be in control and actually if you're falling a river part of your acknowledgement is that you're not in control and and being right is is not important knowing the next step being knowing how to find the next step right oftentimes if you're following the next step is is presented to you the right move is a perfect is something presented to you by a by mun telling me no we're doing live podcast joe yeah right and i didn't know that was the right thing i thought it was the wrong thing as it turned out yeah so i want to get more into the emotional fundamentals like what what is it emotionally it makes it so challenging for people to step into leadership and like what is it that made being held by 11 people while i cried made me a better leader what is the emotional block that somebody who's scared to step into leadership or taking responsibility beyond themselves doing how does that work even taking responsibility for themselves yeah um we talked about blame being a big part of it right so if you're scared to blame if you're blaming others that that can deeply get in the way of this situation i think the other thing is trust so there's a study that shows i'm not going to get this exact but that you know even three-year-olds exhibit behaviors of leadership leadership is that natural if you watch kids play in a field you will see leadership going from one kid to an ex which is the way we're built which is why organizations that do that are more effective so the leadership is moving from one from one person to another person and you'll watch young kids exhibit leadership and if you're watching kids play often unless somebody's been pretty abused or super introverted and there's a whole way of leading through introversion too which is interesting like it apparently it creates more lasting change if it's a in a introverted type of leadership but you'll just see that that leadership passes it's like a natural quality in us to to lead and so the question isn't like what gets us to lead it's what kicks us out of it if i can't trust the environment i don't feel like i'm going to be able to leave i can't trust the people around me i don't feel like i can lead if i've been told i'm bad i don't feel i can lead it's and so as you heal from the trauma is as you get more in touch with yourself the natural thing is to move more and more into leadership that there's people who are not deeply in touch with themselves that move into leadership because there's some quality that they're in touch with right but if the more you get in touch with yourself the more you have to get in touch with that quality and the quality is a listening to your conviction and so you might not be able to see yourself really really clear but you listen to your conviction because that was the only way you could not get abused or that's the way you showed value to get loved or anything like that but for everybody else it's just oh i if i know myself i listen to my conviction if i listen to my conviction i move into leadership i move into acknowledging that i am in leadership because everybody is in leadership yeah i also have a sense that there's a common experience for somebody who's scared to step into leadership is that like they they want to be loving but they don't want to be the like there's there seems like like there's a maybe a false binary between really good love and power yeah yeah and there's like a challenge to integrate those yeah can you talk about that a little bit yeah the first thing i'll say is there's like leadership is super fragile right um meaning you don't really have power you have power because people think you have power but that can be taken away because people stop thinking you have power so leadership is it can come and go really quickly so to even confuse it with power is kind of like a silliness i think there's an ownership of the powers recognizing like oh what i what i say has influence but that should be at any level of leadership that kind of ownership needs to be there um but but i think that the underlying thing is if i'm a leader i'm going potentially going to be an or i have a job to do and therefore i'm going to stop paying attention to people i'm going to stop empathizing even though all the research shows that empathetic leaders are more successful leaders more emotional intelligence more successful leadership maybe i think many people just had the examples of whoever was in a leadership or in charge role in their life did so from a closed heart and so they believe that they're going to have to close their heart to step into making something happen yeah or or they close their hearts in themselves to make something happen yeah often the case often the case is that that their authority figure either external when they're a kid or their internal authority figure is an ass and so they're like oh my intern this thing inside of me that's trying to lead that i know i think is a leader even though i don't really follow it and even though like it tells me i don't do a good enough job and so apparently i'm not doing what it says so i'm not actually following it which means it's not actually the leader but i think that that thing is a leader and i am and i'm and i don't like it so i don't want to be that in the world so then we're following the voice in our head because it's the with conviction rather than following the subtle silent cause and so i think it's a leader and it's a calling within us that is actually if you're listening to it much like deeper and broader yeah that's a really present really cool thought process so i geek out here on a minute in a minute and like this might be nonsensical for people but i think it's kind of cool which is right in a weird way the negative self-talk that negative voice in your head is not owning the fact that it's a leader yeah yeah it's doing the blame it's doing the blame yeah so if you really stop and think about if you said if my negative self-talk actually fully recognized that it was a leader what would it do differently wow that's kind of like like that just just that yeah that's cool if it was the rudder not the captain yeah what would it do right that's a fascinating that's a fascinating thought process because typically it's acting like an authority but it's not owning its leadership yeah it's blaming you that's great okay so for somebody listening to this right now they're in their car they're doing their workout and they're about to move on to the next part of their day yeah how how can that person own their leadership of their life just a little bit more in all they have to do is recognize it just recognize that when you smile at somebody they're more likely to smile back that's leadership you're at the gym right now and how you're working out is giving permission to other people like that's that's all leadership all this really is just to actually allow that shit in for a minute to really go oh I am in leadership when I complain to my husband that's leadership when I wake up and go I don't want to go to work today that's leadership when I don't say the thing in the meeting that's leadership when I say the thing in the meeting that's leadership to actually just recognize everything you are doing even the way right now you are listening to this podcast is leadership you are setting an example you're giving permission you are are are giving the example of change in the world and this is bringing up another story just recently I was on a backpacking trip with somebody really close to me and it was their first time backpacking I've been backpacking many times yeah so I was in the leadership role of hey we're going backpacking and you know kind of here's here's how we need to pack here's what we need to bring and I was in the leadership role of hey we're going backpacking and while we were hiking we were with a larger group this person was hiking slower than everybody and so I stayed with them and just the way that they were doing it she was just loving herself in the slowness loving like just trusting her her pace trusting her own capacity trusting her own learning of how it is to get used to walking many many miles in a day and trust her body and the way that she was doing it was leadership to me because I recognized that I had been associating being in the front which I'm usually the zoomer I like to right right right not zoomer like generationally but like I like to I like to have the gozies I like to be in the front yeah and up in the front is typically where there's the most enthusiasm right and so I'd subconsciously associated the back of the hike with the people who are more tired maybe struggling more often more self-critical that's great and she was the opposite of that and so it was really beautiful to I realized that I was being led energetically right on how I can enjoy myself being in a much slower pace than I traditionally would be yeah yeah perfect what a pleasure great conversation yeah yeah thank you Joe you're welcome yeah thank you thank you everybody for listening I'd love to hear how you are leading in your life as you walk forward through this as you move forward from this episode and you recognize more and more ways that you have been leading in your life I'd love to hear about it you can find us on Twitter on X you can send us emails you can make comments on this in your podcast platform tell us about it and if you love this episode share it with a friend and subscribe this podcast is hosted by myself Brett Kistler and Joe Hudson Munyee Kelly is our producer and this episode is edited by Reasonable Volume join us next time for the art of accomplishment where we're going to go into the imposter syndrome how we are all imposters why that's not a problem and how to find the confidence in simply seeing and being ourselves