Abundant Leadership ✨

Hello, Cadre family. Happy Monday. Gene Mitchell's here in the great outside enjoying a cool breeze. Okay, I'm not enjoying a cool breeze. It's not time. Should still stay warm. I'm kidding. I'm out here on this beautiful Monday, just excited. Excited for a new week, excited for a new day. Good morning. Good morning. Hello Rachel, how are you doing today? Hello, mafia. Good morning. Happy Monday. As you're dialing in, calling in, logging in all the ins, I would love if you just took a moment and typed in the chat.

How are you feeling right now? How do you feel right now in this moment? The only moment that we have any control of is the one that we're in. So my question is, how do you feel right now? I will share that. I feel calm, I feel present, and I don't always get to say that on a Monday morning. So I'm gonna just roll with that today. Today. So if we haven't held space before. Pensive. I like that word. That's a great word. Thank you for that. So if we haven't held space before. My name is Jean Nicholls.

I am an executive coach. I'm a corporate consultant for change and transformation. I co own an indoor cycling studio. I teach spin classes, Reiki master and a sound therapist. So I work in all different ways to help people make forward progress and to heal and move and I feel very blessed that I get to do that. Also, if we haven't met before, I'll introduce you to our co host. His name is Major, so he most often will be in live streams with me. Today he's just chilling underneath this cute little picnic table that we're sitting at.

So abundant leadership, let's just dive right in. Historically, I've had this time on Mondays called leading with authenticity and I still believe in that, but thought that it might be nice to have a tiny shift as we transition into a new season. And in harvest season, it really is about abundance. It's about looking back. Good morning. Speak Wonder. Harvest season is about looking back and reflecting. So if we go back to January 1st, when we started a new year and we just go there and we see how far we've come.

Life hasn't been easy since September 1st to right now for any of us. But each of our struggles and challenges are gonna be uniquely different to our circumstances, our life, the things we need to learn, etc. However, when we look at this moment right now, we can simply reflect on how much we've grown through all of those experiences. Now we might wish for different experiences or wish that something didn't happen the way that it did, but we can't control that. So when I think about abundant leadership, I'm going to use an example here and why it's really important, especially in harvest season, as we're thinking about what are the things that we're abundant within our life, what are we grateful for in our life right now?

That's the essence of the harvest season, is looking back to see all the seeds that we've planted, we've invested in their growth, and now here we are today, we've arrived. Speak of wonder. I love that you're reflecting today. Also, thank you for putting that in the chat. So abundant leadership. I'm going to give you a story, I'm going to share with you an example. And it's so uncanny to me how things happen in the moment that we need them. So I woke up this morning and I was getting ready and I logged into LinkedIn.

And I don't do this every day. I do it kind of sporadically because it's just sometimes another social media outlet. This one is just more professional facing. And when I went out there today, I was so glad that I did because an old colleague of mine, she actually was a boss of mine, did a post today in honor of World Mental Health. And World Mental health day is October 10th. It's on Friday. But she posted her post today and she shared a story that I wasn't aware of and about struggles and challenges that she's gone through.

And she focused on burnout and how getting burnt out physically manifested in her body in a way that caused her to be extremely exhausted and eventually being diagnosed with Ms. And now she is learning how to live with that in a new way. And I didn't know about this challenge. I didn't know about this struggle. We had not been as connected. But here's why I say this. So she's the CEO of a company now. And when I worked for her, it was when I first started going out on my own as a consultant and a coach.

And I was young, right? I was late 20s, early 30s. I mean, it was only two years ago, let's be honest. Kidding. But I was young and I was very naive and I'm a total Pollyanna. Let's be really honest about that. Hi, Kerry. Welcome. And so what happened was I, I'm a strengthsfender coach and I was going to work at the Marcus Buckingham Company And Marcus Buckingham was my idol in appreciative inquiry, positive psychology. And this study in science and this way to lead people in teens, way to learn how to lean into our own lives.

I promise to come back and talk more about this in the future. However, I had to be on site in California, in Beverly Hills, and my brother lives in California, and I've been there a lot, but this is like Beverly Hills. And that to this Minnesota girl who loves to wear Nike and Lululemon, like, that was a lot. And I didn't feel like I fit in. And I was super nervous. And I was there for a training. And this leader, I had a. I had a practice in front of her, and she stopped me as I was going through some content that I needed to facilitate to 250 people in a week.

And she was like, this sucks. Literally, she says this and she says it with a British accent, so. So it sounds even more cool. And she gives me the harshest feedback I've ever gotten to date. And the person who was my boss, they were partners, they were peers. She was like, whoa, let's just take it back a notch. And then she said, but, Jean, she's right. She may not have said it in the way that resonated with you, but she's not wrong, so let's try this again and do something different. And I was terrified of this other person for a long time until what I realized one day, sitting down and talking to her, was that she just had a very direct approach.

She didn't believe in sugarcoating anything. But this female, she was wicked smart. She still is. And everything she said was on point. I just never heard it in that way before. And I gained a new appreciation, new respect for her and a new friendship with her. So watching now and seeing her post on LinkedIn, she has thousands of followers. Her story of burnout, of being a caretaker for her mom, a caretaker for her, her partner, leading a company, leading teams of people, and for her to recognize that she hit burnout.

And that burnout impacted her so hard that it caused an ailment in her body. It caused me to stop, to pause. Because when I first met her, we didn't talk about any of that. We didn't talk about how we felt or if we were tired, if we were overworked, if we didn't take enough vacation. But we do now. And I am so inspired by her ability to lead authentically to herself and lead with abundance. The abundance that I receive from her over and over and over is her knowledge. Because she's, as I mentioned, wicked smart in this positive appreciation, appreciative Inquiry space.

Wicked smart as a leader and a business owner and I learned so much from her when I worked with her. But I even learned something more today. How often do we lift everybody else up around us? How often do we raise our hand and lean in and do more and do more and do more and forget to take care of ourselves? Abundant leadership doesn't mean I give my entire self away. Abundant leadership says I can give abundantly to myself so that I can also give abundantly to my teams. So let's unpack that for a second.

I Jean full transparency. I've been running these marathons as a way to grieve, but I hadn't really unpacked it until somebody asked me about my grief process. And then I broke down and I shared it with you them because so many people around me expect me to show up and work hard and be there for them and support them. And I will do that all day long. I love it. I am born to do that for people. I know this to be true. But here's what I also know. I'm exhausted. I was supposed to run a marathon yesterday and I didn't even go pick up my packet, run the marathon because I have a hip injury because I am carrying a lot of stress in my lower back and my hips and my body is saying you need to take a pause before something big happens.

So I didn't even go pick up my race bib because I know myself well enough. If I picked up the bib, I would have gone to the start line and I would have ran until I couldn't run anymore and that wouldn't have been good for my body. So instead I slept. I slept a lot on Saturday. I rested my hip, I took my dog to the dog park. He rolled around in the sand, swam in the water and we just enjoyed nature. So that moment abundantly I gave to myself so that the next day when I was able to be with our team at the studio, I was able to be honest and be like, yeah, I'm not running a marathon.

It's is really hard for me to not do that right now. But here's what happened. I encouraged, without even knowing it, a couple of our other instructors to take a time out and I inspired some of our riders to remember that they had to take care of themselves first. So in that moment when I thought I was just being selfish, taking time for myself to sleep and rest and not do something I trained to do, what came back to me was an overwhelming amount of shares from different people where they said I would have just pushed through.

But you know what? I'm not feeling it too. So I'm going to take a time out. So abundant leadership doesn't mean you have to give it all away. Because when we do give it all away, when we give so much of ourselves to everything and everyone else, we lose track of us. We lose track of these beautiful sights that we get to see that are just right there waiting for us. I love that. Carrie. Yes. Sometimes we need permission from another person. Isn't that true? So what if today you gave yourself permission to simply go for a walk, enjoy the changing colors of leaves?

If you live in a state or a place that has that. Last week I took a few days and I went to California to go see my family, who's going through some mental health challenges in their family unit. And while I couldn't be with them all the time, in between each time I saw them, I went to the beach because water is rejuvenating to me. So I sat by the ocean. I literally pulled out my computer at one point and hot spotted on my phone and did some work right there by the ocean because I felt so grounded and so calm.

And then I came back refreshed and able to really be there and be present for my family. When I did get to see them in a way that they haven't experienced in a long time because I've been so busy doing that, I have stopped being so in this time of harvest season, when I look back and see how far I've come, I get to see all the things that I've gotten to do. I've gotten to travel, I've gotten to race in new countries and new cities. I've gotten to test my body and test my mind. And now I get to take a pause, refresh my body, refresh my mindset.

Be creative. Right again. So sweet Bunder, right now you're swinging your year old grandson at the park. Oh, abundance of giggles. Oh, give that little one a hug for me. So as you move forward throughout your day today, knowing that whether or not you manage people doesn't mean or dictate that you're a leader. You are a leader. As you lean in, as you follow, as you listen. And doing that from a place of abundance, where you recognize what you need to feel full, allows you to be able to support and give abundantly to those around you.

Ah, thank you, Carrie. And now I'm going to show you one more little thing. Hi, ninjas. Say hello to everybody. We all need a little extra puppies in our life, right? I hope you have the best day. We'll talk to you all soon. Get out there. Smile. Move your body. Fill up your soul with something else that you need today. We'll chat soon. And don't forget to check out the other people today. They're amazing too.