Abundant Leadership ✨ Focus On Deepening That Bond

Hello, Monday. We're back. My apologies in advance. I didn't check the life of my phone and the battery died. Happy Monday. So I'm back. My name is Jean Nicholls. I'm excited to be here with you. I am taking a pause to find a breath to settle into this Monday to be present. Hello, Rose. Hello. Speak, Wonder. Welcome back. Note to self, speak Wonder. Always check your phone battery life before you pop into the Cadre sphere. So, hello. Hello, Seamerster. How are you today? Yep, a brief blip. That's what we go with, brief blips.

But it's Monday, we're here and it's also Mercury in retrograde. So until November 29th, fully expect and prepare for technology blips. It's going to be a thing and we're going to plot twist our way through it and it will be great. It'll be great. And don't worry, Major is still here with me, checking out his own space. So he's excited to be here too, today. So on Monday, professional development day, leading with authenticity, I thought it would be a really great moment to take a pause, especially as we're leaning into the last few weeks of 2025.

We are settling into the last 44ish days of the year. Can you believe that we are so close to the end of this year. However, we are right on the pinnacle of a crazy season. The time when we have all of the holiday bustle that comes along with it, all of the emotions that come along with the holidays, all of the expectations that we put upon ourselves or the expectations that are put upon us. And so I thought it would be a great time for us to focus during this season on deepening our relationships with our teams, with the people that work with us, work around us, that we collaborate with, and that could be in a work environment, it could be in a volunteer environment, if you're retired, it could even be deepening relationships with yourself or with your friend groups.

There are no boundaries or rules on relationships, right? We have so many of them and if we think about those relationships as an investment not only in them, but in ourselves, we might look at them slightly differently. So knowing that we're entering into this, this season, right, Knowing that depending on where you're at in your life, what stage you're at in your life, this season could feel overwhelming. This season could feel sad for losses. It could feel different because of changes in your work landscape, your life landscape, people that have come and or gone throughout the year.

So the holiday season, the last 45 days of the year sometimes can be the hardest days of the year because we are required. I'm air quoting that. Because we always have choice. Sometimes we don't really feel like we have choice, but we're required to attend friendsgivings or family Thanksgivings or host events. If you're managing and leading people, you are creating space for your teams to celebrate. Maybe you feel the need to buy them gifts or answer whatever the expectation might be. And so my first question for you or my invitation to you is to reflect back on past holiday seasons and reflect back to maybe your favorite work experience, favorite manager, favorite boss.

How did they approach this season? What did they do to make this season feel less overwhelming, more exciting, more fun? So when I think about that, for me, I had one manager in particular, and it wasn't about the gifts. It was about time. So the most important value for her was quality time with her family. Therefore, she instilled that in us. And so it wasn't work more during the holiday season. It was work smarter during the holiday season. If you can get your work done in less hours so you can spend more time with family, do that.

If your family is in a different state, book the trip, work from there. And so one of her values was quality time with family. And so that was great. But it also, there were a few people on my team that didn't have that same relationship with family. Either they had losses in their family or a variety of different things. So what they got permission to do wasn't to just go spend time with family. And there wasn't rules around it. It was, go be where you're going to feel the happiest, the most joyful, the most relaxed.

So some of those people went and worked from different states and visited friends, and they had permission to just kind of do the holidays and navigate it their way. So here's what happened with our team. We did a call that year. We had a Christmas holiday party, virtually. It was great. Everybody could eat whatever they wanted to eat on the call. And it was cool because we got to see where everybody was and we got to spend time together. But it wasn't a work meeting. We played a game. So our boss was so cool, she went out and figured out how we could just do some virtual games.

And we spent like an hour, an hour and a half, all of us having our snacks, playing virtual games with our team, laughing, hearing about favorite memories or stories, and it was the coolest thing. And here we are, like dozen years later, and I'm still talking about that moment with that team. So speak Wonder puts in here that she has a fun memory. The year her boss took us on a staff cruise during the holidays. A cruise. It was imaginary. All of it happened in the conference room where we embarked on and then had a cruise experience each day, including a festive meal at the captain's table.

See? Deepening that connection. You still remember that. So when we approach leadership, leadership can really show up in a lot of different ways. And I work with a lot of different kinds of leaders. Major is the leader of the household, just so you know. If there's any questions, he's the leader. We follow. But leadership can be. Sorry, he bumped the phone. Leadership can show up in different ways. So really, it's taking the inventory of what kind of leader do you want to be? What do you value?

And how might you listen a little more intently to the people that you surround yourself with and create a possibility to connect in a different way? So fast forward. I remembered that as a really cool experience. And so in Minneapolis, we have a theater called the Guthrie Theater. It's actually pretty well known. And a new friend of mine happened to be a friend in the play, a lead actor in the play. And so I sent a note out to our whole team at the Spin Studio saying, hey, on this day, this person in our community is performing their last show, and then they're going to move away.

Who wants to go? And I was like, I'll buy the group tickets. You can all Venmo me. We'll all sit together. We'll meet up before. And everybody that couldn't make it, they made it. And here's what happened last night. It was so fulfilling. We got to experience some culture together, a Play. And we three of them, who are 2ish, are newish to the Twin Cities area. Got to go to the Guthrie, which is a beautiful theater in Minneapolis that they had never been to before, but they had heard. So we got to share something new with one another together.

Not only the play, but the space. We met up for food beforehand, and we got to just share stories about our weekend and just get to know one another. It wasn't about the studio. If anybody talked about the studio, I was like, we're in off hours. We can talk about that when we're on hours, but that's not right now. And we literally just shared stories, and we laughed. And then we laughed at how fast we moved from the restaurant to the Guthrie to go get into the performance. And we cried together because the story was both heartfelt and so many emotions, laughter, sadness.

And afterwards, we got to have a conversation about this experience together and see our friend who is the actor, the lead actor before they flew back home today to New York. And it was this really cool experience that we don't get day to day working together. And so when we take the opportunity to invest in ourselves, but also invest in the relationship of those that we are working with, that we surround ourselves with, we create a space where people might feel more vulnerable to share when they're not okay.

We create a space so that people can share when they just had a win, something exciting. So when we deepen that relationship, when we invest time into people outside of the list of things to do, see all Major's fur flying all over, when we invest that time, we humanize our work, we humanize our relationships. And in a world where there's so much happening on social media and so much happening with AI and different ways to connect, we always come back home, home, home into our heart, home into how we feel.

And when we focus back in on those relationships, we find true, authentic connection. Now, it doesn't mean that you're going to be best friends with everybody at work, but we do spend a significant amount of time working. But if I were to ask the question, how many of you work remote? There's pluses and minuses to that, right? We feel like when we're remote, we can still get a lot of things done at home. I can make sure Major gets his walks, I can do laundry while I'm doing something else for work, right?

So we feel more efficient, but it also helps us feel a little bit more isolated and alone, a little more withdrawn. So when they say, let's get on a zoom call, use your cameras, use your cameras. Because science actually tells us that when we use our cameras on calls now, it can be a lot if we're on calls all day long, hence my cute little screen glasses here. But when we are on video, it simulates that in person connection. It's not the same, but it does have benefits. Neuroscience measured benefits that when you're on camera, you can feel more connected to people than when you are off camera just looking in.

You can start to change the energy of a connection by simply saying, hey, let's FaceTime or jump on a team. Let's turn on our cameras and have the conversation. Because even if you can't be in the same room, we can still look into somebody's eyes. And eyes truly are the window into somebody's soul. We can see body Mannerisms. When we're doing something on text or in email, our communication styles can be wildly different. And so when we are on camera or in person, we have the opportunity to deepen that connection, to ask the question that says, I don't resonate with the words you just used for that.

Can you explain it differently to me? And they can see that you're being genuine, sincere versus over email, where they might think that you're just being combative, assuming positive intent. So ways in which we can deepen connections. One, we can start to understand what our teams value, especially going into the holiday season. It doesn't have to be about giving a lot of gifts. It can be about time and creativity and connection. Two, understanding what is going to bring you joy right now in the next 45 days and what will help you feel grounded and share that with your teams.

Share that with the people that you work with. As we start to open up that door, that window of opportunity, it can help us have a little more grace for one another. 3. Know their birthdays. Add them to the calendars. If you don't know their birthday, ask and see if they'll share. You don't need the year, we don't need to know age. We just need to know a day to celebrate. Or maybe there's a different day that they like to celebrate. Mark it in your calendars, put it on repeat every year until maybe that relationship has faded away or doesn't seem as relevant anymore.

And then you can choose what to do with it. Celebrate those birthdays. Say Happy birthday. A happy birthday. Video or text means a lot. 3. Go 3. Number 4, find out what they're curious about. Just going to let that sit there? What are they curious about and what are you curious about? When we start to understand somebody's curiosities, we start to see a little more of a window into how they think, what they engage with. So if you do need to invest in a gift, maybe you can invest in something that they're curious about so that they feel seen.

Because when we really look at what a connection is, it's about seeing one another, hearing one another, feeling one another, moving beyond the task. And I'm going to tell you, the next 45 days are going to be a blur. And during that period of time, if our connections aren't deepened, we can become short because some of us have a lot of emotion around the holiday season. Maybe we don't like it, maybe there's good reason, maybe we suffered great loss, but it's having that common understanding and creating a space so that people feel like they can ask for what they need, even if they're not ready to be vulnerable.

And that's okay too. So my invitation to you is what are your tips and tricks for how you deepen relationships? Feel free to type it in the chat. Feel free to answer the questions that I'll post about deepening relationships in the Cadre sphere in the comments, or simply for yourself. Make note of where do you feel strong in creating meaningful connections, deepening that connections, and lean into it. Because the next 45 days are going to get tricky. They're going to get fast and we're going to have a lot of emotion and then our day job is going to tell us hurry up and get stuff done before the end of the year, before everybody goes on vacation.

And so we're going to be inundated with a lot of expectation. But the number one most important thing we can invest in is ourselves and the connections with those around us. So I hope you all have a great day. Or if it's not a great day, just feel the day, allow yourself to be in the day. But mostly know that we love you. We're here for you. Check out all of the Cadre contributors because each one of them offers a gift and we will see you all soon out in the sphere.