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 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 you're also— another way of saying that is like we're talking about the way of being that leadership is.

Correct.

Not the assignment of leadership. Correct. The assignment of authority.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. And so, and I think that the most important thing about outside of everybody is 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, and they actually are one and the same thing.

Yeah. I like how you just said lead and follow as though they— Yeah. 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. 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, I believe in this and I have a— 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, I know that this is the way I want to go.

Yeah. So what's the distinction then between conviction and, say, hardheadedness?

Sometimes there is no distinction. Like, we will follow hardheadedness because there is a conviction to it. Hardheadedness 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 lead. I'm not going to be really hardheaded about how I get there. Right, so you could say Martin Luther King was hardheaded about civil rights, hardheaded 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 hardheaded. So, but he had conviction in his process. He had conviction in his, in where he wanted to land.

Okay, so I wanna like 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 gonna learn to lead. I'll probably learn some things about raising money. I'm gonna 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.

Yeah.

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 capacity to understand yourself and others. So basically EQ or emotional intelligence. And so a huge part of what was happening in that course was getting to really be able to understand yourself and others. And I don't know if you also remember in the course there was also this understanding of how leadership arises in different parts of the group at different times. And the idea wasn't to become the leader, it was to recognize leadership and follow it, which is basically how leadership works best. Decentralized leadership studies have shown work a lot better, that when leadership is more case-by-case dependent, it works better. And you see it in our company as well, where you are a leader on some things, I am a leader on some things, Mattia is a leader in some things, Mun is a leader in some things, and they get to be that leader as long as they're stepping into that leadership. And that we even give the authority that way, which is rare in a company. We actually say if you're responsible, you get the authority.

Yeah, I even remember the time when Mun suggested that we did an in-person podcast recording with a live audience.

Yeah.

And you were not convinced, but you're like, well, like, Mun's got conviction here.

So I think I said, I don't want to fucking do that. There's nothing in me that wants to do that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And I didn't want to do it, but what I did want to do is I wanted to follow Mun. I saw her conviction. It was important to me to follow her, not just because I saw her conviction, which was the major part of it, it was really important for me to show everybody in the company my leadership in that moment was to show everybody in the company that we're going to follow your conviction as long as it doesn't go against our principles, as long as it's within the context of what we can afford, we're going to follow your conviction.

Yeah, it brings up some research that I saw where it's actually the number of people who are taking leadership in their role in an organization that is a better predictor of the organization's success than the quality of the top leadership.

Correct. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you see this also in a lot of studies about— I think it's, uh, the— it's one of the Malcolm Gladwell books, uh, I think it was like Blink or something, where he talks about when the, the leadership goes down to the bottom of an organization and people feel leadership at the bottom of the organization. And he talked about it in the form of a war game, that those that like some ragtag group of people that without any, a lot of arms could win a significant war against the US Armed Forces in this war game. Because that would be just because of the leadership structure, the org, you know, the, the structure of like where the decisions were made and, and having that sense of ownership.

It's even like a, it's a cultural mythos for us, you know, like Star Wars, a lot of these myths and stories that we love to tell our stories of some kind of ragtag guerrilla band of self-organized people, like, arising and outperforming the centralized, powerful, hierarchical, rigid system.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. And so I—

so what I see for sure is that we're all leaders. Each of us are leading, whether we want to admit it or not. What I also see is that The conscious, the bringing that into consciousness, saying, oh, I am leading, is a significant step.

Hmm.

Right? So take somebody who's a housewife, they're leading.

Or a house husband.

Or a house husband, they're leading. Right? Are they a good leader or a bad leader? That's a whole nother question. And what makes a good leader and a bad leader is another question. But they're leading. Everybody is leading. Everybody has an influence on their environment, and therefore they're leading. Now the question is, do they want to admit to it or not admit to it? Do they want to feel that responsibility or not feel that responsibility?

Yeah. So what underlies the avoidance of owning, owning someone's authority, owning their— owning our leadership?

Yeah. So there's a couple of things around it. In general, what I notice is that they don't want to face the blame either from themselves or for others. There's actually this hubris to it, which is, oh, I'm—

I—

if I'm leading, I'm responsible for other people. And one of the things that I've learned, and I remember learning this actually in that same 18-month course, which was, if I feel responsible for you, even if I am in a leadership position, if I feel responsible for you, I'm disempowering you.

You.

I remember this moment of I'm sitting with somebody and I'm like, oh, I feel like I've let you down. And they were like, that's super disempowering. I was like, what? Like, I'm this leader, you paid the money. He's like, what, like you don't think that I'm responsible for my own experience? Hmm. 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 correct. I'm not responsible. I'm not. 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 too, and they led themselves to follow you. And so, so that— and, 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 second person who actually creates the first follower. The first follower creates more— is often more leadership than the person doing it. And it's like if 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. And, and so it's, it's, it 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 I were to take a leadership role and fail, if I were to make myself responsible for everything that would happen.

Yep.

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, 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 the 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's 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 they are blaming other folks for 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. 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 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. I didn't wanna do it, but that conviction is there, taking responsibility is there, that leadership is there, I'm following it. So that's one piece to it.

I mean, that's kind of calling me 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, "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 largely about following. It was about listening to what's needed next. And that's, 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 is 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, but— and I think the core is that 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 in the boat. And part of your job is to follow the river. If you are not listening to and following the river, you are screwed, right? Like, I assume it's the same with the wind if you're jumping off of a cliff, right? And, and, and at the same time, occasionally your job is to manipulate the river, the boat, a little bit so that you can follow the river better. And similarly, in an organization, following the river is really important, and which is just what I did with Mun or 100 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 being on the team that I'm in.

So from you, 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 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, 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, the rub happens.

Yeah.

And so vision is that, but vision at its purest sense is the leaders ask— 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, he acted as if his voice was just as important. So, so it's like acting as if the thing that you're, you're working towards is already in existence is like a very deep form of vision.

Sort of, in other words, like leadership being what you're willing to put up with, what you— that's what you 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. 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 in 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 leading 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 of 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 following the river, part of your acknowledgement is that you're not in control. And, and being right is, is not important. Knowing the next step, 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 something presented to you by, by Mun telling me, no, we're doing live podcast, Joe. Yeah, right. 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 that 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 obviously, if you're scared of blame, if you're blaming others, that, that can deeply get in the way of the 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 3-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 the next, 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 has been pretty abused or super introverted, and there's a whole way of leading through introversion too, which is interesting. Like, apparently it creates more lasting change if it's an 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 lead. If 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 traumas, as you get more in touch with yourself, the natural thing is to move more and more into leadership.

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 asshole. Yeah, 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? 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 power, recognizing like, oh, what I say has influence. But that should be at any level of leadership. That kind of ownership needs to be there. But I think that the underlying thing is, if I'm a leader, I'm potentially going to be an asshole, 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.

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.

Into power.

Or they close their hearts in themselves to make something happen.

Yeah.

Often the case. Often the case is that their authority figure, either external when they were 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 asshole with conviction rather than following the subtle, silent calling within us that is actually, if you're listening to it, much deeper and broader.

Yeah, that's a really—

ever-present.

Really cool thought process. So I geek out here 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.

Oh, it's putting it all on you.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's doing the blame thing.

It's doing the blame thing. 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 that. Just, just the— 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?

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, 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 how we need to pack, here's what we need to bring. 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 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. 'Cause 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 have the gozies, I like to be in the front. And up in the front is typically where there's the most enthusiasm. 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. Munyi 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.