The Innovative Sage Approach to Feminine Leadership: Unlocking the Next Level of Your Potential | E174

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Hello and welcome to Leadership is Feminine. How are you? I wanted to share something with you this week. And over the past summer, last several months, I've been really focusing on my body of work and what it is that I. What it is that I believe I'm here to really do. Like, what is that legacy work. And what I chose and have chosen to do is really immerse myself in my Sage advisory think tank that I started probably about three years ago. I'm super excited because Sage has gone from our original four or five women to now 22 women. Sage is a. It's a very unique container. It's not like any of the other masterminds that I know. People are inviting you to networking groups, women's groups, and so it's harder for me to, I guess, sell, if you will, because it relies a lot on you understanding yourself and what you know you need, and also trusting me and having a relationship and experienced with me, an experience with me, if nothing else, because it's dependent on that. So I have a private podcast for my Sage clients and what I decided to do is share with you the first one. It's an intro. It. It excavates the difference that I believe Sage is amongst all sorts of other offers and things in the world, not, not in a disparaging way, just to sort of give you some general understanding. And then for women who are already in Sage, so they have a really clear expectation of how we're going to go forward. And I just was thinking about, like, this might be a really good thing just to share on my regular podcast. So for those of you who are dancing with the idea of us working together someday, Sage is really going to be the primary vessel for you going forward. If you want to work with me, if you want support from the work I do, we're going to have resources for you to do that. And we still do, obviously. But Sage will be where you and I will work together. I'm introducing you to this introductory podcast of the Sage lessons. I'll leave it with you to let us know. You can email hello at the Visionary CEO if you have questions or if you'd like to talk more with me about it and then we can take it from there. Okay. All right, thanks for tuning in today. Well, hello and welcome to, to this first podcast for your Sage lessons. What I want to do in this very first episode is to do sort of the high level overview of what I hope for this journey together, this experience, this knowing that we're going to be Going and doing all the work of. And talking about. Over the course of. Of the next series of months that we're together, I put together the SAGE program. Originally called the SAGE CEO. It taught a couple of different iterations, but Sage continues to be the core, because the word and the definition of sage is how I see all of you. A sage is someone who is well known in their industry, in their space. They are revered. They have built a body of work that has reached a level of excellence in whatever it is that you do. And a SAGE is also someone who has wisdom, who has depth of knowing, sort of beyond what would be expected of someone who has lived so far in your lifetime. I find that the women attracted to Sage are women who are. Are dep. Have a depth to them, and other people seek out that from you also. So in addition to you being here because you are a seeker, you are also sought not just for your tactical knowing, but because you have this, you know, beyond the veil sort of knowing that people want more of. And so after I did quite a bit of the. Let's. Let's call it kind of the basics of helping women build an understanding of how they want to lead and build a team to support their vision, I had quite a few women who were getting that, and they were doing it well. And then the question started naturally, being, okay, so now, now what do we do? Now what do I do? How do I continue to work with you? And I've always known that there's this other part of what I know and what I do, and it started with the retreats that I started in Hawaii, you know, 13 years ago, really. But it. It's evolved, and it continues to evolve, and that's what I want to talk about in this podcast. I think that what's true is that as humans, we sort of exist in two planes. And there's this first plane. That is where we are born. And we build a life, and we build a body of understanding through traditional methods. We are taught in school. We are taught by family, we are taught by culture, we are taught by religion, experiences. All those things are put together. And what all of those share is that we learn by witnessing the knowledge of others, and we incorporate it. And so if I want to learn how to sell, if I want to learn how to market, if I want to learn how to have a difficult conversation, if I want to learn why people do what they do, I seek out a teacher. And teachers teach. So what they do. A teaching environment holds that I know more than you, and therefore you come to me and the exchanges, I give you what I know, and then you now know it. And so the assumption in teaching and also the assumption of being a student is that we are here together. Because the thing I think you need to know, I design it, I put it together, I figure out how to share it, and then I teach it to you. So in. In essence, a teacher decides what the student needs to know, and the student goes into that relationship believing it. Right? The student says, yes, teacher, teach me. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. There are lots of things in life that we have to learn and we learn from someone else. But I want you to hold that meaning, right? That, like if I took a history class in high school, that history teacher is deciding what I need to learn. Or take it one step further. The school district decided what I needed to learn in that history class. The teacher will decide how to teach it. Right. So the student is very passive in terms of the curriculum in any of these circumstances. Yeah. The trouble I think we have, remember I talked about we exist on two planes, is that a lot of us, and I think a lot of humanity never gets off that plane. They continue to believe that if I need something, I have to find the teacher who will teach me. And I trust that the teacher knows what I need to know. It's based on their body of work, it's based on their curriculum. And what they teach me is what I'm supposed to know. And so if I stay and I exist on that plane, that vibration, that space, my whole life, then I am always seeking knowledge, understanding, et cetera, insight through the lens of what someone else thinks I'm supposed to know. And as I have matured in my experience and in my life, what I have recognized is I have had quite a few of these incredible teachers. But what I know about myself is I don't really like that part as much as then taking what I learn from a teacher and figuring out what is the filled now puzzle piece that only I can could have identified in me, that I am my own body of work and I might collect the knowledge, the instruction of others, but I do not abdicate my knowing, my competence, my wisdom to a teacher. And that's the second plane. The second plane is what I believe is a sage, and that is also what I believe about myself in the context of this program as your sage, which is that I don't actually know what you need to know. I don't know what the gaps are. I don't have a prescribed SAGE curriculum. I Think that we can all arrive and grow into next level versions of ourselves by actually staying away from contrived, boxed, prescribed ideas. What I learned when I started my Hawaii retreats and then did the how to CEO program several years ago, and then sort of started finding more and more women who were like, okay, yeah, I got that. But now what, what I recognized is what was that idea that I had in 2006 sitting in my playroom with my two year old twins and my, what, four or six year old son, that there are women on this planet who know that they know what they need to know, but they don't know how yet to know it.

And I fill that space. And that is what I do with a sage, because a sage knows there's always more to know. And my unique gift, I think, to share with you is that I know how to listen to you. And I don't mean like listen to what you say, but I mean listen. You posit a question to me and I hear a universe behind it. I hear the whole picture behind it. You might just be saying, I don't know how to tell Lisa in marketing that she's not meeting my expectations because she continues to make so many mistakes. And I actually hear the whole story. I hear the pattern, I hear your pattern, I hear why it's complicated. I hear the lesson that you have yet to embody. And that isn't something I can prescribe. I can only meet you where you are and I know we will solve it. So. But what that requires of you is so much trust in me. And so I never take that for granted. I, you know, it's a, it almost, it does. It makes me a little teary because I think you being here in this experience with me is quite brave given that most people on the planet want to stay in the first plane, which is nothing is worth it unless I can see it all ahead of time. Show me the agenda, show me the boxes we're going to check. Show me what I'm going to get. And I stand here and say, I don't know other than you will be better, you will be smarter, you will be more perceptive, you will have more awareness of yourself and others. You will gain confidence. You will know when you are tripping over a similar worn out, exhausted pattern. You will become the leader of your business and your life. And I cannot outline a 12 module series for every single woman and say, this is what you need to know. But I can listen to the patterns I hear between you all. And I do share because I think that there is some sort of magical hand afoot always that will bring three or seven or 12 of you together, and all at the same time or within a couple months of each other. You're all processing something very similar. It's like that magic has come to say, Chris, this is a thing. You should talk to them about this, and I do. So what this does for us together as a collective and as individuals is the growth, the learning. Though the sage always knows there's more to know. Whatever it is that you must know, the responsibility for that is shared between us. I can only help you as much as you present. I can only lift you through your thinking, your limits, your fears, as much as you are willing and vulnerable enough to present them. Because I have yet to have a client in my entire career and life that says that. I would say I can't help you. Not when that client knows that the limit isn't about something on that first plane, like how do I write a job description? Or how do I conduct a difficult conversation? But she knows that she's missing a depth of knowing of herself, of human behavior, of the experiences that we're all sharing. She knows there's something in there she hasn't touched yet. When that woman is in front of me, there's nothing we can't solve. The people that I have met who are overly rigid for tactics, they like to gobble them up, and they believe that a tactic will solve every problem. She frustrates with me because the tactic to me is the easy part. Like, okay, just follow these five steps then. And sometimes that's all we need, right? And sometimes that's what we do. But sometimes we think the five steps are the solution, and then they still don't solve the problem. Why is that? And it's because we continue to not solve the problem. We continue to operate on the lower plane, and we haven't stepped up. So I think what you have to expect through this experience together, and what my former and current, former ongoing sages would tell you is it's. It can be hard to have that level of honesty with yourself and with me. And yet also I find that all of my clients just like me, with my coaching relationships that I have, it's so refreshing to see and meet yourself in a new way and say, oh, my gosh. And to feel like you've just been so heard, so validated, like, I can't believe you got that. I can't believe based on what I said, you heard exactly what I meant. That was exactly What I was trying to say. You got it. You heard it. Yes. Thank you. There is such power in being a woman like that that is constantly. Honestly feels a little misheard or misunderstood or doesn't feel like she's found a space where she can really robustly sort of express herself in a way that other people could understand her. And you come into the space and you feel that it's like locks in. It's magic, but it's different. And it's one of the reasons that, you know, I have taken my time to grow this program, because not everybody's invited. If you keep spinning on the same problems, you cannot. You cannot do this work. You just can't because you'll be so frustrated with me. You'll be so frustrated with the process. And so I'm incredibly thoughtful and protective of this age container. The last thing, and I think one of the critical things that I want to say just in this first podcast is that just because there are all these other women who are interested in being in this SAGE program and are here, this is not a group program.

And what I mean by that is this is. However many individuals have registered and signed up having their own experience, but there just happen to be other people there. I remember when I was pregnant with my twins, I was so freaked out by having twins that I used to tell people I wasn't having twins. I was just having two babies at the same time.

And it felt so much better than to force them into this relationship of being, like, stuck together. And I feel like that's what I want you to hear me say here. Like, yes, you're all here at the same time, but none of you are responsible for the other people in the group, and vice versa. Nobody's responsible for you. You're responsible for you. I'm responsible to be your sage, to be your coach. So to that end, there may be people in this SAGE experience when we get together, at our gatherings, that you want to gobble up. You love them so much. You have found someone that you think you could be friends with for the rest of your life. You want to talk to each other. You spend time with each other outside of sage. You plan trips together. Listen to me. If that happens, I think that's fabulous. Get it. Make it happen. Assuming they want to hang out with you.

There may also be women that you meet through this process that you would not ever want to have a glass of wine with. You may not ever want to have to hang out with outside of this experience. They trigger you. They bug you in this container. This container is free of any gossip, negative talk, coveting about other participants or me. Frankly, we don't do that here. And if you feel inclined to do that, then you are invited to step out. This space is not for that. What I would invite you to do is if someone in this program triggers you every time we're on a group call, anytime we're in the same room together, you're feeling it deeply. You're like, it's ba. It's dis. It's disturbing you to the point that it's impacting your ability to participate. It can happen. I understand that. But as a sage, I want you to understand my expectation is, first of all, I get it, because it happens to all of us. But second of all, as a sage, before you make it about them, let's ask ourselves, why? Who do they remind you of? What is the trigger? What is the rule that you have about people that they are breaking? And why do you care? As a sage, I invite you to always be onto yourself rather than blaming others for your emotions. And then bring it to me. Tell me, hey, I am struggling when we're in a room and so. And so this. This happens. And I don't want to be struggling. I would like to work through it rather than, hey, can you make sure I'm not in a room with so and so anymore? Right. I'm not going to do that. And I hope you hear the spirit by. From which this is coming from. If. If someone were to be cruel to you or abusive to you, I can't. I can't even imagine that happening. But listen to me. The more I know people, the more I. If any of that were to happen, I would certainly want to know. But I also want to make sure that we understand that the world is big and safe. Ages have to embrace, have to be willing to embrace that every triggering experience, even, is a lesson for us to say, hmm, this is so interesting that I am. I'm letting this really, really get to me. I think I probably need some coaching. Just like you would if there was someone in your life outside of this program. A team member, a person that you hired, someone in your circle, a vendor that you just are really struggling in a relationship with. Bring that to me. Let's talk about it. There's a lot of ways to handle these circumstances. But one, the way that we don't do that here ever, is by building factions around other people, talking about other people in a way that we would never talk to them in their face. Gossip, all the things. We don't do that here. And so I'm emphasizing that because one of the reasons why I have never really been a big fan of groups of women is I don't think we hold that very well in some spaces. And a lot of women are unfortunately in the habit of using their triggers to connect with each other about other women. And I don't want to do that here. So in sort of summary, the recap here is that we are here collectively to step up into a new plane of growth, and that that growth is not up to me to prescribe, but up to you and I to reveal. And that the more we interact, the more you will move through what these moments are. That isn't to say that if you have a question about something that feels very operational, very tactical, it's fine, let's talk about it. I just want you to see that I'm always seeing the bigger landscape when I have that conversation with you, and that when as we identify patterns, as I start to see these magical sort of themes rise up, you will learn more about them. Because I will. I will tell the story of that through the lens of so many of the experiences you all are sharing with me. You are really unique in a world of people. To be a woman who says, yes, I want to do this, Yes, I trust this crazy kid Placky, yes, I'm up for it. Yes, I am game for something. I don't really know what's going to happen, but I trust her. I don't take that for granted. I never will. And I'm just beyond thrilled to see where we go collectively and individually as we continue our work together. So welcome, welcome, welcome. Remember that I asked you to be a part of my Catalyst podcast event where I'm inviting you to become a visionary Catalyst. Share the podcast link with women that you know. And as soon as you hit 20 shared links, clicks on those, we can measure that. I'm going to give you one of my bonuses digital courses. Go to the visionary CEO Catalyst. Get yourself registered. Grab the podcast link super easy. And please share it with women that you know that are leading in the world. Because I'd love to be able to impact 20 million women. I know that when women feel more confident in who they are as leaders, it changes who they are in their lives. But help women live and lead on their own terms. I can't wait to see how many clicks we get. Let's get it.