Leadership Is For Everyone

Joe: Each of us are leading whether we want to admit it or not. 

Brett: What is it that made being held by 11 people while I cried, made me a better leader?

Joe: 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.

Brett: Welcome to the Art of Accomplishment, where we explore living a life you want with enjoyment and ease. Today we're gonna 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? 

Joe: 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.

Brett: Yeah. So you're also, another way of saying that is like we're talking about the way of being that leadership is 

Joe: correct, 

Brett: not the assignment of leadership, the assignment of authority. 

Joe: Correct. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Yeah, that's right. And I think that the most important thing, 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. 

Brett: Yeah. I like how you just said lead and follow. So can you unpack that a little bit? 

Joe: 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 have conviction over, listen to the calling and follow it. Now, that doesn't have to be like a big calling I'm gonna save the world, or I'm gonna free all the people of 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'm gonna follow that belief. The very active leadership that is following, you can't really separate them because there is no leader that everybody's yeah, I love your leadership because you never follow what you think is right.

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 doesn't have some level of conviction over what they're doing. And it doesn't even need to be conviction, this is right, this is wrong. It's just, I know this process. I know that this is the way I want to go. 

Brett: Yeah. And so what's the distinction then between conviction and say, hardheadedness. 

Joe: 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 wanna be. This is the kinda life I wanna leave. I'm not going to be really hardheaded about how I get there.

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. But he had conviction in his process. He had conviction in where he wanted to land. 

Brett: Okay. So I want to reconcile this with something here. 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. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: 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.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And so how do those two things rectify there? 

Joe: 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. 

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

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And you were not convinced, but you're like, whoa, like Mun's got conviction here. So I follow that.

Joe: I think I said, I don't wanna fucking do that. There's nothing in me that wants to do that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And I didn't wanna do it, but what I did want 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 gonna 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. 

Brett: 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. 

Joe: Correct. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. And you see this also in a lot of studies about, I think it's one of the Malcolm Gladwell books I think it was like Blink or something where he talks about when 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 some ragtag group of people without a lot of arms, could win a significant war against the US armed forces in this war game just because of the structure of where the decisions were made and having that sense of ownership.

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

Joe: Yeah, that's right.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And 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 bringing that into consciousness saying, oh, I am leading, is a significant step. So take somebody who's a housewife, they're leading, 

Brett: or a house husband 

Joe: or a house husband, they're leading.

And 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? 

Brett: Yeah. So what underlies the avoidance of owning someone's authority? owning our leadership? 

Joe: Yeah. So there's a couple 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, 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.

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? You don't think that I'm responsible for my own experience? And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Whoa, I am disempowering this person. I am assuming that they are not responsible for themselves. 

Brett: 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 

Joe: Exactly. Yeah. Not owning the leadership in a different way. I'm not responsible. But there's another side of it which is I am not responsible for all these people that I'm leading.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: No, they made a choice. They led themselves to follow you. And even there's this great internet phenomenon. I think a while ago, but it was this whole thing about how it's the second person who actually creates, the first follower creates more leadership than the person doing it. it's 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.

Brett: I love that video so much. 

Joe: So do I. And yeah every one of those people led. The first person, the second person, everybody else, everyone made it easier for everybody else to dance. 

Brett: Yeah. So something also interesting in that piece is that if you are making yourself, like if I were to take a leadership role and fail. If I were to make myself responsible for everything that would happen. 

Joe: Yep. 

Brett: 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 either way, I'm in the leadership authority position, but I'm just frozen in it rather than fluidly moving into it and owning it. 

Joe: That's a great point. The other piece about it is somebody who is not owning their leadership in the situation or doesn't wanna 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's not the case. So it's 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 expecting the authority to be handed to them or the leadership to be handed to them, and they are upset that is not being handed to them, or they are blaming other folks for their reality for the way they've led their life. And so they don't wanna be the person who is blamed by others. They're projecting that blame that they put onto others, that it's gonna be on them if they step into conscious leadership. 

Brett: 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. 

Joe: Correct. 

Brett: 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 be made. And they are disempowering themselves, and they're likely to feel disempowered by those around them regardless of what's happening, whether they're being disempowered or not in those. 

Joe: Yeah, and one of the things that I'll see when that's occurring inside an organization is somebody will say there's something wrong here and nobody's listening to me. Why isn't everybody listening? 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 gonna go fix it, we'll all follow you. 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 want to do it. That conviction is there, taking responsibility is there, that leadership is there, i'm following it. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: So that's one piece to it.

Brett: And that's 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? 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. 

Joe: The second one's the leader. 

Brett: Yeah. That person's the leader.

Joe: Totally. That's a cool one. 'cause 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. 

Brett: Yeah it also 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. 

Joe: There's a lot of things that make great leadership. The model I think about often, there's many models, but, 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 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? At the same time, occasionally your job is to manipulate 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 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 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, this organization or be on the team that I'm in.

Brett: So from VIEW for people who are just entering this podcast for the first time. 

Joe: Vulnerability impartiality, empathy, and wonder in inside of relationships to create more connection. The more connected the team is, obviously the leader behind that connection is somebody that people wanna follow.

But the other model that I think about often is called Save, and it's S stands for self-development, meaning that 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 gonna 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 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 gonna 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. 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 pure sense is the leaders 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 is like a very deep form of vision. 

Brett: And in other words, like leadership being what you're willing to put up with what you allow.

Joe: That's such a good one. And then there's the E with it, which is, esteem means appreciation. It means you're treating somebody with respect and all the ways that you're working with them, increases their esteem of themselves and of the organization.

So you're working on the esteem and 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 part of that is that you're following everybody else's leadership because of that autonomy. It's part of how that all works.

Brett: Yeah. And following another word for that is listening. Like you're listening 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. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: You're also listening for where there is leadership so that you can attune to that and you can 

Joe: Yeah, exactly.

Brett: You can enlist that into the broader scheme and then bring it into context. 

Joe: Yeah. If I walk into a group and I see, oh, they're 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, 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 that just blew my mind that it's saying that I am, I have an internal integrity. By the way, the studies show 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. 

Brett: Yeah. Clarity. 

Joe: Yeah, 

Brett: Clarity, values, principles. 

Joe: Yeah. And, 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, 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 being right is not important, knowing the next step, knowing how to find the next step.

Oftentimes, if you're following the next step is presented to you. The right move is something presented to you. By Mun telling me, no, we're doing live podcast, Joe. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And I didn't know that was the right thing. I thought it was the wrong thing as it turned out. 

Brett: Yeah. So I want to get more into the emotional fundamentals. Like what is it emotionally that makes it so challenging for people to step into leadership and 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? 

Joe: Or even taking responsibility for themselves.

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 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 gonna get this exact, but that, even three-year-olds exhibit behaviors of leadership. Leadership is that natural. If you watch kids play in a field, you'll see leadership going from one kid to a next, which is the way we are built, which is why organizations that do that are more effective.

So the leadership is moving from one person to another person. And you'll watch young kids exhibit leadership 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 an introverted type of leadership. But you'll just see that leadership passes, it's like a natural quality in us to lead. The question isn't 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 gonna 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. 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. 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 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 clear, but you listened 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, 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 'cause everybody is in leadership. 

Brett: 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 want to be loving, but they don't want to be the asshole. There's maybe a false binary between really, 

Joe: Good call 

Brett: love and power. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And there's like a challenge to integrate those. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Can you talk about that a little bit? 

Joe: Yeah. The first thing I'll say is leadership is super fragile.

Meaning you don't really have power. You have power because people think you have power but that can be taken away 'cause people stop thinking you have power. So leadership can come and go really quickly. So to even confuse it with power is like a silliness. I think there's an ownership of the power recognizing 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 gonna stop paying attention to people. I'm gonna stop empathizing, even though all the research shows that empathetic leaders are more successful leaders, more emotional intelligence, more successful leadership. 

Brett: 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 gonna have to close their heart to step into making something happen.

Joe: Yeah or they close their hearts in themselves to make something happen. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: 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, this thing inside of me that's trying to lead, that 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 thing is a leader and I don't like it, so I don't want to be that in the world.

Brett: 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 like deeper and broader. 

Joe: Yeah, that's a really. 

Brett: Ever-present. 

Joe: Really cool thought process. So I geek out here in a minute and this might be nonsensical for people, but I think it's cool. Which is, in a weird way, the negative self-talk, that negative voice in your head is not owning the fact that it's a leader. 

Brett: Oh, it's putting it all on you. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Yeah. It's doing the blame thing. 

Joe: Yeah. So if you really stop and think about, if my negative self-talk actually fully recognized that it was a leader, what would it do differently? 

Brett: Wow. 

Joe: That's cool. 

Brett: If it was the rudder, not the captain. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: What would it do? 

Joe: That's a fascinating thought process because typically it's acting like an authority, but it is not owning its leadership. Yeah. It's blaming you. That's great. 

Brett: 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 can that person own their leadership of their life just a little bit more?

Joe: All they have to do is recognize it. 

Brett: Ah. 

Joe: 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. 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 giving the example of change in the world. 

Brett: Man, 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.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: So I was in the leadership role of hey, we're going backpacking and 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. Like just trusting her pace, trusting her own capacity, trusting her own learning of how it is to get used to walking 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, not the zoomer like generationally, but I like to have the go-sees, I like to be in the front. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Up in the front is typically where there's the most enthusiasm. 

Joe: Right. 

Brett: 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.

Joe: That's great. 

Brett: And she was the opposite of that. And so it was really beautiful to, I realized that I was being led energetically on how I can enjoy myself being in a much slower pace than I traditionally would be. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Perfect. What a pleasure. Great conversation. 

Brett: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Joe.

Joe: You're welcome. 

Brett: 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. Mun Yee Kelly is our producer, and this episode is edited by Reasonable Volume.

Join us next time for the Art of Accomplishment, where we're gonna 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. 

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