The Art of Leadership - Day 2

[Music] [Music] you yeah [Music] [Music] hello gorgeous leaders welcome to module two of the art of leadership program. I'm so excited to see you all tuning in from all over the world. I've loved your shares in the program, your experience of like, where have you not really called in shoulder-to-shoulder leadership? And then I have loved the feedback on the activation that was held. Isn't you amazing, Jack? Like, oh my gosh.

So the first thing I want to look at with you today is the understanding of shoulder-to-shoulder leadership. And are we going all into shoulder-to-shoulder leadership for the rest of this program? And the answer to that question is no. So the beginning of the program, I need you to understand shoulder-to-shoulder leadership so that you can understand the art of leadership as we embrace it for the rest of the program. But I have an entire program as part of my AF Next Level, which is called Alpha to Alpha, and that is a program that is fully for shoulder-to-shoulder leadership.

The idea here, though, is that in order to be an effective leader, you have to understand shoulder-to-shoulder leadership. It's not always going to be the case that the people in front of you rise to their height, to their capacity. And so what's difficult is that you're sometimes going to want to lead with people shoulder-to-shoulder. You're going to want to have those relationships, but then people are going to show up on their knees. And the only way to be shoulder-to-shoulder with them would be to crouch down, and you're going to not want to do that, which is absolutely okay. And I absolutely do not expect you in this program to only ever lead shoulder-to-shoulder because at this stage in the program, you may not be able to do that.

What you may have found in module one is, in fact, that a lot of the relationships you have, you chose them in a non-shoulder-to-shoulder kind of way. You either chose people who are often on their knees because you feel more confident as a leader when they're on their knees. You've either chosen people who tower above you because you feel more confident, like you can't hurt them, you can't, you can't mess things up if there's greater leaders than you leading. You may have found that you, you don't choose effortlessly shoulder-to-shoulder leadership.

And what I would love is to cultivate the kind of power in this space that by the end of it, you understand shoulder-to-shoulder leadership and you're more aware of the people you choose in your life so that this is an effortless thing that you get to do, that it's not hard, that it's who you start to manifest in your life is people who stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you.

So what the purpose of today's module is, is we are going to go into the energetics of what the impact is on us when people aren't behaving shoulder-to-shoulder. And this is such an important piece of the art of leadership. To be honest, I'm going to go ahead and say it's the most important piece of leadership. So there is the way that people behave, and there is who people fundamentally are.

So the first thing I want you to really check in with yourself in this moment is, like, have you ever behaved in a way that was not an accurate representation of who you fundamentally are? Have you ever been ruder than you are in the soul of your heart? Have you ever been shorter, you know, quipper? Have you been mean? Have you said things that they come out of your mouth and you're like, "I'm disgusting. I can't believe I said that." Have you even treated people in a way, maybe even in response to their behavior, that you're like, "This was not the best of me." That if you were ever to be judged by that, it would be really upsetting because that would be such a misrepresentation of who you are.

So the big thing that it requires in order to be a leader is to understand that most people behave in a way that's incongruent to who they actually are. And the number one reason they do that is because they haven't been through "She Who Leads Herself" and they haven't been through Pimpel, they haven't done the inner work. So what they have available is, "When I'm at my best, I am my best. And when I am not at my best, I am not at my best." And it's not my fault. That's what most, that's how most people live their lives.

And you, you've, you've experienced that for yourself. "When I'm happy and I'm doing my best, I'm the best version of me. But if you're rude to me, watch out. If you try to steal from me, if you lie to me, if you cheat me, if you say something not nice about my friends or my family, if you try to hurt me, watch out. I am a very different person then."

So what's difficult here is that a lot of times when we are contemplating shoulder-to-shoulder leadership, we're thinking of ourselves at our best, walking with people who have no worst. That's what a lot of people imagine. I'm walking with mature people who never get mad at anything. And I'm also just thinking of me at my best, when I'm not being an absolute. Because that does happen, but I'm not thinking about that in this moment. We're not even, we're not going there in this moment. I've forgotten I ever do that. So that's not what, what shoulder-to-shoulder leadership is.

Shoulder-to-shoulder leadership is equal power, but different. We all have a better and a worse, and that can show up at any moment. And we have got to be wiser than the reaction. What we learned in "She Who Leads Herself" is the reaction versus the response.

So one of the things that I've really learned on my journey, and this has been, I'm going to even tell you one of the ways that I learned this on the phone with a lawyer during some of our journey, during a real estate proceeding. One of the people that we were doing business with had a very short fuse. So not necessarily that they were a bad person, although that is debatable, but they had a short fuse. And the short fuse made me feel really uncomfortable because to me, if you have a short fuse and you're not able to manage your emotions, you're dangerous, you're a bad person. Like, I work so hard on my external experience so that people feel safe around me. Like, if you're not able to do that, you're not very powerful. I have a lot of judgment in this moment right now.

The lawyer, after the conversation we have, we hang up, and the lawyer says to us, "You know, okay, so here's how I would move forward and this is what I would do." And I was like, "But aren't you worried about the way this person reacted?" And he was like, "Well, yeah, I don't trust him. Like, that's a bad reaction. But most people do react like that when they're lying, or most people do react like that when they're cornered. And so he's either lying or he's cornered. Nerdy stress, like that's normal."

And the way he said it, I got a feeling like this person has seen so many people react the exact same way when faced with the exact same challenge that it has stopped meaning anything about anything. It's like, "Well, yeah, when you feel cornered or where you've just been caught in a little bit of a fib, you react like that. Don't worry about that. That's normal."

And I realized my lack of experience with people who are cornered and people who are lying. Because in my line of business, very rare that you're going to be cornered with me, very rare that you're going to lie to me. Like, why? What's the point? But in different lines of business, some people will just fib a little bit. They will make moves until all of a sudden they're cornered and there's nothing they can do about it. And then stuff starts to break down and they should be held responsible. And they can't hold the pressure of being responsible.

And so it opened a whole other way for me of looking at the online world. Because what used to trigger me a lot with the online space is people who just allowed themselves to be rude or mean or write things that are not very nice about other people on the internet. It always kind of upset me. But then I realized these people are either cornered, cornered to make a payment they don't want to make, cornered to complete an agreement they don't want to complete, cornered to feel like they have to say their piece because they've been found out about something. You name it. And in that moment, they're not able to be powerful anymore. They lose their leadership. And so they respond in almost the exact same way. There's a pattern that's almost identical to every person who's currently like, "I can almost tell immediately when a person has posted something." I'm like, "Well, you have hired someone you don't want to pay. You signed a contract you don't want to fulfill." It's a very similar kind of reaction.

Human beings have very similar reactions. If a person made a mistake they didn't mean to make and they're held responsible for it, they all have a very similar reaction. They didn't mean to do it. They care so much about their job right now. They're being held accountable to a mistake they didn't mean to make. And if they don't feel they get recognized enough, and now they're just being recognized for their mistake, they all respond a very similar way to that as well.

And so there's something really special that started to happen as I opened up my leadership lens. I started realizing that human beings have patterns. And the patterns that we have are when we feel like we are not being respected, or we feel like we're not being seen, or we feel like we are stuck or cornered, or we feel we're going to get into trouble. There's a reaction that comes out that other people will immediately devalue and call who we are.

There's a very fine line between the most powerful version that you are and your character when you're triggered. Because the fact is, your character becomes who you are eventually. So if you don't work on your character, your character does become who you are. However, you having a moment with your character doesn't necessarily decide who you are as a person.

So I want you to take another moment right now and I want you to consider who in your life you have completely cut out because they had a moment of bad character. So you reached out to an employee about doing something and they immediately freaked out, told you that you don't, you don't care about them, or that you don't notice anything good about them, you only notice the bad stuff. And in that moment, you were like, "Like, I refuse to be spoken to like this. You're fired."

Maybe you have had a person that has been was defaulting on their payments. They asked you if they could cancel their agreement. You said no. The minute they felt cornered, they said that you were not who they thought you were. They freaked out. And you just felt super attacked by that and cut them out because it was like, "How on earth? You're nuts. This reaction is crazy."

Maybe you have had a friend who shared something with you about how you made them feel, and it really insulted you. And as you reacted a little insulted, they said something about you or to you that really hurt your feelings, and you've not been friends since. Maybe someone showed up in your life and said something or did something, and now you just don't look at them the same anymore. "I really thought that person was really it, but then they reacted this way or they responded this way."

And so why this is so important is because we tend to change our opinions about people based on who we believe they are. But we'll never really know the depth of a person's being. It's not possible to know the depth. So we make our decisions based on who we believe people are in the moment, which is so different. Their character versus who they are.

Now, there is definitely the opposite. And this is where you have held on to relationships that don't serve you and people who do all kinds of stuff and don't put boundaries down. And if that is the case, then what I would suggest for you to look at is, what do you imagine those people would do if you put your boundaries down? Because this is again a character thing where you might imagine, "If I were to put a boundary down, I know this person. This person would be so upset. They'd be so mad. They'd think I'm all this. They'd think I'm all that. They'd leave. They'd think I, I'm abandoning them."

You have a belief about the person either way. Either that they're bad and that you're better off without them, or that they couldn't, they won't handle it if you put a boundary. You're going to lose them. They're going to freak out. Whatever it is. But this is all where the shoulder-to-shoulder leadership isn't showing up.

Because in shoulder-to-shoulder leadership, this is what happens. You feel the feeling of, "This doesn't work for me," or "I really don't like the way you're speaking to me," or whatever it is. And you deal with it in a way that is very much the way you would hope someone would deal with you because you respect the person, the way you would want to be respected. And then you deal with the reaction without making the person responsible. Like, all of the person that they are is now changed because of their reaction.

So I'll give you an example. Let's say I say something in this program and you don't like it. I'm sharing in this program shoulder-to-shoulder, which means if I'm in a program and a leader says something that I don't like, I'm not going to start hating the leader for that unless it's something like racism, sexism, something that's like a hard no for me in a boundary that I'm done. So unless I'm saying something in this program that's a hard boundary for you, I don't imagine you're just going to freak out on me and hate me because I'm speaking to you like an equal.

But if it did happen that I said something and you freaked out, instead of being like, "Well, that person's crazy. I don't care," it could come out. It'd be, it'd be like, "This person just had a character breakout. What just happened?" And so you can have boundaries where it's like, "Well, you can't have a character breakout in my rooms, and you're done, and you're out." You can have that. Or you can have a discussion that's like, "I don't believe this is who you are as a person. I think that this was a character breakout." In which case, you can have an alpha communication. We're going to talk about that in the program.

But the fact is, when you show up as a leader, when other people are not showing up as a leader, one of two things is going to happen. Number one, you're going to be shocked at how incredible leadership is. Or number two, you're going to be extraordinarily disappointed and feel like, "What's the point?" And feel like, "What's the point of being such a good person if in the end, I do all this work and it's still this way?" And that is still worth it. Because there's something that happens when you consistently know that you led correctly through all the things that happen in your life. Who you are to yourself starts to change.

And I will tell you, in all of my life, all the issues, all the fights, all the things that have ever happened, 90% of the people circled back and said, "I was going through the hardest thing in my life, and I'm so sorry about that." People do eventually come back to their senses. If you don't freak out too, if you freak out too, they will always have your freak out in their mind as a reason why they freaked out. They'll, they'll, they'll switch the order in their mind. It'll justify forever their behavior.

But if you can hold your leadership when all of their intensity goes down, they will be left with a memory of how they overreacted or acted out of character with you, and they will make it right. Because most people are good. Most people are inherently good. Most people are inherently wise. Most people are inherently capable. And this is why shoulder-to-shoulder is such an incredible concept. Why this, this became so important to me.

And this is an important piece of the puzzle. Is that when I was sleeping in the front seat of my car, when I had absolutely no money, I was still going to become me. So many people looked down on me. So many people talked to me like I was absolutely worthless. So many people wouldn't give me the time of day. I reached out to coaches asking if they had extended payment plans in my early beginnings. I got shut down. I got laughed at. I had coaches make posts about me. I was the one in the inbox that asked for a link and then next thing, my conversation being shown, like, you know, not the ideal client screenshot. That was me.

And I thought, "You know what? If I'm successful one day, I'm never ever going to make anybody feel this way ever." And the fact is, I've become who I am. But I was who I was. Broke, incapable of committing, wanting something, not being able to afford it, putting it on a payment plan. Like, that's, that's who I was. So when I'm speaking to people now, I'm not just speaking to you now. I'm speaking to the version of you that's about to become someone that's about to blow all of our freaking minds. And you better know that I'll be one of the people that treated you with respect from the beginning. I didn't need a handout. I didn't need saving. I didn't need a hero. But respect went a long way. And not a lot of people gave it to me.

Shoulder-to-shoulder leadership isn't about saying the person in front of me is as capable right now as I am right now. Shoulder-to-shoulder leadership is respecting the greatness that exists within the person in front of you. You don't know who they're going to become. This person could become anything. So when I speak with people, I speak to them, yes, for who they are right now, but for their deserving of respect, for everything they're becoming. And this is how most of the greatness has occurred in my life. Because people do become extraordinary, and they have great stories about who I was for them in the beginning. And for some, they continue with me all throughout the journey, and now they're multi-millionaires, and we have the time of our lives. And I coach them while they're multi-millionaires. They stayed with me through the entire journey. They go up and up and up, the kaleidoscope, the, you know, the round staircase. And every time they get to a new level, they see the same view at a higher perspective, and they need coaching at that level. And they go and they go and they go, become multi-millionaires, and they still value our relationship.

So what I want to invite you to look at here is that this is not about saying, "But what if people are not as good as me? What if people are not as educated as me? What if people are not as good of leaders as me? What if people are rude? What if people are this?" I'm still supposed to treat them shoulder-to-shoulder. Yes. Because here's the other part of it. People will show you their true colors when you treat them the way they deserve to be treated. When you treat a person the way they were supposed to be treated, if they are not yet mature, if they're all up in their head, if they've got character flaws, you will be the greatest version to them, and they will be a colossal a-hole. And there is nothing that you can do about that. But you also won't wonder if you caused it, and they won't be able to tell you that you caused it. You will be able to see, "I did exactly what I needed to be, and this is how you responded. You're having some character issues right now. You're not, we're not ready yet." But that doesn't mean I have to hate you. That doesn't mean I have to judge you. That doesn't mean I have to throw you under the bus. It doesn't mean I have to drag you through social media. It doesn't mean anything. It really just means you're not there yet.

And can you imagine the kind of life you'd be building right now if the way you saw the world is, "I'm working on me so I can walk shoulder-to-shoulder with people in respect for the greatness that is within them, whether they choose to use it or not." I give my best. I really stretch that muscle within me that wants to give people what they deserve. Meaning, "I'm really nice until you're this to me, then I'm that." I really wish I just really want to do that. I don't do that. I stay in my alignment. I stay in my core power. And those people eventually rise. And remember, I always treated them with respect. Or I never hear about them again. But I, I hold nothing, regret in my body. Or they respond to the greatness I saw. Because those are actually the only three options.

If I say, "I am amazing, but you're not," how am I ever going to effectively lead you? If I say, "You're amazing, act like it, please, please, please," I'm still not going to get you the best of you. If I say, "I expect you're amazing, so I'm giving you the best there is, and if you decide to quit, that's you. If you decide not to like it, that's you." I'm going to, but I'm going to respect you the same either way because that's who I am. I don't need to worry about me, and I also don't need to worry about you because you'll always have the memory of a person who respected you, and that does not disappear.

Some people in a heated moment will be so rude, even when you're being polite, but they will not forget it. When their emotion goes down, they'll remember the people that treated them with kindness. I do. I remember in the past, there were people who genuinely treated me with so much kindness and respect in my hard times, and I still remember those people. You will remember, even if you don't have the capacity to thank them in the moment, even if you don't have the capacity.

So when I asked you on the first call, "Are you helping people, or are you leading people?" This is the biggest difference. If I don't think that you're amazing, if I think you're a struggling little chicken nugget, I'll help you. If I think you're amazing, I'll lead you. Because in one, I think you can do it. In the other, I know you can't, so I'm stepping in to help you. So it's going to be, there's moments in life where you're going to help people. Helping is not a bad thing. And there are moments where we just don't have it. We need help, we need support, we're on our knees, we need help. That happens.

But when our pattern is constantly to help people instead of lead them, we end up finding ourselves in an overgiving pattern where people don't respect our leadership, and they constantly expect help. They want financial handouts. They want time spent that you don't have. They want acts of service, constant acts of service that are starting to be taken for granted. They want you to do things for them that are not financially compensated, that they're not really grateful for. But you're helping. "Thanks so much for helping. Thanks so much for your help." is so different than, "Like, I couldn't have done this without us. Thank you so much for your leadership." One comes with respect.

So who do we help? There's a little kid that can't open a jar. They say, "I can't open. Can you open?" You say, "You can do it." I said, "I can't." You say, "You can just do it." I said, "I can't. I can't do it." "I believe in you. You can do it." And then they open the jar. That's leadership. If you know for a fact they can't open the jar, I say, "Can you open this?" "I can't open it." You say, "Yes, of course." Click. You open the jar. There are feelings inside like, "I know this person doesn't know how to do this yet. I'll help them."

But you want to look in your mind, where do you expect people just don't know, and you go right into helping right away? Because there is a correlation with why women are underpaid and the amount of help they give people instead of leadership. Even in your employees, like if your employees are constantly like, "I can't remember how to do that. What would you, what do I do? What do I do?" You just answer. You never ask them, "What would you do in this instant?" Or even call them on it. You know exactly what the answer is here. And they're like, "You're right. I just didn't want to make a mistake." "You got this. You're right." "Sorry." "Don't be sorry. It's all good."

With the leadership, you create confidence. You create strength. With help, you, you can create codependency easily. Now, when you don't want, when it's so important for you to feel validated and important, this is another place where women fall into the trap of helping. Because it's like, "If you need me, if you need me, I feel like I'm needed. I feel, I feel important." So I'm actually going to give you what you need, and I'm going to keep giving you what you need, and you're going to need to stay in my world. Because when you get what you need, you don't leave. But you don't create the greatness that you can create in this world. And you never become the greatness because you're always capped by not being able to let go of people that need you.

Your greatness is in the people that choose you. And it's hard not to be chosen. It's hard to have a person have the choice to stay with you or not, and to choose not. In business, as your employees, as your clients, as your friends, as your partner. And so for a lot of people, it feels like the easiest thing to do is to make them need you, then they don't go. But it is not the same reward. And the pain of a person you thought needing you leaving you far exceeds the pain of a person that you know you led that feels like they can spread their own wings.

Moving on. So you think you're, you're protecting yourself, but really you're setting yourself up for feeling like, "No matter how much I give, it's never enough." So have you ever felt that in your life? "No matter how much I give, it's never enough." The friends decide to go elsewhere. The partner goes elsewhere. The clients go elsewhere. The team goes elsewhere. You can't keep the relationship, no matter how much you give. That hurts so much because you tried to make them need you.

If you lead them, when they go, you'll feel proud. Like a mama whose babies fly the nest. You'll feel proud. Like a friend who moves on to bigger things. You'll feel proud. Like, you'll feel different about your clients, your employees. You'll feel different. But like, "I taught them everything I know, and now they're just going to move on and go do this with other people." They needed me. I created a need. That dependency is not leadership. And you can't feel that way in shoulder-to-shoulder.

Shoulder-to-shoulder is honor. So when you see the visual that we put in the animation of people passing the torch, you have to honor people to pass that torch. If you've got a little person next to you that you're afraid is going to burn themselves with the fire, you won't confidently pass the torch. If you're afraid the person's so good that they're going to run away with the fire and not pass it on because they're too good for the circle, you'll want to hold on to the torch. Only when you know everyone here respects each other and the fire do you feel confident passing that torch all around the fire camp, all around the fireside. And that's what we need as women, especially us together, is like, "I trust you." And I know it hurts when people break your trust, but that's their thing, not yours. I trust because I'm a trusting person. I trust you because I don't want to live a whole life avoiding trusting you. And if you break my trust, I'll be okay anyway.

So what's the point of me holding on to not trusting you? It's the point of me trying to protect that? Because there's actually so much pain and fear. Might as well live your life to the fullest and only experience the pain when you actually get burned. Because when you do that, when you learn, you learn a lesson, you grow, you change. The pain of fear just keeps you small and stuck. The pain of pain makes you grow and change. So you might as well just be blissfully ignorant during your life. Keep your eyes wide open. Be aware. Live full out. Put yourself out there. And if the pain comes, then let it change you. Let it grow you. Let it better you. And experience the pain only once. Not once in fearing it, and once in living it. Only in feeling it, and then let it change you. Because it does. Pain changes you for the best. And if you look through the history of your life, you'll see most of the things you feared the most that happened ended up being some of the greatest things, the catalysts for change, the things that really made you realize who you were, your strength. You pivoted. Something happened because of those pains. So trying to avoid pain just isn't the thing.

So what the, the shoulder-to-shoulder leadership works in two ways. You're not putting someone on a pedestal. And you're not saying, "You, you're supposed to be so smart. You're supposed to be so brave. You're supposed to be so rich. You're supposed to be a leader. You're supposed to be this." So you should. You're not doing that. And you're not doing, "You don't know yet. You're not capable yet. You clearly can't. You clearly struggle with." "I don't trust. I don't believe. I don't." You're not doing that either. You're speaking to people like you're, you would want to be spoken to yourself. The only reason we don't do that is because we anticipate they're going to hurt our feelings. It's the only reason that you would not do that.

"What if they fail me? What if I'm wrong about their power? What if I trust them like they're an equal and then they mess up?" Do you know how important it is for you to find out if people can't have the same kind of power in a certain situation than you? Like, it is more important that you operate here and find out that they're not willing to meet you there, than that you operate here so that you're never disappointed. If you can operate here and they can rise here, you'll find out you're walking with a shoulder-to-shoulder powerful person. If you walk here and they show up here, you have compassion for their character. You trust they're not there yet, and you keep operating there until your next energetic match shows up.

Now, the issue is, people say, "I don't want to be, or I'm tired of being the only person that's responsible." Have you felt that before? Like, "If I'm not polite, if I'm not the one holding the standard, if I'm not the one leading the show, like, why don't other people have to be responsible? How come other people don't have to be this? How come they can talk to me like that? How come they can show up like that?" So I'm just supposed to show up like this, no matter what they say? I'm just supposed to be like that, no matter what they do? Yes. And if they knew how to do that, you wouldn't feel so alone. The key is, we all have to learn to do that.

I do not change my behavior because of you. If not, you were the one leading. It has to be my character and who I am is driven by me and my self-leadership. And I hold myself to such a high standard because I actually believe that in holding myself here, there's a possibility that you or the right people are going to walk behind me, and I'm going to have the right people with me. That's why I hold myself to that standard because I'm the leader. And I'm either going to lead just myself, or I'm going to lead people. People who are capable of walking with me at this level.

But if, when you freak out, I stop leading me and I immediately start following your lead of a lesser communication pattern, a lesser emotional intelligence, a lesser maturity, then you're the leader. I give up my leadership to them. The ones who lead us down a path of chaos, of fighting, of misunderstanding. So the thing is, if you change, if you give up your leadership role because people don't seem to want to follow you, you follow them. That's why leading ourselves is so important. And you will sometimes feel like you're the only person in the world. But eventually, the world will open up for you, and you will find your equals everywhere. Because the only people who can actually do this are people who have chosen it over and over and over and over and over again. And when they see that with other people, they're like, "Oh my gosh, the power I see in you is so similar to the power I see in me." And that's when magic starts to happen. That's when Alpha to Alpha communications start to really matter. This is when Alpha to Alpha becomes the concept.

But right now, in the art of leadership, you've got to take into consideration that you are going to lead people, not knowing if the character that will respond to you is the leader or the victim, the leader or the villain. You don't know who they're going to be. That's their story. That's their life. That's their moment. So our job is to become unshakable in our leadership, no matter who we're leading, and that we don't respond to their chaos if they don't respond to our leadership. This is so freaking hard. And it becomes exponentially harder when you add emotion, money, opinions. Like, there are things that amplify the chaos and the feelings. How very dare you.

You may have seen a person be rude on social media and imagine that that person is just a bad person because of one bad comment. When in fact, that person may feel so out of power everywhere in their life that they had a moment of character flaw on the internet and said something they would never say in real life, just to get anger out of their system. And you've decided that's who they are, all of them, because of the one comment. "I would never do that." Really? Shall I replay every ugly moment you've ever had and see if none of them measure up to this little sneaky little comment that was just made on your page? Because we have it in us to get so mad that we lose character. So our job is to make sure that we have compassion for people who don't know how to lead themselves, and that we continue to lead ourselves so that we don't do that.

Now, this doesn't mean you're going to be perfect. You're going to have moments in your life where you're just like, "Can't handle the pressure anymore. I need to vent. I need to talk." And that's what therapists are for, coaches are for. And if you've got really solid friendships and your partner's there to listen, that is extraordinary. But if all you've got every time you speak to someone is a negative thing, a rumor, gossip, frustration, anger, eventually the people will start to see you differently than who you are. They'll see you as a gossip. They'll see you as a complainer. They'll see you as this, as this. And often people say things like, "So, so, I don't ever tell people how I really feel. I have to lie. I have to hold my feelings in." No, but you do need to notice how often your feelings are anger, frustration, judgment, because that is where the inner game of leadership really matters.

She who leads herself. Fatal. A lot of this is inner child wounding. Most of it is trigger trauma responses. It's not even the grown-up in you that's making these decisions. It's the little chicken nugget inside of you that's acting out something that happened to you when you were a little kid that you're finally old enough to be allowed to say whatever you want without going in the corner. And instead of having the power to lead yourself, you choose the self-righteousness.

And so this is one of my favorite lines. Is this moment of self-righteousness worth compromising my leadership and manifestation? I like, is this moment of self, um, is this moment of self-righteousness worth compromising my energetic vibration? Like, I'm trying to manifest extraordinary things and I'm about to get mad and I'm going to start, I'm going to change my center of manifestation over this. This, or can I have power over it? Is this moment of self-righteousness worth compromising my relationship? Is this moment of self-righteousness worth compromising my leadership?

What is self-righteousness? It are they are moments where you feel you are right. Is this moment where I feel I'm right worth compromising my leadership? It's okay that you feel like you're right, that these people are jerks, that you can't take it anymore, that they should be better. But is it worth jeopardizing your leadership to fall into the trap of proving that, of showing, of telling everybody what really happened, of telling your side of the story, of losing it, of telling them off? Is it worth it? And that answer is most 100% the answer is no.

So you find someone that you can speak to. But it will eventually happen that someone will say, "I just can't take the drama anymore. I don't want to hear about your problems anymore." Has anybody ever told you that? It's one of the most upsetting things in the whole freaking world. And it's frustrating because you'll want to think of all the people you've held during their stuff and feel like, "Nobody's ever there for me." But the real truth is, people know what you're capable of. People know what you're capable of. And if it feels out of character for you to be a certain way, they'll call you out on it.

Some people are just whiny and incapable as an identity. They've been that way since they grew up. People expect that. But then there's the people who show themselves to be a certain way on social media, who lead companies, who lead people, and then are constantly complaining and constantly doing that whenever they're with somebody. And it's like, "Why do I get the worst of you?" That's where the judgments come through. You say you're this, but then you're being this. So our job is to figure out what's the truth of our leadership. Where do we really stand?

You don't need to be put on a pedestal, and you don't need to be perfect. So if you pretend you're on a pedestal and you pretend you're perfect, people will expect from you more than you're actually capable of delivering. No point in doing that. There's also no point in being self-deprecating just so people don't expect a lot from you. Pretend you're not as good as you are. Constantly break your word, fail at everything, sabotage, quit before the end, just so people don't have too much expectation on you. There's not much of a point of doing that either.

The real vulnerable thing to do as a leader is to do your best to not inflate your best, to not pretend it's more than it is, and to do everything you can to uphold that standard and better it. And on your journey of doing that, you will find people with higher standards than you that make you feel like you could be doing better. And you will find people with lower standards than you that make you mad and make you wonder what the point is of working that hard. That's the journey of leadership. And to avoid those feelings, we either pretend we're better than we are, pretend we're worse than we are. We either self-promote or self-sabotage, instead of being the frequency of truth. And there is no stronger frequency on Earth than the frequency of truth. And the strongest frequency of leadership is the frequency of truth.

So the truth I want you to seek for today's module, the introspection for today, is: Am I willing to look at people beyond their character and trust that if they're in a moment that's not so great, this is probably just the worst possible representation of who they are? Whether this is a troll on the internet, whether this is a client that's misbehaving, whether this is a friend that's causing chaos, whether this is a person I'm dating that's showing me something I don't like. Now, this does not mean you have to keep the people in your world. You get to have a boundary that says, "Oh, not my person." But how you treat them in deciding they're not your person, that's the difference. No need to call them out for who they are, to tell them who you think they are, to tell other people who you think they are. All of that is irrelevant. All of that is a moment of self-righteousness where you feel it's more important to be right than to deal with your feelings.

Leaders can deal with their feelings. Even if it's hard, they realize, "I'm compromised. I am mad. This is not the right time to have this discussion." They don't say, "No, no, no, let's have the conversation. You want to talk about it? Let's talk about it." They don't do that. Don't say, "You know what? Maybe we should talk about it because I don't know when else we're going to talk about it. You know, like, why don't you tell me then? Like, we should, you just tell me then." They don't say it then. That's not the right time. And they don't push up other people. "Okay, you're mad. You know, go tell me." Person's completely out of it. You should be able to communicate clearly. They can't have compassion. Take a moment. When you're ready, I'll be here. When they're super sad, I can listen to you now. If you want to recuperate, I'll still be here when you're ready to talk about it. Give people a moment.

People's emotions and character is not who they are. It's what they do. And the key of an extraordinary leader is it's not what we do, it's who we are when we do it. And being able to give that compassion to other people. This says so much on both sides of it. You can do a nice thing, but why did you do it? Some people do nice things just to look nice. Some people do nice things because they're kind. Some people do bad things because they lose their temper, because they don't ever work on their inner self. Some people do bad things because they're heartbroken and they've lost themselves for a minute. Some people do. It's like, we don't know why people do what they do. So we give compassion. But that doesn't mean we don't have to have boundaries. And we're going to talk about boundaries in this program. Talk about communication in this program. We're going to talk about when you decide that this person has no place in your life, how do you say it? Why do you say it? Is it just a power move? Does it just feel good to cut them out? Is it punishment? Most of the time, that's it.

Can you breathe through your emotions? Can you feel your emotions? Can you not make other people responsible for your emotions? Can you do what's best for yourself without punishing other people? This is leadership. It doesn't mean you're not going to have arguments. It doesn't mean you're not going to have disagreements. But it does mean you're not going to regret your behavior. And that, to me, is the most important thing for a leader. Because have you ever in your life found that it's difficult for you to lead something if you feel incongruent with it? Like, let's say there's a segment in your business you're supposed to teach, but you've been struggling with it in your life. And then all of a sudden, it feels like, "How can I talk to people about this if I'm struggling with it?"

Maybe even with your kids, you might have had this issue. Like, you want to tell your kids they're not allowed to scream or fight, and you know for yourself, you've just lost it with your husband the day before. You're like, "How am I parenting this right now? I'm the worst." Like, I, so the thing with leadership is that the more embodied you are in your own self-leadership, the more squeaky clean you are in your leadership, the easier it is to lead other people. And the more it really feels like you can stand in your power when you're saying what you're saying.

Then you're in the frequency of Truth, and there is nothing more powerful on Earth. In the frequency of Truth, people who say things that sound good do not vibrate on the same level as people who say things they live by. You meet a person that says things that sounds good, you're like, "You say some..." You see someone who says things they live by, you're like, "This."

This program is not about looking like a leader or sounding like a leader. This is the program where you become a leader. And I would not be surprised if during this program, there is going to be a lot of opportunities to test the things that I'm telling you. People are going to bug you. You're going to want to not like them. You're going to want to be right about the fact that they're just bad. You're going to want to cut people out. You're going to want to do it in a way that feels good. You're already being tested. See this how it goes in your work, in your work, in your family, in your friendships, with strangers, in a traffic jam, you name it, you will be tested.

But the fact is, it doesn't really matter. Without the test, how do you even know you got it? If you don't test it, yes, Melanie, you're so right. I should be this way. I like it. This is who I am. Q: In an argument, forgot everything I just learned. Oops. Like, this is the opportunity to be like, "Oh gosh, this is so much harder in practice than it is in theory. What the heck is this? I don't like it. I don't want it." Okay, wait, hang on. What are my tools? I'm mad. I need to break. Ah, help. Group help. This will happen.

But with this program, what happens is that you see it. And that's the crazy thing. Most people can go through their entire life oblivious to their lack of leadership. All they see is it's other people's fault. It's other people's misbehavior. It's the circumstances. It's not fair. Like, all they see is it's the external thing. When you put yourself in a program like this, it's like the glasses change, the lens changes. All of a sudden, you're like, "Oh, oh, oh no. Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. How do I? What do I?" And it starts to be a real journey, and it starts to be real. And then you can start dealing with stuff.

And with experience, you're going to start to see what I'm telling you. There will eventually come a day where employees who behave a certain way doesn't make you feel like they don't care about you. You don't matter. Blah, blah, blah, blah. You'll see it like they're afraid they're going to lose their job. They're afraid that they're not valued at all. They're afraid. The only thing you notice about them is the thing they did wrong. They're afraid they're giving all their time and their life to a boss who doesn't value them and only sees their mistakes. They're a real person. They're having an experience.

You're not going to see people who default on payments and don't want to honor their contracts and get mad at you. You're not just going to see a bad person with no integrity. You're going to see a person who's having a financial fear and who wants to not be responsible for their decision, and that's trying to put that responsibility on somebody else. You're going to see a person who's in a lot of shame, a lot of guilt towards the stress they may have put on their family. Maybe they made agreements without telling their partner. Maybe they've got to face things they don't want to face. They would much prefer you fixing it so that they don't have to deal with that. And unless you fix it, they have to deal with that. So now they're mad at you instead of being mad at themselves. All projection. It's okay. You understand. You've been there. Doesn't make it okay, but it definitely doesn't make them a jerk or a villain or the worst.

You're going to see, you know, friendships. Friends who feel threatened by your success or your relationship or your money or your growth. And instead of seeing that they hate you and you don't matter and they're jealous of you, you're going to see that they love you and they're afraid they're going to be left behind. You're going to see that they themselves worry that they pale in comparison, that they've messed up in their life, that they should have been doing more, that they don't matter as much anymore, that you're going to leave them behind, that you're going to have new shiny friends, that they won't be able to keep up financially, that they won't be able to keep up, that they're going to be left behind. And it's all of their wounds that you don't care about them enough that it's going to start shining through. Nothing to do with you, just their fears, their pains.

You're going to start to see that when your kids misbehave and freak out, it's not because they don't like you or they don't love you. It's not because they're purposely trying to push your buttons. It's because they haven't felt your unconditional, undying attention recently. They felt like you're too busy, you're doing something else, and they're not the most important thing. And so they might misbehave just because that's when you give them the most attention.

You're going to start seeing people for the real people that they are, instead of just people who should have known better, that triggered you because they don't care about you, that you need to just cut out of your life, or people that you need to help and change and fix because they're incapable of being more mature, and you put your entire life on hold to help people be better people instead of leading them.

So in today's homework, what I really want you to touch on for yourself is where have you let people's behavior determine their identity? And where have you been afraid that your behavior determines your identity? And where have you tried to change your behavior so people think your identity is different, instead of just trusting your truth, your alignment, your authentic truth, and becoming actually stronger emotionally, instead of trying to look stronger, look better, look wiser? Actually strengthen what's inside so that you're actually less angry, instead of looking less angry, that you're actually less wanting to punish, instead of looking like you're not trying to punish? Like the real inner work. Where have you tried to look more or less just to create an illusion, just to not have to deal with the feelings?

When you do this homework, it will become so easy to walk shoulder to shoulder with people because you will understand that we are all the same. My fear about my feelings and your fear about your feelings. My potential for greatness, your potential for greatness. Then it all boils down to execution, choice, discipline, maturity, and leadership. But fundamentally, the ingredients are there. Okay, just want to check the chat because I feel like there was an important question here. Let me just check here. Imagine a world where we all had this expansive lens. Is the homework going to be posted? Yeah, I can ask the Alpha Fem team to make sure there's a special post that re-explains it.

But just so that you, the idea is not just that it's written and you're like, "What do I need to do for my homework?" I want you, you might take this and hear something unique to you. These are contemplations for your leadership. So whatever this triggers when I'm speaking, that's the most important. What I want you to be contemplating and thinking about for your homework is where have I let other people's character, just some way that they behaved when they're not happy, when they're afraid, when they're stressed, like I've looked at that behavior and I've said, "That's who they are. I can't handle that person. She's just so rude. She's just so mean."

So contemplation is deep thought. It's introspective thinking. It's like, "What does this mean to me? What are my thoughts about this? Have I ever done that?" That's what contemplation is. You're journaling, thinking, feeling, right? So I want you to think about that. Where have I looked at a person's character and made it their identity? And then, because I've done that, where have I tried to change my character so that people think my identity is different, instead of actually working on my identity? Where have I cheaped into this work to look more powerful instead of being more powerful?

And I think I did a great job at it. You know, I have so many clients in my inbox, especially private clients, over the years that have been like, "Look, obviously, clearly, I was really pissed. Wouldn't you be pissed if this happened to you? But I didn't show it at all." I'm like, "Mmm, sure you didn't show it at all. Let's go with the actual how you felt about it. Let's untangle it." So you had a conversation at the peak of your anger, and you're guaranteed that you didn't show any of it, and you're completely shocked at how bad of a rude response you got from the person you were angry at, that you choose to speak to while you were angry, but you're pretty sure you were perfect at it. Let's unpack all of that, shall we? Like, where, where have you altered your character in front of people instead of your identity? And where has that backfired? Where are you trying to be nice, trying to look patient, when in the back of the room, you're freaking out, you're mad all the time, and you're constantly talking about how frustrated you are with everything? Where have you worked more on your character than your identity? And so you've connected those things, even for other people. Character equals identity. Character equals identity. So if I change my character, I change my identity. Where, what?

Okay, where are the actual flaws? What's the frequency of truth? I struggle with people who are rude. I struggle with people who don't see my value. I struggle with people who aren't grateful for me. I struggle when I feel like I want to be appreciated. I over-give to be appreciated. When I don't feel appreciated, when I over-give, I feel bitter and resentful. Then I make it a character thing for the person that wasn't grateful and I say that they're an ungrateful person that doesn't deserve my friendship, instead of look at the fact that I was trying to overcompensate by being over-generous in order to be seen. These are contemplations.

Oh gosh, here's what I'm thinking. Here's what I'm realizing. Because what I ultimately want for you is squeaky clean frequency of Truth leadership. You will have, you have a vision inside of you, whether it is leading your family, your company, or the business you work for. You have a vision, but it gets compromised when you're all caught up and I need people to think I'm perfect, or I need to, I need people to be nice to me. You stop leading properly. So we're going to look at what the flaws are. What cuts your leadership? What messes it up? Where do you trip as soon as someone doesn't see how hard you've been working and points out a mistake? Whenever you make a mistake, whenever people don't notice you, if you do work that's not valued or validated, like where do you just stop leading and start responding to other people's character?

These are all the thoughts you can be thinking about after this module. The idea of this program is that we, we look at ourselves and we think, because in the day to day, we actually avoid this part more than any other part. What we do instead is, "What do I do? What should I do? This bugs me. What do I do? This bugs me. What should I say? This is frustrating. What should I do? This person bugs me. What should I say? How should I handle it? What would you say? What would you do?" Instead of, "Whoa, notice what I'm thinking about myself when I feel this way. Notice what I think about them when I feel this way. Notice what I'm trying to fix immediately when I feel this way."

If you can be patient with your feelings, you can completely lead yourself. If you're impatient with your feelings, you'll try to fix the thing right away. If you're impatient with people, you'll decide who they are very fast based on what they do. If you're patient with people, you'll give yourself time. It's not a problem to not trust a person yet. You're allowed to say, "Well, I don't trust you yet because I don't know you, but I enjoy you." You don't have to say, "Of course, I trust you. I don't want you to feel bad." You don't have to say, "I don't trust you. I don't know you." You can say, "Well, you know, I'll get to know you and we'll see. You right now, I don't really know. I feel like we have a lot of differences in the way we see things, but I'm willing to give it time. I believe there's good in everyone. We'll figure it out." Patience. Patience, yo. Patience. Patience with your feelings, not to try to change them right away, not to try to control them right away, to actually sit in the frequency of Truth and to deal with your feelings, not to be so afraid that a triggered feeling could become a character that could be perceived as your identity, but to actually breathe into your feelings and then lead, not be led by the other person's anger, sadness, pressure, whatever comes from that.

So this is a big module, and we're going to unpack it in different segments throughout this program. This conversation is the most important one, and the rest is going to support all the pieces that hold this together. If you could go into your life after this program and when people behave a certain way, genuinely have the feeling, "Okay, I'm not sure what they're going through today. We'll see what goes, what happens with that." Your life would change. You would have so much more time because most the people who struggle with not having a lot of time in their life spend most of their time thinking about the people they don't like, and the things they don't like about the people they don't like, and the things that are bugging them about the things they don't like, and trying to figure out how to stop making those things bug them. We miss, we lock. It's crazy how much time we spend doing that. "Just need to tell you the story about this person. Drives me bananas. I don't know what to do about it. I just tell about this person bugs me. I don't know what to do. I don't know." So many hours of life are lost in hypothetical worlds, experiencing feelings of dislike, distrust, stress, and upset about things and people that we imagine are worse than they are. It's wild. You want a lot of time back.

And to be able to lead a person, if you see their value, you will lead them further. A person will not be led by a person who doesn't see their value. So your ability to still be able to believe there's good in a person after they've misbehaved means you can still lead them after they've misbehaved, and that is rare. Usually, misbehavior equals breach in leadership. Not for us. We can bounce back. So you don't need to get everything perfect today. You're just contemplating. More of this will be unpacked throughout the program. We're going to go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into these things. But to lead people, you've got to see them for more than their character. To lead people, you can't just jump in and help them because it makes you feel better than watching them struggle on the way to success. It takes emotional strength. So take your time. Write. Share. Think.

The program is developing. There's no place you're supposed to be right now. This is normal. I'm going to give you in this program modules that end and feel incomplete because I want you to feel that feeling a little bit. In this program, I'm not going to wrap it up perfect like a little bow. It's going to feel like, "But wait, but but but but but but but." That's part of leadership. Incomplete? Question mark. Figuring it out. It's part of it. Part of the fun. You got this. I got you. You're a badass. Go figure it out. I'll speak with you soon.