Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode and a special episode of the conversations with coaches podcast. But one of the lessons minisodes was kind of what I’m calling him, I still like calling him that I think that works. Because it really all about what I’m getting to learn about life and living and business and growing and changing and evolving in my personal life, my professional life all the above, yada, yada, yada, it’s fantastic. Like I always intro these episodes by gushing about how much I love this podcast and the coaches I get to talk to, but you know what, I’m just gonna be me. I’m gonna keep on gushing. So today, I want to talk very briefly about a, I guess, I guess you can call it a false dichotomy. It’s an it’s false, I’m making the dichotomy I’m comparing two things that I don’t think I really think are on the opposite ends of any spectrum. But you know, I might be creating the problem and then solving it for myself all here in a few minutes, I have a problem. It’s really just a, an exercise for my brain and for my heart. And something that comes up maybe not necessarily quite in these words, but it comes up conceptually a lot during during my interviews with coaches talking about I’ll use the terms authenticity and authority, authenticity being a term for basically showing up authentically and all the work that you do everything you say, basically being yourself being present. But there’s also a strong note of not just availability, but vulnerability, which is another really big word in professional circles, vulnerability, who thought even like, you know, 20 years ago that the concept of vulnerability would be professionally viable, and, in fact, very important, spoken about in profound ways and instituted, like corporate on a corporate level. Anyway, that’s a discussion for another time, but authenticity, vulnerability, availability, empathy, these things are all just core to so important to everything that we do as coaches as people in our lives.
But then, as coaches to as many of you own your own business entrepreneurs, but in a position of leadership, you also have to, I’m gonna say balance that with authority, you do need to, like really need to but of course, want to be seen as an authority in your niche in your industry, amongst your team, basically, so that you as as almost like a function of your ability to lead, you know, what we’re supposed to be doing, why we’re doing it, you can articulate it, you can help the team grow and go together. And I put these two concepts on opposing sides of a scale, just to basically draw attention to how actually close together they are, perhaps related they are as opposed to, towards the opposite ends of any kind of spectrum, I find authenticity and authority to be very closely tied, at least in the way that I think of it myself. And I feel like I feel like I have a lot of a lot of people I talk to think of it in the same way that quite frankly, at least for me, and at least in some circumstances, I don’t want to speak authoritative ly on this and only speak exclusively on this, like this is how it is. But I find that a lot of leaders authority derives from their authenticity, from their ability to show up authentically to be not just available, and have strong leadership attributes. And you know, like a good listener, but also being vulnerable. Not afraid to not only make mistakes, and but own up to them, and share them and learn with them as a team. And just for one example. It’s not even just like owning up to your mistakes. That’s not even what I’m thinking of when I’m thinking about authenticity and authority. But it’s one really good example of what good leadership looks like.
And I find, I find most of the leaders in my life that I that I allowed to lead me that I truly admire and will do, will go the extra 1000 miles for whatever the circumstance is set their authority in their authenticity are, are closely tied, if not braided tightly together, I find their accessibility, their agility, their vulnerability, their empathy, to be, quite frankly, the fire burning at the heart of their authority for me. And also obviously, authority comes from other places as well. But different logs on the fire comes from their special knowledge experience, things that they can do that I can’t that I admire in them and and, you know, they helped me to grow in certain areas. There’s all sorts of things that go to it. But I find putting these two ideas on opposite ends of a scale and just just watching the way that they move together kind of like in this little conversation we’re having right now. And how they really are a lot closer than I think most of us think they are when we first start to consider it. So it’s kind of wanted to share that I was weighing them in my head. It’s actually something that I still have written on my whiteboard, just the the words authenticity and authority. They’re like they’re in. Here’s a word cloud. It’s not even a place where I put like quotes or inspirations or anything like that, but just kind of like a little word cloud and they they’re pretty close in proximity so I got to thinking about them in computer or stand in contrast to each other and just kind of wanted to share some of my thoughts on it some of the lessons I’ve gotten, because I mean, even though these words might not be the ones that come up, the concepts of authenticity and authority, I think are present in every single conversation I’ve had with a coach, as I’m thinking about it. I really think that’s true. So anyway, as I’m being slightly inspired over again, as I’m talking with you just wanted to share that with you.
And also, you know, solicit your thoughts if you have any ideas regarding this or something close to it. I know I’ve had some conversations that have been very much in this neighborhood of where things like vulnerability and leadership come into play. But anyway, thank you for listening to my word cloud ramblings and I will talk to you again very soon.
