Welcome to my unfiltered life...

A Sunday in December when my son has the flu.

1 December 2024

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It's the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and my son has what I believe to be the flu. I have been a mom for a minute or two now and have seen it all—and this is classic flu. There's a pot of leftover ham cooking down with some beans on the stove, and a tray of bar cookies just came out of the oven. The house has an enchanting aroma of chocolate, ham, and Vicks vaporub (business idea: candles that smell like real life). When anyone in my family is sick, my go-to plan includes clean sheets, Lysol, Vicks, comfort food, and ooey gooey treats—and a likely smothering level of personal attention. I mean, when have any of those things ever made a situation worse?

Note to self: on your next bad day, spray some Lysol and have a cookie in bed in clean sheets—see if it makes things better. Report results here.

So, why tell you all of this in the opening post of my new blog? The short answer is it was an easy opportunity to finally get started (more on my crippling imposter syndrome and self-sabotage later). The longer answer is it is what you will find here—real stories, the unvarnished (non-influencer) truth about life, family, work, relationships, and leadership, and all of the other reasons I started writing and building a business to help others discover their strengths and gifts hidden in their life story. And, I really do love to write, so that's a bonus.

Spoiler - this ^ is not an image of me - I could never pull off those fabulous earrings. Are they even connected to her ears? Why is her neck melting?

Wait. I'm off track and just spent at least a half hour playing with AI images (that will happen a lot).

Humans first, and always.

Back to the reason for this blog and the mission for my business.

I tell my team on a near-constant basis, "we are humans first, and always" and that is the core of my leadership and life philosophy, and it's the mantra I expect my team to fall back on. In so many spaces of our lives, we are labeled - employee, friend, wife, husband, CEO, student, child. Each of these labels implies a certain set of expectations, behaviors, and pre-defined (often shifting) measures of success or failure. Underneath all of that, we are humans. We have fears, anxieties, hopes, love, connections, and passion for our dreams. The stories of our lives and the people within them define us in positive and negative ways, and no one day for us looks or behaves like another.

When I hear people in positions of leadership say, "check your personal life at the door," I am appalled. How is that even possible? Is the door at work a magical portal that serves to erase all that makes us who we are? Preposterous - and dangerous. Just last week, I walked in the door of work after having a terrible morning. My son took 15 extra minutes getting out of bed, my purse strap got caught on the doorknob, and my car was on E when I got in it - the inevitable outcome of the greatest lie of tired adults everywhere, "I will just get gas in the morning." Needless to say, when I arrived at work, I was looking to burn off a little rage. Ever been there? Did that boiling frustration affect the way you work, communicate, interact? Absolutely. To self-correct, I messaged my team and I needed 10 minutes to get my life and attitude in a better place. I closed my office door, drank my coffee, checked some emails, and waited until I was fit for human consumption. Do we all have this luxury? No, and I don't pretend that we do, but the point is to be aware, to give yourself (and others) grace, to not fight being human, and learning to find ways to regroup, reset, quiet your mind, and reset. We all deserve this much for ourselves. No one has time for unplanned trips to HR.

I set and live this model because I need people to know that they are allowed to be authentic, messy, in touch with who they are, understand what defines them, and are keenly aware of what motivates, limits, inspires, and challenges them. How do we grow if we don't embrace the whole of who we are, where we come from, and what truly defines us? How do we work together if we don't know the people around us - and allow them to be human (implying: messy and complicated)? Poorly, that's how. I would much rather have whole, authentic humans than ones who are deprogrammed by outdated expectations of workplace behavior. Humans first, and always.

Changing the Narrative

This is going to be a bit dramatic, but indulge me (you will get a lot of drama and hyperbole here). At the base of the Statue of Liberty, a quote by Emma Lazarus reads, "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore..." Beautiful, right? Change teeming shore to "terrible leadership" and you get the idea of why we are here - and the thing I want to change.

During my first residency in my doctoral program, I was being asked to define leadership (spoiler: there's no right answer - it was a setup to identify the perfectionists and overachievers in the room - aka, me). Around the room, my classmates took turns sharing their own definitions of leadership. Let me quickly pause and share that I attended a faith-based program and there was more than one pastor in the room who spoke beautifully and spiritually about leadership - wrapping scholarship in gospel with beautiful ease - people were captivated.

When it was my turn, attempting to look like I was smart enough to be in the room, I launched into an unsolicited (dry) TedTalk on transformational leadership while injecting all of the buzz words surrounding the study of leading and inspiring people that I had Googled while waiting for my turn. To this day, I am shocked it didn't go viral. It was a masterpiece of the spoken word (heavy sarcasm). What I didn't know then, and what I have grown to learn over years of study, practical application, and leaning into my own strengths of empathy and emotional intelligence is that leadership has nothing to do with the leader: it is defined by the people we lead, the moments we are in, the challenges we face, and if the dog threw up on the carpet as you were walking out the door, late as always. Leadership has no definition because it would be impossible to do so - and every person in the room with me that day was right in their own definition. Leadership is theory, yes, but the nuance is in the practical moments. The people. The stories that define us and the spaces in which we arrive.

TL;DR:

In my work, and in this blog, I want to explore all of these elements with you to help shape your leadership, identify your strengths, empower your teams, and build an agile leadership model that is humans first, and always. Let's change the narrative.

Cheers,

MP