What is happening, my friends? I am so excited to be back on the podcast. I have been taking some time off like a manifestor does in human design. I've been really fully embracing these cycles of energy that come and go energy that peaks really high. Like there's a ramp up. I feel a ramp up. And then this peak, it's like an explosion. And then I put something out into the world. I put an idea out into the world. I put a program out into the, into the world. And then I retreat a little bit and it's just my energy. It's something that I had, I've always been aware of that. I, you know, go through these cycles of, of energetic, creative spurts. And then I pull back and I think about what I did. I think about what else I could do. And then another spark of inspiration comes to me and it is downloaded into my software. And then I'm, I'm off to the races again. And then, The cycle continues. It's a perpetual cycle. It's not a vicious cycle. It's a victorious one, I'd like to think. And so I've been away for a little bit. And it's also Lent. So I am a Catholic and we... practice a very serious forty days of sacrifice and it's mostly to reconnect to the divine, reconnect to the relationship I have with Source or God or Jesus, whatever you believe in. And so there's been a lot of decompressing, deconditioning so that I can just reassess some things that are happening in my life right now. And what's happening in my life is pretty exciting because of this lull that I've had, this break in my energy that I've had, I've been able to reassess some things in my business. And I'm so excited because, listen, I am someone who loves to get my hands in the clay and I am just like you. I'm an action taker. I love it all. I love the how-to steps. I love to just go full force. I'm with you. And then there's seasons in my life and career where I say, no, that actually is not going to work this time. I'm tired of jumping to the deep end of the pool and hitting my head at the bottom of the pool. There's a better way to be excited and to jump into a new venture without hurting yourself. And so I am excited to announce something so special today. that I am doing in the Masters of Leadership Institute, which is the institute of all institutes. This is where we do a ton of research, internal research. We put together curriculum. We design programs for our private clients. We design curriculum for their employees as well. And so it's been very exciting in the institute. And one of the things that I'm mostly excited about is this new idea that I've been putting into practice. So I have been the test subject. I have been the guinea pig. I have been the one putting in the steps, the work, doing the reps to build this new muscle. And this new muscle is called the universal leader. The universal leader is, is this idea of a leader, just like you and I. We were called into leadership. We were, for some reason, were assigned this very sacred, divine assignment to serve. You know, there were some people early in my career that would say to me, well, I was born to lead. And I never believed that because I was a kid who was under the radar. I was below average student, had a great work ethic, but I just, you know, didn't believe I was as smart as my older sister, who's a genius. And as cute and enthusiastic and charismatic as my baby sister. So I was kind of like in the middle, like, I don't know what you're talking about. I wasn't born to lead. Like who, what do you mean? And then enough research and confirmation bias in my research, you know, I was like, yeah, no, I can turn anybody into a leader. I can train them into a leader. And that was my belief for a very long time. And wow, what a fallacy that was. Because I realized here just recently that some of us are born to lead. Some of us have been anointed to do this work. Not all of us can lead. I can give you all of the competence, all of the knowledge, all of the skills, all of the things you must pass to get a hundred on the test. But I was missing a really big thing. And the thing is that person's spirit, that person's heart, that person's intention, that person... Needing to lead, needing to serve others, being called into leadership because of their love of serving their people, their communities, their families. That was the heart piece that was missing. So I was so focused on the mind piece. on the neuroscience of leadership. And I completely disregarded the spirit side of leadership, which is the heart. And so with the added pressure in our industries because of government and other external factors like the administration we have today, many, many things that are contributing to high pressure stakes gain that we are in leadership. I was... really digging in my heels that a leader needed all this knowledge and brilliance and competence to create sustainable results. But I was missing a big, big point of leadership. And that is the leader who's in these positions, at least the people I want to serve, are the leaders who are have a divine assignment, who know they were called into leadership. Those are the people that I drawn to. Those are the people that I wish there were more of. These are the kinds of leaders that I am daring to become. One who is spirit led, but has all this competence and brilliance. Like, don't get me wrong. We need to have the knowledge. Well, what comes first, the knowledge or the spirit? And I had it all wrong. It wasn't even a variable in the formula. It wasn't even something I was considering until the last year or two in my career, in my business, and in my personal life. And as I was drawing closer to my spiritual beliefs and principles, I was deconditioning some of those things that I was trained to believe leadership was about. And so I started to think with my heart, with my spirit, with my soul, instead of thinking with this three pound organ between my ears. Yes, we need to have the knowledge, but can we please talk about the heart first? Can we please talk about the leader's intent? Were they assigned to do this divine sacred work or are they in this for status and power? Are they in this for salary? Are they in this for egoic reasons? Or are they in this for the spirit-led servant leader that we are all craving for today? Those are the people I want to talk to. Those are the people that excite me. And so here's what's interesting. Years ago, before I started Masters of Leadership Institute, I had a program called the Deliberate Creators Club. We had about thirty incredible women and men in that program. And it was a sacred space for us to talk about spirituality, to talk about purpose, to talk about how we were being led into these movements, into these projects, into these businesses and organizations. It was everything my heart was asking for. But after running it for a while, I had a business mentor say to me, you know this isn't scalable. You know you can't provide for your family with this kind of nonsense work. And the more I spent time with this mentor, the more I believed that spirituality had no business in business or in leadership. And so I closed it and went full force on the other side of the pendulum. On the other side of the spectrum, I went full force, hard core, critical, logical, research, rational, public academic thinking. because that was my vocation for over twenty-seven years now. So at that time I had put that aside so I can do more spiritual alignment work and law of receiving, law of attraction work. And I remembered thinking, okay, he's right. This isn't sustainable. Let me bank on my brilliance, on my competence, on my years of consulting and leadership. And a PhD in leadership studies was going to get me to where I could sustain, scale an incredible business. And I went that direction. So I dropped all the spiritual work. I dropped that. Even in my personal life, I discontinued it because it was not fitting into who I thought I was supposed to become in this entrepreneurial space. And so I left my spiritual connection, my spiritual identity aside and went full force research company empire, right? I left all that there. And I have to say that age, life experience, pain, and the optional suffering has really got me thinking that I could do both. I can have a spiritual practice and help leaders be impactful, divinely assigned, fully embodied and present visionaries. I can do both. Why not marry what I love about spirituality and what I love about mysticism in particular through the lens of Christian mysticism? Why am I not integrating that and embodying it in my leadership practice? And so this has been the shift that has been occurring the last few months. And this is the latest download that I have received that I am really excited to pursue. And so the universal leader is someone who shows up into the leadership practice and Yes, with all of the knowledge that they need, the right mindset, the right skills, the right strategy. Of course, we're going to keep simplifying leadership for you, leader. But how about this component of spirituality? Where does that fit into your leadership practice? And it should be the primary thing that fuels your leadership practice. And so we're going to balance this out through this idea that is now fully fleshed out that I've been embodying called the universal leader. Now, the universal leader was an idea that came to me as I was reading Richard Rohr's The Universal Christ. And the premise of his book, and he's a Franciscan father, and the premise of his book is that the Christ mystery is in all of us. It wasn't just assigned to Jesus as we know the Christ, that there's Christ in every single one of us and in every single being. He talks about that Christ is not Jesus's last name, that we all get to experience this for ourselves, that it's not just assigned to a very specific anointed individual, but it is assigned to all of us. The anointing is for all of us. And so as I was reading his incredible book, and by the way, all his work is, has awoken something in me for sure. And I got this idea of the universal leader and the five pillars of the universal leader. And so we're going to go through these five pillars as I design these episodes moving forward so that you can hear about these five pillars of the universal leader. But the universal leader is a leader who Is leading with spirit first? Sure. I think the byproduct of serving in a leadership capacity is the salary, the title, the power. Those are byproducts. But I want to balance these two worlds out for you and mostly integrate both into who you are. So if you're someone who's feeling disconnected from the work that you were called to do, like I was, I was so disconnected. because of what the world told me I needed to do instead. And so I ignored the calling. I ignored the anointing. I didn't feel I was worthy of that. I felt like I couldn't have that in my leadership practice because it would dilute or it would diffuse my power as a leader. So I needed to almost eliminate that side of me altogether. And so what then happened? I got burnt out. I got jaded. I became competitive. I became envious. I became exhausted. And I was ready to fold up shop and end it all. Because I had forgotten what I was assigned to do. And that is to serve my community of leaders like you, like me and others who want to do leadership differently, who know that leadership is not just a job description. No, it's a divine assignment with sacred responsibility in leading those that you were called to lead. That is the universal leader. You want to be reconnected to why you're doing this in the first place. Because you are exhausted of trying to figure this out with your brain. With that gorgeous, beautiful brain that you have. You're tired of that. And you want to lead from a different place. Because you know it can be better. Because you know that this second half of your career can feel so fulfilling and purposeful. You can enjoy going to work and collaborating with your team and getting each one to express their unique gifts that were given to them as well. Like you are not wanting to hustle anymore. It's exhausting. That's old. Let's go. And plus, you know what? We have seen a lot of pain and suffering in our workforce. I mean, let's not even talk about before COVID. So much was happening before COVID, during COVID, after COVID, and now. The era that we are in, people are exhausted. People are not interested in authority figures. People are not interested in you pointing the finger and saying, you must do this. No, employees want more from what they're giving these organizations. They want to feel valued. They want to be seen as collaborative, sacred players in the mix. There's a lot of suffering happening right now. And our workforce is saying, I deserve cruelty-free leadership. And if the leader is not equipped to lead because of the trauma, because of the wounds, because of the gaping open wounds that they're carrying into the organization, If that has not been healed, if that has not been treated, employees are saying enough is enough. You can't keep treating us this way. You can't keep doing this to us. It is unfair and it is unjust and we deserve better treatment and we're going to go somewhere else. This is why you're having problems with high turnover. This is why we're having problems with organizational commitment and engagement. That's my specialty. This is what I went to university to study is the employee's commitment and engagement to the organization because of the leader that they respond to. That was my dissertation and that's been my work ever since. And so I help leaders through my curriculum, through my research, through now my current work in the Universal Leader. to see their employees as divinely gifted humans. So the universal leader sees their role in leadership very differently than the authoritative dictator-like leaders do. that are out there. And so that's the goal for the universal leader. And that's the goal for this fun, exciting new program that I'm offering. So you're going to hear a whole lot more about the universal leader. It's going to be, again, maybe an integration of spiritual growth and leadership mastery. I think that's what I'm going to call it. Spiritual growth meets leadership mastery. Because we must... You measure some things in leadership. We can't get away from that. That's how we earn our keep. But there's going to be a better way to do this. And it's going to be through the lens of spirituality and mysticism. And if you are interested in this ride, join me. I've got the door wide open for you. Come on in. I'm going to take the driver's seat. But listen, there's going to be times where you're going to have to drive the seat. We're So I am encouraging you, inviting you into this new space, an exciting one, and be with me as things unfold in real life, in real time. So get excited leader. All right. Please let me know what your thoughts are. DM me over on Instagram, over on LinkedIn. Those are my two primary places because I want to hear what your thoughts are on spirituality meeting the leadership mastery. Ooh, exciting. All right. I'll catch you very soon. Take care.
