Hey, everyone, I’m Saralyn Hodgkin. And this is the podcast to Practice Your Leadership.
Leadership is a practice. This is something that I talk about a lot.
Because I believe in it so much, there’s so many places where I see get your leadership training certificate, or just learn this one thing around communication or confidence. And it’s almost like there’s this invisible narrative of, if I just do this, then I’m a leader. If I just do that, then I’m in leadership, if I just have this title, I’m good to go. And I’ve got to tell you that that just kind of pisses me off.
It’s it’s this place where I see a need for a recognition that leadership is a practice. Part of that practice requires external skill building, of course, right? You want to have better public speaking skills? Yeah, you’re gonna need to do some skill building Sure. Even communication, effective communication, how do I actively listen? How do I keep my mouth shut? Because I talk too much, whatever it is, right? Like there are places where there is really specific skill building, but how do you even know what skills to build? If you are not reflecting on what is my leadership? What am I practicing right now? What am I aiming for? What is my winding path?
I see a lot of times people looking at some direction, understandably so through school, you know, oh, no, now you’re in grade three. Now you’re in grade four, like the direction is always there University is next. Don’t forget, Oh, are you doing a Master’s? No, you’re going to go be an accountant. Well, now you got to go through this wrong and then this wrong. And then you’ll be a CPA, the the consistency of a model that says here, in order for you to be accepted to belong, to have worth to show up at a party and say, well, this is what I do, you need to follow this path. And what I’m taking a stand for here is that you self author your path.
And that requires you to practice your leadership. And some of that is hard. Some of that means going right in that inner work that is required, and looking at all those narratives that go on on your head, to be able to sit and dwell in areas of real discomfort to notice your triggers, to see how you will have wounded yourself how you have been wounded, how you may be contributing to wounding others.
Leadership is a practice. And the only one who can design the path is you. So where do you talk about this stuff? Where’s the space to hold meaningful conversations around the practice of your leadership, self authoring your leadership path. This is why I created this podcast is that, in the decades I have been working with teams and one on one coaching and so on, a whole bunch of conversations have been had. And I feel that it could be really helpful for some if I just laid out a little bit of a podcast and shared a bit about what I’ve learned from these teams.
And the one on one coaching and advising on all the stuff that I’ve done in my own personal life, that maybe the time is now to create a podcast, just kind of a light version, to be able to share out some of this stuff in the hopes that you pick up what is yours to pick up that you are called to. So that you can stay in your practice. So that you self author your path, so that you feel not so alone in doing some of the inner work that is required.
So my intention here is that you take some of the learnings and some of the tools and you play with them a bit and bring them into practices in a way that shapes your own leadership journey. I’ll share here in this podcast, some things that I’ve done, why I’ve done them, what I learned along the way, to hopefully help you stay in your practice, because leadership is a practice. Do your work all.
Thanks. So I’m Sarah Lynn. You can find me at holonleadership.org. I walk alongside you as you practice your leadership
