Introduction: Is Leadership a Learned Skill?

In this inaugural episode of Love and Leadership, hosts Kristen Brun Sharkey and Mike Sharkey introduce themselves and their unique approach to leadership development. Can leadership truly be learned, or are great leaders born? 

With backgrounds spanning from tech and improv to hospitality and classical music, Kristen and Mike offer fresh perspectives on this age-old question. They dive into their personal leadership philosophies, discussing concepts like “extreme ownership” and emotional intelligence. Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, this episode promises practical insights to help you level up your leadership game. Plus, get a sneak peek at upcoming topics that will help you lead with both your head and your heart - and maybe even crack a smile along the way.

Highlights

• Meet Kristen Brun Sharkey and Mike Sharkey, the hosts of Love and Leadership [0:46]
• Kristen's journey from marketing to improv-based leadership coaching [3:42]
• Mike's diverse career path from classical musician to senior living executive [8:45]
• Mike's leadership philosophy: Extreme Ownership [14:23]
• Kristen's emphasis on emotional intelligence in leadership [18:57]
• Discussion on whether leadership can be learned [21:23]
• The advantages of learning leadership skills versus relying on innate abilities [24:55]
• The importance of a growth mindset and humility in leadership [29:42]
• Overview of upcoming episodes and resources for listeners [32:56]

Links & Resources Mentioned

• It's Your Ship by Captain Michael Abrashoff
• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
• Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
• The Bear (TV series)

Get your FREE 5 Day Leadership Reset Challenge guide here: https://llpod.link/challenge

Podcast Website: www.loveandleadershippod.com
Instagram: @loveleaderpod

Follow us on LinkedIn!
Kristen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenbsharkey/
Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-s-364970111/

Learn more about Kristen's leadership coaching and facilitation services: http://www.emboldify.com

Transcript

Episode 001 - Introduction
===

[00:00:00] Welcome

[00:00:06] to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator. And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

[00:00:23] Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books and interview inspiring guests. Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

[00:00:46] Kristen: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the very first episode of Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey.

[00:00:56] Mike: and I'm Mike Sharkey,

[00:00:57] Kristen: And we are really excited to be here with you. And if you happen to be listening on our launch day or shortly after, this is the first of three episodes that are on your feed now.

[00:01:13] So this very first one will be a little bit of a different format. We're going to spend some time talking about who we are, why we're doing this podcast, and particularly the topic of, is leadership a learned skill. And then our other two episodes that are live , one of them is on the topic of executive presence.

[00:01:34] That's a discussion format. And then we're also going to do our first episode where we go through a book and talk about our key takeaways. And our one for that is Boundaries for Leaders which is by Dr. Henry Cloud. But for today, let's start with who, who we are.

[00:01:58] Mike: That's a

[00:01:58] big question. Way to go existential 

[00:02:01] Kristen: Oh no. 

[00:02:02] Mike: From the get go.

[00:02:03] Kristen: Oh no. I did not mean to go existential with 

[00:02:05] Mike: you.

[00:02:05] You invited me to this podcast, so you should know what you're getting.

[00:02:08] getting And you married me. 

[00:02:11] Kristen: I did, I did marry you.

[00:02:13] Mike: Want to start there with how we met? Should I tell everybody that you blew me off for our first date?

[00:02:20] Is this too soon?

[00:02:23] Kristen: I'm making a really strong impression with our listeners, I'm sure.

[00:02:27] Mike: Well, we found out more later on about why you had trouble with being on time.

[00:02:35] And you were a little bit late for our second, for our actual first date. Yeah. Hmm.

[00:02:42] Kristen: For listeners, our, what was supposed to be our first date (we met online) was , it was going to be like a coffee date and it was a really busy weekend and I kind of woke up. I wasn't feeling great. Yeah. So I, I kind of last minute bailed.

[00:03:00] Mike: huh.

[00:03:01] Kristen: And then our actual first date, I was like 30 minutes late.

[00:03:06] Mike: probably closer to 45.

[00:03:08] Kristen: all right now. But um, here we are.

[00:03:10] Mike: I really stuck around for that.

[00:03:12] Kristen: Yeah, well.

[00:03:13] Mike: I must have been desperate. 

[00:03:15] Kristen: Or you were just so transfixed by my awesomeness. 

[00:03:20] Mike: I it's answer B. Yes 

[00:03:21] Kristen: Yes, yes. But um, yeah, two and a half years later, here we are. We got married last year and 

[00:03:27] Mike: We did.

[00:03:27] Kristen: Funny enough, I think leadership development was a topic on our first date. I'm pretty sure either the first or second date we kind of bonded over the fact that it's something that we both care very deeply about.

[00:03:42] Mike: We started talking about all the books that we've read. Not just, I mean, leadership books, but also like, I don't love the term self help books, you know, but books of, um, introspection and, how to improve yourself, improve your life, improve your work, improve your... I'm always looking to improve.

[00:04:02] So at some point I found out that people actually wrote about these things and studied these things in depth and that that was kind of a taking off point for me.

[00:04:14] That got you the third date, by the way. 

[00:04:17] Kristen: Okay, okay.

[00:04:19] He acts like he was all, all cool. and

[00:04:22] Mike: Oh I was cool. 

[00:04:23] Kristen: Yeah, 

[00:04:24] Mike: for that brief period in time. 

[00:04:26] Okay, great. So why don't we kind of do a little background and talk about how we got here. 

[00:04:34] 

[00:04:36] Mike: So for our listeners, we are now on our third attempt to record our backgrounds. Both Kristen and I, despite trying to give very brief summaries of our background, have both given 15 minute, cover letters to job interviews.

[00:04:53] It's hard to describe your. Background in your life and how you got to the point where you think you're qualified to to start a leadership podcast without like giving your entire CV

[00:05:08] Kristen: We're going to spare you from our interview version of what our background is and attempt to go with shorter versions, but to start on my end.

[00:05:21] So I interestingly originally thought I was probably going to be a professional musician, which is something that Mike and I have in common, , but I played the flute very seriously. It became pretty apparent about a year into college that it was not really going to be the right career path for me.

[00:05:39] So that really led me to my business degree and going into marketing. I spent the first several years of my career at a digital ad agency, which was amazing for a lot of reasons. It's a lot of work hard, play hard. Everybody's young and it's also a lot of opportunities because there's so much turnover and, and growth within there.

[00:06:04] So I had my first management job when I was a year and a half out of college and it was, an amazing learning experience. I just got promoted into increasing roles of greater number of team members and responsibility, and that really kind of gave me the foundation for a lot of what I talk about with leadership now, After that, I spent kind of the rest of my corporate career in ad tech, both from like a startup to Yahoo slash Verizon, which was my last corporate job prior to becoming a solopreneur, but that was many iterations and I had multiple roles leading different teams while I was there. And I, At some point in that job, I kind of always known that I was probably going to do my own business. My dad was a small business coach and facilitator.

[00:07:04] So I kind of had that in my blood and I wasn't really sure what my angle was going to be until I started doing improv about eight years ago. And it was just completely on a whim. I just took a class and I was like, Oh, you know, that was kind of fun. Maybe I'll take another class and then maybe I'll take a six week level one class.

[00:07:26] And then before I knew it, I had been doing it nonstop for a year and a half and I was performing regularly and I was just absolutely in love with it. And at some point I actually looked back and I realized that it was giving me all of these benefits for my career and how I showed up at work and how confident and creative and communicative and just all of these other qualities that were growing as a result of rewiring my brain through improv.

[00:08:00] So that is now the center of what I do for work. I do executive coaching, I facilitate workshops. retreats, off sites, et cetera, and my signature is doing these workshops that are based on applying principles from improv theater to leadership development. So leadership is my absolute favorite thing to talk about, which led me here. 

[00:08:26] Mike: My turn. Okay, great. I have a pretty diverse background. My first career, I was a fairly successful classical musician. I was a classical percussionist, symphonic percussionist rather. Because classical really is a period, not a style of music, if you will.

[00:08:45] And after that, I worked in restaurants for 17 years. I went from, playing in the Houston Symphony to washing dishes in a restaurant, and I'm sure we will hash that out over the life of this podcast. After, almost two decades in restaurants, I found my way into hotels. It was a pretty Just normal dovetail, like, oh, it's service industry instead of iced tea I'm getting people towels. Okay. So I did that for about a decade. And then I transitioned very briefly into HOA management, and then to my current industry, which is senior living. I run a RCFE, it is a residential care facility for the elderly. We are licensed by, the Department of Social Services, not the medical wing of the government, and we provide housing and food and activities and some assistance with Activities of Daily Life.

[00:09:45] So that's where I am now. And my background in leadership. I've always been an ardent student of history, especially military history. So I was always very familiar with the idea of the leader, right?

[00:09:59] And for me, that was often a great general. But to me, I didn't really know that it was a skill that you could break down and you could study and you can improve. And I had a vice president while I was working in hotels, take all of the front office managers in our cluster to, a one day, you know, offsite.

[00:10:20] And it was a little unusual because you wouldn't normally interact that much with your vice president as a front office manager. There's a couple layers of management in between you. But he thought that this leadership development seminar was so important that he pulled us out of our hotels at absolutely the busiest time of the year.

[00:10:37] We were all like stressed to the gills because you don't know what's going on in your hotel while you're not there. But, He had, he had three books. There were three of us, um, in the little cluster and he had three books to share. And one of them was It's Your Ship by, Captain Michael Abershoff. And I am the son and grandson of some Navy men.

[00:10:59] Uh, so I gravitated toward that right away. Opening that book and reading it was a revelation. It was beautiful. Both in that, He was an amazingly successful leader and that also that it kind of clicked for me like oh, this is a This is a subject that I can study that I can learn I've probably now read, I don't know, 200 leadership books.

[00:11:23] I just didn't stop. Once I start on something, I just dig in and keep going. So I was lucky to meet Kristen. We got married and we kind of share the same nerdy passion. So here we are doing a podcast about leadership. We're all going to explore this together, try and get better at it and try and help other people. 

[00:11:44] Kristen: Yeah.

[00:11:45] I think that's part of the reason why we wanted to do this podcast. I mean, for one thing, we're both so passionate about leadership, and especially helping leaders at all levels to get to wherever the next step in their career is.

[00:12:04] Um, but also we come at leadership from very different backgrounds and industries, and I, um, I have like more like the education side of things, I guess. I actually did forget to mention. You have a 

[00:12:20] Mike: you have a master's degree in leadership. And what is the second part of that

[00:12:24] Kristen: it's a master's in management strategy and leadership

[00:12:27] from 

[00:12:28] Mike: don't, I don't have any, I don't have any of those fancy schmancy college degrees. I'm from the school of hard knocks. I'm not really. I worked in vegetarian restaurants in New York. Like there's a level of, of intensity and brutality in, in, uh, restaurants that I personally never experienced. If you've ever read, George Orwell's autobiography, if you haven't, you should.

[00:12:55] It's called Down and Out in Paris and London, and it's quite transformative. The whole, the book is, is George Orwell when he's basically homeless, and he's homeless in London and homeless in Paris and living in these like flop houses, and he's working 18, 20 hours a day in, you know, Parisian hotel kitchens that are,

[00:13:17] it

[00:13:18] sounds like the first level of hell, you know, but it's so romantic and beautiful, like it'll make you fall in love with the, fall in love with the industry.

[00:13:27] Kristen: It does sound a little bit like The Bear.

[00:13:30] Mike: The Bear, if anyone's watching The Bear, The Bear is a pretty good We're watching season three right now. It's a pretty stylized love letter to restaurant life and chef life. But there's a lot of accuracy there, including the mental health challenges that one will experience when one works a hundred hours a week at a restaurant, obsessively focused on attaining some sort of externally validated goal, which we can talk about. But, you know, got to get that Michelin star, got to get that Michelin star.

[00:14:04] Kristen: Yeah, and I think that, yeah, the fact that we come from these kind of different backgrounds and perspectives, but we, we tend to be pretty aligned in our approach to, to leadership.

[00:14:15] I mean, like, what would you say, Mike, is like your overall philosophy on leadership in, if you had to do it in 30 seconds or less.

[00:14:23] Mike: If I have to do it in 30 seconds or less, I, you know, I'm going to steal from, you know, my own leadership mentors, especially Jocko, Jocko Willink, his book, Extreme Ownership. That's kind of my overall leadership philosophy. As the leader, you are fully responsible for everything that happens. above you and below you and you have to take, he says extreme ownership. It's, it's kind of a, a mentality where you don't ever blame anybody else. You, you know, if, if I have a line cook, that's not getting it, I don't say this guy's just not getting it. I say, I have not explained this clearly enough to him, or I have not figured out how he learns, or I have not spent enough time with him, something like that.

[00:15:08] You know, if my vice president is not giving me the resources that I need to accomplish my mission, it's the same thing. It's I haven't, I have not done a good enough job leading up the chain of command to explain to him why I need these things and you take that responsibility. So overall, that's, that's my first principles of leadership I really got from him and I've employed it very effectively.

[00:15:35] Kristen: And we actually will be doing that

[00:15:38] book pretty early on in our

[00:15:40] Mike: You didn't want to do it early on, but we're doing it early on.

[00:15:45] Kristen: I haven't read it to be fair

[00:15:47] Mike: I have tried to play that in the car so many times.

[00:15:50] Kristen: have absolutely it's usually at a point where I'm not in the mood to listen to an audiobook

[00:15:55] Mike: audiobook. You're playing Sudoku. I'm like, you gotta listen to this.

[00:15:57] It's so amazing. She's like, 1, 3, 5, 3, 1, 5.

[00:16:04] Kristen: Yes, well, I don't know, something to do with ADHD, I do a lot of playing games while doing other things, but.

[00:16:10] Mike: I love you the way you are.

[00:16:12] Kristen: That's a tangent,

[00:16:14] Mike: Well,, there's going to be a lot of tangents. Everybody needs to get used to it. If you're going to listen to this podcast strap in because I give Ted talks and my, my lovely wife, as she mentioned, has recently been diagnosed with ADHD and it's pretty fascinating. She has a neurodivergent brain, but the more I like looked into it and the more I watched how she does things. This is, and from my unscientific background, I see it as an adaptation and an evolution of humanity. So we're literally watching human evolution.

[00:16:50] And I think some of these things that people are writing off as different, neurodivergence, things like that, they're actually the beginning of, um, a biological evolution. And I teased her, I'm like, you're an advanced being.

[00:17:06] Kristen: like, sure. I'll take that

[00:17:07] Mike: Well, we joke, she has two ways of working. She can either get 30 minutes of work done in 8 hours, or 8 hours of work done in 30 minutes.

[00:17:17] I've never seen anything like it. 

[00:17:19] Kristen: Just completely, yes, the memes

[00:17:21] are completely accurate.

[00:17:23] for me.

[00:17:23] Mike: completely accurate. 

[00:17:24] Kristen: accurate. Yeah, and I think actually that would be an interesting episode down the road, talking about, for leaders with, especially like inattentive ADHD, especially women who are getting diagnosed at crazy rates in the last few years as the understanding of ADHD has gotten a lot better and how it shows up in women and girls. That would be an interesting episode down the road. 

[00:17:48] Mike: You know, I'm an introvert. I'm a real introvert. You know, I spent my music years practicing in a practice room eight hours a day by myself.

[00:17:57] You know, I've done a lot of things that are very like. meditative and focused. I learned to be a woodworker. I'd spend six hours just working on a dovetail box, you know, , so I've had to adapt my personality and my behavior to be a more effective leader. And then I've read more about introverted leaders as well, because, you know, at some point in this series, we're going to talk about leadership presence and how that goes. How does that go in hand with being, an introvert or having ADHD or, you know, there's not one formula for being a leader.

[00:18:31] You know, you have to kind of find out who you are and what people need and somehow, like, make them meet.

[00:18:39] Kristen: Yeah, and I guess as far as my leadership philosophy. I think emotional intelligence is at the center of leaders and is so critical for effectiveness and engagement and retention over time.

[00:18:57] So that's something we'll, we'll be talking a lot about on this podcast and the components of that, like around awareness of both yourself and others and empathy and regulation and so forth. But, um, the other phrase I go back to a lot with leaders is the fact that great leaders make more great leaders. The central role of a leader is not to necessarily be the smartest person in the room. They're not, they don't need to know everything, right? It's ultimately about like, how, how can you create more leaders within your organization? And I go back to that a lot.

[00:19:41] Mike: I, I'd agree with that. I found that in actually the book in extreme ownership. He said the number one job of leaders is make more leaders, you know, and it's very contrary, like leadership is actually very contrary to the Western kind of archetype of what a leader is, you know, courageous individual winning by himself.

[00:20:01] It's kind of the Harry Potter model. If you watch the Harry Potter movies, it's very, Harry's the hero and everybody else is very much secondary, right? That's the hero. That's the leader. We, we glorify, you know, the generals in World War II. We all knew who Patton was, things like that. But it turns out that as a leader, the best thing you can do is teach other people, decentralize your mission and get everybody on board with a shared vision rather than controlling everything. Because it's exhausting and it doesn't work.

[00:20:34] So I second that and echo that. I think that's very smart.

[00:20:38] So I guess that's what we're doing. We're here to make more leaders.

[00:20:40] Kristen: We're here to make more leaders. Yep. Yep. Definitely comes back to our passion. And hopefully it will be enjoyable as well.

[00:20:50] We'll 

[00:20:50] Mike: see about 

[00:20:51] Kristen: that. 

[00:20:51] That. We'll see.

[00:20:53] There may be some tangents ahead.

[00:20:54] I'll edit out the worst ones.

[00:20:56] Well, I think this, this all kind of leads into our topic for this first podcast other than introducing ourselves and what this podcast is, and that is around is leadership, something that can be learned, like the classic, are leaders born or are leaders made? And if you've listened this far, you probably have a good idea of what our answers are on that.

[00:21:23] I think we're very much both strongly of the opinion that leadership is something that you can learn and develop, and there are definitely skills that help you in that process, but even emotional intelligence, which I think a lot of people assume is something that's very innate is very much something can

[00:21:43] Mike: be developed. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because you mentioned that as such an important thing.

[00:21:48] And I think one of the things that's helped me be successful is I have such high emotional intelligence. And that is not from a good reason necessarily. It's kind of from how I grew up kind of emotionally monitoring the people around me for different reasons, which is not a healthy way to grow up as a child, but it turned me into very, like, I know what people are kind of feeling and thinking, and I'm always watching facial expressions, and so I haven't had to learn that piece per se, so if I could learn from you how you break that down and teach, that would be awesome, so.

[00:22:26] I'm looking forward to that episode. 

[00:22:28] Kristen: Yes, that is definitely its own episode, if not a series of episodes.

[00:22:32] Mike: Yeah. It's a series now. And, I think coming from tech you guys talk about that a lot. And you train on that a lot. In, in other industries we talk about it. But we don't do much in the way of actually like honing these skills.

[00:22:48] We don't know how to. And we don't have the time to, and the resources to, so hopefully this will serve as a tool for people that want to grow their skills and capacity.

[00:23:02] Kristen: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I was also looking up has anybody done like meta studies on, how well can leadership be learned and there is a lot of research on the effectiveness of training programs like organizational training and leadership development that shows really positive outcomes both for individuals and teams and for organizations.

[00:23:27] So I think there's also a, a lot of evidence that supports the notion that leadership is absolutely something that can be learned. Like if you are willing to put in the work, it doesn't mean it's going to be easy because we all have our blind spots and our areas that are much more difficult than others.

[00:23:49] But, if you're willing to put in the work and make it happen. Go through the kind of discomfort of maybe getting some difficult feedback and really going through that.

[00:24:00] Mike: So much difficult feedback.

[00:24:01] Kristen: Yeah.

[00:24:02] Mike: Oh my God, so much difficult feedback 

[00:24:04] Kristen: And this skill building is uncomfortable. Everybody goes back to the cliche of riding a bike, which is funny because like, I never really like successfully learned how to ride a bike. Like I had to refresh myself as an adult because I just didn't ride my bike enough as a kid to apparently have that become muscle memory, but it's, but I've learned how to ride a bike as an adult and a

[00:24:30] Mike: I don't think I've ever seen you ride a bike.

[00:24:32] Kristen: Yeah, I mean,

[00:24:33] Mike: I'm a little scared.

[00:24:34] Kristen: I'm not a huge fan of it, I think, for those reasons.

[00:24:38] Mike: You swim great though

[00:24:39] Kristen: What?

[00:24:40] Mike: You swim great.

[00:24:41] Kristen: Oh yeah. I swim like a fish. But yeah, biking not so much. But

[00:24:46] Mike: I would almost I would like to say too. I think it's almost I think it's probably better that it's a skill that you need to learn than one that you're born with.

[00:24:55] Because usually when people say the part of leadership that you're born with is the charisma, public speaking charisma, which are and can be, especially public speaking, super, super important components of leadership presence and being a leader. However, I have observed in the many disciplines that I have learned over the years, The people that have to put in the effort rather than the ones that are born with it.

[00:25:25] They're certainly better teachers. I knew a violinist in Rice. She was talented in a way that I couldn't understand. I mean, she, it was like Beautiful Mind. I mean, she could sight read a Bach sonata. At like, at a performance level, she could play through it once or twice and give a, give a performance for, you know, the partita number one or whatever.

[00:25:49] Amazing violinist. I don't remember her being a great teacher because she doesn't know how she did that. She just did that. It's A Beautiful Mind. It's like he doesn't know how he does the math, right? If you have to figure out things, leadership is a step by step thing that you can learn or you figure it out step by step, you make mistakes, you seek wisdom you seek knowledge. And you are going to be better off in the long run than somebody with a big voice and a charismatic personality.

[00:26:21] Kristen: Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. Yes, I can say it was very annoying to learn skiing from people who have skied their entire lives and never really given any thought to what movements they do to accomplish certain things.

[00:26:36] So yeah, I think that is absolutely something to be said for learning leadership, like you naturally have an edge in the creating more leaders.

[00:26:47] Mike: And teaching it, right?

[00:26:49] I had a jiu jitsu professor who at one point in his pedagogical efforts with us made us start teaching a move at the end of class, or like a short series of moves to a submission, like position, transition, submission. And you find out very quickly how much you don't understand when you're trying to explain it to somebody else, but as you explain it to somebody else, and I found this when I became a music teacher, you know, I was very talented.

[00:27:19] I figured things out as a musician, but now I had to slow down and back off and explain, you know, the way the pinky works to a middle schooler. Or you go through this much more elaborate process and teaching the move in jiu jitsu to a, to 20 people, 30 people watching you, you internalize it and process it in a different way.

[00:27:44] Extrapolate, elongate, and really get into a finer detail than you would if you didn't have to break it down and explain it. 

[00:27:55] Kristen: Yeah.

[00:27:56] Yeah, so I guess our shared answer to the question of, can leadership be learned is yes, and it's almost more of an advantage if you have to learn it.

[00:28:06] Mike: And Kristen, should you learn leadership?

[00:28:09] Absolutely,

[00:28:12] Because I'll tell you, responsibility is not all it's cracked up to be. I miss that, I miss that doorman job.

[00:28:20] Kristen: I think there's a difference between learning how to lead and, and being in like a management

[00:28:28] Mike: Oh, okay. In corporate America. Those are different.

[00:28:31] Kristen: They can, yes, they can be.

[00:28:32] Mike: Let's talk about that.

[00:28:34] Kristen: Yeah, I mean, there's absolutely ways that you can be a leader in terms of influencing stakeholders cross functionally and being, a mentor and an influence for the people on your team without necessarily having a manager title. Like, you can very much be an individual contributor.

[00:28:54] Mike: You definitely don't need a leadership position or a title to be a leader.

[00:29:01] Something that I regret learning so late. I was definitely a little bit of a problem on some teams. Because I knew everything. I was right. I was so smart.

[00:29:13] They should do it my way. Why aren't they listening to me? It was fun. Yeah. People loved having me on their team. It was great.

[00:29:20] Kristen: Absolutely. Sounds, sounds like a dream. But, no. We all learn as we age and go through experiences. 

[00:29:28] Mike: Some of us the hard way. 

[00:29:31] Kristen: But I think part of what that comes down to as well is, what does it take to learn how to become a great leader is to have a growth mindset, which you absolutely do.

[00:29:42] Mike: Of course.

[00:29:43] Kristen: I mean, you may have been more arrogant in earlier years of your life. I didn't know you then, but you have like a deep value of learning and growing, and I think that brings a certain humility. As a leader, right? 

[00:30:00] If you're always looking for the next way that you can improve something, that you can grow as a person, as a leader, then it's going to make you a far better leader for the people who work for you too.

[00:30:15] Mike: Yeah, humility is the most important trait a leader can have. It doesn't matter how far up your position. You said something earlier like, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room. In fact, it's better when you're not. That's a hard concept for a lot of people and probably for, I don't know, for men, you know, we're men very much are inherently competitive with each other as we, you know, I have some introspection on that, but especially in the West, we come from a background of hunter gatherers. As opposed to Eastern civilizations, which were farmers for far longer. And in an agrarian society, you have to work together with dozens of people. And if you don't, you're all going to die. But hunter gatherer is the exact opposite. It means everyone that I meet in the forest is competition for the very limited resources to keep me and my family alive.

[00:31:14] And I think we still see subconsciously, especially in the business world and the work world, you know, everybody's competition. It's hard to subjugate your ego and say, Oh, actually, I don't know how that works. Can you show me? Or can you teach me what you know? Or how did you do that?

[00:31:31] Or how do you think about that? 

[00:31:33] Kristen: I think imposter syndrome can be the enemy of that. 

[00:31:36] Mike: That's a whole episode. 

[00:31:39] Kristen: Is going to be one of our earlier episodes.

[00:31:40] Mike: That's a series for me. 

[00:31:43] Kristen: For I mean, for basically every client I work with, It is very much a key topic.

[00:31:51] Mike: So what have we, we've done some background.

[00:31:54] You got to meet us. We're awesome. Listen to our show. Uh, you can absolutely become a leader and grow your career and grow your own, grow your own life. And, uh, what else?

[00:32:06] Kristen: Yeah, I think that's, that's pretty much it. We would love, if you rated 

[00:32:14] Mike: Oh, right. Like, subscribe. 

[00:32:16] Kristen: review, subscribe, 

[00:32:17] Mike: on the bell. Hit the bell icon. Is there a bell icon on Spotify?

[00:32:23] Kristen: Um,

[00:32:23] Mike: Or on podcasts? 

[00:32:24] Kristen: I don't.

[00:32:26] well, I don't know. I don't . There's a subscribe button.

[00:32:30] Mike: Well, you should subscribe because we're awesome.

[00:32:32] Yes. 

[00:32:32] Kristen: And you,

[00:32:34] Mike: This is going to be good.

[00:32:35] Kristen: again, if you're watching or watching, if you're listening in our launch week, you have two more episodes to listen to right now. And we look forward to continuing the discussion with you. 

[00:32:47] Mike: Cool, can we get pizza now? 

[00:32:49] Kristen: Yes, let's absolutely order pizza. 

[00:32:52] Mike: Cool.

[00:32:53] Bye everyone.

[00:32:55] 

[00:32:56] The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram at @loveleaderpod..

[00:33:19] You can also find more information on our website loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.