Listen To Our Podcast Online.
In this episode, Michel discusses five lessons that loss can teach us about how to lead. She shares that last July, she lost her mom to stage four cancer. In December, she lost her aunt in law to stage four cancer and then in May she lost another aunt in law to stage four cancer.Â
Just three of the painful losses she chose to highlight. This episode could be entitled how cancer took so much from her last year or some variation on that.Â
Instead, she takes the opportunity to share the top 5 lessons she learned about how we can better lead based on what loss teaches. Michel admits she is speaking to herself as much as she is sharing these reflections and lessons with you:
Michel has learned is that there will always be something coming up. So she wants to encourage you to step forward with a bolder leadership coming out of this pandemic, coming out of such great loss globally. Coming out of any personal losses you may have experienced as well.
Leadership is shifting. leadership is demanding more. Let us go out and connect more with people. Let us deepen the relationships that we have. Let’s extend the community we’re a part of. Let’s include more people. Let’s get to know them, not just their names. Let’s go deeper to learn about their stories, to see how we connect with each other. And let’s move this ball forward.Â
What was the nature of your losses over the past couple years? What lessons did you learn that can inform our leadership?
Please go to UpSkillCommunity.com to review show notes and share your own stories of loss and the lessons you have learned so we can all UpSkill together.
Michel Shah:Â
In this episode. I discuss five lessons. That loss can teach us about how to lead Welcome to UpSkill Talks brought to you by McGraw Hill. I’m your host, Michel Shah lead UpSkiller at UpSkill Community. UpSkill Talks is a podcast for leaders, leaders who are actively seeking innovative and creative ways to interact lead themselves and others. In every episode, through real life stories and enlightening conversations, we will explore the challenge. And opportunities real leaders face in today’s everchanging workplace. We will present you with real strategies for you to leverage your soft skills and produce transformative results. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Let us begin. In the last year. Our family has been impacted by a number of significant losses. Last year. It was my mom, stage four cancer. December it was my aunt in law, stage four cancer. May it was another aunt in law, stage four cancer. The amount of losses that we’ve had. Over COVID none to COVID. Just a number of unfortunate losses, have really shaken up our family and really, really brought home some very important lessons. And that’s what I want to share with you today. But before I share the lessons, I want to let you know that these three women that I am talking about today, We’re late sixties, early seventies of vibrant women. Beautiful, attractive women. Women who were anchors in our family, matriarchs women who held up the post of community leaders, women who opened up their homes. To children, their children, the neighbor’s children, their siblings, children, then grandchildren, and then great grandchildren, the neighbors, friends. Whomever needed a place to be, to stay to refuge. These are women who were those community anchors. These are women too. Who had big dreams that they kept putting off. They were going to get to go see this part of the world. But something came up. And then another thing came up and then it was a grandchild’s graduation or somebody’s wedding or somebody’s funeral. And something else comes up and something else comes up and something keeps getting in the way. Of the things that they wanted to do for themselves, something came up and another thing came up. And then there time came up. So just yesterday. I was at another funeral celebrating the life of one of these women, the third. Five months apart, back-to-back-to-back. And it struck me. That there are so many things we take for granted as leaders. And I think death, loss, grief can teach us so much about how we are going to need to lead in this new climate. While I was at to the funeral service, just outside, before the repass, I overheard a conversation. And in that conversation. Two women were talking and one said, I am tired of going to funerals. I don’t want to go to any more funerals. And the other one responded right away. I guess we’ll become into yours soon. And the reality struck me. That. death is truly a part of our lives. As long as we’re here. Well, what can we learn? What can we learn? When we think about the lives of people who have been anchors, who have contributed. And they’ve left everything that they have behind. But not really everything because at the funeral. Was a huge community that came out. To share to celebrate to honor. To show respect. And I really think that’s what we leave behind. That’s our legacy, the people that we touch, the people that we have brought into our world, the people. That come to show up. To say goodbye to celebrate us. And so. As the funeral came to an end and I had a quiet moment. I pause to think about the lessons, that we could take away from this funeral, these funerals. And I know some of you have had a lot of losses yourself. The lessons we take away from this and how can we translate this into meaningful lessons for our leadership. So five things I want us to reflect on together. And I want you to add to the list because you may have some ideas that I haven’t thought about. But number one for me. Is that we as leaders must cultivate a culture of gratitude. Understanding that every day that we show up to our jobs, whether we love it or we hate it. Is a gift. The ability to hate your job is a gift. The ability to be frustrated is a gift we are here. These are emotions that we’re experiencing the ability to experience. This is a gift we are here, that culture of gratitude. If we can really inculcate that into ourselves and our people, that’s a gift that we can leave behind. So I really believe number one. Is cultivate a culture of gratitude. Number two. Cultivate a culture of wellbeing. I realized. Oh, my goodness. We really truly do have one body and we are our bodies. You need the body to do the work. We need the bodies to be around, to continue making our contributions, to connect, to enjoy each other’s company. We need these bodies to take care of our children, our families. And our children, our families, they need us, and they need us to take care of these bodies. And so how do we cultivate a culture of wellbeing, understanding that that’s how we’re going to be able to last and be able to enjoy our lives. And I’m speaking more to myself now than to you, as we are reflecting on lost together. How do we unplug from time to time and give our bodies time to recuperate. This is something that I am going to be intentionally working on, like truly unplugging, because over the last five or six years, every time I’ve taken vacation, I’ve always said you can reach out to me. Just email me, just call me, just reach out to me. Because I feel somehow that I’m being helpful. But this year, I actually want to take the vacation and literally take the break. And so I want to encourage you to think about whether or not you’re truly unplugging and giving yourself time. To re, to refresh. To replenish. Just to revitalize yourself. I leadership lesson. Is there. Need to unplug. For greater wellbeing. And to consider that for your people as well. Lesson number three. It’s how do we cultivate? Culture of care of compassion, of empathy, of forgiveness. We have to learn to give each other wiggle room. A little room to make mistakes, little room to take risks, little room to say, I’m sorry, little room to say the wrong thing. And. Be able to apologize and be able to keep it moving. A little room. To know the difference between what’s really big and meaningful, and what’s really small and petty, just a little bit of a wiggle room. When we understand the impact of loss. And the value of this wonderful experience that we have called life that I think we need to spend a little bit more time cultivating this culture, where we focus on the big things. And let some of the little things go learn to forgive each other and learn to start over, to reset, to refresh. That’s number three Number four. We need to cultivate more connections and greater sense of community. We need to belong. We need to build relationships. And if we have relationships and a lot of relationships, we need to deepen the relationships. So many people are engaging in these superficial relationships. I was recently at an event and someone said to me, what a pleasure, what a wonderful surprise to be at an event where we’re not talking about what’s the weather on your side of town. Oh, did you see that storm come through? Where we only talk about the weather and the superficial realities? But can we go a little bit deeper to learning about each other’s stories to really begin to talk to each other and learn about each other and connect at a deeper, more meaningful level. This is who we are. This is why we’re here to get to know each other. Let’s do that. Let’s cultivate greater connections, better relationships. Let’s build a community. Let’s show up. Supporting each other, caring about. About each other less built on learn from let’s share strategies and tips with each other. Let’s come together, less forum our communities. I see in funerals, the community. That people have left behind how I get to meet new people at a funeral whom I’ve never met and feel like I’ve known them forever. Because the person that’s gone cultivated a community that I was a part of, even though I didn’t meet everyone. Unfortunately it’s the funeral for the first time that I’m meeting so many members of our community. I want us to think more intentionally about how we cultivate community and how we get to know the people in our community to share to care. And to engage with. That’s number four. Lesson number five. It’s the last lesson I’m going to leave you with. And I want you to add yours to this list. We have to do it now. The time is now. Because we don’t know what tomorrow brings. If we are here or we’ll be talked about tomorrow. This time calls for bold leadership. For us to understand that time flies. I look at my children and realize, oh my, I just had these children. How can I be talking to these adults right now? Time flies. We want to make sure we’re doing the bold things. Now we’re taking those risks that we always thought about. We’re doing the things that scare us. We’re saying the things we’re building, the relationships we’re going out and we’re innovating, creating. Taken the chances connecting, networking, we are doing the things that we’re thinking about and the way tend to do. I put in off because something else has coming up and something else is coming up. And I want to tell you right now, what I’ve learned is that there will always be something coming up. So I want to encourage you to step forward with a bolder leadership coming out of this pandemic, coming out of such great loss globally. And a lot of us very personally. Step into a Boulder leadership. What I realized is that the lockdown has put some of us back into even further into our closed in locked in comfort zones. A few people are waking up out of our comfort zones, but a lot of us are still fast asleep. With no intention to wake up. A lot of us are still very sleepy. And so it’s time for us to wake up and then gauge with Boulder leadership. Leadership is shifting. leadership is demanding more. We’re asking for leaders who can cultivate a culture of gratitude, of wellbeing, of equity, of engagement, of connection. We have a responsibility to create. And that’s going to take high levels of engagement. It’s going to take bold leadership is going to take risk taken. It’s going to take making mistakes. It’s going to take giving room for forgiveness and forgiving yourself. I’ve learned a lot from loss. I’m so grateful that I’m here to share these lessons with you. I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to step into a Bolder and Bolder leadership. And I invite you to let us, let us go out and connect more with people. Let us deepen the relationships that we have. Let’s extend the community, that we’re a part of. Let’s include more people. Let’s get to know them, not just their names and their date of birth. Let’s go deeper to learn about their stories, to see how we connect with each other. And let’s move this ball forward. Let’s wake up. From this pandemic and let’s step into a bolder version of you. Those are the five lessons that I am pulling out of loss. Taken them and applying them to leadership and sharing them with you. Let’s build a culture of gratitude. Let’s build a culture of wellbeing. Let’s build a culture of care, compassion, empathy, forgiveness. Let’s build greater connections. Let’s build out our community. Let’s get to know each other at a deeper level. We’ll find out how much we belong to each other and are connected to each other. And now is the time. To go boldly where you’ve never gone before. Go out and do the things you always want to do. Don’t put it off. Don’t put it off. Don’t put it off because we do not know. How much time we have to get it done. Thank you for listening to this episode of UpSkill Talks brought to you by McGraw Hill. We bring you new episodes every Monday. Please take a moment to subscribe, leave a five star rating and a written review at apple podcast. Or follow us on. By Google podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, don’t forget to share upscale talks with other leaders like yourself. So they too may gain the skills and insights to produce amazing results. Please go to UpSkillCommunity.com to review show notes and learn how you can join a community of leaders from across the. Collaborating to lead in a more meaningful and impactful way. I’m your host, Michel Shah. And again, thank you for joining me on this episode of UpSkill Talks.
There was a problem reporting this post.
Please confirm you want to block this member.
You will no longer be able to:
Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete.