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Hosted by veteran communications strategist and leadership trainer J.Marie, Your Friend in Leadership is an inspiring and approachable podcast created to empower today’s public leaders. Each episode delivers strategic insights, transformative ideas, and actionable communication tools to help you better connect with your communities and move your mission forward. With deep appreciation for the important work of public leaders and the knowledge that leadership and communication are skills that can be built and improved, this podcast is your guide to confident and effective leadership every step of the way.
Greetings, friends. I am delighted you have found your way to this little nook in the podcast community. My name is J.Marie, and I'm a veteran communication strategist and leadership trainer with more than a quarter century of experience in the public, nonprofit, and utility sectors. In that time, I've helped superintendents and school directors navigate tragedies and crises. I've helped utilities and tribes reach agreement on complex environmental issues, and I facilitated international leadership teams to help them refine their focus and reinvigorate their work.
J.Marie:I am known for bringing a balance of strategic thought, connection of big ideas and a heart for the people who are actually doing the work. And I bring all of that together, and I'm delighted to put those skills and that experience to use for you. My goals here today with this podcast are to support all people, but especially public leaders, to be your best self, to tie your work more closely to your values, to connect more deeply with your communities, and ultimately so that you can be a stronger force for good in the world. And while my work applies to everyone, you know, I'm gonna talk over the next 20 episodes or more. I'm gonna talk about communication skills.
J.Marie:I'm gonna talk about leadership strategies. I'm gonna talk about how to build trust and deepen connections, and all of these skills can apply to all of us in our everyday work. I'm often told that the things that I help leaders and teams understand and the areas that I help them build their skills in, that those leaders and teams take those ideas and apply them in the workplace, but they also bring them home and apply them at home and in their faith communities, in their athletic and hobby communities. And so really, these skills apply broadly. But my focus is on public leaders, and I do that because folks who have chosen to step into positions of leadership and specifically leadership within local governmental agencies like public schools, libraries, fire districts, utilities.
J.Marie:I feel like the work that you all are doing, it matters from a standpoint of the vision that you hold and the the mission of your particular organization. Those things matter. But it also matters in terms of your role to support our American democracy. I am genuinely a lover of democracy. There's a quote that's been attributed to Winston Churchill, but nobody can find when he actually said it.
J.Marie:So who knows if he actually said it or if someone else came up with it? But there's this idea that said, you know, very tongue in cheek, you know, that democracy is the worst form of government except for every other one that's been tried. You know, government is hard. It is how we as as a people with broad ideas about what matters and what's most important, how we come together and determine what we're gonna do collectively together and what limits we're going to place on each other and what expectations we're going to have and what investments we're gonna make. And reaching agreement on those kinds of big ideas is difficult and it's messy.
J.Marie:And so people who choose to step into public leadership are choosing to put themselves in the middle of all that messiness, and I want to build up your skills to be confident in the midst of all of that. I want to support you in being better able to reach out across the full continuum of your community's perspective and deepen your connection with people with whom you might not automatically agree, but yet it's still your responsibility to help advocate that their voice be heard alongside other voices. And, ultimately, I believe that all of that work that you're doing in public leadership not only supports, you know, as I said a moment ago, your vision and your organizational mission, but democracy itself. When you do your job well as a public leader, you build trust, not just in the work that you do personally as a leader or in your organization's work, but in the very idea that we as individuals, that what we care about matters and is reflected back to us by those who are making the decisions for how our local organizations work. So I want to spend this time with you, supporting you in what you do.
J.Marie:We are keeping these podcasts relatively short. Most of them will be 15 minutes or less. But before we close out this inaugural episode, I wanna share with you a little taste of what you can expect in future episodes. And given that this is a this podcast is gonna focus on both leadership and communications, I wanna jump right into that communications idea. And one of the very best ways that you can level up your communications as a leader is to shift your focus.
J.Marie:We have a strong bias in our culture that leadership is tied to a person's charisma. And and to a certain extent, there is some truth in that. But I think a bigger piece of the work is how well does a leader reflect back the values and priorities of the community and constituents that they are serving. And one of the best ways for you to build your community's confidence that you are doing that is for you to shift your focus, you know, not just on what is your personal vision, what it what are your what is your leadership team's goals for the year? What is your organizational mission?
J.Marie:Yes. As a leader, you need to have a firm grasp on those things. I would advocate that you also need to have a firm grasp on the people that you are talking to and talking with. And so to shift your focus, like hold essentially hold in one hand your personal goals, your organizational vision and mission, and in the other hand, hold a strong focus on who are the people you connect with and serve, who are the people who are affected by the decisions you and your organization make, Who are the people who have resources that can contribute to the vision and mission that you are advocating for? So anytime that you are going to be gathering people together, say in a staff meeting or or a public forum, or you're going to attend someone else's meeting.
J.Marie:Maybe you're going to your local Kiwanis or your rotary or your local senior center to talk to them about what you're doing. Or anytime you're going to send out an email to, like, to an all staff email or a newsletter to your community. Before you put your message together, I encourage you to pause and get really clear on who are who is your audience? Who are the constituents that you are communicating with? And what matters to them?
J.Marie:What are their values and priorities? And give yourself, even if it's just 60 or 90 seconds, bring to mind one of those constituents and think about why what you want to say that day or in that in that message. Why does what matter to you also matter to them? Get really clear in that connection. And then all of the communications that follow from that, whether it's a a verbal presentation or an online meeting or a written communication of some sort, all of your communications will be more powerful if you take that moment to pause and get really clear about not just your message of what you want to say, but who you are saying it to.
J.Marie:Your ability to get anything else done that you want to do, whatever your vision, your personal goals, your organizational vision and mission, whatever those are, your capacity to get those done, especially the bigger and and more audacious the goals and the purpose, it depends. There's a direct correlation. You know, your capacity to get it done is tied directly to your understanding of your constituents and your audience's values and goals. So the better job you do at tying those together, the more powerful your ability to influence people will be. And I'm a close today by just by thanking you.
J.Marie:I hope over the course of this season, you will hear from me many times how much I value and appreciate the work that you're doing. It does matter. As Jane Goodall says, you cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. Thank you for keeping that in mind, for bringing intentionality to it, and thank you for sharing some time with me today.
J.Marie:And, hopefully, you'll stick around for our future episodes, and we'll just we'll deepen this conversation together. Thank you again. Take good care, friends. Until next time. Be well.