Good Leaders: What experiments in your life are making you nervous?

Over the past four weeks, our team has been experimenting with producing The Goodness Pays Leadership Podcast. What experimenting really means is a whole lot of trial and error, raw emotions, and nervous energy. In my role as the thought leader for Good Leadership Enterprises, I spend a great deal of time creating, designing, editing, and sharpening things into simplicity. Well, the podcast trial and error has been anything but simple. It’s messy, and it makes me nervous. Excited, and nervous!!

Emotions are a great teacher

So, the coach in me asks: You say “messy” makes you nervous…What’s that all about?”  It wasn’t until we made the decision to be in the podcasting business that I began to understand the power of podcasting. Good podcasts are intriguing, insightful, inspiring, and sometimes a little raw with authenticity. Once I started to study podcasts I wanted to produce all of that. That’s when I started getting nervous!  Two things surfaced as the source:

1.  The pressure to honor the voice of our guests. The Goodness Pays Leadership Podcast is not a podcast of the Good Leadership Breakfast. It’s a podcast of the speakers from the breakfast. So, we are adding words to their wisdom. And since their speeches are a multi-sensory experience – it’s a difficult art-form to re-create their magic in just one of the senses: sound. Which leads me to the second thing that makes me nervous:

2.  Technology.

Lowest common denominator

At the recommendation of an expert, we paid really good money for a top-of-the-line microphone. Which of course didn’t work for us. Who knew it would only work correctly inside a top-of-the-line audio studio. We don’t have a top-of-the-line studio, we just have the Aspiration Suite. So after hours and hours of disappointing tests, we abandoned the fancy mic for a cheap one. Shazam – the cheap one works great!  The cost isn’t the issue. The most expensive part was all of the negative emotional energy that was burned up by five people trying to figure out why the #%&$ mic was making us sound distant and echo-y!!!  Our confidence is growing now with experience and cheap mics. Go figure.

It takes a great team

What fills me with confidence is the amazing team we’ve assembled. It’s been fun to see and feel us go through the classic learning curve for a team: Forming, storming, norming, performing. Tasha is learning to be producer. Katie is learning to translate her video editing skills into audio editing. Chloe is learning to be a podcast coach, producer, writer, and co-host. Kelsey is learning to be a podcast co-host. And she’s learning how to handle the anxious energy of her co-host – nervous Paul Batz.

Coming soon

After last Friday’s recording session, we have four episodes “in the can.”  The fifth episode will be recorded this Friday, April 16, immediately after the Good Leadership Breakfast. It will feature our international speaker Jurriaan Kamp. The little voice inside my head says, “Nervous is good!” We’re all re-learning that nothing significant every happens alone. And if we weren’t a little nervous…we wouldn’t care.

Good leaders embrace the messiness of trying something knew, especially when it makes them nervous. And they hang in there with their team, when they believe the work is really important.

Please share with me: What experiments in your life are making you nervous?