Summary
Joe Hudson reframes leadership as a universal quality rather than an assigned title. Everyone is already leading — through their influence, their example, and the way they show up. The question isn’t how to become a leader but how to recognize and own the leadership you’re already exercising. Great leaders follow: they listen to their conviction and follow it, while simultaneously following the leadership that arises in others around them.
The episode explores why people avoid stepping into conscious leadership, identifying blame as the core mechanism. People who are scared to lead are typically blaming others for their reality and projecting that they’ll be blamed if they step forward. Joe introduces the SAVE model — Self-development, Autonomy, Vision, and Esteem — as the qualities that make people want to follow and stay. He emphasizes that decentralized leadership, where the right person leads at the right moment, consistently outperforms hierarchical structures.
Brett shares a personal insight about how an 18-month course that involved being held by 11 people while crying made him a better leader, illustrating that emotional intelligence and self-understanding are the foundation of effective leadership. Joe also makes a striking observation that our inner critic exhibits the same pattern of avoiding leadership — it blames us rather than owning its influence.
Key Concepts
- Leadership is a universal quality, not an assigned role
- Great leaders follow their conviction and the conviction of others
- Blame prevents stepping into leadership
- Decentralized leadership outperforms rigid hierarchy
- The SAVE model: Self-development, Autonomy, Vision, Esteem
- The inner critic blames rather than owning its leadership
Key Quotes
“Each of us are leading, whether we want to admit it or not.”
“You can’t really separate leading and following because there is no leader that everybody’s like ‘yeah I love your leadership because you never follow what you think is right.‘”
“At the beginning of the journey you blame others, in the middle of the journey you blame yourself, at the end there is no blame.”
“It’s like being on a river and you’re a boatman. If you are not listening to and following the river, you are screwed.”
“Leadership is what you’re willing to put up with, what you allow.”
“If my negative self-talk actually fully recognized that it was a leader, what would it do differently?”
Transcript
Each of us are leading, whether we want to admit it or not. What is it that made being held by 11 people while I cried, made me a better leader? It’s like being on a river and you’re a boatman. If you are not listening to and following the river, you are screwed. Listen to the calling and follow it. Welcome to the art of accomplishment, where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease. Today we’re going to talk about leadership and how everybody is a leader in their lives whether you recognize it or not. Joe, you often say that leadership is for everyone. What does that mean? Yeah, it it means literally that everybody is leading. A lot of the thing about leadership is that people don’t admit it to themselves. So when we’re talking about leadership here, we’re talking about the quality that is in all of us. We are not talking about you’ve been given a title or you have some sort of control or apparent control over other people. Yeah. So you’re also another way of saying that is like we’re talking about the way of being that leadership is correct not the assignment of leadership the assignment of authority. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. And so um and I think that the most important thing about outside of everybody is actually always leading and to recognize that is to uh think about leadership as we all want to lead a great life. We all want to um follow our convictions and and they actually are one in the same thing. Yeah. I like how you just said lead and follow as though they Yeah. So, can you unpack that a little bit? Yeah. So, the thing about great leaders is that they follow. They have a strong sense of conviction over what they think to be the way or what’s right or anything like that. They have this strong sense of conviction. Leadership begins by listening to that in yourself and following that. Being able to listen to the thing that you think that you have conviction over. listen to the calling and follow it. Now, that doesn’t have to be like a big calling like I’m going to save the world or I’m going to free all the people of like the war torn country. It can be just like I am really convinced that this thing like changing the order of operations in the postal service. I believe in this and I have a I’m going to follow that belief. So the the very act of leadership that is following you can’t really separate them because there is no leader that everybody’s like yeah I love your leadership because you never follow what you think is right you know even if what you think is right is to try to make everybody happy and you’re following that even if that’s the case people will follow that but what they will not follow is somebody who’s actually not doesn’t have some level of conviction over what they’re doing. And it doesn’t even need need to be conviction like this is right, this is wrong. It’s just I know this process. I I know that this is the way I want to go. Yeah. And so what’s the distinction then between conviction and say hard-headedness? Sometimes there is no distinction like some some we will follow hard-headedness because there is a conviction to it. It hard-headedness is just not the most effective form of conviction. meaning that um a really effective form of conviction is I know that this is where we want to be. I know that this is where I want to be. This is the kind of life I want to leave. I’m not going to be really hard-headed about how I get there. Right? So, you could say Martin Luther King was hard-headed about civil rights, hard-headed about uh being treated in an equal manner, no matter what color, skin, but how he got there, listening, the interaction, having the emotional intelligence to interact with people, none of that was hard-headed. So, but he had conviction in his process. He had conviction in his in in where he wanted to land. Okay. So, I want to like reconcile this with something here. So, when when I first signed up for the first 18-month course that I did with you, I was like, “Oh, great. This is a leadership course. I’m going to learn to lead. I’ll probably learn some things about raising money. I’m going to learn some things about being a CEO, inspiring people, having a vision, stepping in with conviction.” And what I got was being held by 11 people for an hour while I cried. And somehow that actually did lead to me stepping more into leadership in my life and in my organization and in this organization ultimately. Yeah. And so how how do those two things rectify there? Yeah. So there’s a lot of studies that show that leadership uh and and how good of a leader you are has a lot to do with your capacity to understand yourself and others. So basically EQ or emotional intelligence. And so a huge part of what was happening in that course was getting to really be able to understand yourself and others. And I don’t know if you also remember in the course there was also this understanding of how leadership arises in different parts of the group at different times. And the idea wasn’t to um become the leader. It was to recognize leadership and follow it which is basically how leadership works best. Decentralized leadership studies have shown work a lot better that when leadership is more casebyase dependent, it works better. And you see it in our company as well where you are a leader on some things. I am a leader on some things. Matia is a leader in some things. Mun is a leader in some things. And they get to be that leader as long as they’re stepping into that leadership. And that we even give the authority that way, which is rare in a company. We actually say if you’re responsible, you get the authority. Yeah. I even remember the time when Mun suggested that we did a in-person podcast recording with a live audience. Yeah. Yeah. And you were not convinced. But you’re like, well, like Mun’s got conviction here. So I think I said, I don’t want to do that. There’s nothing in me that wants to do that. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And I didn’t want to do it. But what I did want to do is I wanted to follow Mun. I I saw her conviction. It was important to me to follow not just because I saw her conviction which was the the major part of it is it was really important for me to show everybody in the company my leadership in that moment was to show everybody in the company that we’re going to follow your conviction as long as it doesn’t go against our principles as long as it’s within the context of what we can afford. We’re going to follow your conviction. Yeah, it brings up some research that I saw where it’s actually the number of people who are taking leadership in their role in an organization that is a better predictor of the organization success than the quality of the top leadership. Correct. That’s right. Yeah. Absolutely. And I mean, you see this also in a lot of studies about I think it’s the it’s one of the Malcolm Gladwell books. Uh I think it was like blink or something where he talks about when the the uh leadership goes down to the bottom of an organization and people feel leadership at the bottom of the organization. He talked about it in the form of a war game that those that like some rag tag group of people that without any a lot of arms could win a significant war against the US armed forces and this war game because that just because of the leadership structure the or you know the the structure of like where the decisions were made and and having that sense of ownership it’s even like a it’s a cultural mythos for us you know like Star Wars A lot of these myths and stories that we love to tell are stories of some kind of ragtag gorilla band of self-organized people like arising and outperforming the centralized powerful hierarchical rigid system. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And so I I so what I see for sure is that we’re all leaders. Each of us are leading whether we want to admit it or not. What I also see is that the conscious the bringing that into consciousness saying oh I am leading is a significant step right so take somebody who’s a housewife they’re leading or a house husband or a house husband they’re leading right are they a good leader or a bad leader that’s a that’s a whole another question and what makes a good leader and a bad leader is Another question, but they’re leading. Everybody is leading. Everybody has an influence on their environment and therefore they’re leading. Now the question is, do they want to admit to it or not admit to it? Do they want to feel that responsibility or not feel that responsibility? Yeah. So what what underlies the avoidance of owning owning someone’s authority, owning their owning our leadership? Yeah. Um, so there’s a couple things around it. In general, what I notice is that they don’t want to face the blame either from themselves or for others. There’s actually this hubris to it, which is, oh, I’m I if I’m leading, I’m responsible for other people. And one of the things that I’ve learned, and I remember learning this actually in that same 18-month course, which was if I feel responsible for you, even if I am in a leadership position, if I feel responsible for you, I’m disempowering you. I remember this moment of I’m sitting with somebody and I’m like, “Oh, I feel like I’ve let you down.” And they were like, “That’s super disempowering.” I was like, “What?” Like, “I’m this leader. You You paid the money.” He’s like, “What? Like, you don’t think that I’m responsible for my own experience?” And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Like, whoa. Holy. You know, it it was Oh, right. I I am disempowering this person. I am assuming that they are not responsible for themselves. Wow. Which is a very different thing from like sherking responsibility yourself. There’s a different thing that is correct. I’m not responsible. I’m not which is just not owning the authority in a different way is. Exactly. Yeah. Not owning the leadership in a different way. I’m not responsible. Yeah. And but there’s another side of it which is like I am now responsible for all these people that I’m leading. Yeah. No, they made a choice. They led themselves to you to and they led themselves to follow you. And so, so that and and even there’s there’s this great internet phenomenon. I think it’s a while ago, but it was this whole thing about how it’s the second person who actually creates the first the first follower creates more is often more leadership than the person doing it. And it’s like a somebody dancing at a concert, they’re just going crazy. and everybody’s just watching for an extended period of time and then one other person joins to dance and then boom, hundreds of people there like immediately. I love that video so much. So do I. And and so it’s it’s it like it’s every every one of those people led the first person, the second person, everybody else, everyone made it easier for everybody else to dance. Yeah. So something also interesting in that in that piece is that if you are making yourself like if if I were to take a leadership role and fail if I were to make myself responsible for everything that would happen and as a result I don’t step into that role then I actually already am making myself responsible for everything that’s happening. So, like either way, I’m in the I’m in the leadership authority position, but I’m just frozen in it rather than fluidly moving into it and owning it. That’s a great that is such a great point. So, right, the the other piece about it is somebody who is not owning their leadership in the situation or doesn’t want to step into a bigger leadership position. Typically what one of the things that’s pretty certain about them is they’re blaming other people. So plenty of leaders blame other people. I’m not saying that that’s not the case. So it’s like every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square. There are definitely leaders who blame other people, but if somebody’s very scared to step into leadership, they are blaming other people. They’re they’re expecting the authority to be handed to them or the leadership to be handed to them and they are upset that is not being handed to them or they are blaming other folks for their reality for what the way they’ve led their life and so they don’t want to be the person who is blamed by others. They’re projecting that blame that they put onto others that it’s going to be on them if they step into conscious leadership. Yeah. So that they’re seeing through a lens of blame and the not stepping into the leadership is a way of them trying to stay safe and avoid the blame. Correct. But it’s actually creating a world in which there’s a lot of blame to go around because they’re not getting what they want. They’re not seeing the changes that they want to see be made and they are disempowering themselves and they’re likely to feel disempowered by those around them regardless of what’s happening whether they’re being disempowered or not in those. Yeah. And one of the things that I’ll see when that’s when that’s occurring inside an organization is somebody will say, “There’s something wrong here and nobody’s listening to me. Why isn’t everybody listening and now you’re upset at me for saying that there’s something wrong here?” That will be like a common thing that gets played out. Um, and one thing is they’re not taking the leadership to actually go fix the problem. So in our organization that generally just does not get rewarded at all because we follow leadership. We do not follow blame. So if that person was like that’s wrong and I’m going to go fix it. Fantastic. Go fix. We’ll all follow you. Well, I just like I followed Mun into doing live podcasts or like this whole setup that we’re in right now. all month not I didn’t want to do it but that conviction is there taking responsibility is there that leadership is there I’m following it so that’s that’s one piece to it um and that’s kind of calling me back to times where I’ve been standing on a cliff with a group of people a self-organized group that may have just decided hey let’s go do this jump together and the conditions are poor and one person might blame and be like what do you guys think like what are you thinking these conditions are terrible. And another person might just say, “Oh, this doesn’t work for me. I’m I’m going down.” Right. The second one’s the leader. Yeah. Yeah. That person’s the leader. Totally. Yeah. That’s a cool one. Yeah. Cuz when I think about that, Yeah. I can see that in multiple areas. It’s the same way in a marriage. The person who’s blaming is really saying, “You take leadership. You are the leader. You’re taking leadership.” Blame is acknowledging the leadership of somebody else. and and giving yours away. There’s this great saying that says at the beginning of the journey you blame others, in the middle of the journey you blame yourself, at the end there is no blame. And definitely the more you move in that direction, the better your leadership becomes. Which is I think another reason why that 18-month course really helps people become a leader because it’s really pulling the blame out of the system. Blaming others, blaming yourself. It’s really pulling that blame out of the system and just dealing with life as it is. not blaming anybody for it. Yeah. It also was largely about following. It was about listening to what’s needed next. And right that’s that’s what really I have seen produces the best work from a team is if whoever’s next contribution is the perfect contribution for that moment steps forward in exactly that moment. It works way better than if somebody’s there directing the whole thing. There’s a lot of things that make great leadership. One of the things that I think the model I think about often there’s many models but and I think the core is that you’re you’re following and so you’re following yourself but you’re also if you’re in an organization or if you’re in a a movement it’s like being on a river and you’re a boatman and part of your job is to manipulate the river and the boat and part of your job is to follow the river. If you are not listening to and following the river, you are screwed, right? Like I assume it’s the same with the wind if you’re jumping off of a cliff, right? and and and at the same time occasionally your job is to manipulate the river or the boat a little bit so that you can follow the river better and is similarly in an organization following the the river is really important and which is just what I did with mun or hundred other times where somebody had conviction and I didn’t believe in it. So there’s that. But the the the more refined thing is acting from view is obviously a really great thing for leadership because it it is that’s the emotional intelligence piece that we talked about. It’s the piece of oh I’m listening to people and they feel heard and they feel seen and so they want to be a part of this thing that’s happening in this organization or or be in be on the team that I’m in. So from view for people who are just entering this podcast for the first time, vulnerability, impartiality, empathy and wonder in inside of relationships to create more connection. The more connected a team is is what we teach in the connection course. The more connected the team is obviously the leader behind that connection is somebody something that people want to follow. But the other the other model that I think about often is called save and it’s S stands for self-development. Meaning that if that leader if in your leadership in that culture people feel like they’re better this year than they are last year that they are constantly improving as people they’re going to stay. The second is autonomy where people feel like they actually are in control of their own world that that when they do have initiative it gets followed. when they do take leadership it’s followed that level of autonomy you need to create alignment but you need that level of autonomy for people V is vision vision means oh here’s where we’re going to be this is this is the world I see that is possible for us that’s like the very beginning of vision the second part of vision is the context if you let me share all the context of what makes me do this because this is where we’re headed so often times most of the miscommunication that happens in an organization or what pisses somebody off with the leader is they don’t actually know what the leader’s thinking how how they came to the conclusion. They didn’t feel like they were a part of that process. That’s where a lot of the the rub happens. And so vision is that but vision at its purest sense is the leader acting as if the reality that they’re looking to live in is already existent. So an example of this back to Martin Luther King his vision was equality that people would be treated equally. He acted as if he were already being treated equally. He he acted as if his voice was just as important. So, so it’s like acting as if the thing that you’re you’re working towards is already in existence is like a very deep form of vision sort of and in other words like leadership being what you’re willing to put up with what you that’s what you allow. That’s such a good one. Yes. Yeah. We can come back to that cuz I want I do want to come back to that cuz that’s Yeah. Um and then there’s the E with it which is esteem means appreciation. It means you’re you’re treating somebody with respect and appreciate all the ways that you’re working with them increases their their esteem of themselves and of the organization. So you’re working on the esteem. And so if you do those things, you’re a great leader. If you do those things, people want to keep on being with you in the organization. And you’ll notice that in that part of that is that you’re following other everybody else’s leadership because of that autonomy. It’s part of how that all works. Yeah. Yeah. And following another word for that is listening. Like you’re listening to Yeah. Right. You at the same time as you’re seeing the leadership and others and you are holding the reality field that everybody steps into their leadership. Yeah. You’re also listening for where there is leadership so that you can attune to that and you can You can enlist that into the broader scheme and bring it into context. Yeah. If if I walk into a group and I see oh they are all feeling better about themselves. They’re all following their truth. They’re all like leadership is moving around. There’s autonomy that the right person is leading at the right moment. Who doesn’t want to be a part of that? That quote that you said, I always interpreted that in this very particular way where I thought that meant that as a leader, which I agree with, um, as a leader, what you put up with is the the quality of your leadership. I I will not put up with defensiveness or I will not put up with this level of performance or whatever. But it can be taken a different way which is the way you’re describing it as the person on the cliff saying this isn’t right. I’m walking away. I’m not putting up with this. And and I that just when I thought about that that just kind of blew my mind that it’s it’s it’s saying that I am I have like an internal integrity which by the way the studies show that that internal integrity or that moral compass is one of the things that we look for in our leaders that make for great leaders. And that’s another way of saying like what you’ll put up with. It’s not just performance, not just accountability. Yeah. Clarity. Yeah. Clarity, values. Exactly. Principles. Yeah. And but notice out of everything that we’ve talked about, what isn’t necessary in leadership is to be right. And most people think or controlling or controlling. They feel like they have to be right. They feel like they have to be in control. And actually, if you’re following a river, part of your acknowledgement is that you’re not in control. and and being right is is not important. Knowing the next step being knowing how to find the next step, right? Often times if you’re following the next step is is presented to you. The right move is a pre is something presented to you by a by mun telling me no, we’re doing live podcast, Joe. Yeah. Right. And I didn’t know that was the right thing. I thought it was the wrong thing as it turned out. Yeah. So, I I want to get more into the emotional fundamentals like what what is it emotionally that makes it so challenging for people to step into leadership? And like what is it that made being held by 11 people while I cried made me a better leader? What is the emotional block that somebody who’s scared to step into leadership or taking responsibility beyond themselves doing? How does that work? Even taking responsibility for themselves. Yeah. Um, we talked about blame being a big part of it, right? So, obviously if you’re scared to blame, if you’re blaming others, that that can deeply get in the way of this situation. I think the other thing is trust. So, there’s a study that shows I’m not going to get this exact, but that, you know, even three-year-olds exhibit behaviors of leadership. Leadership is that natural. If you watch kids play in a field, you will see leadership going from one kid to the next, which is the way we’re built, which is why organizations that do that are more effective. So the leadership is moving from one from one person to another person. And you’ll watch young kids exhibit leadership. And if you’re watching kids play often ex unless somebody’s been pretty abused or super introverted and there’s a whole way of leading through introversion too which is interesting like it apparently it it creates more lasting change if it’s a in introverted type of leadership but you’ll just see that that leadership passes it’s like a natural quality in us to to lead and so the question isn’t like what gets us to lead. It’s a what kicks us out of it. If I can’t trust the environment, I don’t feel like I’m going to be able to lead. If I can’t trust the people around me, I don’t feel like I can lead. If I’ve been told I’m bad, I don’t feel I can lead. It’s And so, as you heal from the traumas, as you get more in touch with yourself, the natural thing is to move more and more into leadership. that there’s people who are not deeply in touch with themselves that move into leadership because there’s some quality that they’re in touch with, right? But if the more you get in touch with yourself, the more you have to get in touch with that quality and the quality is a listening to your conviction. And so you might not be able to see yourself really really clear, but you listen to your conviction because that was the only way you could not get abused or that’s the way you showed value to get loved or anything like that. But for everybody else, it’s just, oh, I if I know myself, I listen to my conviction. If I listen to my conviction, I move into leadership. I I move into acknowledging that I am in leadership because everybody is in leadership. Yeah. I I also have a sense that there’s a a common experience for somebody who’s scared to step into leadership is that like they they want to be loving, but they don’t want to be the asshole Like there’s there seems like like there’s a maybe a false binary between love and power. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s like a challenge to integrate those. Yeah. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. The first thing I’ll say is there’s like leadership is super fragile. Like Right? Um meaning you don’t really have power. You have power because people think you have power, but that can be taken away because people stop thinking you have power. So leadership is it can come and go really quickly. So to even confuse it with power is kind of like a silliness. I think there’s an ownership of the powers recognizing like oh what I what I say has influence but that should be at any level of leadership that kind of ownership needs to be there. Um but but I think that the underlying thing is if I’m a leader I’m going potentially going to be an asshole or I have a job to do and therefore I’m going to stop paying attention to people. I’m going to stop empathizing even though all the research shows that empathetic leaders are more successful leaders, more emotional intelligence, more successful leadership. I mean, I think many people just had the examples of whoever was in a leadership or in charge role in their life did so from a closed heart. And so they believe that they’re going to have to close their heart to step into making something happen. Yeah. Or power. Or they close their hearts in themselves to make something happen. Yeah. often the case often the case is that that their authority figure either external when they were a kid or their internal authority figure is an ass and so they’re like oh my intern this thing inside of me that’s trying to lead that I acknow I think is a leader even though I don’t really follow it and even though like it tells me I don’t do a good enough job and so apparently I’m not doing what it says so I’m not actually following it which means it’s not actually the leader but I think that that thing is a leader and I am and I’m and I don’t like it so I don’t want to be that in the world. So then we’re following the voice in our head because it’s the asshole with conviction rather than following the subtle silent calling within us that is actually if you’re listening to it much like deeper and broader. Yeah, that’s a really present really cool thought process. So I geek out here on a minute in a minute and like this might be nonsensical for people but I think it’s kind of cool which is right in a weird way the negative self-talk that negative voice in your head is not owning the fact that it’s a leader. Oh it’s putting it all on you. Yeah. Yeah. It’s doing the blame thing. It’s doing the blame thing. So if you really stop and think about if you said if my negative self-talk actually fully recognized that it was a leader what would it do differently? Wow. That’s kind of a like like that just just the that cool. If it was the rudder not the captain what would it do? Right. That’s a fascinating That’s a fascinating thought process because typically it’s acting like an authority, but it’s not owning its leadership. Yeah. It’s blaming you. That’s great. Okay. So, for somebody listening to this right now, they’re in their car, they’re doing their workout, and they’re about to move on to the next part of their day. Yeah. Yeah. How how can that person own their leadership of their life just a little bit more in that? All they have to do is recognize it. Uh just recognize that when you smile at somebody, they’re more likely to smile back. That’s leadership. You’re at the gym right now and how you’re working out is giving permission to other people. Like that’s that’s all leadership. All all this really is just to actually allow that in for a minute to really go, “Oh, oh, I am in leadership.” When I complain to my husband, that’s leadership. When I wake up and go, I don’t want to go to work today. That’s leadership. When I don’t say the thing in the meeting, that’s leadership when I say the thing in the meeting. That’s leadership. to actually just recognize everything you are doing even the way right now you are listening to this podcast is leadership you are setting an example you’re giving permission you are are are giving the example of change in the world and this is bringing up another story just recently I was on a backpacking trip with somebody really close to me and it was their first time backpacking I’ve been backpacking many times so I was in the leadership role of hey we’re going backpacking and you know kind of here’s here’s how we need to pack, here’s what we need to bring. And while we were hiking, we were with a larger group. This person was hiking slower than everybody. And so I stayed with them and just the way that they were doing it. She was just loving herself in the slowness, loving like just trusting her her pace, trusting her own capacity, trusting her own learning of how it is to get used to walking many many miles in a day and trust her body. And the way that she was doing it was leadership to me cuz I recognized that I had been associating being in the front, which I’m usually the zoomer. I like to right not zoomer like generationally, but like I like to I like to have the goies. I like to be in the front. And up in the front is typically where there’s the most enthusiasm. Right. And so I’d subconsciously associated the back of the hike with the people who are more tired, maybe struggling more, often more self-critical. And she was the opposite of that. And so it was really beautiful to I I realized that I was being led energetically, right, on how I can enjoy myself being in a much slower pace than I traditionally would be. Yeah. Perfect. What a pleasure. Great conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Joe. You’re welcome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you everybody for listening. I’d love to hear how you are leading in your life as you walk forward through this as you move forward from this episode and you recognize more and more ways that you have been leading in your life. I’d love to hear about it. You can find us on Twitter on X. You can send us emails. You can make comments on this in your podcast platform. Uh tell us about it. And if you love this episode, share it with a friend and uh subscribe. This podcast is hosted by myself, Brett Kistler, and Joe Hudson. Meta Kelly is our producer. And this episode is edited by reasonable volume. Join us next time for the art of accomplishment where we’re going to go into the imposttor syndrome. How we are all imposters, why that’s not a problem, and how to find the confidence in simply seeing and being ourselves.