The Leadership Mirepoix
3 Essential Ingredients for Conscious Leadership
[00:00]
Welcome to Heart Glow CEO®, where high-performing leaders learn to regulate stress, strengthen self-trust, and make clear decisions without sacrificing their health or values.
I'm Kc Rossi, Integrative Leadership Coach. Expect practical nervous system tools, conscious leadership insights, and real conversations that bring achievement into alignment. Take a deep breath with me and let's dive in.
Let's blend two things I love: leadership and the kitchen.
Today, we're talking conscious leadership through the lens of cooking. Because leadership, like food, is one part technique and one part alchemy.
And here's the vibe: You don't need more leadership garnish. You don't need another trendy acronym or a new personality to wear to Monday's meeting.
You need a better base.
And in cooking, that base is mirepoix: carrot, celery, onion. Simple. Repeatable. Foundational. You saute it once, and suddenly you've got the starting point for soups, sauces, stews, braises... all kinds of delicious outcomes.
In leadership, we have our own mirepoix: three building blocks that show up in every hard conversation, every decision under pressure, every moment your team is quietly asking:
"Can I trust you?"
"Are you steady?"
"Do you see me?"
"Are we clear?"
Today's Leadership Mirepoix is:
1. INTEGRITY
2. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
3. CLARITY
Inside those three ingredients are flavors people crave most: authenticity, empathy, communication, vision. Those aren't separate extra ingredients; they're the way these three essentials actually taste in real life.
And I want to give you a data point early because I'm not here to float around in theory.
Gallup found that only 13% of employees strongly agree that leadership communicates effectively. 13%!
So if you've ever felt like, "Why are we having the same conversation again?"
Or, "Why does everyone seem confused, even though I swear I already said it?"
You are not imagining things.
Clarity is rare. And because it's rare, it's leadership gold.
All right, my friends, aprons on. Let's cook!
[02:00]
Why does the base matter?
Here's what I've noticed after decades of entrepreneurship and coaching high-capacity humans: When things get hot, we don't rise to our highest ideals. We default to our strongest habits.
Heat reveals the recipe.
So under pressure... deadlines... conflict... uncertainty... a team that's stressed... clients that are intense... we will return to our foundation.
If our foundation is solid, we can improvise. We can be creative. We can lead with steadiness and presence.
If our foundation is shaky, we'll overcompensate with garnish. Oh, are you shaking your head here? Because I can't stand fluff.
And what I mean by garnish is more words, more urgency, more control, more people-pleasing, more intensity, more "I'm fine" while our nervous systems are doing parkour.
The good news is foundations are learnable. Let's walk through the three ingredients and how to actually use them.
[03:30]
INGREDIENT ONE: INTEGRITY
This is one of my personal core values. I have it very, very high on the list.
Integrity is the ingredient people can taste even when you don't say a word. It's the coherence between your values and your behavior.
It's doing what you said you would do. It's being consistent. It's clean.
And here's the key: authenticity lives inside of integrity.
Authenticity isn't "I'm just being honest" as an excuse to be blunt, chaotic, or reactive.
And I want to say here that I can fall into this bluntness or this directive communication. And often my bestie will sometimes just look at me, and whenever I hear myself say, "But it's the truth," it's like a little cue for me to check in.
So again, authenticity isn't "I'm just being honest" as an excuse to be blunt, chaotic, or reactive.
Real authenticity is inner alignment expressed outwardly, and here is the thing I want you to underline: with responsibility.
It's being human without making your team hold your emotional process.
Integrity is where trust begins. Because trust isn't built in one big speech. It's built in a hundred tiny receipts.
The follow-through. The small agreements. The repair when you missed it. The steadiness when you're stressed.
I will never forget a passage in Stephen Covey's book that talked about the emotional bank account: all these little teeny things, right? The follow-through, the small agreements, the doing what you said you're going to do, taking accountability and making amends or apologizing when you've messed up.
He would categorize those as emotional deposits. So that when there was this humanness, because we're not perfect, where maybe you missed a deadline, or you didn't have follow-through, or maybe you had more of an outburst when you weren't feeling steady, when you were stressed, he would categorize those as emotional deficits or withdrawals.
We're really looking to have a balance. We're not expecting perfection here. We're looking to have this even keel of balance.
A quick integrity check. Just a few questions that you can ask yourself:
Do I keep my agreements, even the small ones?
Do my people experience me as stable, especially under stress?
Do I model the standards I expect from others?
And I think this is really important because that last piece, and really all of them honestly, I feel that you can see both professionally and personally.
And I met with one of my clients yesterday, and one of the things that she was sharing with me was part of the wins that she was recognizing: being able to cozy up by the fire with her two daughters and just enjoy one another with no screens.
And it's really interesting because she told me that she not only collects their phone, but she also puts her phone into the basket to set aside for this time.
And this is an example of integrity in action and leadership: modeling the standards that you expect from others.
So you can see these examples not only in leadership in the workplace or if you're leading a team, but absolutely in your personal relationships: whether you're a parent, in your relationship with your partners... have you kept the agreements?
Personal relationships with your friends... do they experience you as stable, or do you expect them to just be the dumping ground so you can have one big, long emotional outlet?
So just a few examples so you can think about integrity.
Because when integrity is missing, no amount of great communication can cover it. People feel it. It's like cooking with old oil. You can't quite name it, but something's off.
And this is where conscious leadership begins: not by being perfect, but by being congruent.
[09:20]
INGREDIENT TWO: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
This is such a wonderful part of my work as an EQi-2.0 practitioner. I love to bring this particular data to my clients so we can see a beautiful color-coded chart for my visual learners: their relationship with all the different pieces of the EQ puzzle.
And the most fun is how we get to look at this through the lens of deejaying our own life. And what I mean by that is, if we see an area that we're really strong in, we get to look at how we can use it as a lever to pull up an area that we may have potential for growth.
Emotional intelligence is your ability to notice what's happening inside you and what's happening inside other people without turning it into a drama festival.
And empathy lives inside emotional intelligence.
Empathy is the outward expression of EQ. It's the ability to understand someone's experience, even if you don't agree with their approach, their timing, or their conclusion.
This is where leadership becomes embodied.
Because your nervous system is not private. It broadcasts.
Think about that for a minute.
If you're leading while dysregulated — snappy, rushed, checked out, defensive — your team is absolutely going to feel that.
They not only feel it, they adapt.
They get smaller. They get louder. They stop telling you the truth. Or they become highly strategic in the way that makes you wonder, "Why didn't anyone say something sooner?"
This matters so much that one of the most famous workplace studies, Google's Project Aristotle, found that psychological safety was the most important team dynamic.
Think about that for a minute.
Psychological safety is a permission structure for truth, innovation, accountability, and learning.
No safety equals silence, hesitation, performative agreement.
So on the flip side, safety equals people speak early, share ideas, admit mistakes, name risks, and solve real problems.
I want you to think about that for a minute. Think about a place where you didn't feel safe. You were just kind of biding the time, maybe shrinking in the corner, maybe fidgeting, biting your lip, jiggling your leg. This was your nervous system giving you little clues that you didn't feel safe.
And now think of a time where you do feel safe, or you have felt safe, and you felt safe enough to speak your truth, even if you didn't think your ideas were going to be 100% received by everybody in the room. You still shared your ideas.
EQ is a primary way leaders create safety: not with perfection, with presence, with tone, with pacing, with listening, with repair, with the ability to stay grounded when the room gets uncomfortable.
Oh, that's a big one.
When there is chaos going around, because let's face it, we are under tremendous stress in our personal lives and in our workplace for a variety of reasons, there are going to be many rooms where it's a little crunchy and it's uncomfortable.
What can we do as conscious leaders to initiate grounded safety within our system, which then spreads a positive ripple effect?
This is why I'm so committed to giving my weekly gift called the Peace Bubble.
And in the Peace Bubble, we have this opportunity to practice grounded safety. It's something that I offer every single Monday at 8:30 a.m.
I'm going to drop the invitation link. There's no charge. It is literally just sweet souls that care about carving an intentional half an hour at the top of their week to drop into their system, to regulate their nervous system, to practice things that initiate coherence and alignment.
And it not only brings them peace, but it spreads this beautiful, powerful ripple effect so those around them feel it also.
And then there's also this beautiful global effect because collective peace has power.
But here's a mini practice that you can use today, especially if you're someone who moves fast, thinks fast, leads fast.
Before your next meeting, take 10 seconds and ask:
What's the emotional weather in me right now?
Name it. Maybe it's tight. Rushed. Irritated. Scattered. Calm. Tender. Focused.
Then choose one regulating move:
Take one deep breath.
Drop your shoulders.
Unclench your jaw.
Slow your next sentence by 10%.
Practice that with me for a minute:
Take one deeper breath.
Drop your shoulders.
Unclench your jaw.
Slow your next sentence by 10%.
Good.
That isn't woo. That's leadership hygiene.
It's the difference between bringing a calm flame to the pan and throwing oil on a grease fire.
[16:10]
INGREDIENT THREE: CLARITY
Now we get to ingredient number three. And this is where that Gallup data point is so useful.
Only 13% of employees strongly agree that leadership communicates effectively.
That means clarity isn't common, which also means clarity is a competitive advantage. Woo hoo!
Clarity is not more communication. It's cleaner communication.
I want to make this extremely practical because "be clear" is nice advice. Like, eat more vegetables. True, but not specific.
Here's what clarity requires:
Meaning: Why are we doing this? What matters here?
Direction: What does good look like? What are the priorities?
I've actually heard Brené Brown talk about what does "done" look like when we're communicating, which I love.
Agreements: Who's doing what? By when? And how will we know?
Most leadership communication fails because it's heavy on words and light on agreements.
And I did a podcast that talks about the difference between expectations and agreements. I'm going to drop that link into the show notes so you can have even more distinction between the two.
So what agreements might sound like is: "Let's align. We need to move faster. Let's improve communication. We all need to be on the same page."
Cool. Love it. What does that mean by Tuesday at two?
Clarity is your ability to reduce confusion.
Not by controlling everything. This is such a big one, especially for my dominants on the DISC assessment, especially for my high achievers or my fast leaders.
Clarity is your ability to reduce confusion. Again, it's not by doing everything yourself, but by giving people a clean path.
Vision lives inside clarity.
Vision is what gives meaning to the work. It answers:
Where are we going?
Why does it matter?
What are we building together?
Think about that for a minute.
When people have clarity, they can cook. When they don't, they hover. They hesitate. They overcheck. They waste time, spin around in circles, or they improvise in ways that you didn't intend.
And then everybody's frustrated, and nobody knows why.
[19:00]
THE CHEF'S KISS: TRANSPARENCY BUILDS CONNECTION
I want to give you a bonus to the mirepoix. It's the chef's kiss: transparency builds connection.
And no, this is not oversharing your personal life in a team meeting and calling it vulnerability.
This is transparency in service of connection and clarity.
Here's the formula:
Name the moment.
Name your intention.
Name the ask.
So a couple of examples:
"I want to name something. I'm noticing tension around this project."
"My intention is clarity, not blame."
"My ask is that we define what done means and what each of us needs to deliver."
That's a really good one that gets a lot of clarity.
This is conscious leadership.
It signals integrity: I'm not going to pretend.
It signals emotional intelligence: I can stay present in discomfort.
It signals clarity: I'm making the next step clean and workable.
And it builds trust without turning the workplace into group therapy.
Because transparency becomes powerful when it's anchored in responsibility, not performance. Not dumping. Not: "Now here's everything I feel now, please take care of me."
It's: I'm here. I'm honest. I'm steady. Let's move forward together.
I hope this is landing.
So if we were going to put the Leadership Mirepoix Method on a simple recipe card, it would look like:
Ingredient one: integrity.
Keep agreements. Align values to actions. Let authenticity be the way integrity shows up in real time.
Ingredient two: emotional intelligence.
Regulate first. Listen deeply. Let empathy be EQ in action and create psychological safety by how you show up.
Ingredient three: clarity.
Communicate meaning, direction, and agreements. Let vision live inside your clarity.
And remember: if only 13% strongly agree that leadership communicates effectively, clarity is not optional. It's a leadership flex.
And the chef's kiss: transparency that builds connection.
Name the moment. Name your intention. Name the ask.
[23:00]
So here's my invitation for you and your week:
Notice when you're trying to lead with garnish: more urgency, more intensity, more words, more performing leadership.
I'm chuckling to myself because I had an executive director we've been working together for a couple of years, and we've been working on her reclaiming her power and being grounded, really owning her wins and using her voice.
And this week, my invitation was to notice her periods. The periods that come from the end of the sentence.
And so when I'm saying to you, notice when you're trying to lead with garnish, and I'm saying garnish can look like more words, this is when you start hearing the run-on sentence, the justification, the kind of baked-in need for validation, the rationalization.
There's approving energy there that is so interesting when you think about it as garnish. It really doesn't get your recipes coming out with that most amazing alchemy.
So I really want you to think about that. When is enough, enough?
When can you just stop and end your sentence with a clear period and feel confident and feel like it's enough?
And you always, always can come back to your base.
If you start to feel like you're spinning out a little bit, or like some of those older patterns are sneaking their way back in, you will just come back to your Leadership Mirepoix.
Come back to your base of integrity, emotional intelligence, and clarity.
Because the base is solid. And when you get to stand on a solid foundational ground, then you get to be creative. You get to be human. You get to lead in a way that feels like you without burning the whole kitchen down.
[24:40]
And I really want this to be a conversation, not a monologue.
I would love it if you sent me a message and told me what you're working on right now. Are you working on getting through hard conversations? Decision fatigue? Team misalignment? A vision that isn't landing?
Tell me what leadership situation you're in, and I'll create an episode recipe for that exact scenario.
And if Heart Glow CEO™ has been supporting your leadership, I'd be grateful if you leave a quick review. You can do so at www.lovethepodcast.com/brilliance.
Until next time, my friend: lead with a steady heart, a clear mind, and just enough spice to keep it interesting!
Until next week... breathe, joy.
