EPI 94 - Authentic Leadership: How to Lead Without Armor

Hi friend — welcome back to The Habit Within. I’m Camille Kinzler, and today’s episode is one of the most personal reflections I’ve shared in a long time.

This conversation was born out of my Word of the Year — courage — and the very real, very uncomfortable ways it’s been showing up in my life. Not as boldness. Not as fearlessness. But as the courage to be more authentically myself.

To follow my intuition.
To honor my nudges.
To use my voice differently.
To stop performing and start leading from alignment.

And that’s what this episode is really about:
What does it mean to lead without armor?
Without ego.
Without performance.
Without needing to be right, liked, or approved of.

In this episode, I explore:

• Why courage isn’t about being louder — it’s about being more honest
• How my Word of the Year has been confronting me daily
• What it means to lead with your voice — not to fill space, but to create meaning
• The difference between reactive courage and intentional courage
• Why leadership rooted in intuition feels different than leadership rooted in control
• The four pillars of authentic leadership:
  • Self-awareness — understanding your triggers, patterns, and motivations
  • Accountability — owning your choices without needing consensus
  • Vulnerability — leading without armor or ego
  • Positive mindset — holding vision without denying reality

This episode is about becoming, not performing.

 About choosing truth over approval.

 About learning to trust yourself through discomfort.

 About letting your voice come from presence instead of protection.

Authentic leadership doesn’t ask you to be more impressive.

It asks you to be more you.

Big Takeaways

• Courage without awareness becomes reaction.
• Awareness turns courage into choice.
• Leadership doesn’t require certainty — it requires honesty.
• Vulnerability builds trust more than perfection ever will.
• You don’t need armor to lead — you need alignment.
• Authentic leadership begins the moment you stop performing.

A reflection for you

Where in your life are you performing instead of leading?
Where are you staying quiet instead of being honest?
Where are you choosing comfort over truth?

If this episode resonates, I’d love to hear from you. Send me a message or share your reflection — these conversations matter.

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Transcript

(0:00 - 8:04)
What courage has been most revealing for me is that it's really about how to be the courage to be myself, more authentically myself. That's what I've been confronted with every day. It's like the courage to follow my intuition, the courage to honor those nudges when I have them, the courage to honor the nudge to how to feed myself, how to move my body, how to show up in my community. 

Welcome to The Habit Within. This podcast is for high achieving women, 35 and older, who seem to have it all together, but feel like they're constantly running on fumes, struggling to balance it all and losing sight of the woman they used to be. I'm Camille Kinzler, a former physician assistant turned transformational coach, blending science, positive psychology, and a metaphysical approach to habits, health, and vitality. 

If you've ever asked yourself, why am I so exhausted even after a full night's sleep, or I feel like I'm juggling so much but I'm just barely keeping my head above water, you are in the right place. Each week, we'll explore the real reasons behind feeling overwhelmed, trapped in the cycle of overworking, and constantly running low on energy, and how to break free from the patterns keeping you stuck in survival mode. It's time to stop living on autopilot and to start feeling like yourself again. 

Let's dive in. Hello, welcome back to The Habit Within. This is Camille Kinsler, your host, and we're three weeks into the new year, and I'm just checking in with everyone. 

How is everyone doing? Like, how is it possible that it's already three weeks in? I have no idea. And it just feels like any other day, right? All of the hype, and then here we are, just still the exact same human beings that we were before, and it's all right. It's okay. 

We're surviving. We're thriving. We're doing all the things, one foot in front of the other. 

And if you had high hopes for the new year, and then here you are, join the club. We are all feeling it, exactly as you are. And if you're the opposite, and you're like completely thriving, soaring, you are checking all the boxes, and you feel like that this is the best year yet, then let us know. 

We want to celebrate you. We're going to know exactly what you are doing, so we can do it too, so we can come along with you. Today, what I'm going to be doing is checking in. 

I'm going to be sharing with you about how I am doing with my Word of the Year. A few podcasts ago, I mentioned how probably for the last decade, I've been choosing a Word of the Year instead of New Year's resolutions or intentions, and it's kind of my guiding light that I use throughout the year. And this is the first year that my Word of the Year is actually kicking me in the butt. 

It's appearing almost on a daily basis, and it's very confronting. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that, and I want to know what your Word of the Year is. How is it going for you? It makes me wonder if I chose words that were a little bit more ethereal, or something that I was like hoping to achieve at some point along the way, or a reminder of how I want to be and show up in the world, versus this one. 

I don't know why. It's just feeling really confronting. So we'll just jump on into that today. 

And the reason why I'm sharing it is because I feel like I'm not alone in this, that oftentimes we're confronted with a part of us, and instead of really facing it, confronting it face-on, we make excuses, or we go back into our comfort zone. But we're not doing that anymore. You're in midlife more than likely if you're listening to this. 

And what we do in midlife is different than what we did in our 20s, and even in our early 30s. We get to decide how we want to show up in the world, and that means that we have to walk through the fire on occasion. And I'm excited to see where this leads me as I keep myself honest with you as a listener. 

As we talk about my Word of the Year, which was courage, and how it's going for me. And yes, it's like changing my relationship with this Word. And really looking at how when we choose the Word of the Year, it's more of this devotion, the self that we're claiming. 

What courage has been most revealing for me is that it's really about the courage to be myself, more authentically myself. That's what I've been confronted with every day. It's like the courage to follow my intuition, the courage to honor those nudges when I have them, the courage to honor the nudge to how to feed myself, how to move my body, how to show up and commit in my community, what to do for and within my business, who to talk to, the courage to really use my voice, which is a really funny thing to say for somebody who has a podcast. 

But podcasts tend to be very, for me, they're more structured. I outline them, I reflect, I consider it's really a way for me to kind of journal what I'm thinking, how I'm feeling, maybe do some research if I need to. I rarely just hit record and start speaking. 

And that's not because I'm like afraid of that style or that format. But because like I said, it's more of my ability to kind of verbally journal what's going on in my life. And so I don't want to ramble on and on and on. 

I want it to be a little bit more clear and concise. So that's why I write it down. But when I look at this idea of courage as it is linked to my voice, it's not just about like speaking or speaking up or speaking up in public places or speaking to an audience. 

It's how do I use my voice to lead? How do I lead with my voice? And not in this convincing way, not in this performative way, and not just to like fill space. Have you ever been in a meeting and you have somebody who you're like, are they just talking to talk? Like, what's their point? Where are they going with this? Or are they just talking to be seen? Or I mean, I am guilty of it in the past where you talk because you feel like you have to, right? You're in this meeting, everyone wants a voice to be heard, but you're not really saying something that you know the direction in which you're saying it. It's because you feel like you need to instead of really speaking from this place of, you know, being present and being connected to the material in which you're speaking. 

So as I really started exploring what kind of like what leadership looks like. So as I was excavating this and I was like, okay, what does this mean? Like, that I'm feeling like I need to find more courage to, to use my voice. And in this, in this leadership way, I started to really kind of explore what leadership looks like, or what kind of leadership that I feel like I could learn from. 

And I came across this framework of authentic leadership, which was perfect because I was using this word of showing up more authentically me. So I'm going to share these four key components of what authentic leadership is. And a lot of it is, is how I present myself in the world. 

And you'll notice some connections, even with this podcast with these four key components of authentic leadership. The first one is self-awareness. The second one is accountability.

(8:04 - 8:31)
The third one is vulnerability. And the fourth is positive mindset. And so what I love most about this framework is how, well, it's really balanced and one supports the other. 

And also, because I've seen myself exactly in this type of leadership. So let's go through each of these. So self-awareness is really the habit within, right? It's self-awareness is truly the foundation.

(8:32 - 9:04)
It's noticing why something triggers you within a conversation that you're in, or why you want to avoid a certain conversation, which actually is coming up more than not this year. Why we feel pulled to speak and why we feel pulled to stay silent. So it's really being self-aware on how we want to show up in these conversations. 

And these can be conversations online. These can be conversations in person. These can be conversations with a loved one.

(9:05 - 22:17)
This could be conversations you have with yourself even. And I talk a lot in my podcast about our perception of the world, our personal perception of the world, our nervous system, our intuition, awareness, and those all take practice and self-awareness. But courage becomes impulsive instead of intentional if we don't really check in with ourselves and how we're showing up. 

So courage without awareness means that we're just reacting. But awareness allows courage to be more of a choice. It's where we get to sit back and we get to really check in on why this is important for us to speak up about. 

And if we don't speak up about something, if we don't share our voice in it, what does that mean as well? And the second one is accountability, which, you know, I love ownership, accountability. It's also something I speak a lot about in my podcast. But owning your role. 

This one has been big for me this year, especially in my role on the board of trustees, because the hardest part about leadership in this way isn't about having ideas because we can have a lot of ideas on all sorts of levels. But it's about being willing to stand in that responsibility, in that ownership of your choice. And it's realizing that, unfortunately, we cannot make everyone happy. 

And even in certain choices, I am not 100% happy with the outcome. And we can't be liked by everyone, even though I think that there is some mutual respect that can absolutely flow from one person to the other, even if we don't agree with them. And you can't protect everyone's discomfort, because we have to allow somebody else to go through their discomfort. 

So sometimes courage looks like being the decider and then standing in that. And it's much easier. Trust me, it's so much easier to talk about ideology than it is to actually talk about function. 

It's so much easier to say, hey, hey, let's just wait another year. And then we can circle back around and figure out if we need to do anything about this versus just taking action and recognizing that you can change if it's not working and trusting that that is an option later on. It's easier, way easier. 

And I love this aspect. I'm a daydreamer. I've been a daydreamer since I was a little girl. 

It's way easier to dream about what could actually be than to actually navigate how to take the steps to do it. And for those of you like me who want harmony and kindness and unity, it's really uncomfortable to take accountability for something, for somebody's maybe discomfort or their disapproval in a way. But courage isn't necessarily about pleasing people. 

It's about really stewardship. And stewardship is another beautiful word that I want to incorporate in my life. It's not something that I'm as familiar with or the word. 

I'm not as familiar with the word. So I'd love to go deeper into that. And then here's another one. 

It's vulnerability. It's how to lead without putting up your armor, without putting up the armor of ego that I have to be right and you have to be wrong. And it's not about like, you know, oversharing about my life or my opinions, but it's about saying, I don't have this fully figured out. 

We're all learning together. I'm still learning. You're still learning. 

We might actually get this completely wrong, but I'm here and I'm in it with you. I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here. 

And that is the energy that I'm really wanting, you know, I like to bring to this podcast is like here with you, let's walk through the fire together. And also that I'm not trying to be this expert. I was a PA working in clinical practice for over a decade. 

And it's very much like, I'm the expert. You listen to me and you do as I say. And trust me, that's not the way the world works anymore. 

And so within this podcast, that's why I like for it to be or feel more like a conversation as I'm a woman who's walking beside you. Courage really doesn't require, I think that we know the all the answers, right? But it does require honesty. And that to me is vulnerability. 

The other aspect is this positive mindset. And that doesn't mean that it's like, everything's going to be great. No, we have to go back to vulnerability. 

We have to go back to self-awareness. We have to go back to accountability. All of these intertwine. 

One isn't strong without the other. But a positive mindset is where I think authentic leadership actually really becomes more balanced because this is where we don't pretend that everything is fine, but we choose possibility over cynicism. We choose to hold a vision without denying the reality of what's happening. 

And it means that we grow without demanding that there be perfection because there will never be perfection. And if we wait around until the perfect time with the perfect constellation of people, then we're going to be waiting for a long time. And this is, yeah, so this is the tone, the positive mindset tone is that we are becoming and we are becoming together. 

And yeah, and I believe, totally believe that it can happen because I'm holding that vision for us. So since the start of this year, Courage has really shown up for me, like I said, almost daily. So this is within the boardroom, within relationship conversations and conversations with myself and conversations online, which I really, really choose to stay out of. 

But Courage has asked me to speak when I want to stay quiet, to check in, why do I want to stay quiet? What am I afraid of, of not being liked, of being wrong? So really, it's so important to pause when I want to react and really reflect on what is the truth that I want to share? What is the truth in my body in the moment? And also leading when I am not comfortable in leading. And I think that is so hard. So accepting that leadership sometimes can feel very, very lonely. 

And I think it's the realest thing that we can do, especially in today's society, especially as we're going to be moving forward with AI. I think recognizing the imperfection in people is what's going to really set us apart from AI, from what you hear on a podcast, from what you see in a movie, from what you, the art that you, the painting that you see, to the music you listen to. I think when we start hearing, my husband and I talk about this a lot, but when we start hearing the realness, the fault, the messiness, it's the thing that's going to light us up and make us feel more alive than it ever has in the past, because we're going to see perfection everywhere. 

I got a kind of a side tangent to talk about. I went to this class last night called CAP, and during the meditation portion, it came through that I should not fix my teeth, so I was going to get Invisalign. I have an appointment lined up to visit with a dentist about getting Invisalign, because I'm like, why not? I'm 48. 

I can get Invisalign if I want to. But it came through of, I think that people's teeth, unless you have some really poor dentition, that's a different story, but when they're slightly crooked, or you got a little tooth that's doing something funky over here, it's so adorable. The women that I've known who've corrected their teeth, I was always so sad when I would see them that first time, because it just changed them. 

It just changed that uniqueness and the individuality. It came through that I'm not allowed to touch my teeth, that the picket fence teeth is so overrated, and we need that uniqueness that's there. If you're listening to this and you're thinking to yourself, too, I want to lead more authentically in my life, whether that's in your family, in your work, the relationship you have with your body and how you want to lead your body to better health and vitality in your relationships and your healing. 

Courage doesn't ask you to become any louder or verbose or really doing anything more than just becoming more true to yourself. Authentic leadership is really the moment you stop performing and start living more in alignment. Start speaking your truth. 

When you feel like there's something that you need to say, you figure out a platform in which to say it. Maybe that even looks like you are doing voice memos into your phone or you are writing down in your notes your feelings, your true feelings, and seeing what comes from that. Because within these three weeks into my Word of Courage, I can tell you this has been so uncomfortable for me, but this has been the most, I guess, the most honest I've been with myself in choosing the right word, because maybe the words before were more fluff. 

It was like, I think I had one that was prosperity and one was creativity and one was space and another one was allowing, right? So it's like these things that just don't really have that, the push that this word does, at least for me. So I would love to know your word. How are you doing three weeks into this? As always, reach out to me. 

Let me know what's going on in your world and know that I am always here for you. I have four spots open for February for us to dive deep into your individualized, personalized vitality and health protocol where we look at your genomics, so your DNA. And really cool, little side tangent here, another one, is that we have like 22,000 to 23,000 genes. 

And of those, only a very small portion of them are functional, can be changed. And it's around 100. And that's what we do. 

We look at those genomics, those genes that actually can be influenced by our environment and our food and our gut and peptides and supplements and nature. But it gives you exactly, dials in exactly what's needed for you, for your DNA. So you can stop guessing, stop looking at the shiny objects, and you can figure out the protocols that are best for you to really have more energy, more vitality, more connection, more hormonal balance. 

I mean, I am seeing this so much in every read that I've done in somebody's DNA, is how just a little bit of tweak and maybe the clearance of your estrogen that's in your body or the way that your body converts testosterone to estrogen or progesterone, the way we store it, all of these things can cause inflammation, can cause fatigue, brain fog. And so when we know exactly what we need in order to help our bodies process those things, yeah, we can even maybe even lose some weight. I had a client that texted me today and she goes, oh my gosh, I've lost four pounds. 

And it's been like not even a week since she's eating to her genes, eating exactly the type of diet and food she needs to have to release weight, to have more energy and decrease inflammation. And so I was working, I was working for her. But yeah, reach out if you're interested in that. 

And as always, I hope that you loved this episode as much as I enjoyed making it for you. Until next time. The world needs the vibrance and wisdom of a woman's intuition to help heal the world.

(22:17 - 22:27)
When we learn to trust ourselves through leaning into and through discomfort, we learn to trust ourselves and in that space is our power and clarity.