Helping Expand Your Leadership Influence
One concept I’ve written about captures my mind almost more than all the others, and it’s today’s flashback.
The Horizon of Possibility is something I love thinking about, and something I use constantly. This week, in fact, the concept has been used in at least two conversations, and I love it!
Before I dive too deep, click here and check it out!
What do you do when you have a student who shows great leadership potential?
Over the course of my ministry experience I’ve had a few students who seem to be a step ahead of their peers when it comes to reading and understanding a room. They have an intuition about them that makes them appear more mature and capable than everyone else.
So, it only makes sense to give them more and more responsibility, right? I mean, we want to develop student leaders. That’s kind of the point of what I write about here at 3QL.
Let me offer one caveat. And it’s one that is still fresh in my mind.
I never want to crush a potential leader’s spirit. I desperately try to avoid adding too much to their burden, but when a student has a high capacity, I find myself wrestling with this.
That’s why I’ve started reminding myself of the following thought.
Give students student leadership opportunities, not adult leadership opportunities.
If you want someone to feel the weight and worry of leadership, give a teenager the load you would expect from an adult. I’m not saying some teenagers cannot handle such responsibility, but they have the rest of their lives to be adults.
Put in the effort to help a student find appropriate levels of challenge for where they are. I want to avoid expecting a 14 year old, who shows incredible capacity for influence, to carry the load I would ask a 34 year old to carry. No one wins in that situation.
Instead, I want to help that 14 year explore leadership in appropriate avenues.
Stretch their thinking? Of course.
Challenge their abilities? Sure.
Help them grow their leadership influence? Absolutely.
But if I ask them to start adulting, they will burn out and I will give up.
So, how are you at this? Are you providing high capacity students with student leadership opportunities?
Practice makes perfect, or so the saying goes.
The past few years I have coached my oldest daughter’s basketball team. Right or wrong, one of the things I made them do was work on shots from the block. I wanted them to be able to make a shot close to the basket using the backboard.
We would have competitions to see who could make more. We would take turns. We would have timed drills, all with the purpose of helping them develop that one shot.
Why? Because you perform how you practice. If you practice making shots from the block, you have a higher likelihood of making shots from the block in a game. The math is simple.
There’s a rhythm to the repetition. Your muscle memory takes over at some point.
For me, in high school, I shot countless shots from “the elbow” of the free throw line. That was almost 20 years ago, but guess what: today, I can make an elbow shot almost without thinking about it. I repeated the process over and over, and it has stuck with me, somewhat.
Leadership is redundant. As we teach students the ins and outs of leadership, we have to embrace the redundancy.
It’s practicing block shots every practice, knowing eventually you can move further away.
It’s asking and answering the 3 questions every week, over and over, and seeing how the answers change.
It’s inviting those around you to join you as you accomplish a task.
Leadership is doing the same thing over and over. Even when you think you cannot do it again, repeating the process. And teaching others to do the same.
Does repetition get old? Sure.
Does repetition get boring? Sometimes.
But is repetition necessary? Absolutely.
As I’m embarking on helping developing a new group of student leaders, I realize the importance of repetition, and easy repetition to start. I’m striving to help them find a rhythm, to find a place to get started. The goal is to help these student leaders see the opportunities for them to make an impact.
What needs repeating in your setting? Are you willing to tackle it?
Pick your spots.
And so went my advice to a friend about a situation they found themselves facing.
Sometimes the temptation we, as leaders, face is to try to generate sweeping changes all at one time, when in reality the most effective change happens when we pick our spots.
If you face a situation and see ten different things that need addressing, here are three tips to help you narrow down your list and more effectively pick your spots.
As simple as this may sound, the reality is so often lasting change happens bit by bit. Take a minute to look around today and pick your spots. Clarify, prioritize, and move with humility. You may just be surprised at what you can accomplish.
Today’s flashback takes us back to one of the first posts on 3QL. The post is titled “Don’t Let Someone’s Character Surprise You“, and was born out of some personal frustrations years ago. Here’s a clip:
I have a morning routine. I make coffee before I do almost anything else. Sometimes I prep the coffee maker the night before, and sometimes I have to prep and brew in the same motion.
But do you want to know something that has never happened? I have never pushed brew on the coffee maker and watched the coffee pot fill with soda. Why is that? Because the coffee maker does what it is made to do — make coffee.
Over the years I have learned a similar lesson about people — I cannot let myself be surprised when someone does something that lines up with who they have been while I have known them.
Be sure to click over and read the rest of the post, and thanks for stopping by!
