First, full credit to a great mentor of mine, Dr. Mark Warner. I clearly remember the first time he said to me Create a Great Day instead of Have a Great Day to me as a young college student. It struck me then and recently it struck me again as I found myself simply going through the motions of my life.
I am convinced we are using the wrong word. HAVING something and CREATING something are totally different. We HAVE to eat. We HAVE to sleep. We HAVE to use the bathroom. So why do we tell people to have a great day, have fun, or have anything? What if we changed it... CREATE laughter. CREATE hope. CREATE love. CREATE fun. When we use that word in this way, we empower our people. We challenge our people. We give the opportunity for our people to be empowered and to think about action, not reaction. When we CREATE, we change. I hope you will stop HAVING a great day and, as Mark would say, I offer you the opportunity to CREATE a great day today....that's what I am going to do too!!! In my world, and in many of yours too, a new beginning dawns in August and September as we send our the youngest members of our community back to their learning environments to grow as thinkers, creators, and learners. If you are one of those who get the chance to engage them in their growth, I hope you will REACH with your leadership.
Real. Be You. Their fake meter is strong (even the little ones) and can read right through you. Also, you don't have to sugar coat anything. If it's great, celebrate. If it isn't, they need to hear that too. It can be constructive, but it has to be real. They will thank you later. Excited. If you aren't, they won't ever be. Not the rah rah we have to be excited crap....authentic excitement about the opportunity to change a life for the better. Isn't that why you got in it?? It wasn't for how well you teach someone to fill in the bubble....or at least I hope not! Accountable. Every word and action is important. In and out of the classroom. People send their most prized possessions to you. You have a responsibility academically but more importantly for their well being. Change. Change them. Not manipulate. Not force. Change their thinking. Change their perspective. Change their world. Oh, and it's OK to let them change you. You will be better for it. Hope. We need it...all of us. Without it, what can we do? With it, what can't we do!! Rich, poor, educated, extrovert, introvert...EVERYONE. Offer hope for their success. Students you can do this too....if we do it together, who knows how far we could REACH!! The Olympics have been great to watch. My 8 year old daughter is...well...obsessed to say the least..and I love it. Every morning I get a complete report of who won the night before (when she stayed up and the old man fell asleep) and what I could expect when I tuned in that night. She is immersed, engaged, and clearly interested.
The conversations have also led us to talk about something I have preached in my classroom for years: TALENT will only take you so far...HARD WORK carries you to your destination. When you teach music, as I have for 15 years, you see some truly talented, gifted, and unique students who come with so many gifts and abilities. I am in awe of their ABILITY. I respect their GIFTS. I recognize their STRENGTHS. The truth is though, I am not interested in TALENT, I am interested in WORK. The Olympics have reminded me of that. EVERYONE on that television is GIFTED. They make doing some impossible things look easy. The REAL story comes out when you hear about the HOURS, the WORK, the SACRIFICE they have endured to get there. Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hours it takes to master something in his book Outliers. I would bolster that thought with the idea that those hours have to be engaged in growth and in the presence of expert teachers who assist you in perfecting your basic raw abilities. I am reminded to keep fighting the good, tough, and resilient fight when it comes to my goals. If I am going to break world records, and truly be world class, I need to keep working, making sacrifices to get there, and stop relying on my raw talent alone. I need more Pelican Leadership in my life. It hit me like...well...a diving pelican that I need to shape some of my action much like they were taking care of their business. Here are my takeaways:
1. No matter who or what is around you.....be you. I have never seen a pelican riled up...by anything. I have watched them work alone, in pairs, in packs, surrounded by other birds, following fishing boats, and diving in the same area as dolphins. Their actions are the same, and thus their results are too. 2. Observe before you act. Soaring high or gliding as close to the ocean as possible, pelicans take careful process to take in the situation before acting. The work they do in observing allows them to..... 3. GO FOR IT!! The dive. Calculated. Committed. Consistent. I could watch the dive all day long (maybe that is weird....but I have to be me). There is no turning back for the pelican once they have made the decision to go for it. They are ALL IN!! The pelican has reminded me to be true to my leadership values, watch and listen to the environment around me, and once I am ready, GO FOR IT..committed to the success I have created for myself. The ocean is truly remarkable. Every time I am afforded the opportunity to spend time with it, I have and will always be amazed by the vast power, beauty, and diversity. This particular morning, as I stood on the early sunrise beach, I thought about the calm and balanced consistency that the ocean provided.
I listened to the consistent cadence of the water as it touched the shoreline in rhythm. The calm consistency passed on to me and I found myself in connection as my breath settled to match. I wondered and thought about the ecosystem of marine life abundant and active below the surface, yet the surface shared with me was a sea of glass, only interrupted by a small fish jump but never deterred or pushed away from the calm and consistent beauty. I reminisced about the previous day and how the ocean provided a different emotion. The strength and power it shared, and the energy was more vigorous, sharing with me a different side to it's vast array of abilities. I thought about how my leadership needs to be more like this ocean. I want to be able to return the the calm consistent leader each morning. Regardless of what is happening within me, I need to return to this focused and balanced state. I need to breathe. I need to find cadence, control, and consistency. Someone needs to breathe with me, to sit with me, to feel that calm focused start to the day, so we might journey together on an adventure to build something. What if we could return each morning to prepare ourselves for the day....I wonder what we could accomplish and share with the world? Lifeguarding is a thankless job. They are there for your protection and are ready to save a life at a moment's notice. When they do, they are commended, applauded and appreciated, but those moments come few and far between.
I recently observed and noticed that the majority of their job is reprimanding behavior. The shrill whistle is almost always followed by some warning or order to stop someone from doing something. They sit, look, and find the negative in hopes to change behavior. Imagine if the lifeguard whistle meant someone in the pool was going to receive a compliment or congratulations. GREAT JOB AT THE WAVE POOL!! THANK FOR WALKING!! NICE HANDSTAND!! How would that change the game?? When we use our leadership whistle, I hope it is for more than negative behavior changing. I hope when we blow our whistle to grab the attention of those around us, that we offer a positive feedback loop that fosters growth and encouragement instead of scolding and negative behavior change. Our work isn't about saving lives, but it is about changing lives...what whistle are you using?
I recently spent some time in Washington D.C. and was inspired and moved by an exhibit at the Newseum featuring Pulitzer Prize Winning Photography. The images ranged from joyful to disturbing, each catching unique human emotion in each frame. I tried to imagine the lens each photographer had to use BEFORE using the camera to catch these moments and the unique skill each photographer had to see the moment before it happened. This challenged me to question the needs of the leadership lens.
The leadership lens needs to be transparent. People looking at leaders need to see through them. The leader's words and intentions need to be seen with integrity and honesty before a leader can move a person or organization forward. The leadership lens needs to be mirrored...on both sides. A leader needs to be able to see themselves...to selfcheck in the mirror regularly, while also allowing others to see themselves within that leader. Words and actions are trumped by a deep connection between people. The leadership lens needs to be both near and far sighted. The leader is challenged to see the 10,000 foot view while also needing to engage with the real time action on the ground. A myopic view won't allow for a complete understanding of need. Finally, and most importantly, the leadership lens needs to see empathy. These images I digested reminded me of the dichotomy of the human life and spirit and how quickly our environment can change. The leader MUST evaluate, understand, and respond appropriately to the environment around them. The effective leader must adapt their message, adjust their expectations, in order to get that Pulitzer Prize winning moment. The empathy lens allows leaders to listen, embrace, weep, celebrate, and engage with their people. The leadership lens is a complex, multifaceted lens. Leaders don't have time to change lenses to capture the moment. The leadership lens is built over time, adding skills and gifts until they become interchangeable and omnipresent. I look forward to continue to build our lenses together. Orlando.
Crying. Pain. Anger. Prayer. Hope. Love. When human life is ripped from the earth through the actions of the sick and hurt, we, each in our own way, go through a cycle of emotions that never makes sense and never brings back people who were stolen. It never feels good. It never totally heals. It never is resolved. So why does it happen again...and again....and again. And again. We stop talking about it. We allow time to diminish the feelings. We "move on" from the emotions. This is a mistake. We can't. We, those left reeling to find enough love in our soul to share with the world, have to bottle up the feeling, the energy, the emotion so that at any point can find ourselves deep in that pain again. We need to harness that energy now so that tomorrow, or one week, or one month, or one year from now we can engage our love to eliminate this hurt in our world. No one else is going to do it. WE MUST TAKE CONTROL. We must be the catalyst for change if we expect it to be better. Mourn. Heal. Grow. Standup. But DO NOT forget the pain you feel right now. You will need it. You will use it for good. You will alter the world as we know it. It will NOT be easy. It will NOT happen overnight. It will NOT eliminate the inevitability of humanity's darkness. It WILL save a life. It WILL embrace someone in your powerful love. Your work WILL be a beacon of light when someone desperately needs it. WE WILL SUCCEED. We have to. No one else but you and I will do it. So keep talking about it and let's change something in the name of GOOD! School is just about done....thank goodness. I have watched my colleagues around the country take deep breaths and release heavy sighs as understanding and learning continue to be evaluated by the standardized test. In my continued search for sanity and joy in the ridiculous world of standardization, Ken Robinson continues to give me hope for the future. We must engage our people, young and old alike, in the opportunity to Imagine, Innovate, and Create.
When we imagine, we dream and when we dream, we vision. Vision is what drives purpose, and without it, we cannot build the next great thing. The brain is made to imagine and dream our future, but we must provide a welcome environment for it to flourish. The imagination is often messy and sometimes outrageous, but without it we will never find the beauty of what the mind can find. Innovation is the opportunity to make something better. The vision of what we want can often times come out of something we know, but aren't satisfied with. Challenging status quo comes from the dream and innovation is born in that vision. The only barrier that blocks progress, is our self inflated ego that tells us what we have is the only and best version of itself. Acceptance of new possibility must overcome our weaknesses. Sometimes are dreams are so vivid that we can vision something no one has ever seen before. Creation over replication is the answer to combat the boring and futile. Put the Pinterst away and start from scratch. Make mistakes. Revise often. Welcome the opportunity for those we lead to make something. They don't just want to create...THEY HAVE TO CREATE! If you don't let them, they will leave, and bring their vision to someone who will advocate, support, and celebrate their creative genius. So let's embrace the idea of no school this summer for young people and old alike. Let's make the summer of 2016 the one we reflect back on and celebrate as the summer our imagination started the next great idea.... |
Thanks for stopping by. These are musings on how I see leadership in the world and how I continue to try and grow through my lens.
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