Leadership 101

I, Hannah Marie, was the first child born to my parents, the oldest child in my family.

With this...erm, fate, comes the natural tendencies to be in control, to lead, and to be in charge.

Teaching, working with kids, and being in charge has been one of my gifts for a long time, and something I'd say I'm somewhat good at.

But my dad says that my strength is also my weakness.

See, as the oldest child, I've also never had big kids to look up to. So I spent the better part of my childhood (actually, I still do this) looking up to my older cousins, friends, and leaders with this kind of sacred awe.

Yes. If you knew me as a child and you were more than 2 years older than me, it was like you were some kind of holy and perfect being. I longed to have an older sister or brother that I could look up to.

I was sure that by the time I turned 16, I'd be perfect.

Ha.

Ha ha.

Haaaahhhahahahahahahahahhahaa.

So I thought that maybe, by the time I turned 18 it would be different.

Riight.

Nope. Still the same ol' me. And now that I'm staring the rest of my adulthood in the face, I'm starting to realise that I'm going to be the same person when I'm 21 as I am right now. (wow, profound, isn't it?)

Unfortunately, not everyone I looked up to looked down on me with the same kind of affection, and I got pushed around a lot - not in a bullying sort of way, but just in that "you're-too-little" sort of way.

I'll tell you, those were the words I least liked to hear -- "that's for the big kids." I was never bullied, never picked on - just always treated as "little."

Having these experiences as a child was both a blessing and a curse - a strength and a weakness.

It became my strength because as I've gotten older, I've begun to realise that I am becoming the older person that small children look up to - and I can sympathize with them. I know exactly how they feel and I can treat them with all the care, love, and respect that I've got because I know that they're often more capable than they might seem.

I had little 2nd graders in school cling to me. One of the things that most made my day was when a little girl named Hayley said "We're going to go play with Hannah because Hannah likes children."

But it's also become my weakness. Sometimes, I still carry that feeling of inferiority that came with always being made to feel small. I somehow feel that if I can make small children feel little, it will make me feel older. Then I will become that perfect, big, important girl I always wanted to be.

And instead of being a good leader, I become a drafter instead.

One of Jon Acuff's posts said this,

It’s easier to draft than it is to lead, but when you lead, you help somebody else go faster than they ever could have on their own. Leading is helping somebody else be better. Leading is helping somebody else get stronger. Smarter. More connected to whatever it is they’re uniquely called to do.

Leading is helping somebody else go faster than they ever could have on their own.

Drafting is easier. You don’t have to fight the wind.

Leading is harder. You have to continually break new ground.

I've been thinking a lot about this, especially as I teach piano.

For those of you who don't know, I have 8 students that I teach. Some of them are harder to teach than others - but with each, I have to find new and creative ways to make the concepts understandable.

I could just say "You can do better than that. Remember your dynamics." But instead I can say "Hey, good job with your counting! Now, let's play this part really loud. Can you pretend your fingers are elephants?"

I could just "draft" them, and give them all their assignments. But teaching -- leading -- that's different. It requires far more of my effort, but the results are far more rewarding.

Leading is helping somebody else be better. Leading is helping somebody else get stronger.

A lot of times I'm afraid to help people because I don't want them to get "better than me." I like to retain that air of superiority, and apparent "perfectness" that I have.

But that's far from the attitude I should have, and in the long run, it's going to hurt me far more than it's going to help me.

Coming up with creative, new ways to help the kids I work with isn't always easy. Sometimes I want to just say "How do you not get this simple concept?"

But that's not the kind of teacher I want to be. That's not the kind of leader I want to be.

Real leaders ask "What can I give to this person?” instead of "What can I get from this person?”

I teach piano not because of what I can get from it, but because I want to share my passion for music with others. I want them to love it as much as I do. But that focus isn't always the easiest to maintain.

I want to be a leader who gives. I want to be a leader who helps someone else grow.

Maybe I don't have my own dream. Maybe I'm like those people who never really quite figure out what it is they want to do.

But I know one thing I can do, and that is help other people. I can lead them. I can give of myself.

And really -- that's when I find that I'm most content.

Motivation

I've been thinking a lot about commitment, goals, and the weight of my words and actions. (this is a new years post, just so you know. =P )

Lately, I've been taking advantage of the fact that I'm really really good at doing things last minute.

I don't say that to brag. In fact it's a terrible weakness of mine.

I can memorize my speech the night before the tournament and still do well.
I can study new vocab right before taking the test and remember it.
I have fabulous short-term memory.
Basically, I can learn quickly. I can also rattle of said learned information and sound like I know what I'm talking about.

In the past couple years, though, I haven't really internalized much of what I've learned. That's not to say that I haven't learned anything, but that a lot of my life has been lived on the surface.

I could go into a lot more here, and I will in a later post. But lately I've been thinking about everything I say as if I was binding myself into a legal contract.

A couple weeks ago, I was challenged by the speaker in awana who was talking about how she made the commitment when she was 12 years old to read her Bible every day for at least 5 minutes a day.

At first I thought this kind of weird. Then I thought again. And I found it a rather brilliant idea.

So I wrote up a little piece of paper stating my commitment, signed it, put it in an envelope, and stuck it in my Bible.

I have now committed to reading my Bible at least 5 minutes every single day for the rest of my life.

One person I talked to was slightly taken aback at first.

"Isn't that kind of a lofty goal?"

I mean, you know, we all make New Years' resolutions, and almost half of them are unreachable ideals that we set to make ourselves feel better, or at least so that at the end of the year we can say "well, I tried."

But if you think about it, that's such a tiny little commitment. 5 minutes a day. Out of how many minutes in our crazy days?

And what else does Christ ask of us but for the rest of my life? I say my life is committed to Christ, but what does that mean?

Well, for me, it means that every day for the rest of my life, I am going to spend time reading His word.

It's kind of big, but if you think about it, it's really rather small. Yet this is what God asks of us.

Since then, it's been crazy how impactful the idea of my signature on that piece of paper is.

That means if I miss one single day, I've broken my commitment: one I made to Christ. That's pretty huge, you know.

I don't have many goals for the coming new year. (2011. Isn't that kind of scary?) But one of my goals this year is to reach all my goals. How about that?

So often we make them just to make us feel better, to sort of put us in an ambitious mindset in hopes of reaching the perfect ideal. As if writing it down is going to magically make it happen.

Since I've been so good at doing things last minute, the concept of working for something is sort of hard to grasp sometimes. But that really hit home to me when I went to Nats last year. [see my Nationals tag for more about that] Learning what it means to work hard for a goal and to reach it.

One of my friends pointed out that I'm really goal oriented. I never really thought of myself as particularly this way, but the more I think about it, the more it's true. When I set my mind to something, I really do do it. The fact is that I haven't been setting my mind to very much...just sort of flitting around and only halfway setting my mind to things.

So here's to the New Year: setting my mind on knowing Christ - and actually reaching my goals. My goal is to be committed. To my friends, my family, my schoolwork, and my Savior. What are your goals?