WISE, INTENTIONAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
LEADERSHIP IN LIFE
Mike Prom - Director
September, 2008 – Vol. 1, Num. 5
Simulcast 2009 – Friday, May 8
Educational guru William Glasser has indicated that one of our basic needs as humans is the freedom to choose. Your motivation to accomplish a task greatly diminishes when you feel trapped and do not have a choice to do that task. It may be a matter of attempting to get out of the situation rather than accomplishing the task. Heaping guilt upon people to do something they have no voice in is not a good motivator. Telling them they have to do the task because you are the boss does not motivate your people either. It does not gain you points with people no matter if it is a paid position or a volunteer situation.
Giving people the opportunity to choose, letting them have a voice goes great distances for morale and enthusiasm. A motivated worker in any situation is one of the greatest assets going for you. Plus it reinforces being a servant leader, as you show in reality that you do value the opinions and feelings of those you lead. Find ways to involve your people, no matter what level they are at.
When I do not want to involve people, I have to check whether I am being selfish and worried that by involving people in decisions or activities, they will not think the same way I think nor do the activity exactly as I do it. You do lose some “control” when you involve others and give them the freedom to choose. It is the struggle to work through. Am I here to serve them or are they to serve me?
This is not saying that you simply become a wash rag and get blown in any and every direction. If you are in charge, you are the bottom line and have to be the one who takes responsibility, which means there will be times that the choices made by others under your responsibility will be halted or curtained for the betterment of the whole. Establishing relationships with the people you are involved with will make those tough situations go much more smoothly when they arise.
Giving people some say, some freedom to choose will enhance relationships and be a key motivator in accomplishing what needs to happen. You will also show you care about them as individuals. Where freedom to choose is squelched, you see a look of hopelessness in the faces of those people and that is a look that is extremely difficult to change when people know there is no hope on the horizon.
The Bridge Builder by W. A. Dromgoole
An old man walking a lonesome road,
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and wide and steep,
With waters running cold and deep.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The rolling stream had no fears for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow traveler near,
“you are wasting your strength with building here.
Your journey will end with the passing day,
You never again will pass this way.
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build you this bridge at eventide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head,
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today,
A youth whose feet must pass this way,
The chasm that was nought to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He too must cross in the twilight dim-
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.”
QUOTES ON CHOICES
“There is a choice you have to make in everything you do. So keep in mind that in the end, the choice you make makes you.” John Wooden
“The secret of a person’s successes is discovered in their daily agendas.” John Maxwell
“Be aware that the natural tendency is to mentally set an almost unreachable standard for success while simultaneously creating a definition that is easy to obtain.” Tommy Newberry
