Taken For Granted

So, this evening I went out and had a nice skate on one of the many outdoor rinks here in the Ottawa area.  It was great, the weather wasn’t too cold and there weren’t too many people out on the ice.  A great time.  Anyway, this whole skating thing is a big deal for me because it’s not something I’ve done a lot of.  I’ve skated more this year in the last week than I did the last two years and probably even the last 5!  I am not a strong skater at all and (confession time) I can’t stop.  As I was bumbling about on the ice I was watching all the young guys skating and I couldn’t get over it.  They make it look so easy!!  They’re skating forward and backward, stopping, doing crossovers, they make it look like they’ve been skating from birth.  At 27 I am trying to learn and doing my best to be disciplined to get out on the ice as often as I can but man, when I see 11 year olds doing better than me it’s very disheartening.

Do you ever wonder what it’s like for people who watch you do things you’re good at?  You know, you’re really good at art or music or something, you’ve been doing it so long that you forget how you even started.  In leadership, like skating or playing drums, when we’ve been doing it for a while it becomes easy to forget what it was like before.  We do things naturally and intuitively that at some point were strange and hard.  As a leader, it’s important to develop the people around you and help them discover the leadership potential within them.  If you can keep in mind what it was like when you first started, it may actually make you a better leader and help your followers to get where you are, sooner.

One Response to “Taken For Granted”

1. Matt says:

   January 7, 2010 at 11:03 am

   My one counter to this is not everyone is a leader, and those working underneath you may not be leaders. Not that their role is any less important. They likely have skills, like skating, that you don’t. But leadership is not where they need to ever be.

   Take for example a hockey coach. The coach doesn’t need to be a great skater, great shooter, or puck handler, but he needs people working for/underneath him who are. If he wants to win he needs people who aren’t like him. What the coach offers is leadership and an intimate understanding of the game(in most cases unlike any of the players on the team). With the coaches understanding and the players individual skills they make up a great team that can win hockeys games.

   The sum of the parts is what makes the team great. Those without leadership skills may not need to understand what you do, but the value behind it.

   Another example would be the body, a hand will never be a foot and an eye will never be a mouth but each part is valuable. And with this in mind I think a role of a leader is not always to make other leaders, but to instill the understanding that every role is of equal importance and to help each member grow in their position.

   Back to skating, your feet turning into a brain would not make you a better skater, but it is the coordination of each part; growing and learning and working together that will eventually make a better skater.

   I didn’t intend to be so long, but anyway those are just my thoughts.