My oldest daughter started high school this year, and it became instantly apparent there’s a lot of fear and excitement that goes into a transition like that. Think about it: one year they are kings and queens of the castle, and they come back from summer at the bottom of the totem pole. Not to mention the changes they are about to go through in the next four years! By the time they graduate they will have aged from a young teen to an adult with full legal authority to vote, go to war, live on their own, get a credit card…there’s a lot of turmoil in that process!
It’s easy, I think, for us to lose perspective as these teens grow up. We start thinking they’re more competent than they are. We look at them and they’re beginning to look like adults, and it’s easy to forget they aren’t. We start getting frustrated at their turmoil — knowing the stresses of “real adulthood,” it’s easy to feel the smallish problems of adolescence seem like they should be easily overcome, and we can get frustrated waiting. Which is, of course, one of the biggest challenges of leadership: When things seem obvious and easy to us, we think it should be obvious and easy to someone else.
High school problems might seem so small to us, but it’s huge to the high schoolers. If we judge them for that, it will be wholly impossible to connect with them in a way that serves, inspires, and truly leads at a time when they need us most. Similarly, if our team is having difficulty with something that seems easy to us and we judge that, the same calamity will result: we will never connect, never truly lead. Leadership is having grace in their turmoil. As we enter the school year, our kids need that grace from us just as much as our team needs that grace from us.
Note to self: Just because I have perspective, that doesn’t mean I should judge those who don’t. That’s not leadership. Leadership is meeting people where they are, not where we wish that they are. Leading them through their experiences with vision and kindness — that’s leadership.
