When we see people who are above us, we often feel jealous and wish we were in their position instead. But in John Maxwell’s book, The 360° Leader: Developing Your Influence, he says that the higher your position is, the less free you are. Or in other words, “The amount of responsibility you take on (may even increase) faster than the amount of authority” (Maxwell, 2006). I think this is an important lesson for me, because sometimes I may feel jealous of power, however I may not have the patience or durability to deal with it yet. In TALONS, this concept gives us more respect and admiration for students and teachers who lead events and trips. We learn that if we want to be effective leaders, we must be prepared to make some sacrifices in our lives, and that we aren’t completely overwhelmed when we get there. If we listen to Maxwell’s quote, then we will be more willing to compromise with our leaders and even be willing to help them more. It’ll create a sense of empathy and bring the members of a group closer together. All we have to do is understand that the top positions aren’t “paradise,” and that being a leader is actually a lot of work. And the way to make things not as bad as they could be is by working together, because a stressed leader means a stressed team. A stressed team leads to suboptimal results, which increases stress and restarts the cycle.
(Picture: johnmaxwell.com)
Growth is an important aspect of life. The 360° Leader: Developing Your Influence, by John Maxwell, points this out by saying that you should be more “growth-oriented than goal-oriented.” We should be striving to become better, rather than following the same schedule each day. I picked this quote to talk about because I think I should start looking at everything that happens this way. When life gets monotonous or even boring, I should start challenging myself, even if that means risking failure. It is better to fail and learn than to not fail at all and remain the same. I think this relates to TALONS because one of our goals is to be individual learners. This requires us to be willing to grow and gently push beyond our capabilities. We can take small steps at a time, such as increasing the difficulty of something each day, but it should be at a helpful pace. It also relates because when we grow, we become better leaders. This could be through experience, as we know more today than we did tomorrow. The more we mature and grow, the more other people will have confidence in us. However, if we focus more on achieving a daily schedule, rather than seeing what we could be, then we’ll be stuck where we are. There would be no progress in ourselves, or in the world. Life would become boring, and possibly won’t function properly without necessary changes. Growing will help us create and prepare for change.
When someone other than us comes up with an idea, it can often be difficult to be enthusiastic about it. However, John Maxwell’s book, The 360° Leader: Developing Your Influence, tells us that it’s important to be supportive of these ideas. This is challenge 6 of “The Challenges 360° Leaders Face,” “The Vision Challenge” (Maxwell, 2006) as John Maxwell calls it. I chose this topic to discuss because I usually like being in charge of situations, and radically different ideas are seen as an attack on mine. Maxwell says you can still have influence when listening to other people’s ideas, as you can build off them. This relates to TALONS because as leaders in training, we have to learn the importance of other people’s ideas. We have to learn that sometimes other people know things we don’t, or have ideas that didn’t occur to us first, and that it’s perfectly normal. We can use this as an advantage instead of feeling defensive. When planning TALONS trips we have to communicate really well, because other people’s enjoyment and possibly safety can rely on us. It’s better to be wrong than ruin someone else’s experience. And accepting other people’s ideas doesn’t make you wrong either. You can combine ideas and come up with a compromise, or have your own ideas inspired from someone else’s. The important thing however, is to be supportive of your teammates and their ideas. The goal of a team is to achieve a good end product as a group, not for you to show off how great you are.