I want to do a brief summary of each Leadership Meridian class I have in an effort to remember what happened and to keep a record of it.
So, Thursday I met some incredible people who I am very excited to get to know better. It was our first day of Leadership Meridian, in a word, it was amazing. They first half of the day we stayed at a bank and heard some pretty inspiring speakers talk about what teamwork is, why it's important and how to become better at being a community, and creating leadership skills to cultivate great relationships and progress our community. BSUs tennis coach came in, he was amazing... He talked a lot about his passions, about how fostering teamwork and coaching has always come natural to him and the reasons why. He talked about a sense of belonging and how, if individuals have that, be it to their team, their sport, their job or their community they will want to do the best for that 'thing'. He said his job as a coach is simply to love his players. To show them that they belong to a team that is bigger than themselves and that when he has been able to successfully show these people love they can in turn love themselves and excel at their own passions. He said a couple of things that lined up A LOT with how I feel about the world. The first being that most people are 'spectators' of life, they walk around watching, not really participating and being fully 'present' (this is precisely why I live every day to be fully present, whatever I am doing I try to be completely in that moment. When I am with friends I am not texting others, when I am at work I try to be fully 'at work', not always the case but it is something I like to aim for etc.). The second thing he said that rang true to me, that I have actually tried to explain before (probably in my convoluted, hacked-together way), 'people will become how you treat them'. If you have no expectations of a person they will have no desire to care, if you have great expectations, treat them with kindness and compassion those individuals will rise to a level to exceed your expectations and if you think very poorly of a person they will lower to that point and meet your expectations there (I could use a ton of parallels from my life to help justify this statement, but I won't). I strongly believe you should give every single person the benefit of the doubt, encourage greatness form EVERYONE, you might just be surprised who rises to the occasion sometimes. Anyway, he was a very inspiring person, I loved listening to what he had to say and his ideas!
Then after all that we went out to NNU for 5 hours for what they call 'The Ropes' program. I guess the dude, John, has been putting it on for several years. There was not a single thing I didn't LOVE about doing that class, especially with 13 random strangers. I feel like I got to know everyone pretty well and I am grateful for that. In a nut-shell, we got to do a series of team-work activities that made us laugh, think, and problem-solve and in the process we learned so much about each other. We were encouraged to just do things and then as a group would reflect on how it went. We saw and talked about character traits, and why it takes each kind of person to succeed at any goal. In one of the exercises there was a platform balanced on a beam (like a teeter-totter, but only like 5 inches off the ground) and we were to all step on it and as a team separate to either side without letting it hit the ground in the process and then as a team step back off of it without letting it touch either. Those were the only instructions. So, we had to work together to get there... our team tried one strategy, it didn't work out, tried another, it was closer but then it didn't work out too. Then two guys worked together, came up with a great plan, everyone followed suit and we found a solution and executed it successfully. We had great communication and teamwork, not initially but eventually. We probably did about 20 different exercises over the 5 hours all working up to the climbing wall. I personally was stoked to climb, I haven't got to all summer and I miss it. I might have been the only one there that was stoked though, everyone seemed to have mixed emotions, mostly nervous. Even though I really wanted to climb I thought it was more important to help out the belayers so that those people who WERE climbing could relax a little, well as much as they could knowing that their ass was covered if they fell. John (the facilitator) was of course there helping everyone and there were like 7 steps that would have to simultaneously fail to create any sense of harm for anyone, but still, I remember the first time I went climbing, and the first time I belayed and its scary as hell until you get a feel for it. I did get to climb eventually and it was so fun! Then somehow while I was up there they also nominated me for the zipline/swing thing... I was scared but it was great. It really pushed my bounds of safety, I was the only one who got to do that one so it was kinda unique. I was terrified to do it but it was pretty fun... I prefer dangerous situations were I could actually hang onto something but it was cool to swing around and feel like I was flying around like Peter Pan... Turns out I'm also a screamer... that was new to me :). It was such a great day, everyone made huge steps and I feel like I met a whole group of new friends! I am really looking forward to getting to know and work with this crew over the coming months!
So, Thursday I met some incredible people who I am very excited to get to know better. It was our first day of Leadership Meridian, in a word, it was amazing. They first half of the day we stayed at a bank and heard some pretty inspiring speakers talk about what teamwork is, why it's important and how to become better at being a community, and creating leadership skills to cultivate great relationships and progress our community. BSUs tennis coach came in, he was amazing... He talked a lot about his passions, about how fostering teamwork and coaching has always come natural to him and the reasons why. He talked about a sense of belonging and how, if individuals have that, be it to their team, their sport, their job or their community they will want to do the best for that 'thing'. He said his job as a coach is simply to love his players. To show them that they belong to a team that is bigger than themselves and that when he has been able to successfully show these people love they can in turn love themselves and excel at their own passions. He said a couple of things that lined up A LOT with how I feel about the world. The first being that most people are 'spectators' of life, they walk around watching, not really participating and being fully 'present' (this is precisely why I live every day to be fully present, whatever I am doing I try to be completely in that moment. When I am with friends I am not texting others, when I am at work I try to be fully 'at work', not always the case but it is something I like to aim for etc.). The second thing he said that rang true to me, that I have actually tried to explain before (probably in my convoluted, hacked-together way), 'people will become how you treat them'. If you have no expectations of a person they will have no desire to care, if you have great expectations, treat them with kindness and compassion those individuals will rise to a level to exceed your expectations and if you think very poorly of a person they will lower to that point and meet your expectations there (I could use a ton of parallels from my life to help justify this statement, but I won't). I strongly believe you should give every single person the benefit of the doubt, encourage greatness form EVERYONE, you might just be surprised who rises to the occasion sometimes. Anyway, he was a very inspiring person, I loved listening to what he had to say and his ideas!
The second guy was the leader of the Boise and Metro area SWAT team. He was a little less 'entertaining' simply because he was not as 'expressive' with what he believed, you could definitely see his passion and the love he has for his job/duty though. I learned a TON about the processes the police force goes through and the values our law enforcement holds. He was a great example of how critical having a good leader and putting together and encouraging a great team are, his situations are life and death. One thing goes wrong and they could have some serious issues on their hands. More than that he shared his own personal values on how to run a team, he outranked his subordinates but yet refused to let them call him Col. Sgnt etc. He did not like placing himself above his men, I thought that was rare to see with a military man AND with a police officer. Most of them that I meet tend to be very power-hungry and tend to require all the status and respect they can. As he put it, generally there is a sense of entitlement when people get to his level but he believed he was so successful because he humanized it, he put his men before him because at the end of the day what THEY were doing matters more than what HE was doing. He believed SWAT could exist without him but it could not exist without his men. I thought it was great that he felt like he worked for them, not the other way around like most managers feel. He was promoted to his position to be able to understand each of them and get them everything they need so that they could do their jobs well. If they failed he never thought it was them, he saw it as his own failure of not being on top of the situation enough to be able to do his job correctly and take care of their needs. It was a very interesting perspective, and while I don't think it applier to every profession I think it certainly applies to most, it was intriguing.
Then after all that we went out to NNU for 5 hours for what they call 'The Ropes' program. I guess the dude, John, has been putting it on for several years. There was not a single thing I didn't LOVE about doing that class, especially with 13 random strangers. I feel like I got to know everyone pretty well and I am grateful for that. In a nut-shell, we got to do a series of team-work activities that made us laugh, think, and problem-solve and in the process we learned so much about each other. We were encouraged to just do things and then as a group would reflect on how it went. We saw and talked about character traits, and why it takes each kind of person to succeed at any goal. In one of the exercises there was a platform balanced on a beam (like a teeter-totter, but only like 5 inches off the ground) and we were to all step on it and as a team separate to either side without letting it hit the ground in the process and then as a team step back off of it without letting it touch either. Those were the only instructions. So, we had to work together to get there... our team tried one strategy, it didn't work out, tried another, it was closer but then it didn't work out too. Then two guys worked together, came up with a great plan, everyone followed suit and we found a solution and executed it successfully. We had great communication and teamwork, not initially but eventually. We probably did about 20 different exercises over the 5 hours all working up to the climbing wall. I personally was stoked to climb, I haven't got to all summer and I miss it. I might have been the only one there that was stoked though, everyone seemed to have mixed emotions, mostly nervous. Even though I really wanted to climb I thought it was more important to help out the belayers so that those people who WERE climbing could relax a little, well as much as they could knowing that their ass was covered if they fell. John (the facilitator) was of course there helping everyone and there were like 7 steps that would have to simultaneously fail to create any sense of harm for anyone, but still, I remember the first time I went climbing, and the first time I belayed and its scary as hell until you get a feel for it. I did get to climb eventually and it was so fun! Then somehow while I was up there they also nominated me for the zipline/swing thing... I was scared but it was great. It really pushed my bounds of safety, I was the only one who got to do that one so it was kinda unique. I was terrified to do it but it was pretty fun... I prefer dangerous situations were I could actually hang onto something but it was cool to swing around and feel like I was flying around like Peter Pan... Turns out I'm also a screamer... that was new to me :). It was such a great day, everyone made huge steps and I feel like I met a whole group of new friends! I am really looking forward to getting to know and work with this crew over the coming months!
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