Being in the education field for 20+ years I have been around a lot of excellent leaders, be they administrators, counselors, librarians, coaches, or students and I think that has helped me tremendously in my leadership capacity.
My Early Experiences with Leadership
When I was younger, I was fine with letting others take the reigns and lead the way. My first leadership experiences were as the “Team Captain” of my youth and high school baseball teams. My leadership style was to lead by example, to get the first hit off a tough pitcher, or make a great play on defense, or come up with a clutch hit. I was a very quiet leader though, and as I got older this became a liability to any type of real leadership. My weakness was that I tended to go it alone on my leadership expeditions, leading to a lone wolf mentality that was very performance based.
Leadership as a Young Adult
I worked in the restaurant business for a seven years as I pursued by college degrees and they taught me some basic communication skills, management skills, etc., but I still was a average leader at best. It was not until I became a teacher and coach that my skills began to catch up with my aspirations. Nowadays after 18 years of teaching, I feel very comfortable as a leader, small or large groups, adults or kids, and it is a pretty cool feeling. Adults look to me for leadership on different projects. My students enjoy my leadership style. In general, I feel like I am hitting my stride as a more complete obvious leader.
What is Great Leadership
Great Leadership requires the ability to lose oneself and truly see the needs of one’s followers, understand their actions, their wants, their needs, and tireless preparation to help them reach their goals, along with feedback and support. Great leadership is quite exhausting when done properly and toxic if done poorly. A strong leader makes or breaks a team, end of story.
- (no title)
- Courage Under Fire
- Exploring the Nostalgia of Time Capsules
- Relationships That Matter
- My Modern Sports Team Would Be the Knights of Ni
Thanks for reading The Lifelong Learning and Education Blog Check out some of my other recent articles! What are your thoughts on leadership? Do you enjoy being a leader or not so much?
Playing golf with my bros!
What notable things happened today? Hitting the links today, enjoying that teacher summer! Read more
Family, Sports and the Great Outdoors
What are you passionate about? I grew up a only child for much of my childhood and have grown to deeply enjoy the company of my family. We have five kids, 2 dogs (one is pretty sure she is a human, don’t tell her I said that), two cats, a bearded dragon and fish so… Read more
Cute and Cuddly, but Watch out, they Bite!
If humans had taglines, what would yours be? Human beings are a puzzle inside of an enigma of contradictions. On the one hand, we are capable of amazingly wonderful things and on the other completely terrible things. We can create/destroy, love/hate, lead/follow and so on…. Read more
Road Trip to Montana!
A short blog post on disconnecting and finding peace in a chaotic world. Read more
Jobs you say…..yes I have had a few….
My first job was working at a baseball camp for former Dodger bullpen coach Mark Cresse, which was a great experience. My first day my pitching machine hit Brett Butler’s son twice, while he was watching and glaring at me intensely, but after that I learned the ropes. It was hard work being in 100… Read more
What do you Define as Religion?
Religion to me can be many things, anything you believe in that you give any sort of supernatural ethos to really. My religion these days seems to be :baseball, fishing, and snowboarding. I find that these activities help me connect to the big picture of life around me. I spend most of my days at… Read more
What are your thoughts on this?