Dear April,
I hope today is a great day for you. I am sorry that I am out of town. But you know that after 20 years of marriage even when I am gone you are never far from my heart.
I have to thank one of my old high school buddies for connecting me with this song. Wanted to save it until our anniversary in December but just can't wait. The words are so perfect. Just click on the Happy Birthday link below and watch my Youtube birthday present.
"WITH THE STRENGTH THAT WE SPEND IN THIS LIFE, IN THE HOPE THAT IT GOES ON FOREVER WE BELIEVE AS WE PROMISE TO TRY, THAT OUR LOVE IS ONE LOVE THAT WILL NEVER FADE AWAY."
Happy Birthday
CAM
March 25, 2009
March 10, 2009
Authentic Leadership
I don’t know if I would have said this 25 years ago when my YMCA career started but today I feel that my faith and my leadership are so integrated that they are now hard to separate. Somewhere over the last decade I have felt a sincere calling from God to develop and focus on my leadership. I have had to sit and pray about my spiritual gifts and to ask if leadership is one of them. Some people may doubt leadership as my spiritual gift and in all honesty sometimes I doubt it myself.
Early in my Y career I had a kid in our after school program exclaim, “I am gifted and talented!”
“You are?” I responded.
“Yes, my teacher has me in the gifted and talented class,” he beamed.
Don’t you wish every kid could feel that way? That everybody could feel that way?
One of my Y staff often talks about the inverted triangle and that leadership is not top down but often bottom up. My faith has helped shape my belief that as a leader I cannot be more important than the organization. The people around me need to trust me and my leadership. I have said the word servant more in the last five years than I have said in my life. Being a servant leader is my responsibility and it is my calling. Not that I am great at being a servant all the time, but that is definitely the new goal line. So by being a servant leader I have to focus on empowerment. My daily challenges have changed from tactical stuff like conducting a meeting to more strategic stuff like helping branches stay aligned and focused with our mission. Today I try and focus on empowering staff and volunteers to meet organizational goals. As the CEO my day should fill up with serving the people around me.
Being a leader at the Y has provided so much significance in my life. We recently heard a leadership speaker talk about how we should follow our compass and not our clock. I used to think that it was all about bigger budgets, bigger buildings, bigger donors and bigger dreams when it is really about significance.
Not quite sure when this all happened but today I pray for my leadership. Today I pray for your leadership. My prayer is that we all understand the purpose, the power and the strength of our leadership. It takes commitment to focus inwardly and to gather input so we can become more aware of our gifts and talents. It is funny how today our job searches have become less about skill and more about values. I have found that I am now motivated by other people finding joy, meaning and success in their work and feeling that I have some small part in all of that. I can only be as good a leader as the leaders that work beside me every day. That ONE thing constantly garners more focus.
The most difficult part of leadership is taking these same skills to my house and leading my family the way I lead my organization.
Thank God for prayer.
And thank god for you!
Early in my Y career I had a kid in our after school program exclaim, “I am gifted and talented!”
“You are?” I responded.
“Yes, my teacher has me in the gifted and talented class,” he beamed.
Don’t you wish every kid could feel that way? That everybody could feel that way?
One of my Y staff often talks about the inverted triangle and that leadership is not top down but often bottom up. My faith has helped shape my belief that as a leader I cannot be more important than the organization. The people around me need to trust me and my leadership. I have said the word servant more in the last five years than I have said in my life. Being a servant leader is my responsibility and it is my calling. Not that I am great at being a servant all the time, but that is definitely the new goal line. So by being a servant leader I have to focus on empowerment. My daily challenges have changed from tactical stuff like conducting a meeting to more strategic stuff like helping branches stay aligned and focused with our mission. Today I try and focus on empowering staff and volunteers to meet organizational goals. As the CEO my day should fill up with serving the people around me.
Being a leader at the Y has provided so much significance in my life. We recently heard a leadership speaker talk about how we should follow our compass and not our clock. I used to think that it was all about bigger budgets, bigger buildings, bigger donors and bigger dreams when it is really about significance.
Not quite sure when this all happened but today I pray for my leadership. Today I pray for your leadership. My prayer is that we all understand the purpose, the power and the strength of our leadership. It takes commitment to focus inwardly and to gather input so we can become more aware of our gifts and talents. It is funny how today our job searches have become less about skill and more about values. I have found that I am now motivated by other people finding joy, meaning and success in their work and feeling that I have some small part in all of that. I can only be as good a leader as the leaders that work beside me every day. That ONE thing constantly garners more focus.
The most difficult part of leadership is taking these same skills to my house and leading my family the way I lead my organization.
Thank God for prayer.
And thank god for you!
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