Hello family, as we wrap up the month of October, I thought it apt to also wrap up this series on “Cultivating Leadership Skills In Our Kids“.
There is a lot more to point out on this topic & I will try to take it further at another time as I am inspired.
At the beginning of this journey, while I was thinking about the name for the series, I thought about a couple, one of such was “The 3 Ms of Parenting – Modelling, Management & Memories” but it just didn’t sit well with me, so I settled for the current one.
Just to recap, our anchor scripture has been Prov22:6 which says “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” I highlighted that our job as parents involves, Modelling ( or Mentoring) in which we display the right characters we want our kids to emulate so as to be worthy citizens in our society, then we talked about Management & all of its various flavours.
My last post highlighted the need for failure management for our kids as a way of ensuring that they learn from these failures & turn them around as stepping stones to greater successes.
This & many other areas ensure that we help develop greats leaders of tomorrow.
Before I talk about the last job of a parent ( Making Memories), lets look at 2 more points about management of our 21st century kids.
Team & Independent Management
I mentioned team management in passing while I was talking about talent management, but its worth emphasising again.
As they grow older in this current age, the requirement to be a vibrant team member is of great value especially as the world is becoming a global village.
The need to collaborate with people in different time-zones with different cultures, beliefs & upbringing will be super high in their generation, so we need to ensure they develop with the required skills to be fantastic team players.
We are intentional with our kids as regards extra-curricular activities in school, we enrol them in team oriented sports like Football, Basketball, Athletics-(Relay races), Ballet, etc to ensure that they imbibe the team spirit.
To be an effective team player we ensure our kids:
- Have an Identity ( Self-Awareness): In a world where people are trying to be others, we ensure that our kids know who they are as a person & as a member of our family. They have clarity about Dos & Donts as well as Whats & Whys.
- Understand their strength: We ensure that they know exactly what they are contributing to the team as a member. So they are not intimidated by another team member, we reason with them to see what their unique strengths are & how that helps the team.
- Be socially-aware: To know that there is a whole lot more in the world than what we are teaching them right now. There are different people, cultures, beliefs, experiences, etc. Going to a school that is truly international has opened up their eyes to the world at large as they interact daily with colleagues from different parts of the world.
We are blessed that God has given us the privilege to raise our kids as citizens of the world & super proud when we see them interact among their colleagues.
They are bold, articulate & always ready to help & take up responsibilities amongst their mates. I recall a time we travelled on vacation to the UK & my son didn’t miss a beat interacting with his cousins & their friends as if he had always lived in the UK, he wasn’t out of place.
By virtue of his participation in a summer camp programme “Leadership in Training” LIT in church, his leadership skills & team spirit has greatly increased & at the recently concluded Family Conference, I saw him display these skills as he interacted with others in a group activity to solve a problem & provide services to other kids.
I have a great relationship with my kids which is far better than what my Father had with me, but I also found out during the Conference that I need to do more especially as they are getting older.
Independence management is about creating a culture, a template for them to follow & then empowering & releasing them to use it independent of you as they grow older.
Give your kids the ability to make choices for themselves ( especially not so critical choices). This may mean allowing them to make mistakes from time to time ( remember failure management), as it forms part of their learning process & experiences.
A typical example is picking up what they will wear, while they were younger we picked what they wear, but as they are getting older, we’ve eased out on that & sometimes allow them to pick what they want to wear just to see their choices & rationale so that we can either validate or correct it accordingly.
Before, we chaperone them to all parties & events, now sometimes we drop them off & transfer their care to a trusted elderly person & come back to pick them while getting feedback from the person on how they are doing or did at the event.
We see independence management as a way of judging how far they’ve imbibed what we’ve taught them over the years.
I remember when one of my son’s best friend was having his birthday party & both my wife & I had somethings to attend to that Saturday, I dropped him off at the place, handed him over the the parents of his friend & picked him up later.
When I came back for pick-up, I was properly attended to with food & drink, I sat down in a corner, eat, cleaned up after myself & trashed things properly, before I went to play with the kids.
Unknown to me, a guest had been watching & while I was playing with the kids she came up to me & asked “Is that your son?” pointing to my kid.
I said “Yes, dont we look alike” & she said we do in every way, she told me how she noticed him as being polite & intelligent & that he did exactly what I did in eating in a corner, cleaned up after himself & trashed things before running off to play.
I told her that it’s all about God’s help & the support structure my wife & I have intentionally put in place & as I drove off, I was filled with pride & gratitude.
Days like this encourage me a lot & also drives me to do more as I really dont have a lot of time, he will be 11 years old in December & in my mind I have 7 years to go to cultivate & activate what he can GO & IMPACT the world positively with……. Time is of the essence!!
We will conclude on this series tomorrow while November will be dedicated to something else.
Are you doing a great job as a model to your kids?
Are you managing your kids correctly in all the required areas?
This is my snippet, I AM SHALOMESQ!!!
Shalomesq Snippet 