I absolutely love this video. Firstly thank you to the proud father who shared it, and for adding the dramatic music to great effect. My own daughter learned how to ride her bike this week. This video was shown to me when I was having a conversation with a good friend and showing off a video of my little one's first self propelled cycling experience. But a bit more on that later.
This video brings a smile to my face every time I watch it. I love how it was filmed right after the boys first experience of cycling on his own. He was ecstatic, he was almost in shock at the awesomeness that he had just experienced, he was bursting with pride in himself and he wanted to share his joy. So what can we learn from this short video that can help us as we live out our lives with our families, at work and at play? Here are a few leadership lessons I have taken from this video. 1. 'I feel happy of myself!!!!' His words are perfect. He is so happy that he struggles to find the right words to describe how he is feeling, and when he finds the words they are perfect. One of the hardest things I have had to learn as a leader was to simply be happy with myself. It sounds like an easy thing to do, but in practice it is very hard. When in a position of leadership you can get so caught up in trying to do everything right, in trying not to make mistakes, in making sure you are pleasing your bosses, in making sure you are pleasing those you lead, even stressing about pleasing the people your company provides a service for. We all need to take more time to simply be happy, we need to take more time to enjoy the little victories when they come along. It is easy to be happy at 4pm on a Friday afternoon in July. After all in one hour you will be walking out of the office and into the warm fresh air.....and maybe even to the pub. However being happy, and I mean truly happy, on a wet Tuesday morning in November is much more challenging. So how do we achieve happiness? We need to learn to enjoy the process and celebrate the small victories. We need to understand that happiness is not on the other side of our next big report, happiness is not after the kids go to bed and you get some peace and quiet, nor is it after a hard session at the gym. Happiness is found when you fully engage in the process and you marvel at the small milestones and details that you often miss because your focus is on the future. Happiness is the challenge of sitting down and writing the report, happiness is playing with your children and making them laugh and scream even when you are knackered, happiness is in the lunge, the running technique or the squat. Learn to be present in the everyday mundane and you will start to find happiness, because it is right here and right now. 2. 'If you believe in yourself you will know how to ride your bike!!!' So many people are walking around with their self confidence dragging behind them. This can be for many different reasons and from time to time everyone can get into a mindset like this. I have definitely walked around with my shoulders slumped forward and my head held low. Self belief is very important for a number of different reasons. Firstly it helps us achieve on a regular basis. People with high belief in themselves and their abilities tend to be go getters. They will go and do what they are asked to do, they don't complain, they just go and do. However this statement made by the young boy in the video goes much further than simply just going and doing. What he says is actually brilliant, 'If you believe in yourself you will know how to ride your bike.' What I take from this is that if you have true belief in yourself you will learn how to do the things you can't do. I have worked with so many people that don't challenge themselves to learn to do new things. They work on something until they reach the boarder of their comfort zone. So what do they do when they get to this point? They go and ask someone else to do the work, they convince a colleague to carry on the work and they don't learn. The most productive people know that they do not know everything. The believe enough in themselves that they don't pretend to know everything. They find it easy to ask others how to do something so that they can learn for the next time. They learn and therefore they know how to ride the bike. 3. '.....you just keep practicing.' You know that old say, 'Practice makes Perfect.' Well it stands true. The only way you ever get good at something is practice. There is more and more research going into debunking the myth of Talent. You all remember that kid in your class who was good at everything. That kid who played multiple sports and was a superstar at all of them. They were also the most popular in the class as all the boys wanted his on court skills and all the girls wanted him on their arm. Sadly that was not me. There was also the academically gifted who stood out from their peers, the kid that was doing Quantum Mechanics when the rest of us were still on long division. Sadly that also was not me. That kid was called 'Talented', they had a natural ability that set them apart from everyone else. They were going to go further than everyone else, continue to be better than everyone and will have a more successful life than everyone else. So.....what happened next??? Nine times out of ten everyone else catches up. The other kids grow, become more physically able, start to understand the more difficult theories. Life has a way of evening things out. Carol Dewek has been pioneering research on the talent myth. Her work has lead her to believe that people will have largely one of two mindset types. Either a fixed or a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset will see a problem and give up because they perceive it is too hard. A person with a fixed mindset will believe that they have only a limited ability and do not have the opportunity to learn and improve on the things they are not good at. More often that not the kids that are perceived as having a talent find themselves with this mindset. They are so much better than everyone else without having to try that they start to believe that they are so good based solely on their talent. When things get tough and people catch up with them and they can no longer coast they struggle to stay ahead of everyone else because they have not learned how to work hard to continue to improve. A person with a growth mindset will relish a challenge, they will not give up when the going gets tough. They will find a solution to a problem, they will learn what they need to do to get better. They understand that mastery only comes from hard work and practice. To put it simply, '....you just keep practicing.' 4. 'You get better and better if you do it' Once you have learned a new skill it does not get committed to memory instantly. You need to practice. You need to repeat actions, processes, skills time and again in order for them to become second nature. I am sure it was only a matter of days until the boy in the video cycled his bike as if it was nothing special. However to get to that point he would have to practice and practice and practice some more. In order for us to get good at something it takes practice. To stay good at something takes even more practice. I mentioned at the top of the blog that my daughter learned how to ride her bike this week. When she did this I videoed her and she decided to give a lesson on how to cycle your bike, giving some sound advice that I had given her. My wife put the video on Facebook, for all her friends to see. One of my daughters friends saw the video and decided that she wanted to learn how to ride her bike without stabilizers. So the next day she went out and learned how to do it. I am so proud of my wee girl for being a good influence on someone else and inspiring them to achieve something they though was beyond their grasp. So in short, be happy with yourself, believe in yourself, practice, practice and practice some more. Thanks for reading, Peace and Happiness.
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Hello, and welcome to my blog. Thanks for joining me, I hope you like what you read/watch/hear and keep coming back for more. I want this blog and website to be a source of inspiration for you all, a place for us all to grow in life, work and play. The main premise behind me wanting to do this blog is that I am really interested in Organisational Culture and Leadership and I want to explore this in a fun and meaningful way. I have called the website The Leadership Thread because through my own development I have picked and pulled information from many different sources, not just your typical places. I have learned lessons from TV shows, colleagues, walking down the street, BBQs, basketball games........and so on. For me leadership is not something grand and fancy that you only see in guys with suits, it is not always the big grand gestures that make people turn their heads. Leadership lives in the day to day actions of those that lead. It is the fabric of what it is to interact and work with people on a day to day basis. I believe that the traits needed to be an effective leader thread themselves throughout our lives and don't just exist in work, but also in our family lives, our hobbies and our social circles. I want to explore this and see how behaviours and actions transcend place, position, friendships and organisations. Leadership is about people. It is about engagement, sharing, trusting, supporting and guiding. Belief in a leader can be very hard to build and very easy to bring down. Leadership is lonely, it can be very difficult, however it can be ultimately rewarding. So......How am I going to do this? I am going to do it through a number of different ways. I am going to start through this blog using my own articles as well as having some guests submit their own work (I promise I won't take credit for work that is not my own!!!!). I will also be working on a podcast in which I will interview some really interesting people who I feel have a great story to share. To top it off I will post great content I find on the web that I think you all will enjoy. I will also post interesting stuff on my Twitter feed and other social network platforms as these roll out. There are a couple of other interesting projects that I am working on that I will share with you all at a later date. Before I go I want to explain to you the picture I have chosen to use for my website. This picture was taken in October 2014 when I was on holiday in the South of Spain with my family. I was walking along the beach and noticed the sand was just wet enough to leave some great footprints that my wee girls were making as they walked in front of me. I took a couple of pictures of their footprints alongside my own. From the moment I took the pictures I loved them. To me these pictures symbolise how I am no longer walking through life on my own. I am now doing it with my family. In my daughters eyes I am the leader of the family (we all know that the mums are the real leaders of our families), but we both let my girls believe that I am the leader. Not just are my daughters walking by my side on my journey, they are looking to me for advice and guidance........that is some serious stuff right there!!!!! I can't mess this leadership opportunity up. I have to be the best I can be at all times to make sure that I am a good example for these two little girls. However, how did I learn how to become a father? It did not come from books, I can tell you that much. My learning came from many different places. The influence of my own father, sports coaches growing up, my childhood heroes, bosses, friends and foes. I have taken small threads of good, strong, redeeming qualities and wove them into my own version of fatherly leadership. They have all helped me learn how to be a great dad. I therefore used this picture as a symbol of leadership, the people you lead will walk beside you, but they will also be looking to you for inspiration, guidance and support. If you keep your distance they will resent you and act out to get your attention, if you get too close and friendly they will take advantage of your seemly good nature. If you don't put in place the right expectations of good behaviour they will test the limits. However if you give them the freedom to explore, within the correct parameters, if you allow them to make their own mistakes and don't judge them when they fail, they will continue to look at you for leadership and support. Ok, that is it for now. Thanks for taking the time to read this initial post. I hope you found this interesting and will at least give me a chance to entertain you with future posts and content. Peace and Happiness to you all!!! |
AuthorMy name is Andy Smyth, I have spent the last decade working in the field of Sports Development, where I have had the pleasure of working to grow leaders within local community sports clubs in Scotland. Archives
August 2017
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