What kind of leadership legacy will you leave?
By: Debra Slover
Children are born leaders, but most need help discovering and building their leadership qualities. For parents, empowering their children and nurturing their confidence actually shapes family legacy and contributes to society as a whole.
Wait, you say . . . How can I teach my children to lead? I’m not a leader. I’ve never chaired a committee, run a company, or been elected to a political office. I was president of the PTA, does that count? Whether you have or haven’t thought of yourself as a leader isn’t the point, since you are the one constant leader of your life.
You began your leadership journey, just as your children did, at birth. Let’s use a gardening metaphor. What do people and plants have in common? For one thing, the primary stem of a plant is called a leader from which everything blossoms. Like plants, children have a leader inside waiting to blossom.
As with all gardens, there are four seasons; a time to sprout, a time to grow, a time to cultivate and weed, and a time to harvest the bountiful fruit of your wisdom and re-sow the seeds of leadership wisdom for generations to come.
That’s where you come in as a parent leader. Your wisdom and unconditional love creates the fertile ground for leadership to flourish in children. It is not leadership based upon control over others or greed. It is grounded in wisdom, love, and no nonsense; the most authentic kind of leadership.
What does this mean for the current generation of parents? We can prepare our children for the future by sharing our wisdom and help them become leaders in their life today. We can do so through education, empowerment, and engagement in building their leadership skills. We know intuitively each child is unique. We can nurture their confidence and ability to lead their life responsibly by our gentle and loving nature. We know the lessons of life and mistakes all humans face by the pure fact that we are here to love and nurture them unconditionally. When we do, we complete the cycle of life and have the opportunity to live and leave a thriving legacy.
I am reaching out to parents because we have entered the harvest and re-sow season of life. Cultivating leadership in your children provides an exciting and healing experience. Why? You journey back to the time when you were a little sprout and examine the condition of your family garden into which you were born. You learn how you grew. Was it to merely survive? Or was it to thrive?
Parenthood is your time capture or re-write your leadership legacy story. It is a time that you can clearly see your legacy through the eyes of your children. You will know whether you are merely surviving or thriving as the leader of your life.
The truth is we are all born, we live, and we die, yet most of us spend a lifetime trying to survive that which we can’t survive. Why not rewrite your story to leave your unique thriving leadership legacy that you desire?
Debra Slover is the founder of Leadership Garden Enterprises, LLC, and author of U.N.I.Q.U.E.: Growing the Leader Within and the accompanying children’s book, U.N.I.Q.U.E. KIDS: Growing My Leadership Garden. www.leadershipgardenlegacy.com
