Last night I watched a good portion of the CNN celebration of Heroes in the world today. They were all ordinary individuals with a vision or idea of a way to help a single person or a group of individuals one at a time. None of them believed they were heroes. All of them were leaders.
There was one of them that really struck me with a comment she made in her acceptance speech after receiving an award. She said, “It is quite a comment on the world when showing respect for or doing an act of kindness for someone is deemed heroic.”
I would agree with that. For us to be leaders though there are skills and knowledge needed along with being able to look at situations and see what we can do to make a difference. Our acts of leadership do not need to be so large that they affect every human on the earth. In fact if we start with that goal in mind we are less likely to be affective. We can change the world of individuals and those around them. When we are willing to help one person soon we find that we are affecting so many more.
In our own community we have heroes. I will comment on some of them in the future. But I believe that our children have that ability too if we develop it. This is one of my goals for this year coming in 2009. You may want to follow my Leadership Blog and look for some training sessions we will be doing this year coming up. If you are interested in your child learning the skills and getting practice to be a leader, contact me at Balanced Life Skills and lets see how we can do this together.