Co-author: Lorien’s Journal entry. Fall 2020
I learned not only how to lead others, but most importantly, how to lead myself.
I had a loud personality growing up. I guess that is why I was continually told I was a “natural leader.” Yet, I didn’t know much about leadership. In 8th grade, I went to my first day-long leadership training. Things changed. My brain hurt by the end of the day, but I was hooked!
I learned a lot of the simple foundations you will read about in this book. In my early training, we practiced having conversations, public speaking, shaking hands, and a seemingly endless list of basic leadership habits and thinking. The most important change was that at age 14, I believed someday I could lead, that my dreams of travel and adventure could come true, and I was going to be okay as a teenager.
We learned not only how to lead others that day, but most importantly how to lead ourselves. It was a day full of challenges that helped set me on a leadership path through high school and college. I began to embrace habits that I needed to develop and was able to tap into my strengths that had helped define me as that “Natural Leader.” (We will talk about how to do both of those things in this book!)
During college, I was one of the key leaders of a student organization. By then, I had some experience in how to run a team and how to lead my peers. After college, I worked as a waitress and eventually found myself in a management position, while learning new leadership skills every day. I knew how to work hard, encourage my team, and treat them with respect. I continued to gain confidence in my own leadership.
I moved to California, where I started leading a team of students and a musical band for events on college campuses across America. The leadership experience I gained in junior high, high school, and at college was paying off. I knew how to organize events, develop and explain a vision for what a team wanted to accomplish, build and lead a team, and run a schedule. Each challenge was fun, but they were challenges… sometimes hard ones.
I made mistakes along the way. But the next time I faced a similar task, I had a better idea of what I was doing. My time in that position was an amazing leadership opportunity. We visited around 80 college campuses across 20 states, drove thousands of miles in a van, and were able to work with countless students hungry to learn about how to impact their campus. One day we filled the Camping World Stadium with 60,000 students and locals. I was in awe and said to myself, “How did that 8th-grade student get from Troy, Ohio to this??” So many of my life dreams and goals were happening!
When I was invited to help write this book, I realized that just as my life changed as an 8th grade student, and as the lives of thousands of students in our audiences around the country developed new hope and vision for their lives, a leadership book would be a lasting tool to offer that same change to more students than we could ever hope to talk to in person. I now see choosing my leadership path in junior high was one of the best decisions I ever made.
My hopes for each teen reading this book?
· That you will be coached, and challenged in your dreams to be a leader.
· That you will choose to do the hard work and the daily disciplines needed to build a strong foundation for your leadership in the seasons ahead.
· That you learn about the true meaning of legacy, and how your life can bless and influence others as you make a difference in your chosen path.
· That you learn from your struggles and distractions and push on towards winning.
· That whether you are a “Natural Leader” or a “Born Leader,” or one who never thought of themselves as a leader, that you just begin the journey.
· Welcome into our world of Authentic Teen Leadership.
· Happy reading!