Today I want to talk to you about leadership and it’s a tough subject to talk about because it’s ever evolving. I feel like the old model of leadership is busted—is bankrupt—so I’m constantly looking for new ways to invent, to show people what true leadership, pure leadership, what that looks like, what it tastes like, what it smells like. I was doing some research on early presidents in our world. John Adams was our second president behind George Washington, and his son John Quincy Adams was our sixth president. I was reading a little bit about them and I saw this one quote from John Quincy Adams, our sixth president, and it goes like this:
If your actions inspire others to dream more, to learn more, do more and become more then you are a leader. —John Quincy Adams
So if YOUR actions inspire others to dream more, to learn more, to do more, to become more then YOU are a leader. And I thought how that quote juxtaposes a lot of our leadership today and I think that might be the reason it’s busted. I think our leadership, just looking around, our leadership is asking less and less of us because they think that’s nice or they think that’s more evolved or not to push us, not to challenge us and not to ask more of us. Typical things that come out of our leadership’s mouth these days are, ‘it’s just not fair’ or ‘we’ve got to level the playing field’ or ‘we’ve got to regulate this group so this other group has a shot at doing this and that.’ I just think that’s backwards. I don’t think that’s why we’re here. I don’t think that’s why we’re made this way. I don’t get it. Why are we not asking more of our people?
It reminds me of a simple story, and I may have told you this before because my audiences hear it. I just remember when my son started playing basketball and he had a coach and they would run these races at the end of practice. They would run down to the end of the line and then back. My son Axel was probably six at the time, maybe seven, he’s running these races with the other five or six players on his team and he’s winning all of these races. So they keep running them over and over again. And finally after he won maybe five or six of these races in a row, the coach comes up and says, “Hey Axel, could you slow down so that somebody else can win?” I heard that come from the coach and I just stopped everything and I didn’t say this to the coach, but I said to myself, “Wouldn’t it be better if the other boys sped up and kept up with Axel? Wouldn’t that be better for our team? Wouldn’t it be better for our team if instead of having the fastest player slow down, to have the slower players speed up? Wouldn’t that be better?” And then I thought, “Wouldn’t that be better for our country and our world—and more specifically to your group, your audiences, your kids? What if you asked more of them? What if you asked them to play up to your level? Instead of you coming back to the pack, make the pack come up and play at your level.
And when I think of those things I wonder, okay, what would our world look like if our leadership demanded we play a bigger game, we play at a higher level, like John Quincy Adams is saying—if your actions are inspiring others to dream more and do more and be more and become more then you’re a leader. So if you’re asking people to do less, and it’s okay, I don’t think you’re a leader. I think that leadership model is busted, that’s not working anymore. I think our new job—and this goes to you and your audience—you have to demand more of your audience. You must make them play up to your level; the same goes for your kids. Why would you demand less of your kids because you know the media or culture tells you, “hey, don’t put too much pressure on the kids; hey, don’t push your kids.” I think the opposite. I think, what if we demand more of them, make them play at a higher level? Make them play up to the level that we want to play at, which is the top. And there’s no other level other than the top. What are you going to do? You want your kid to be a second-class citizen? Why would you play to that level? Why wouldn’t you go, “Look, let’s go to the top.”
Well, to do that, you’ve got to ask them. So you’re a leader and I’m a leader and we’re reluctant to do so, right? Most great leaders are kind of reluctant to do so. I want you to go out and I want you to demand more of your kids. I want them to play up to the level that you want them to play at. I want you to demand more of your audience—inspire, ask more, demand more of all the people that surround you. And if they can, they’ll raise their level. That’s a world I’d like to live in. I don’t want to live in a world—and I don’t want my kids to live in a world—that has to reduce itself to mediocrity. Your job is to demand more. You want to be a true leader? Ask for more. Get out there.
