Tonight I was so honored to listen to Tim Lautzenheiser speak about what it is like to be a leader. I was sitting in the lecture hall waiting for him to take the stage and as he did, the whole room stood up and gave a standing ovation. That’s usually a sign that you are in for a treat, but I could have never imagined just how much.
He opened with the statement, “Leadership is doing stuff that no one else wants to do.” This made me reflect back to the old days when I was the captain of my volleyball team and how true this statement really rang for me. He went on and talked about different kinds of leaders. There are two types of leaders, those who want to be successful and those who want to be significant. If you want to be a successful leader, you are a self-promoter and if you want to be a significant leader, you promote others.
During Dr. Tim’s speech I learned that leaders are selfless and that there are three ingredients to being a leader including:
1. Do what is right
2. Do not settle for less than excellence.
3. Serve other people.
You have to pick up other people to be better and, as Dr. Tim would say, “You are only as good as your leader.”
Throughout his speech, Dr. Tim told the most moving story I think I’ve ever heard. The story was about two high school kids named Mark and Jeremy. Mark believed in Jeremy and took him under his wing. This gave Jeremy the hope and desire to become a person who could save lives and realized he would have never been able to do it without his “big brother,” Mark. This story will touch my heart forever and will always make me think about what kind of difference I want to make in this world and the people I can lead by being a coach.
Thanks to Tim Lautzenheiser, I will work to make a bigger difference than I ever thought I could. I hope that the students who attended his session got as much out of it as I did and remember his words long after camp ends!
Continue to read our life-changing stories here and follow camp coverage and photos at https://www.musicforall.org/what-we-do/summer-camp/2015-symposium-coverage.
