One time a man was walking along the beach and saw another
man fishing in the surf with a bait bucket beside him. As he drew closer, he
saw that the bait bucket had no lid and had live crabs inside.
“Why don’t you cover you bait bucket so the crabs won’t
escape?” he asked.
“You don’t understand,” the man replied. “If there is one
crab in the bucket it would surely crawl out very quickly. However, when there
are many crabs in the bucket, if one tries to crawl up the side, the others
grab hold of it and pull it back down so that it will share the same fate as
the rest of them.”
Welcome to the #2 of the “top Ten Leadership Legacy Skills”.
Ambition often gets a negative connotation in the work force. I have experience
it first hand in the past. Despite this perceived negativity, I believe it is a
skill that must me practiced, modeled, and shared with adults and students
alike to (1) grow, (2) transform, and (3) lead.
Many of us are in the leadership roles we are in because we
have ambition. We have a desire to reach a certain goal, support a certain
cause, or lead for a change. This ambition helps us (1) GROW as learners. Whether it was taking additional classes,
trial and error in solving problems, or watching and observing others, we all
used this skill to grow into who we are today. Furthermore, if we want to
continue to grow, we must employ this skill to further develop ourselves. It’s
okay to have ambition—ambition allows for dreaming, future planning, and goal
setting.
Many of us have been in a situation where there is a time in
which we feel stuck, lost, or frustrated in each situation. In these challenging
times, we must pause, assess, and create a future plan. This future plan helps
us (2) TRANSFORMS our dreams into
actions. I first learned of future plans when going through a certification
training with Ruby Payne’s “A Framework for Understanding Poverty”. This
strategy allows for students to think about the future. Dream. Set a goal for
the future, and then develop plans in how to get there.
As an elementary student, I knew I wanted to be a teacher – a principal someday even. I never thought
about my doctorate or working for a highly respectable educational company as a
director of professional learning. Why? I simply didn’t know it existed. But, I
had a dream—a plan in being an educator. Then, after earning my appropriate
credentials I achieved that dream of being a teacher and then a principal. Are
we talking to our students about their dreams? Are we instilling ambition in
our students by having them craft their future story? We should know every one
of our students’ ambitions.
When we utilize the ambition that is within us or make a
point to help students create a future story, we can begin to plan. We make
thousands of decisions daily as leaders. But, are these decisions made in the
moment, by happenstance, or are we methodical in our decision making? When we
know the goals that we want to achieve, and have created a plan to reach those
goals, we are able to be more strategic in the decisions that we make. This
allows us to (3) LEAD at a high
level of efficacy. Our ambition really grounds are thinking and planning.
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