this last weekend i went to fayetteville,arkansas (which for some reason i absolutely love doing, it's just so wonderful there) to be trained for a philanthropy i want to be a part of. between eating chocolate sprinkled donuts and listening to and pretending to know the words of music sang by men that wear eyeliner, it was an absolute blast.
but i think the most interesting and intriguing thing that i saw was the leadership of the man involved with the organization. the group i'm involved with is called 99 baloons, an organization centered around serving families with special needs children. it's got an amazing story behind it that if you haven't seen, you're guranteed to cry your eyes out. click on "amazing story" if you want to watch it.
but here's what i was most intrigued by, how a guy named matt leads this organization. he's elliot's father from the video if you watched it. but here's what i most enjoyed about how matt does things: (it's really almost a how to for a volunteer organization)
1. he's someone you want to be around.
-as i observed interaction after interaction, i saw how everyone involved from male students at the u of a to moms in their 40's and 50's interacted with the authority in the group, and it with both respect and smiles. it's so hard to be caring, loving and humorous while still firm, focused and driven but i feel like that's what was going on. any person who walked in to our training meeting was greeted with some sort of yell or humorous comment while still solving what they needed solved.
if this comment had a part b, it would be the trait of being comfortable in your own skin. matt's not necessarily a specimen of a man, being 6' tall with a thin frame and lacking an authoritative tone, but he was confident in his purpose and cause and that led to purpose and direction in minor decisions, and i would expect the same thinking in major decisions.
2. clear, contagious and concise understanding of the purpose and potential of the organization
-if you sit down with him for 5 minutes, he could tell you what, why and how he's doing what he's doing. the effects are that you're filled in enough to understand what the group does and if you love children, a strong desire to be a part of that. i think you could err in two directions here: people want to talk your ear off for days and go off on tangents that really don't tie back to what the purpose is. on the opposite side, someone could not really know or care enough to give you a knowledge of what's going on. matt displays a fine medium here and has enough emotional, logical and ethical reasoning behind what he's doing to call you to be a part of it.
3. a model of a leader
i think the qualities that matt brings to the table are the necessary ones. granted, i've been around him for a total of 6 hours in my life (and 1 of those comes from repeated viewings of the video) he doesn't lead from positional authority but rather from a respect that is derived from three things: a. his intellectual capacity. a law school grad that went through the situation and would be able to completely empathize with the families involved with the group. 2. he's comfortable. as previously mentioned, the guy's comfortable in his skin and confident with the direction. i think that the leader establishes the tone for the organization and it trickles down from the top. 3. unselfishness. servant leadership is the most attractive style of leading that i'll ever see. if the leader will do anything for everyone involved, it sets a tone of humility that affects all involved.
it's so fun for me to see how these things are ran, it just made me want to have a vision of my own so that i could effectively administer this pattern that was modeled for me. it's just legit to see someone loving and serving and doing it well, serving out of their respective gifts. have a good one friends
