How are you shining the light for the next generation of leaders?
An MBA student entrepreneur posted a comment on my blog today with a great question:
“Where does an entrepreneur go for mentoring or advice when there’s no one able to teach you (at least locally) what you want to learn?”
Two lessons here for servant leaders:
First, we need to stop letting our young ones think that all the answers already exist, whether or not we have the answers available for them. We do a disservice to our next generation by giving them spoon-fed answers and not letting them learn on their own or learn from their mistakes. When we provide them too much, they miss out on learning from authentic experience and we rob them of one of life’s most precious teaching elements.
Additionally, we take from them the rewarding challenge of having to embark on the adventure of having to search both internally and externally for solutions that take creative energies to produce. Robbing our next generation of true learning through imaginative problem-solving hurts them and deprives future generations of rich rewards of authentic experiential learning.
In fact, if we let them figure some things out for themselves, they come to find that there are questions that haven’t yet been asked, and that there are answers that may not yet exist.
Sparking this “wonderment equation” within them is a massive gift that we can give those with whom we are entrusted to steward. Additionally, we need to instruct them how to pass this on to their subsequent followers and keep the fire burning.
Secondly, we need to ask the younger ones what they want to learn from life, or from a situation, and also what they want to do once we work with them to clear the path for them to get where they want to go. Our job is to hold the candles that light their way and then to hand those candles over to them so they can go farther than we are able to. And by example, we will be teaching them how to pass the candles on to their proteges.
Often, there is more to be learned from the questions than from the answers.
How are you going about creating questions that stimulate creative problem-solving? How are you engaging in behaviors that encourage authentic experiential learning? How are you holding the candle in a way that creates demonstrative learning?
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Dr. Janice Presser is CEO of The Gabriel Institute
She can be reached at [email protected]
Image Source:monstersandcritics.com
