Everyone is a leader!

One of my favorite animated movies is Ratatouille! I love the line in the movie that "anyone can cook!" It is so positive and inclusive.

When it comes to the topic of leadership I've come to the realization that not only can anyone lead but that EVERYONE on your team IS a leader. That's not always a good thing. In fact my conclusion is that since everyone on the team is a leader, like it or not, you better train everyone to lead properly.

Here is how we do that...

Like most teams we have a leadership group. It is made up of the team captain and a representative from each class. We also have a senior leadership council made up of all our seniors. However, a few years ago we started to take things a step further by training everyone to be a leader.

A wonderful speaker by the name of Tim Elmore came and spoke to our athletic department about leadership. While we couldn't really afford to implement his leadership program financially, it got me thinking about structuring our own program. I've used a number of resources including his leadership books to create our version of leadership development.

We also have a wonderful Student Leadership & Development Program on our campus. Each summer they host a FREE student leadership summer program that last three days. All of the campus student leaders attend. We ask all of our new student-athletes to also to attend.

Starting in the fall of their first year all freshmen and transfers engage in a workshop about self leadership. You can't lead anyone else until you can lead yourself.

Sophomores work on the concept of connecting with people while juniors develop their skills when it comes to leading others. These are weekly workshops that last about 20 minutes. Sometimes they require action items during the week.

Since seniors tend to have the greatest amount of leadership responsibility our approach to training them is to treat their senior season like a leadership internship. They have the training and now they just need the hands on experience. We provide them with those opportunities throughout the season.

I'm finding that since started including everyone in our leadership training we are developing better leaders and better followers.