Archives for November 2007 | Kontrary

I’m sick. My throat hurts. My nose is a faucet. And my head is squeezing in on itself. For no apparent reason. Except maybe in a vain attempt to expel my persistent cough.

And I’m never sick. Oh, sure. I’ve alluded to the one time when I had some strange freak condition that landed me in the hospital. But besides that.

I never get sick.

When other people tell me they’re sick, I raise my eyebrows like, are you really sick you poor thing, or are you just a big wimp? Because if I have a little sniffle, I work through it. I’m tough.

Then a couple weekends ago, I laid down on the couch, the sun shining in, feeling like I could sleep into oblivion because moving was not an option. I couldn’t even move to change the channel from Gossip Girl to America’s Next Top Model.

It wasn’t until a few hours later that I thought, huh, I must be sick, and reached for the phone to dial the only person who could take care of me, even from hundreds of miles away.

My mother.

“Of course you’re sick!” she answered when I described my symptoms. She demanded that I go buy a liter of 7-up to calm my nausea, some white bread, but no butter, and chicken broth. Then sleep. Lots of sleep.

“And for heaven’s sake, don’t try to work!” she squawked. Yes, mother. And for the next four days, that’s what I did. I lived on 7-up, bread, chicken broth, and slept. I don’t even drink pop.

I got better. Life went on. And now this.

Don’t the sick fairies know I have stuff to do? Really. My nose is so red and my skin is so pale, I look like Rudolph died. It’s not fun. And I’m trying to figure out how I can get some work done. Any work whatsoever. So I do a little work, and then I call my mom to check in on her, because as it turns out, even hundreds of miles away, she’s sick too.

“You haven’t been lying down? Go lie down,” she says. And I’m all like, “But Mom, how are you?” And she’s like, “For heaven’s sake, don’t try to do any work either!”

Yes, mother.

My friend Nick asked me first. Then Marci said the same thing. And then today, one of my favorite creatives posed a similar question. They all wanted to know, what gives you the right to be a young leader? What gives you credibility?

Wait, what? What do you mean what gives me the right? I must admit that I didn’t have a good answer, even the third time around. To me, it’s like asking what gives women the right to work?

It seems to me that if I want to do something, then I should do it. This notion that young people have something to prove, that we must pay our dues, is outdated. But it’s obviously on the minds of my peers.

My gut reaction was to reply, “because I work really frickin’ hard. How about that?” But somehow that didn’t seem like the leader thing to do.

There’s a new trend where we’re checking under the rug to see what has been swept underneath. It’s a matter of ethics, a matter of accountability, credibility, and simply realizing that if we’re following, we should pay closer attention to who is leading.

We’ve always wanted our leaders to be transparent. But as it becomes easier to create yourself on the internet and tell whatever story you wish, being transparent is increasingly difficult. You as a blogger and who you are in real life may or may not always match up.

Indeed, our generation is moving up so quickly, that discrepancies aren’t just showing up in the online world; who you are in one job could be drastically different from who you are in the next.

And if we’re changing so drastically and consistently, do we have the expertise to move to the front of the line?

Questioning the validity of a person’s leadership skills is why more leaders aren’t stepping up to the plate in the first place. It’s why we have a leadership crisis in areas like the environmental and nonprofit sectors. And it’s why a slew of Generation Y doesn’t want to be engaged at all.

There’s nothing special to being a leader. You have to deal with a lot once you jump in, sure. It’s a challenge and it’s hard work and it’s rewarding and it’s fantastic. But leaders aren’t all that different from the rest of us.

My organization just finished a series on how local leaders in politics went from interest to action. We had a senator, state representatives, our mayor, our county executive, aldermen, lobbyists, and more. Across the board, every single political leader expressed that their story wasn’t unique. They saw an opportunity and went for it. Funny how remarkably easy it is to make a difference.

I don’t have a special skill set to be a leader. I’ve never taken leadership classes, and while I’ve been in positions of leadership since high school, I don’t think this makes me more qualified to be one now. It’s just, I can’t imagine doing anything else. Like, when I visited Madison to decide on where I would attend school, I felt in my bones that this was the place to be.

What gives you the right to be a young leader is the fact that you have stepped out from the rest of crowd. That you have put yourself out there, taken a chance, and have simply tried.

You will mess up along the way. You will make mistakes. You’ll take things personally. You won’t want to be a leader sometimes, and sometimes you might not be.

You won’t have all the skills, and perhaps it’s easier to think about it as if you’re a leader in training. But if you make that commitment, you’re already miles ahead of everyone else. And the others will follow. Because you believe in yourself. And that’s half the battle to believing in others.

Rightfully young.

In searching for links for this post, I found that Rosetta Thurman does a great job discussing this subject as well. Go check it out.