We the People!
Once a month, we at the Cedar Mentorship Program, meet with the mentees to discuss topics from our syllabus. This meeting is called LDS, also known as: the Leadership Development Series.
On February 18th, 2017, we met at Millennium Park to talk about two topics and also to do a leadership development activity. We were led by Shola
- Knowing your roles and playing to perfection:
The discussion focused on the importance of knowing the roles we play as individuals. Most of us have parents who are still alive – this puts us in the role of a son/daughter. Most of us also have siblings – role = brother/sister. Some of us have jobs and therefore are employees. Some of us already have children and are therefore mothers and fathers. The first part of this topic was to get us to identify the roles we play. It is important to know your role so that you can live excellently.
After defining our roles, we talked about the importance of playing our roles to perfection. What does this mean? This means asking ourselves – how can I be a better son? How can I be a better father? How can I be a better husband? How can I be a better employee? How can I be a better businessman? How can I be a better leader? Unfortunately most people do not think this way but only think in terms of how people can better serve them. The purpose of this mentorship program is to develop genuine leaders. Teenagers with healthy self-esteem who are also aware of themselves and how they play a role in shaping our world.
After discussing the topic of knowing our roles, we moved on to the next topic which was an extension of this. - Knowing the things we control:
We talked about how most people focus on the things that are outside their control. We talked about how inefficient, ineffective and draining that can be. A lot of people try to control other human beings. One popular way of doing this is through anger, because anger as an emotion threatens the self-esteem of whoever it is used against.
The 3 things we control:
1. the words that come out of our mouths
2. What we think, our mindsets
3. How we behave, our lifestyle
the key in this was to explain to the mentors and mentees that we are better of focusing on the things in our control (listed above), instead of focusing on things outside our control (the list of this is endless). This is one of the most critical lessons for happiness and success.
After talking about this, we did a leadership development activity called “who’s at your table?” Just like organizations and businesses have a board of directors that provide guidance and encouragement for the business or organization to succeed, as individuals, we need to have a group of people that we look up to for advice, guidance, inspiration and leadership. A sheet of paper was given to everybody in attendance and everybody was told to think about the people who fit the aforementioned categories. They do not have to be people who you know personally, for example a lot of people put Jesus, Barack Obama and we also had others putting Angela Merkel, Muhammad Yunus and lots more.
Everyone was tasked to hang this sheet somewhere where they could easily go look at it again when they need encouragement or guidance. We also talked about how the people on our table would change from time to time. It is also important to think about whose table we are on and the people who look up to us as role models.
After the meeting, we had cool lemonade, orange juice, and apple juice, danced a little and ate some of the best meat and chicken pie in Abuja! 🙂
Our next LDS meeting was held on Saturday, March 25th 2017.