Byron's Babbles

One of my favorite sessions that I do for 3D Leadership is called Setting Your Leadership Style. I start off by playing the awesome music video of the song by Alter Bridge, Show Me A Leader. Since we are having to do these on Zoom™ instead of in person here are some takeaways from the chat box and discussion:

• Do not compromise values
• Don’t compromise on beliefs
• We need great leaders so hope never dies
• There needs to be one clear message (clarity)
• The only thing to do is next right thing
• Can’t survive without strong leadership
• #FarmKidsRockToo (couldn’t leave this off – it was added for my benefit)

Then comes one of my favorite activities that I call Rushmorean Leadership which was then followed up by an activity called Extending the Influence. The activity calls for teacher leaders to bring pictures to identify four great leaders to put on their own personal Mount Rushmore. Then they bring six additional pictures to extend the influence. Part of the share out was in small groups (the ability to do this on Zoom™ is incredibly intuitive and has lots of options to customize for the facilitator’s needs) and part was done by FlipGrid™.

One of the questions I always like to ask is if the participants’ Mount Rushmore would look the same a year from now or would have looked the same a year ago. There were varied answers to this ranging from yes to no and then everything in between, like maybe one or two different. Then a triad of things were said by participants that really struck me:

• We never know when we will meet the next person that will go on our Mount Rushmore.
• Who will be the next to influence us?
• My revolving Rushmore

This reminded me of the beginning monologue phrase in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.” To me, this means that people come into our lives and we enter other peoples lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When we treat every encounter as a chance to impact, influence, or inspire we bring purpose to our lives. Most people that enter our lives are seasonal and they’re with us for a reason. Once that reason is fulfilled life has a way of moving them on. We also need to remember, the influence the great impact that others that we have never met influence us. Think about the influence of the four Presidents on Mount Rushmore and the impact they have on us. Remember, you also are influencing someone you haven’t even met. Thus, we really do have a revolving Rushmore.

So, why use Mount Rushmore as the through line for this activity? Mount Rushmore is not just big; it is about the ultimate bigness – a monument to monumentalism. Think about the bigness of the role that individuals that you would place on your personal Mount Rushmore have had. Borglum, the sculptor, was obsessed with the bigness of America: the heroic story of a handful of tiny East Coast colonies growing to becoming an entire continent. Think about the four Presidents that were chosen with that bigness and growth in mind. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and expanded the country’s size with the Louisiana Purchase. Teddy Roosevelt made sure the Panama Canal happened, thus connecting the United States globally.

When I think about the idea of our own revolving Rushmores, I remember the rush of emotions that I felt when seeing Mount Rushmore in person for the first time. That rush contained thoughts of patriotism as well as awe. The awe was about the scope of the project as well as the awe in our ability to create and our human weirdness. Why had we done this? Why does this monument that the sculpting began on in 1927, with a dedication by Calvin Coolidge exist? I believe it is because of the great value we place on those who have had influence on us. Think about the work on Mount Rushmore that spanned some 14 years. A lot happened in our country during that 14 years. Leaders came and went and world/country history changing events happened.  There was the Great Depression, World War II, and three different Presidents. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was there for the Jefferson dedication (there was a separate dedication as each face was finished). And, Mount Rushmore was finished one month and one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Is that a lot of history, or what? The sculpting alone is a monument to our tenacity. The hardness of the granite is a monument to the very strong foundation built by the founders of our country. The granite is so strong and hard it is said to only erode one inch per 10,000 years. When you think about it, our country has had a revolving Rushmore of those that have been on our “stage” and made a huge difference. This is no different than our own lives and the people who have been major players, making entrances and exits, playing many parts. Those great people who enter our “stage” make us who we are and make up our own revolving Rushmore.