Written on March 9, 2025 at 1:07pm
I am becoming more concern about our children learning personal identity is more important than relationships. Certainly more important than patriotism. We (adults) are not teaching American children or doing a very poor job teaching: BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER. How do I know that? Just saw a successful event for middle school / high school students who “identify” as females or non-binary? Males? You are not wanted (at the time of writing this article, there hasn’t been the same event for heterosexual middle school / high school males). How does this build relationships with those who do not “identity” as females or non-binary with those who do? Hmmm. It’s dark humor for me but, when those who want to bring people together through ‘diversity’ they choose to leave out a group. That isn’t humor. That is IRONY. Sad irony. If we (educators of K-12) continue this practice of providing events for specified groups for the next several generations, America will be fundamentally changed and that IS the goal. What makes America unique is we see one another as Americans, not fill-in-the-blank.
We Need Each Other
I am going to give a 9am-3pm, March 22, 2025, seminar on Dr. John C. Maxwell’s High Road Leadership. For this article, I am going to lean on that excellent book’s message to help encourage adults to stop teaching children to look at life through their identity, oppose to WE NEED EACH ANOTHER.
I love this part of the book:
If you’re a leader and you allow yourself to get drawn into taking sides and working against other groups of people, you’re limiting your leadership. As leaders, we all need the people on the other side. Our side doesn’t have all the answers. Believing we do is arrogant. I am not always right, and neither are you. And those on the “other side” are not always wrong. If you don’t listen to them, you’re shrinking your influence and limiting your impact. If you can’t work with people who disagree with you, you will never become the leader you could be. No one will ever convince me that you can choose only half of the people and get as much done as compared with if you work to lead all the people.
What a fantastic lesson to teach our children! By offering experiences for all of us to attend at the same time, we learn that others are not always wrong!
As we look at the current state of leadership, if we think all these problems have been created by “the other side,” we’re missing the point. If we want a better culture, a better country, and a better world, we need to look in the mirror and recognize our own contributions to the division we’re experiencing.
The High Road
There are three roads: low, middle, and high. I am gong to give you several ways (will give more on March 22, 2025) to get you to the high road.
The High Road Brings People Together
High-road leaders don’t focus on the chasm between people. They focus on connection. They build bridges instead of walls. What I take from Dr. Maxwell’s lesson is when we offer, let’s say a music class, for a specific group of people, we miss the opportunity to teach the role of music connecting people. Especially people who are very different than us.
The High Road Creates Winners WITHOUT Creating Losers
More and more leaders today see leadership as a zero-sum game, where the only way to win is to make sure the other person loses. When you take the high road, you don’t try to create losers, and you don’t see every disagreement as a war. If you define a win as giving first, how can you lose. When we do something cool for a specific group of people – they win. Therefore, we have excluded people from that cool event – they lose.
Several Practices (more to be given on March 22, 2025) of High-Road Leaders
If you are to be a high-road leader, you must do the following things:
- Bring people together
- Value all people
- Acknowledge your humanness
- Do the right things for right reasons
- Desire the best for others … more to share on March 22, 2025
The Pathway to Bringing People Together: COMMON GROUND
The fastest and most proven way to bring people together in a world that divides is to find common ground. When you find common ground, you create ways forward that did not exist before.
All or Nothing. How about “Common Ground” instead?
I am at peace for people who need to be with “like-minded people.” I see it every day at every school I taught at, especially during lunch or recess time. The children would naturally segregate themselves. AND THAT IS ALRIGHT! Having to be with people who are unlike us is not real, not authentic. What challenges me is when “like-minded people” are unwilling to go with others / learn from others / learn with others who think differently. This is the direction our nation is heading. Why? Because, we are teaching our children – identity first; others second; and certainly country will not be in the top five! We should be teaching: COMMON GROUND. Let’s return to COMMON GROUND.
Hope you will want to learn more about HIGH ROAD LEADERSHIP. If you are a teacher / coach for youth, I would love to teach this book to your students / athletes. Thanks for reading.
Email: band2gether@comcast.net