Reader:

Leadership isn't inherited with age. It's developed through opportunity responsibility, and practice.

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Who’s Teaching Our Children to Lead? Leadership isn't inherited with age. It's developed through opportunity, responsibility, and practice.

Where do children learn the skills they'll need to become responsible adults, productive team members, and effective leaders?

For me, those lessons began long before I held my first management position.

As a youngster, I learned to play the trumpet and guitar. As a teenager, I learned the French horn, competing individually and as part of a band.

Music taught me that talent alone wasn't enough. Practice develops competence. Discipline creates confidence. And teamwork produces results none of us could accomplish alone.

By my senior year of high school, I was helping younger musicians learn to play, practice, and perform together.

I discovered that my success wasn't measured only by how well I performed, but by how well I helped others perform.

Meanwhile, I was working in restaurants, attending school, playing in a rock band, and helping my family following my mother's serious accident.

Those experiences taught me to manage competing priorities, honor commitments, and accept responsibility.

After high school, another important teacher entered my life.

His name was Dave.

I began working in Dave’s restaurant, cooking and cleaning. Three months later, I was learning food preparation. Two months after that, Dave was teaching me how to manage a commercial kitchen.

I learned to organize people, anticipate needs, coordinate activities, and prepare our kitchen team to support the dining room staff.

Dave wasn't simply teaching me how to run a kitchen. He was teaching me how to lead a team.

Looking back, I realize how fortunate I was to have adults who challenged me, trusted me, and invested in my development.

Now, here's my question for parents, teachers, coaches, and employers:

Are we preparing our children for life's responsibilities—or protecting them from the very experiences that develop responsibility?

We don't need to overwhelm them. We do need to provide age-appropriate opportunities to grow.

Start with three actions:

1. Give them responsibilities. Household chores teach accountability and contribution.
2. Get them involved. Music, sports, clubs, and community activities teach preparation, cooperation, and teamwork.
3. Let them experience work. Appropriate jobs and service opportunities teach reliability, problem-solving, teamwork, and the value of serving others.

And when they make mistakes, don't immediately “rescue” them. Help them understand what happened, to learn from it, and improve.

Children don't become responsible adults simply by growing older. They become responsible by practicing responsibility.

What opportunity could you give a young person this week that might change their future?

Keep Learning! Keep Leading!

And remember, Information without transformation is wasted energy.

That is today’s Morning Minute.

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Parents are children's first and most important teachers. From teaching them how to eat, walk, speak etc. parents guide their children's speech, habits, and actions. It is only fitting that they teach them responsibility, manners, and discipline. The worst way of training your children is by doing everything for them. They become totally dependent and unfit to work in the marketplace. start them early doing small chores. And, when they are older, encourage their participation in school, sports, music, etc. You will be happy that you did.

Please forward this message to everyone you know with children or who are planning to have children.

-Larry B

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Here are some recent Morning Minutes you may have missed with actionable ideas, useful instruction, and step-by-step methods to help you, your family, and/or your team to be more, do more, and achieve more.

​"What Happens When Enthusiasm Meets Reality!" Enthusiasm gets you started. How you respond to setback, mistakes, and defeats will determine your success. Discover 3 examples of how that enthusiasm gets you started. And, how that discipline, competence, and resilience can lead to your success when reality crushes your enthusiasm.

​"What Does Your Team Need From YOU?" Discover the 6 functions that develop people, improve performance, and create winning teams. Learn how that your function as a coach, a teacher, a teacher, an instigator, a disciplinarian, and organizer, and a mentor are critical to building a world-class team. Take the challenge to improve your leadership skills as you continue to develop your team!

​"What Are You Doing With Your Freedom?" Freedom creates opportunities. Character determines what we do with it. Discover the true story of how America saved 2-3 million Russian lives after the Russian revolution in the 1920s. Learn how that freedom creates opportunity; opportunity creates prosperity, and prosperity gives us the capacity to help others.

​"Be the Change You Want to Create!" What if the biggest obstacle to your team's growth is the example they see every day? Learn the first step in team transformation by employing the T.A.S.T.E. leadership model. Answer 5 questions that will give you a starting point for transformation. Discover 2 successful examples of team transformation that you can model as you be the change you want to create.

​"Don't Just Solve Problems Create Problem-Solvers!" Use this process to train your future leaders...one question at a time. Discover a disagreement among managers that one of them has brought to your attention...to solve. Evaluate the 3 options that you have when this scenario occurs. Learn the 4 questions that must be answered in order to get the best solution...one that they agree on before you get involved.

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(published by the Bonorato Creative Group, LLC; all rights reserved)