Recently we had the chance to partner with the PAC 7v7 league to deliver the Emerging Leaders Initiative for the second year in a row. First, this program is so much fun to facilitate! To have the opportunity to work with young athletes is always fun but this program is so much more than a class – it is upbeat and the athletes get to do what they love, compete and use their athleticism.
This program is about 20 years in the making. The co-founder of PAC 7v7 is my good friend Pisa Tinoisamoa. We first met on a football practice field in Vista, CA when we were Freshman in high school. Pisa went on to play in the NFL for almost a decade and had a lot of success with the St. Louis Rams and Chicago Bears. Along the way Pisa met another local guy, Brett Swain, who made it to the NFL and played for the Packers during their 2010 Super Bowl Championship run. When football ended for them they became coaches at local high schools here in North San Diego County. If you are around football or have any experience with offseason development, one of the most popular is the 7 on 7 leagues. These leagues focus on the skill players perfecting the passing game skills. Pisa and Brett founded the PAC 7v7 league and have several teams for different age groups – offering quality coaching to help athletes stay sharp through the offseason.
When Pisa and Brett first approached me last year about developing a leadership program for their young athletes, specifically middle school age, I was excited. We had a great meeting dreaming up a few scenarios, and I walked away feeling like this is going to be awesome. Then……it hit me…” How do you take leadership concepts and principals and package it in a way that would keep a Middle Schoolers attention?”. The Blanchard Institute showed me some insight when I was trained to deliver their Student Self Leadership Course. The Blanchard Institute has done a lot of great work developing a program that engages students without lulling them to sleep with classroom lecture or losing their very short attention span. Using these nuggets of knowledge, I managed to create a program workbook that focused on the core leadership principals that Pisa and Brett wanted their athletes to absorb, while weaving in activities that demonstrated these principals in live action. The great part about the finished product was that the athletes had fun and they were also challenged to think about their future and what type of leader they can become.
I believe this type of program is critical to the growth of our next generation. Our culture spends a lot of time and money training the “bad leadership habits” out of adults in the corporate world. Why do we wait? Many people who end up being leaders in the corporate world go a life time teaching themselves or get spotty teaching on how to be a leader. Leadership Development being the 14-billion-dollar business it is shows that there is a lot of re-writing of leadership behaviors going on. This is what excites me about programs like Emerging Leaders Initiative – let’s start teaching sound leadership principals that young people can apply to their day to day now. In my experience with teaching young people leadership principals, they get it……it’s worth it. If you have a program or team and you desire to provide the gift of leadership development, let us know. We can create a specific program that incorporates a fun and engaging environment while giving students the skills to be leaders now.
Kenny Wood