[June 1, 2017] Young leaders often find themselves making poor decisions and involved in situations in which they are unprepared. Often, the root cause is their lack of education on how to think successfully. Teaching young leaders how to think is one of the ways senior leaders can help them.
It took me joining the U.S. Army and then some of their special training to truly grasp an effective method on how to think. Of course, there are many ways to train someone on a number of ways to think about solving problems and making good decisions. Today, I will put forth one of my favorites. Some call it thinking big.
More accurately called strategic thinking in a complex world, the Ends, Ways, and Means analytical model is a technique to help us get our thoughts in order. This is where most people go wrong; when they fail to accurately understand what they are attempting to achieve or identify the problem they have.
When explaining this to young folks (often as young as 13 years of age), the proverbial light comes on in their heads. In Part 1 of this two-part series on teaching young leaders to think, I will provide a simple and relatively easy guide for them to use.
- Define the End Point: What are you trying to achieve or what is the problem you are attempting to solve? What is the mission, task, or assignment you must accomplish? Clarity in defining the problem is the first major step. Even adults frequently get this wrong. For example, years ago when I was involved in scouting with my son, the Cub Master and Den leader couldn’t tell me what they wanted the boys to have at the end of their time in the Cub Scouts other than just having fun. After several meetings with the scouting committee, parents, and scout counsel we decided that scouting is best seen as building the boys mentally, physically, socially, and spiritually. While each is a complex goal in itself, we were better able to bring our resources into line with each of those goals. Before we were just following the “have-fun” model and it didn’t always work out well. We rediscovered the age-old adage that it is easier to teach leadership to them while they are young and eager to be taught.1,2
- Determine the Means: Means are the resources necessary to achieve, continuing our scouting example, the ends such as money, equipment, volunteers, charter support, community involvement, and reliable educated leaders. In the scouting workshops, we used a matrix to identify what resources we needed for each of the four goals identified earlier. A few required no money but a lot of hands-on from all the adult leaders. Others required coordination with local churches and synagogues for use of their facilities and technical help. Like day camps, some required travel, a fee per scout, and food costs.
Part 2 of this series will be on the Ways in which this can be done. Ways are the methods, tactics, and procedures to achieve the Ends. This is where teaching young people how to think gets more difficult and where we see failure often occur.
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- Can Children Learn Leadership? (Part 1): https://www.theleadermaker.com/can-children-learn-leadership-part-1/
- Can Children Learn Leadership? (Part 2): https://www.theleadermaker.com/can-children-learn-leadership-part-2/