Power of Communication

Nick and Nate, my buddies. This is us at Lake Powell feeding the fish some corn. Such fun, and such simple communication. I just had to tell Nick and Nate to be quiet, don't move and the fish will come eat the corn we put in the water. Then I had to tell them again, then again, but they never did stop moving around. They did get quiet though, we had a great time.

Communication with children can be difficult at times for them and you. They do not comprehend you a lot of the time and you can not reach what they are trying to tell you most of the time, mostly because they do not have the words to fully describe what they want to say. However on the other hand generally with kids they are not trying to discuss in depth concepts, mostly just dealing with the basics of life, food, poopy diaper, sleepy, etc. I think that is why I get along with kids sometimes, because they know that when it all comes down to it life is about the simple things. However we grow up and get mature and we have to worry about complex relationships and worry about how the world works. We worry about if we can talk to so and so, or if it will be appropriate, or nice.

I guess the short an skinny of it is courage. I think as an adult communicating with other adults it often just takes simple courage. I know I am often afraid to say something, but as long as my intentions are right, and what I have to say will not be offensive or hurtful, then I wish people would just say it. I need to.

I have been trying to implement that into my leadership role, rather than sitting quietly as we as executive directors meet, and I usually have thoughts pertaining to myself such as "that's not that great of an idea" or "my opinion doesn't matter that much," instead I have been striving to open my mouth and say what I am thinking. I have found that when I do I feel much better, I feel like I have done my part. Even when my ideas are not implemented or have flaws in them, at least they are out there, and really I rarely actually feel dumb for sharing my ideas, even though I thought I would.

Well, I am going to stop this rant, that has meander all around with just saying that I believe communication is a powerful leadership trait and it is one where we need to lift where we stand, even if we are not the leader, we need to lift our voice, lift where we stand.

Problem Resolved

So this past week i found myself in a pickle. As the Executive Director over president's training we were holding the first of our what have come to be weekly meetings. About 2 hours before the training i found out there was nobody signed up to do it. i went to me class and thought "oh well, I will make the best of the situation." So I decided that this would be a good opportunity for me to help my new assistant catch the vision we have for our club president's, so I decided we would still go through the training together even though nobody would be there. The problem was my assistant had other plans and had decided that since there was nobody to train we could do other things. So there was a brief spat, and we left the situation alone.

Afterwards I was left upset, and mad and frustrated because i had high hopes. So I took a few days to cool off, and one night when I was finding it hard to sleep I asked my heavenly father what to do, and pondered over the situation. It came to me that i should apologize (but I was in the right) yep apologize and instead of making a bad situation worse turn it around for the best. The second thought I had is, my assistant is a child of God and a God in embryo, I am working with a powerful individual. I also thought of this class and the people who are freshmen, new to BYU, and I thought of how powerful my class/students are. this lead me to believe that my assistant could actually handle the whole training on their own and while I still felt I needed to bare my testimony of BYUSA's vision for the year to this individual and impart how important I feel about these president's trainings, other than that my assistant can handle the whole thing, and did not need me to hold their hand through the situation.

I have since had a conversation apologizing, expressing my appreciation for this individual and also giving them more responsibility, because they can handle it. I was mad at first, and now I am comforted and confident, and i feel closer to this individual. I am grateful for them.

My Leadership Role

Alright I decided to take the easy way out, i am going to blog about my BYUSA Clubs Executive Director position as a leader. in this position I act as a liaison for 10+ clubs and help them get the things they need for their activities. I also oversee the training of all the BYUSA club presidents. In this blog I will probably be changing the names of some I work with to protect their identity, so do not go looking for these individuals. This should be fun.

Leadership Role

I will get back to you on that one.

Leader Interview

For my interview I chose to interview my friend Hyrum Salmond, I should have probably gotten his permission to post his name on my blog, but I will worry about that later. Who is Hyrum and how do I know him. Hyrum is the emeritus President of the BYU college Democrats, he is also a student here at BYU and my former study buddy for the LSAT and current study buddy for the hardest class in my major. I being the emeritus president of the college republicans worked a lot with Hyrum then and was able to see his leadership skills as well as follies at times, he on the other hand also saw many of my follies and the few skills i might have. so in my discussion with him i asked the following questions and got the following answers.
Q: As leader of the Dems what were some things that you learned?
A: I learned better communications skills as at first i thought people would understand my vision or instructions and later i found that I might have been vague, so i learned to communicate better. i also learned how to be organized, and i also learned to have empathy towards different views as i saw there were many views from my own club members as well as your (Skylar, the college republicans) club members and your own views.
Q: What kinds of things did you change about yourself as you gained more experience as the leader of the dems?
A: more patience for the slow system that BYU has, I learned that it is a bureaucracy and there is good reason for it, BYU represents the Church and they have good reason to take their time, yet it was still frustrating for me as I tried to get things done, such as invite speakers on campus, we never did get them approved. I also felt the mantel of my responsibility which lead me to be more informed about the issues, i felt I needed to know everything so that i could better represent the organization of Dems.

One last thing he added was that experience matters, you can't just train someone the true knowledge to get the job done, it just comes over time.

The characteristics that I think make Hyrum a great leader is his knowledge on certain subjects, it gives him an edge. The second thing is his confidence in himself, he has the knowledge and he is not afraid to share it or just counter your ideas and point out the weaknesses. I value his influence in my life because he tells things as they are and can talk openly, often sharing his viewpoints and the knowledge he has. Often time when I did not even ask.

VB (virgin blogger) no more!

Hi Classmates. This is your non technological TA blogging, if you knew me you would be cheering right now. My wife is extremely impressed that I got this far alone, I am equally as impressed. Turns out it is pretty easy.

Welp, now that I have kind of gotten over the awkward transition from virgin blogger to regular blogger we can start to have some fun. Keep checking on me to see how I progress.