18559

i have a lot of books on my shelves about leadership.  some of them are inspirational, some are informative, some are analytical, some are anecdotal.  they are all intended to make the reader a "better" leader.  

i've read all of them.  i've taken classes on leadership.  i've been to the leadership summit.  i've been a leader in different contexts.  i've been a leader by title, by position, and by circumstance.

we are only four days in to summer camp and already this is the most challenging leadership experience i have ever had.  over the course of a given day i have had to get 10 five year old boys changed and ready for the pool, talk a seven year old girl into participating in activities with the rest of her group, motivate a sixteen year old junior counselor to "go above and beyond" by carrying one more cooler up the stairs, teach a unit leader how to be a leader to the kids and junior counselors they are overseeing, inspire the art teacher to think of something to do on a rainy day when she'd already seen all the kids once that day, speak frankly to a parent about their child's behavioral issues, and the list goes on and on (and almost all of this is cross-cultural as well).

so, i sit in my living room and look at all those books and chuckle to myself because they are fairly worthless when rain and thunder and lightening are bellowing forth from the sky and you have to get fifty kids off one broken bus and squish them on to a second bus with the same amount of kids, all while burning up your cell minutes trying to figure out where you are going to spend the day because hale reservation is no place to be in a storm like this one. 

and that was just the first week =)