Leadership from a different perspective – Alan Hutchinson

Naked Leader Week – 193 (w/c Monday 12 February 2007)

Leadership from a different perspective – Alan Hutchinson

I love this experience of Alan’s, and it very much fits in with my own experiences with Anthony and Olivia. If you have teenagers, enjoy and do, if you may have teenagers one day, enjoy and file, if you do not, enjoy and send on to someone who has – though not to the teenage themselves, of course!…

With love

David
X

Teenage Kicks
How can you coach a teenager to enjoy the breadth of music that you aspired to as a youth

Whilst at university I became an avid Captain Beefheart fan but had not listened to it for years. One evening when my youngest daughter was seventeen I came home to find Beefheart blasting out on the stereo.

To my surprise my daughter had found my old box of LP’s and was enjoying playing them.
She wanted to know more about the music I had listened to and the bands I had seen.

The next weekend we went to a record shop and I discovered Beefheart was available on CD and was able to return to listening to my favourite music whilst travelling around the country in my car. More amazingly when my daughter travelled in the car we shared the music, the experiences from my youth and also the music she was discovering.

So how did this amazing connection between us happen. Well imagine if the story had been different with me finding the records to play to my daughter to tell her how great it was. I don’t think the result would have been the same.
The reality was it was her discovery, her agenda and her motivation.

My view is don’t try to coach your teenagers to be like you, just provide them with every opportunity to experience the good things in life and make their own choices. If you’re very lucky you may find they connect with you and in my case bring back pleasures I had lost.

Alan Hutchinson