After dinner is wrestle time in my house. My kids and I get on the floor and it’s a free for all. Often Blake will say, “Daddy can you make us fly?”
Do you know what that is?
Yeah… I lay with my back on the floor and my feet up in the air and my kids sit on my feet and I launch them into the air, higher than they could ever jump on their own. They love it!
That’s what great leaders do… get on their back, stick their feet up in the air and they launch people… higher than they could go on their own. They serve by launching and their people love it!
Launching people is really big.
I was training a group of leaders and I told them this story of making my kids fly. As I got done with the story, a guy, probably in his forties, interrupted me and said, “James, I can remember my Dad doing that with me as a kid and it was fun, I loved it. But now I’m the Dad on the floor and it is hard.”
“What’s hard?” I asked.
The guy laughed and said, “The floor.”
That’s true. Launching people isn’t easy, sometimes it’s hurts, because launching is not about the leader it’s about the person being launched. It is a choice to get down on the floor, get into a position that is focused on the other person, and to use your energy to help someone else reach higher than they could on their own.
A Side By Side” Launching Leader is a person who chooses to get underneath people and make people fly.