I’ve got to be honest. When I went to bed last night, I had every intention of waking up this morning and gracing you with a post that went something like “Want to know what works for me on this Wednesday? NOTHING. Nothing works for me. How’s that for reality?”
And I’m not going to even tell you why I was in such a tizzy when I went to bed last night. However, it rhymes with “toys.”
As well as “joys.”
And it begins with a “b.”
Moving. On.
One of the things that I have found to work for me related to Starlite is choosing to praise in public and correct in private when it comes to the college-aged girls on my leadership team. We have a LOT of people that volunteer with Starlite; I usually know less than 10% of our volunteer team at the end of each year. But I know 100% of my leadership team and I try to get to know them well.
Each semester is different, but there’s usually around 20 - 23 girls on our leadership team. Each of them have a very specific role in Starlite — from running one of the actual programs each week to being in charge of special events to managing our office.
I could write a month’s worth of posts on working with this team — what works, what doesn’t, the good days and the bad. We’re all human, so when one of us is choosing to have a bad attitude, it can easily affect the rest of our team — especially if the person having the bad attitude is me.
I’m sure my girls reading this can’t remember one single time I’ve had a bad attitude (PROCESSED NACHO CHEESE DAYS; PROCESSED NACHO CHEESE DAYS; PROCESSED NACHO CHEESE DAYS).
Ahem.
One of the most helpful pieces of advice that has ever been given to me came from my college pastor, Hugh. Even though I’m not in college anymore, he’s still my pastor along with deserving the title of Wisest Man I Have Ever Met. During one of my frequent calls to him that started out with “Hugh, I need some advice” and ended with wailing and gnashing of teeth (on my part, of course), Hugh told me that I should always try to praise my leadership team girls in public and correct them in private.
That might sound pretty basic to you, but the more I thought about my daily interaction with them, the more I realized how much I could incorporate that into actual reality. One of my favorite ways to praise them happens during our regular weekly meetings. Sometime during the meeting, I call one of the girl’s parents. When I start dialing the number, my girls never know who’s parents I’m calling. I pre-arrange the calls so that the parents will know I’m going to be calling at a specific time and will definitely answer.
Once I have the parents on the line (sometimes both mom and dad are on extensions!), I say something along the lines of “Mr. & Mrs. So-and-So? I’m calling tonight to brag on your daughter Molly. She is doing a fantastic job with her program in Starlite this semester; in fact, the principal at the school she’s at told me that she’s the best Sparkle leader we’ve ever had there. On a more personal level, I’ve been watching how faithful Molly’s been to go to her classes. She’s really doing a great job balancing all the different areas of her life………..”
This conversation goes past that, but I think that gives you an idea. Normally, the girl that is being talked about has a face red as a tomato and is about to faint while she waits to see if I’ll mention to her parents that she’s got a new boyfriend that they don’t know about yet (ah, the power I hold in my hands!). I do the calls on speaker phone so that the girl can hear her parent’s reactions as I’m telling them about her. And, of course, I always ask the parents if there’s any embarrassing story about their daughter that they’d like to share while we’re all on the line.
This is, of course, only one way I go about praising them — Friday’s Face on this very bloggy is another way I try to spotlight their cute little selves. Most of my girls don’t comment on the blog, but do I hear about it later on. “When am I going to be on Friday’s Face?” Or, “I’m ready for my Friday’s Face interview whenever you are.” Of course, once they’re featured, they’ve got no reason left to read the blog each week.
I find other ways to praise them, too — letters to grandparents on our letterhead with an extra copy sent to my girls; random phone calls to them praising them for something specific they’ve done above and beyond the call of duty, etc. In fact, I was just thinking yesterday of some new things I want to do for them this fall — but I can’t write about that here just yet.
And then there’s the correction. Ugh. As much as I hate it, there are times — though they are thankfully few and far between — where correction has to happen. I absolutely hate that part, but there are times I just have to do it. The great thing about my girls is that they want to grow — not only as a ministry but also as individuals so they handle the correction like pros. I remember one meeting from this past semester where I had to talk to them about some areas that we (as a team) were slacking in. On my way home that night, I got 9 texts / phone calls from my girls thanking me for bringing up those topics. Just writing that last sentence makes me so proud of my mature girls that I could almost cry.
One of girls, Laura, calls those instances “Times When AB Has to Rock Her Leader Shoes.” I can’t tell you how much I laugh when I get a text from Laura saying something like “You were really rocking those leader shoes tonight! Wear ‘em, girl!”
For those of you who need translation (trust me, I did too) what she’s saying is that she knows I’ve got to trade in my friend flip flops for leader high heels sometimes because that’s my job.
Well, in addition to raising the money to purchase 483,937,258 vats of processed nacho cheese each year. ‘Cause, sadly, that’s my job, too. We got a lot of little mouths to feed, you know.
For more WFMW posts, go here.
