Don’t play with matches while we're gone
Kevin and his wife were leaving their son with a sitter for the evening. As they pulled on their coats, she said emphatically, “Bobby, don’t play with matches while we’re gone. Promise me you won't.” Kevin thought this was unusual because Bobby was afraid of lighting matches, but they were late so he let it go.
When they drove away, she told him that she had watched a TV show that afternoon about kids who had set fires while they were with sitters. Those scenes of badly-burned kids and flashing emergency lights kept playing over and over in her head so she felt she had to say something to keep their son safe.
They enjoyed dinner and headed home. When they turned onto their street, they saw fire trucks on their lawn. Bobby had followed her “don’t play with matches” instruction and set fire to the drapes. Their sitter had called 911 and they rushed Bobby to the hospital where he was being treated for severe burns.
Sadly, don’t play becomes do play in our brains… until we create and communicate another way instead. What could that frightened mom have said and done to keep their son safe? She could have created a plan for her sitter, specifying videos, games, or puzzles to play, and talked that plan through with her sitter and her son before leaving home. And put all the matches out of reach, of course. As leaders, when we give negative instructions, we cannot count on children or upset people to take the second “what we do want to do” step themselves.
But unfortunately knowing what we don’t want is where many of us stop. Like that mom, we’ve seen scary scenes on TV, been adrenalized by movies or friends’ scary experiences. Until now, many of us have failed to recognize a life-changing/life-saving truth… we must each take the all-important Second Leadership Step… imagining and communicating, in great detail, what we do want instead, for ourselves and others.
Susan Ford Collins…“America’s Premier Success and Leadership Coach”-CNN… is the creator of THE TECHNOLOGY of SUCCESS, the powerful leadership system used in more than 3,000 training programs in major corporations, startups and turnarounds. Audiences begged Susan to write about the 10 Success Skills so, after shadowing Highly Successful People (HSPs) for 20 years and coaching them for 20 more, she wrote The Joy of Success (#1 Best Seller Amazon Kindle ), Success Has Gears, and Our Children Are Watching. www.susanfordcollins.com or www.technologyofsuccess.com