Cultivating Future Leaders: Lessons from a Summer Camp Supervisor
In my previous article, I discussed the importance of being a leader who inspires others to follow. Recently, I came across a quote by Simon Sinek: "The greatest contribution of a leader is to make other leaders." The essence of this quote is that a successful leader not only attracts followers but also cultivates future leaders.
Today, in many work environments, I see an overemphasis on strategy and management at the expense of leadership development. While these aspects are crucial in running the business, they dismiss the importance of caring for your people and their growth and development. Sure, not everyone wants or desires to hold a leadership title, but we all demonstrate leadership qualities in our day to day. What has always drawn me to leadership is the potential to develop individuals who eventually become leaders . In my personal experience, this is established through trust and delegation.
To illustrate this point, I'll share a personal story. One of my first official leadership roles was as a supervisor for a summer camp theater program at Tamarack Camps. My staff and I wanted to bring new energy to the program, focusing on more structured and engaging courses for all campers and producing four of the best All Camp plays in the camp's history. I took this initiative to heart, believing that being a leader meant I needed to be present in every decision we made – from scripts, auditions, and rehearsals, to production and the lesson plans for each class we offered. It was amazing! Our theater program received rave reviews for both our classes and the productions we created for the All Camp Plays.
As part of our process, we held one-on-one retrospectives with each staff member at the end of the summer. I entered these retrospectives with two truths: I was exhausted, and I personally did not enjoy the summer as much as I did when I was a non-supervisor staff member. The other truth was that we had achieved our goals of creating a more structured and engaging program and producing highly reviewed All Camp Plays. However, I was surprised to learn that my staff did not share my excitement for the work we had produced. In fact, they felt they did not play as integral a role as they had hoped when joining my team. They expressed a lack of ownership and an inability to identify a specific area where they could say they made an impact and increased value.
After the meetings, I reflected on the summer myself. I was honestly disappointed. I was certain I had led my team to victory, and while this was true for the program, I had let them down as a leader. To make matters worse, I didn't even enjoy the summer myself.
The following year, I vowed to change my approach. My goal was simple: to have a much more enjoyable experience that summer. The plan involved alleviating some of my responsibilities by taking a more hands-off approach and delegating various parts of our program to my staff. Each of them would have ownership of a specific area, allowing me to mentor them in their roles and remove any barriers to success. The summer went by with the same positive results as the previous year, receiving rave reviews for all of our programming and the All Camp Plays. It was a powerful lesson that we could achieve the same level of success with me being less involved in every decision.
If that wasn't lesson enough, during the end-of-year retrospectives, my staff was just as ecstatic as I was about our success as a program. This time, I heard sentiments such as "I felt empowered" and "you really challenged me to step up." Not only did we achieve our goals once again, but my staff had also grown into leaders, and I genuinely enjoyed camp that summer.
Referring back to Simon Sinek's quote, what I learned through this experience is that some of us fall into the misconception that being a leader means making all the decisions or having the final say. Although your experience and tenure might support this idea, it isn't what real leadership is about. Leadership involves using that experience and tenure to nurture growth in those who choose to follow your lead. You gain their trust by appropriately delegating tasks and responsibilities, allowing them to learn through experience and empowering them to make decisions themselves. This frees you from the minutiae of day-to-day decisions and enables you to focus your experience and tenure on more critical decisions and the development of your people.
How are you challenging your people to grow as leaders?