The determination to try and implement new practices and persevere on the way to your goal is crucial to your success as a youth council or parliament leader. You must overcome the fear of failure and feelings of incompetence. Stephen Fitz – Simon once said: “When you try to do something new, you don’t have to be necessarily reasonable and know what to do all the time. That way of thinking will only keep pulling you back. The energy and confidence to resolutely break out of cowardly self-doubt and keep doing what you are doing are what you need.“
It would be easy to offer you a ready-made pool of solutions, just as it is convenient and sometimes profitable to give or impose immediate answers to any difficulties one faces and demand their obedient acceptance, without questions. Critics, coaches, and teachers who think this way are in the world today aplenty.
I, too, longed for the easy way out, for the truths already processed, guaranteed, and obligatory.
But in the end, the only ones valid and helpful were the dangerous and uncomfortable teachers who taught me to see the questions rather than accept the answers. The teachers, who rather than give me ready-made solutions, put tools for solving my problems in my hands. They awoke a sort of thirst in me but refused to quench it. Showing me their backs halfway, I gazed after them, in anguish and pity, for I loved them. Their smile, though full of love for me, seemed all the more genuine, the crueler it appeared to be. They taught me the right questions and how to face them alone. They taught me my freedom, which they did not want to possess for their own. Having bound me to themselves, they suddenly left me restless, and with a feeling of betrayal, they did not even ask for my gratitude, although they remained quietly faithful to me. – Literary source: Václav Černý: Dostojevskij a jeho Běsi (esej), afterword to the novel Běsi F. M. Dostojevského, published by Academia, Praha, 2000.
Today’s world is quickly ever-changing. Organizations tend to implement the practices of lean management, reorganization, and stratification. The trend leads towards organizations employing fewer permanent staff and offering other people work agreements or temporary employment depending on market conditions. The introduction of new technologies requires new ways of working and creates the need to learn new skills and personal approaches. We live in a time when it is rare to have a job guaranteed for five years ahead. The need to survive in a competitive environment has become a fundamental requirement for an individual.
A leader must be able to respond to these changing factors. He must be flexible, adaptable, and versatile, equipped with many skills applicable in different situations and environments. Such knowledge and skills will help cope with the uncertainty and ambiguity of today’s environment and help make the most of the opportunities that arise. To learn means to meet all demands and stay competitive. It means to learn more effectively or faster than others can.
An essential step towards personal development, as well as council and parliamentary development, is to know the current state of one’s knowledge and skills, to know one’s strengths, abilities as a leader, opportunities for improvement, as well as temporary limitations. The second step is to be aware of your improvement needs arising from current trends and development requirements. The natural third step is to work on your improvement and development, to improve your knowledge and skills, thus closing the gap between your current state (or performance) and your future state (desired performance).
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