Leadership is very important to a Jedi. We all need to learn how to be a leader and what makes a leader good or bad so we can jump in and help at any time we are needed. That does not mean you must be a leader all the time. Not everyone can be a strong, born for it leader, but you can learn how to become a leader when the situation calls for it. Being a Jedi is to know when, why, and how to be a leader when you are called for it. In a life or death situation you can save people just by giving out obvious simple instructions and directions. That doesn’t mean you will a leader in your home community or online or at work. What it does mean is you know how and when and why to be a leader for a short while.
Most of us are not born leaders. We do not feel the call to lead and help others, but that’s ok and that doesn’t make you a bad Jedi. Even the born leaders don’t want to or should lead all the time. For two years I refused to learn the group, wanting to work on myself and have a bit of fun. Yet the time came and it was very obvious it was time for me to teach the Jedi again. But part of being a Jedi is to know how to become a temporary leader when the situation calls for it. Sometimes you need to be a leader in a life or death event, sometimes it’s after a car accident, family emergency, work, school, teaching, social event, at the store, and even parenting. This means you see where you can help, step up, tell people your plan, have people agree, and have those people help you carry it out so you all benefit from your direction. While this is not easy or always simple, it’s a needed skill for a Jedi. After all, we are here to help others.
While it becomes obvious who is a leader and who isn’t, there is a certain amount of burden of proof. It’s socially demanded to prove to others why they should follow you. What is your experience? What do you know about a topic? Have you lead before? Do you have a plan? Do you care about the people who are following you? Can you be trusted and respect your team? You need to be prepared to explain yourself and understand the first day or the first action the team will be judging you. You will know by the end of it if you have earned their trust or not. Be patient and polite and open to questions.
There are plenty of leaders, most of them are not good ones. The reason why they are not good ones is they don’t know how to be a good leader. They are either in denial of their ability to lead or they refuse to change how they are leading. Some aren’t leading the right group or leading for the wrong reasons. They may have no experience at leading and just need time and patience. For some, it’s a born talent, but for most it’s a learning process that you either learn through experience like I did, or read about it, which is less effective yet a good idea. Here are some key points and tricks to being a good leader.
A good leader is one who can listen. They can keep quiet and let others speak without interruption. It’s important to value your team/staff/helpers by fully listening. Take mental notes on what you want to comment on and wait until they are fully done and are ready for you to have your turn. If they won’t shut up, then still hold your silence and wait for them to be ready. Patience is a much needed virtue in leading. When it’s your turn to speak, make sure you address all the issues or comments the person came up with. You may not agree or care, but it’s important to show you were listening and explain what you can. Share with your experience why something won’t work. Be logically. If you can’t be logically, share your feelings and hope the other person understands. It’s ok to have a reason not to explain everything. Just don’t withhold too much information.
Another part of being a leader is having a plan, communicating that plan, and then acting out that plan. It’s ok if your plan is not 100% solid. No plan is. It’s ok not to have an answer for everything, just let the team know you need ideas and help. Make sure when you explain the plan, you explain it simply and slowly. Share your resources and where you got the facts or numbers. Show your work. Share the weak points. The more complex, the harder it is to follow along. Try to explain each step in simple terms. And always ask (beg if you must) for questions. Be willing to get creative if they don’t understand you, or if a step isn’t going to work. Also be humble so you can hear about a complaint or an issue with the plan.
Being a leader means use what you have and use it well. You need to learn about your team. In my case I have to learn about my students. I want to know who is good at what and how they can help me. I need to find who has what skills. I need to find out who has what experience. You would be surprised of what a group can do for you. Some of you have good admin presence I can use to manage the group when I’m at work. Some of you I go to when I need emotional support. Some I use for ideas or quality control on my lectures. The rest I use to gauge interest on a topic, pace of my lecture, and a feel for how to group is doing. I’m hoping a few will have good editing skills or graphic design. This way I also engage of you all, creating friends, form new connections, and learn more. Remember a Jedi never stops learning.
Leading a group comes with the unfortunate issue of drama. If you want to be a leader, expect arguments, fights, trolls, rumors, power plays, slackers, quitters, and so on. It’s part of human nature that we don’t always get along. There will always be that person who thinks they can do it better and will try to overrule you. Calmly stand your ground. Offer to help them if they want to do a side project, The hope is of course for a perfect team that gets along, follows the rules, does what they are suppose to, and enjoys themselves, but more often than one there are a few problem people. My first tip is don’t take it personally which is very hard to do. Yes you get will attacked and told that you are wrong and awful and should quit. Don’t quit, especially in the beginning. Things are always rough and hard at the beginning as everyone is learning how to work with each other. Deal with the drama as best as you can. Don’t ignore it or tell people to grow up and deal with it themselves, but don’t try baby people too much. Stick to simple, solid rules and enforce them. Don’t be afraid to kick someone out who refuses to calm down and help after several warnings and offer to help them through their issue.
I want to cover about leaders is taking care of yourself. You can’t help others if you need help yourself. It’s important to make sure your mental, emotional, and physical health is taken care of. Now leading can help with all three needs, but don’t use leading as an excuse to neglect yourself. If you are sick, take the day off and ask someone else to cover you or just cancel whatever you are doing for the day. If you need to sit instead of stand, tell the group you aren’t doing well and need to sit. Don’t try to do everything. You simply can’t. Ask for help with your group. Talk to other leaders to find out if what you are going through is common and they have suggestions or support. Make sure you are updated when you get back from rest and keep up on learning new things. It’s easy to say you know it all and you don’t need to learn more. The group will suffer your lack of knowledge. Also keep up your own personal practices, routines, sleep patterns, and private time. Remember to give yourself treats for a well done job. I always give myself a treat after class is over. Turn the phone off and enjoy your life. As the saying goes: you only live once.
How to become a better leader: Part of being a leader is to keep working on leading. There is always something new or better you can try. Even in this class I have tried new things: live videos, holding mid week classes, inviting new people throughout the course. While there are is no one technique on how to lead, there are some methods that work better than others, especially during one situation or another. Example leading people on facebook vs a forum. Leading people at work vs at home. Leading children vs adults. Leading calm or bored people vs leading panicked or angry people. You need to be flexible and try out different approaches. It’s ok to experiment, but be willing to drop it and try something else if that isn’t working. how to try new ones and when.
Notice patterns. Does your group keep having the same issue? Does your group always get tired at a certain point? Does your group start arguing when one person says something? Bring this to the attention of your group and see what they have to say. Don’t forget to reach out to other leaders for advice and ideas. Just be careful of who you look for help as not everyone is a good candidate to help you. Don’t try easy techniques all the time. Be prepared for things to go wrong. Not everyone gets along with each other and sometimes people who love you, can’t stand working in a group. Perhaps one person it’s out to be a troll or hates the plan. Just remember to be flexible and take in suggestions or drop the plan all together. There was a lot of back and forth to create Jedi Praxeum and how and why the classes would happen in a certain way. Change technique to make it fun and interesting. People like to have a bit of fun, joke around, yap about nothing, day dream, whine, ect. No one can keep focus forever, not even you. Let them have breaks and then reel them back in to focus again. Remember to be human, not a robot and a god like figure. Get down and dirty. Lead by example. I do the Force skills along with your all. I play the games that I teach. I share with you all my walking adventures to show I’m exercising too. Sometimes it’s just better to show how to do something than to explain it. Do the work you ask them to do first. Show them it’s possible and that you are on their side.
Don’t create a cult. Don’t make the group worship you. Inspire and teach free speech, thinking, and action. Make the group about a goal that you happen to want happen. Let people argue and focus their opinions and concerns. Just don’t let them ruin or entirely change your goal. That goal is important and worth doing.
Teamwork
While being a leader is important to Jediism, there is a time to be a team member. You can not and should not lead all the time and you need to know how to work with others. There is a popular social movement on facebook were people claim to hate society, hate people, hate family, hate work, and hate working with anyone. This is going against teamwork and teaching people to withdraw and refuse to help each other. The world is not all evil. Most people are decent, some are great, and others are humble heros. You need to come out of your shell and learn to work with others. As Jedi, we do not see hate as a healthy mindset so we need to also focus on how to deal and work with people in a positive and progressive way.
You need to understand why teamwork is so important. Sometimes it’s about achieving a minor goal or something fund and other times it’s about surviving. Life is about survival. Surviving each day, each event, each problem, each goal. We survive childhood to grow up to be adults. As adults we work and play, figure out a thousand issues, worry about not having enough money and too much stress. We work to eat and have shelter over our heads. We cook to get the food our body needs. We form friends and teams and groups on facebook. And when we work together we all benefit and survive better. We can build a house, fix a car, get a job, finish a project at work, find a creative solution to our home. We can help or save a friend or even a random stranger. We do team work in both real life and at work, but how can you do team work and be a Jedi?
Being a team member means to find a cause that is worthy of joining. Now that’s all lofty and nice, but it’s actually means finding a good active cause. It’s great to want to fight poverty and homelessness, but look at what that group is saying and doing. How active are they? Beware of joining a group thinking you can help bring it back to life. Rarely that works as it’s dead for a reason. Look at the group’s action both present and past. New groups shouldn’t be avoided, but you need to understand it might be rough for a while. Older groups can get set in their ways, especially big ones. Are they raising funds? Where are the funds going? How does the leadership work? Can you find and talk to the leader? Does the leader actually do anything or do they just talk to hear themselves? Does the group welcome and help newbies? Do you like the activities they are doing? Do they demand money or supplies from you and if so, is it reasonable and used well? These are all questions you need to ask and explore before joining anything.
Part of teamwork is willing to put aside your differences to work towards a common goal. At work, that’s easy because the goal is to complete whatever task work as given you. But outside of work, that gets a little more complex. Maybe you need to work together not to run each other at the crowded store. Maybe you need to help a little old lady. Maybe your family needs to work together to find a weekend and a time that you all can meet up at. For the Jedi Gathering, we all must work together to share rides to reduce costs, cook together, coordinate workshops, and how the bill will be covered. For the online Jedi we must work together to overcome the drama of trolls, answer and teach a newbie who wants to know why become a Jedi, and promote new groups, classes (thank you so much for your support) and special projects.
Teamwork is about supporting each other. We want the Jedi community to grow. In order to do that we need to welcome and help new members find information, answer their questions, talk to them personally, and encourage practice and participate. We need to inspire help and support of each other’s training and gently point out issues when approiate such as a pm or an email. While tearing down a person or a group is fun and satisfying, consider the long term damage you are doing. Consider what this will look like to outsiders. I’m not saying ignore and do nothing about the problem or person, but think about a way to keep the damage at a minimum. We need to not attack people when seeking help and see where we can help them. If someone is failing, talk to them, see where the problem is and strengthen them. Often we want to hide our flaws and problems because we don’t want to let the group down. By letting your failing stay hidden, the group hurts and doesn’t even know why.
We also need to show up and work and participate. We need to show up for classes (huge thank you for showing up to this one!), listen to podcasts, talk on skype about Jedi books and projects. We need to post and brag about how we are doing practices and show others how we do it. By sharing, everyone learns and can use that to help them overcome an issue. Also don’t forget to have fun. It’s ok to get off topic for a moment. It’s ok to share Jedi memes. Laughter and joy make the work and learning better. We need to join other groups, and not just turn people because we don’t think they are good enough. We need to support the leaders, but also hold them accountable for their actions. But we also must protect ourselves from trolls and those who seek fights and trouble. By doing this we create a stronger, healthier, more active Jedi community.
Part of being a Jedi is working with what you have. Yes our society has many flaws. All do. Even the star wars universe we love so much. So as a Jedi you have to work with the limits of what society will allow. Yes you can push and teach for change. That’s exactly why I am teaching. I’m hoping to help change the community for the better. However you can’t push too much or you get massive resistance. You can’t disdain the limits or how society works because then you get push back and no progress. You can rebel all the time and then wonder why no one will hear you.
Communication
Communication is a big deal with it comes to any community. Communication is the ability to express your ideas, knowledge, questions, and concerns in a way that others can understand. Of course understanding is the hard part. It’s easy to think what you understand clearly is easy for others to understand. Yet, as humanity, we fail so much.
Part of being a Jedi is about service. And to perform service you need communication. To communicate you need to carefully think about how you think and feel about things and how it can be misunderstood. An example would be apple. Apple you say? What about it? Do I mean the fruit? Do I mean food? Do I mean the computer brand? Do I mean something about Christianity or Isaac Newton? Do I mean a red or green or yellow apple? Do I mean to eat or buy the apple? There are so many meanings to just the word apple. And the only way to find what I mean is to ask.
Asking is hard. Asking means to show you lack knowledge and that generally means shame and fear and rejection. We like to present ourselves as beings of all knowledge, and yet we don’t know everything. So part of communicate is being willing to show your lack of knowledge (possibly seen as weakness) and be willing to open your mind to new ideas. As the Jedi code says “There is no ignorance, there is knowledge”.
Another part of communication is to communicate clearly. My job is at a call center where I have to explain complex banking terms, policies, laws, and programs to usually elderly people. Customers love to use terms that aren’t banking terms or mean something else. I have to ask a ton of questions to narrow down what they mean and what they want. Sometimes I have to dumb down concepts to a very basic level of money comes in and goes out or use an easy example “Let’s say you went to Walmart and you spend money to get an item…” That call may take 20 minutes, but eventually I find an example they can understand and relate to. It’s important that use examples people can relate to and you need to make sure the example is appropriate to the person you are talking to. An elderly person won’t understand a computer example, but may know about checks. It takes a lot of mental flexible and creativity thinking, but in the end they understand me!
Alternate way to explain yourself is to ask where is a person confused. Maybe you are using a term they don’t know or think it means one thing and yet it means another. Maybe they just don’t know the term. Our Jedi code, first line, does that. People read “There is no emotion; there is peace” and think “Oh that means you are never feeling robots?” and yet as explained in Jediism 101 class, it means not to have your emotions control your actions. Never get frustrated or judgmental because someone doesn’t know something or doesn’t see things your way. Take a deep breath and see this as an opportunity to increase their knowledge and practice teaching.
Communication isn’t just about you speaking your thoughts and ideas, but also allowing others to speak. Allowing others to speak requires a somewhat calm, reasonable, open mind. A Jedi mind if you will. It means shutting up, actively listening, not interrupting, and accepting what they are saying is valid in their mind. By society teachings, we have a bad habit of interrupting a person and not letting them finish. They may have a key point you are refusing to hear because you think you know what they are going to say. Sadly telepathy doesn’t even work that way. Learn to listen through the whole speech and you will learn a lot more. It’s hard to see what they say is valid when it seems so obviously wrong. We want to force them to see only our view because we want to be right in only one way. We have a fear that if we are wrong, we are a horrible person. That’s of course not true and just drama, but it’s still a valid concern you need to catch yourself.
One form of communicate can be debate. We Jedi love to debate, but our debate tends to go south more often than not. In a perfect world debate is when two or more people explain their views about a
topic and support it with facts and examples leaving out emotion and unsupported opinions. If done in said perfect world, each side would present their facts and then ask questions to further understand the other (sometimes opposing view) and eventually come to agree and maybe even change their view without name calling, finger pointing, swearing, mass posting, and so on. We would be able to debate without our feelings getting in the way. Sadly this is not the case with the Jedi and we are easily taunted and baited into what are call flame wars. We tend to get offended by opinion and attack each other for just being different and refusing to see another point of view.
A better way to communicate in a debate format would be to realize you are getting emotional and look to see why. It would be best not to get emotional and take this personally to begin with, but we are human. We feel. We care. There is nothing wrong with feeling, just wrong with acting on those feels. So with that, ask yourself: Why do you feel threatened? What does that view mean to you? Does it conflict with everything you know to be true? Does it not work due to your past experiences? Do you have a personal issue with the debater that is causing you to get emotional? Do you think yelling and telling the person they are flat out wrong is really going to help? Could you stop and try to see the subject from their view? Have you tried asking them to explain a term or an idea to you? If nothing else is working I would suggest turning off the computer or muting your phone and take a break. Yes your pride may suffer from the supposedly “lost battle”, but you are being a better Jedi for it. When you can come back to the topic with a clear cool head you may find you can better understand the person or accept that there is a difference “agree with disagree”.
The last part of communication is about what format you use to communicate. Sometimes it’s hard to describe things in text. Sometimes it needs to be verbally talked. There is also the need to talk in person. It’s easy to yell and scream on the phone when you can’t see someone. It’s harder to do that in person and see the hurt, fear, and anger in their eyes. In person we communicate with words, tone, body language, and facial features. We back up to get space when feeling threatened or come close to attack personal space (often use to control people). We naturally get closer when we feel comfortable around people and back up when we are nervous or uncomfortable.
Something to keep in mind when communicating in person is everyone has a different comfort zone. An introvert and extrovert are going to communicate in different ways. An introvert is going to relax and open in a small group or person to person setting. An extrovert may do better in a large group where lots of noise and different conversations are happening. Maybe you have an autistic who thinks completely different, doesn’t read social cues, or has trouble staying on topic. Maybe you have a language barrier to overcome. Or you could speak to an elderly person with bad hearing or eye sight. Always keep in mind who you are talking to and how they may respond. You can’t always get it right, but the more conscious you are the better your communication will go.
Homework: Practice being a leader and a team member for a week. Work on your communication skills. Be ready to talk about it in class.
ALSO: practice for 10-15 minutes each day feeling the Force.