by tashmcgill | Jan 3, 2015 | Community, Leadership, Youth Work
I have this running joke with a couple of teenagers I work with. They are daughters of dear friends of mine but also in my youth work circles. Sometimes they come and hang out on the weekends because we’re doing youthwork-y things and sometimes just because I’m offering caregiver duties to parents stretched thin. Either way, we joke fondly about my role as a Weekend Mom.
These girls, and so many others that I am lucky enough to spend time with have become my ‘kids’. It’s a term of endearment for me, although other youthworkers I respect dislike the terminology. I get that, I really do but there are some young people who transcend my ‘regularly scheduled youth work’ relationships and become part of the fabric of life.
What It Heals In Us.
Often, I will tell my friends how grateful I am for the opportunity to express something of a communal motherhood in the role they let me play in their children’s lives. It is a gift to be trusted to walk alongside young people, particularly when they are the children of other wise, gracious and experienced youthworkers and teachers! I get to play mom when parents go away or even take them on holiday with me. We share in one another’s lives, even birthday parties and school events.
“The first third of your life is about learning, the next third is earning and the last third of your life is about returning.”
A wise friend shared this saying with me many years ago. I’ve learned the parts are not chronological. We never finish learning, therefore are constantly earning and we ought to, as soon as we have anything of worth, start to return investment back into our communities. So it heals something in all of us (the question of self-worth) when we discover we have something worth returning, worth giving back.
It’s what keeps me coming back to youthwork and investing in people, over and over again.
The Gift Of Being A Youthworker In Your 30s.
By the time you’re doing youthwork in your 30s, things are probably (hopefully?) a little different to when you were at college or barely out of school yourself. It’s slightly different too, if you are single. You have capacity, a different set of resources to invest as well as a few more freedoms than others may have. The other great thing about being a youthworker in your 30s, are the young people who have graduated and become friends. They offer plenty of input as to what was helpful to them and not so.
1. Experience counts for something.
I don’t believe that the longer you are around, the better youthworker you are. Being a good youthworker has to do with learning, practicing, listening and being committed to developing your leadership and skills. A graduating youth worker can be just as impactful as a long-timer, but likely in very different ways than a youthworker who has invested years in learning about adolescent development and the challenges that young people face.
For starters, hopefully you’ve had the chance to read, converse and grasp hold of learning opportunities when they come your way. I’ve been lucky enough to find a few mentors (and friends) who have expanded my practice, my understanding and my abilities.
2. Youthwork is an intentional lifestyle choice.
Lots of young adults get involved in youth work because it’s an opportunity to meet and work alongside other young adults. It’s also something of a common practice for young adults who have grown up in youth groups to graduate and work within those youth groups too. When you’re in your late 20s and 30s, regardless of whether you are a fulltime youthworker or a volunteer, youthwork has become an intentional lifestyle choice. You already know the cost of weekends, evenings, extra gas mileage and the impact on your social life and family. There’s likely to be more of a gap between your personal life and your youthwork than there was when you were younger, probably more consideration of balance between the two as well.
3. Resource is probably a little easier to come by.
Having a group of teenage girls over on a weekend afternoon is a lot easier now that I’m older, live with fewer people and run my household. I have space that I can easily make available to young people, young adults and other youth workers to meet, spend time, eat and generally feel at home. A big part of my Weekend Mom routine comes from the reality of welcoming young people into my home. They come and eat, make food, laze about on the couch and know the Wi-Fi password. Extra gas money, a few extra dollars for snacks and activities are all far easier to come by now. It’s no big deal to take them camping for a weekend, when I used to spend enormous amounts of time budgeting for such days.
4. Your role can be Mentor/Friend/Aunty/Mom.
It’s challenging for a twenty year old to play more than one or two roles as youthworker. Even as a twenty five year old, there’s still so much learning about your own ideas of being friend, mentor, caregiver to be done and rarely can you step into the wisdom and security of a parenting role. Mentorship changes over time. It can be instructional, simply learning how to be in certain ways. It can be a devoted do-as-I-do discipline. Or it can be more ancient – the practice of encouraging someone in how to think their way through problems and questions. The joy of being a Weekend Mom, as well as youthworker, mentor and friend – is the way those questions come about.
5. You know when to stay calm and when to escalate.
We all know that not every youthful crisis is actually a crisis. But you have to learn to read the signs carefully, because the younger you are the closer to those same heightened emotions and new experiences you are. That’s potentially controversial, but I find it anecdotally to be true. What seemed overwhelming as a twenty-something youthworker feels very approachable and manageable today.
Something We Should Always Do.
That’s it – the gift of being able to return something from how we are constantly learning and then what we earn. It’s not just money, but wisdom, experience and the capacity for grace and generosity. We should be returning it back into people as soon as we grasp hold of it. So I think, that after years of wondering and questioning if I am done with youthwork and years of trying to figure out how to do it well – I’ve settled on it. There are young people and families who have chosen me as their youthworker and at times, a Weekend Mom. What a joy, what a healing experience – that I’ve grown into someone who has something to offer beyond my youthful exuberance.
by tashmcgill | Dec 30, 2014 | Bodies, Community, Culture & Ideas, Friendship, Mind, Relationships
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
There is family; whom you cannot choose and there is fraternity – the brothers and sisters you do choose.
Do I value friendship over all other things? Yes. Friendship – true, complete companionship outlasts all. Friendship is the root of love. You depend on your friend, but you are not dependent on him. It is in friendship that we learn to see someone fully as they are, we learn how to live with the differences between us and remain loyal regardless. We learn to see the truth of people rather than our ideal of them. Friendship will outlast romance, marriages, the birth and death of children, the death and decay of lovers, career changes. Friendship is a paradox – to hold another so close in your heart yet not be dependent entirely on them in the same way we need a spouse. Friendship spans continents and endures the years.
We live in a complex culture, hindered by lack of inhibition yet a proliferation of obstacles to true friendship between men and women. But if we are to navigate this complex culture, we must do with the art of friendship high in our priority. Not just friendship between like of our like, but friendship between the genders (and transgender). More than ever, men and women need to understand one another and engage with each other in meaningful ways outside the limitations of potential partnership and sexual liaison. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Dec 21, 2014 | Health, Leadership, Mind, Strategy, Youth Work
In a world driven by being the best, it takes a hell of a lot of resilience to be second. To be second best, but not give up. To be second in command, advising on big decisions but not aim for the top rung. To be the backing vocalist, never sing the lead and still sing, anyway.
The Importance Of Being Second
Business leaders talk often about the power of cohesive and supportive relationship between a Number One and a Number Two. Just the other day, I had this conversation with a Managing Director who talked about the value of his Number Two. Cohesive, supportive and encouraging relationships that are also commercially successful require shared mutual outlook, mutual benefit and a clear understanding of mutual strength and weakness. Both have unique responsibilities required for wise decision-making and management. Very few great leaders exist without one or many Number Twos. We make critical errors if we forget that Number Ones need Number Twos, or that Number Twos are as important as Number Ones.
I’ve had a chance to be a Number Two several times. They have been enriching, rewarding experiences and once, it was harrowing and soul-destroying. It’s not just how you think of yourself, or how a Number One thinks of you – but it’s also how the World perceives the value of the Kingmaker, versus the King. Yet, kingmakers are sought after by the wisest of those in positions of power. These leaders who surround themselves with other talented people empower and enjoy the success of the cohesive whole.
But how do you become a great Second?
I remember being 20 years old and driving home from a band practice with a girlfriend. It had been a particularly rough session where I wasn’t on top of my game. I asked her, being a musician and vocalist I really respected, if she thought I was actually talented at all. She said bravely, ‘Well, I think you’re good at what you do but you’ll never record an album or anything.’
Fifteen years later and I remember it clearly – the crisp smell of a cold Spring night creeping into the car and trying not to let the pain show. If I’d had a dream to record any songs of my own, it was stripped in that moment and took years to return. It’s the same feeling I had when I missed out on creative writing awards at school. Always good, but never the best – therefore unrecognized and out of mind.
The thing is, I didn’t want to be better than anybody else, I just wanted to be myself. But we see people and ourselves through the lens of talent competitions that determine talent and ability in ever decreasing circles, competing against one another instead of ourselves.
It takes a lot of resilience to live as second, without being to feel ‘not good enough’. To live as Second is not Second-Best. Second is a role, second is a position that has it’s own unique requirements. It’s not a judgement. The self-awareness required to understand yourself and your ability to be confident in your own talent is typically not nurtured early in our development, rather left to emerge as a result of character-building experiences. Those experiences might teach you your place in the natural order of things, but they don’t always result in a stronger sense of your own voice.
It takes a lot of courage to accept that success is not a pre-determined set of factors. In the same way we must do the work of establishing our unique voice, we must also define success in ways that are meaningful to us.
The challenge of our schooling structures is a substantial focus on identifying what students are best at by means of defining possible vocational choices. Rather than honing and developing ways for young people to establish expressions of their own talent and voice, we throw them into ranking examinations, grading and fierce competition often before we’ve helped them do the work of identity formation.
The more competitive your work environment, the harder it will be to do the work required to establish strong, healthy identity. People love stars, as long as they are delivering big wins. To be good at anything requires a consistent effort in a series of habits that are grounded in your unique talents. You might call this finding your voice.
Why is it so hard?
Because our culture does not understand what talent really is. It confuses talent with being the best of many versus being the best of one. On who can beat out the competition. Embracing your talent and your unique identity is embracing the strength to be second to some or even many but to be entirely yourself.
To know your voice and speak out loud, clearly. Philosophers have expressed this as ‘Know Thyself’. But we need to find spaces to do this work without a cultural demand for competition and a hierarchy of winners overtaking.
So become resiliant. Become sure of your voice, become sure of yourself and what you are capable of achieving from any position.
Second Is Not For Always.
There are some who thrive as Second, forming unique partnerships that deliver success in an ongoing way. But Second is not for always – as with so many things, position is a strategic choice. A healthy Number One/Number Two relationship might thrive and provide deep satisfaction commercially and in life but there may be times where you choose to take on a different kind of role. The resilience to be Number Two, alongside a constructive awareness of the different requirements gives you ample fuel to adapt and achieve in a variety of different roles.
Practical Advice:
- Get to grips with your unique abilities and strengths. Be sure of what you are really competent in.
- Practice working in teams and learn how you do that best.
- Find a great partner or Number One. Someone you have great chemistry with, trust and who increases your capability and influence. Someone who has different strengths than you.
- Define your strategy and goals – both achieving professional success by working together and supplementing the abilities of the other. Identify a goal you want to achieve.
- Work hard on a variety of projects and challenges, even side projects to flex your ability to support, encourage and enhance the capability of your twosome team.
- Check your ego on a regular basis – critical self-assessment, let your teammate observe and give constructive feedback and vice versa. Analyse and look for ways to improve your team communciation and outputs.
- Read and gather insights on personal development, leadership and strategy. Discuss with your teammate regularly. I’d suggest subscribing here for regular short bursts on the subject.
As someone who works with people in a leadership role, I am convinced that our job should be refinement of talent, not establishing talent. Those who encourage and lead others should give significant portions of their time and effort to helping people find their voice and unique expression. Our investment in people’s voice should be a commitment to fostering identity formation and growth. In giving people the resilience, confidence and self-awareness to be Second.
by tashmcgill | Dec 20, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Spirituality
The kitchen is thick and sticky and my skin feels damp like the back of a post-it note, catching every piece of dust and flour in the air. I’m drinking sweet bourbon on the rocks, feeling the condensation gather on my fingertips when I lift the glass for a sip.
This is what Christmas in New Zealand feels like, December’s slow crawl into oppressive 93% humidity. The rain doesn’t fall, it just sinks from a sky that’s become a thick grey blanket over the city.
It’s terrible weather for baking anything, let alone shortbread. Shortbread and gingerbread belong in a Winter Solstice for precisely the reason it is easier to work with buttery short crust when it’s freezing outside.
But it’s Christmas time everywhere, including here and the Western world is largely caught up in a wave of tradition – baking, feasting, carol singing, tree decorating, maybe even a church service or two. Traditions that have been formed over centuries and decades in order to create festivals of remembrance and stories of celebration. And I’m baking, because that’s what we do at Christmas even though I am not meant to eat sugar or gluten.
There’s a science to baking – use a trusted recipe and trustworthy tools. Measure, mix precisely and follow the damn instructions. Just do it the way people have been doing it for centuries and little can go wrong. Unless you’re trying to make Scottish shortbread in a New Zealand summer. Then you have to figure out how to keep the essence of the tradition alive with a method that works in your new environment.
Except I’ve fallen short. My mother has a recipe book full of childhood memories and her shortbread is the best. But the book has a frayed spine, faded ball point pen and sellotape that has lost its stick. It’s almost become too precious to touch and certainly too precious to borrow. So when I should be using my grandmother’s and mother’s fail-safe recipes, I’m using the Internet. Instead of copying by hand the recipe safely tucked into the handwritten kitchen treasure, I’m scouring Pinterest and Google. It’s a sham. There is nothing traditional about this baking exercise. I’m using my laptop instead of a recipe book and rather than being a trusted source, I’m just giving it a go. I’ll try a new one next year if it doesn’t work out.
But I’ll be leaving out the best parts of the story. What worked and what didn’t. How I managed to keep the butter in the crust cool, how I learned to test the oven for hot spots. There is so much that we miss if we forget to write our new traditions beside the old. Even the Christmas tradition we celebrate now, was built on top of another ancient tradition and we can’t forget that is not just about the product of our efforts but also the practice and journey towards it that matters.
Baking shortbread is about understanding the relationship of butter, flour and temperature. It’s as simple as that. Too warm, the dough won’t hold, too cold it won’t be malleable. Baking requires patience on an ordinary day; whether letting dough rise for cinnamon scrolls and bread or waiting for custard and ganache to set. In 24 degree heat, waiting becomes part of the tradition because the relationship requires it.
Similarly, traditions (or rituals) are the way we understand the relationship between the past, where we have come from, the present, who we are now and the future, including who we long to be. Think about the ritual of communion, of breaking bread at the beginning of a feast, of wedding toasts, of honeymoons, of bar mitzvah or coming-of-age rituals. They are ways of marking what has been, what is and what we hope for.
When you cast aside tradition too hastily, you risk losing a connection to what propels you forward. Advent requires a certain amount of ritual regardless of your spiritual belief because it connects to things of old and things of the future. Find me a man or woman who doesn’t recognize some symbology of newness or hope in the Advent/New Year season and I’ll show you a liar or a fool.
I am both trapped by tradition and freed by it. Trapped by always looking back into history but freed by learning from it. We urgently need a connection to the future that makes sense of our past, particularly when it comes to religion because our current traditions aren’t enough. But it appears we’ve stopped creating new traditions – instead we are trying to find more meaning than ever in the old ones. The trouble is, the old traditions need help expanding to meet the requirements of the new landscape.
When someone new joins the family, people have to rearrange their favourite chairs to make room at the table. Something old must make way for something new that adds new meaning.
In the same way I need to write down the recipes that are now mine – the ones I’ve tried and proven regardless of where they came from. A recipe book that ball point pen won’t fade from, pages that can take the heat of my Antipodean kitchen. I need ways of capturing the recipes that are shared with me, borrowed by me and the ones I create myself to share with others. And it needs to be permanent. A chronological recipe book that begins with my grandmother and moves through each generation including my own; collecting our traditions, what we’ve learned along the way and passing something into the future.
Religion is the same. There are dozens of families who will get up this Sunday morning and head to church services because that’s what they do at Christmas. A moment in time inspired by the past and possibly very disconnected from the future. We’ll likely be turning up all week at midnight masses, carol services and Christmas productions. What are the rituals of religion worth keeping and which ones should be recorded as part of our history but replaced or evolved to something new?
Why so urgent? Because for the next week I’ll be encountering people who need the shortbread and gingerbread I’m baking tonight. I’ll expand the metaphor – all this week, the Advent season brings all sorts of people into connection with spiritual communities because of tradition, but I don’t think that tradition is going to cut it.
There are plenty of traditions and rituals that have been meaningful and worthwhile through our history. There are also some that are probably long past due for retirement. Others that should be resurrected. We should be mindful that our spirituality is changing before us all the time, therefore our expression and our storytelling also must change to reflect that new environment. It is not a crime to reinvent tradition, in fact we do it every year.
Our traditions need to be both old and new – old enough to connect us to the essence of our story and new enough to point the way to a future that is approachable and makes sense in our new land.
by tashmcgill | Dec 16, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Spirituality, Strategy
I watched a crane put together a 10-metre tall Christmas Tree in the city a week or so ago. Piece by piece it was lifted into place while a group of 5 or 6 workmen in high visibility vests perfected the placement of shiny glass baubles. What a sight.
Bright neon vests screaming ‘pay attention’ to what is going on here, while traffic trundled past below and pedestrians marched quickly, bracing against the wind.
That’s the Advent season these days. A race against the clock, constructed by the most unlikely people while everyone else races around completing their business. But Advent, deconstructed or otherwise, still matters regardless of your religious beliefs. It screams out, ‘Notice me – I have something to remind you of.’
Advent is a story about leaning in, expecting and waiting. It’s a story about how we hope for better days, the kind of story our humanity needs to hear at least once a year.
You see, I’m beginning to think that a dream alone is not enough to keep us going. In fact, I have been convinced that a dream isn’t powerful at all. The only power a dream has is the focus and motivation it gives you to take the steps required to achieve it.
If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, save money, shake a habit or create a new one – then you’ve tasted a tiny piece of what it’s like. The dream requires lots of action, but they are mostly very human actions. They are based in the natural world.
I’ve become more convinced that dreams need action and longing. Longing and desire are what keeps a dream alive, when hope seems lost. Hope is a supernatural kind of thing. Action comes from within us, but hope is something external and internal that we hold on to. Longing taps into the spiritual within us and dreams need both. Without longing, the dream can become dry and our motivation can ebb away. We lose both our internal and external power.
I’ve got a dream that feels out of reach and almost impossible to realise. So over the last few years, I’ve stopped praying for it, hoping for it and believing in it. I’ve stopped letting the longing for it dwell anywhere but in my deepest secret heart. Slowly, I’ve been starving my dream so that it’s easier to live in the Not-Yet reality, but it’s having an impact on what actions I’m prepared to take to achieve the dream. I’ve leaned back out of my dream, I’ve stopped hoping and expecting.
I’ve got to long for it again, letting the longing bubble up into my conversations with others. I can’t hide it away and pretend like it has no hold on me. I’ve got to seek it, praying and asking others to believe alongside me is crucial to help me lean in and get stronger in pursuit of it. Sharing my longing so that the dream stays strong and alive within me is necessary.
Advent is a season of expectancy and waiting. We eagerly await holidays, Christmas parties, gift-giving, time with family and friends. We await the New Year with expectation of what will come and what we have the chance to leave behind. And in the ancient story the Advent comes from, there’s an extraordinary example of what it means to lean into a dream – something so out of the ordinary and hard to understand that Mary’s only option is to lean forward and say, ‘Ok, let it be with me as you have said’.
Regardless of whether you believe the story to be myth or truth, this story has had a remarkable impact on our human history. Nobody questions the courage of a young teenage Jewish girl under Roman rule to lean in and say ‘Ok, I’m in it for the ride’.
Look, sometimes I feel afraid to share that longing and pursue my dreams because I’m scared that I’m asking for the wrong things. But there is no Plan B – so by sharing my longing and seeking ways for my dream to become reality, I am inspired to steps I should be taking along the way or to realign my heart to alternate pathways. At the very least, by praying and meditating more regularly on my dreams – I am comforted in the Not-Yet season.
Pursuing a dream out of nothing but our own strength is sure to wear you down. No matter the dream, we are spiritual beings and we need to integrate that into every part of our lives. So a dream by itself is not powerful and human actions alone are also not enough. Deep resonant dream-pursuing requires our whole self… spirit, mind and body.
I’m re-aligning my dream-chasing muscles with longing, expectation and leaning in to hope. What are you dreaming for? How are you leaning into it? There are 15 days left until the New Year begins. What will you enter it dreaming of and longing for?
This post was originally written for World Vision USA and adapted here for tashmcgill.com.