As my flight lifts off from the flat grazing land of Boise, Idaho, I sink back into my seat with a feeling of grateful exhaustion. The last three days have been spent with at the Annual Multi-District 39 Idaho Lions Conference. Meeting so many people, keynoting the conference, and listening to the accomplishments of this grass-roots organization has been both stimulating and mid-blowing.
How can so few people accomplish so much?
Unlike many gatherings, I haven’t listened to sales figures, business strategies, or human resource issues. Instead, I watched some $39,000 be given in one single sitting for use for Campaign Sight First II (a program to eradicate river blindness), forLeader Dogs, for Habitat for Humanity, for scholarships, for Special Olympics, and for a new exhibit of Afican Lions at the Boise Zoo. I listened to members speak with pride about their individual service projects such as sending school supplies to a school in Iraq, supplying hundreds of eye glasses to the needy, and awarding prizes for elementary school chidren’s essays on what is true patriotism.
This is leadership at its finest: servant leadership. Here’s how they make a difference:
(1) personal commitment to find a need in their community and serve it
(2) matching individual member’s talents with a project at hand
(3) setting stretch goals and developing a plan to achieve it
(4) celebrating everyone’s success– whether it was their individual club (think “department”) or not.
As for ROAR: that means Reach Out, Act, and Respond. Not a bad mantra for every leader.
They also embraced my husband and me as is we had been part of them for a lifetime. Their hospitality and genuine appreciation were extraordinary. What a blessed weekend… and a great reminder of what a difference individual leadership can make.