Guest Post By Rabbi John Crites-Borak
Launching Leaders Worldwide Advisory Council
In my previous guest post I was recounting a conversation I had with a father about his struggles with guiding his son…
Last week a father contacted me for advice on how to counsel his college-age son. The young man dreamed all his life of becoming a professional baseball player. He has some talent, but not nearly enough to achieve his ‘promised land’ of a spot even on a minor league roster. He’s on the baseball team at a local community college, ignoring his studies, taking menial jobs well below his abilities. The boy is adrift and his parents are worried.
I thought of the Passover Seder and of Launching Leaders. “Where does your son want to be in five years?” I asked the man. “Where does he want to be in ten, in twenty? What does he want to have accomplished when he’s your age, and mine?” (In other words, what is the son’s ‘promised land’?) “And what are his core values?”
“I have no idea,” the father replied. “I don’t even know how to ask him questions like that. They will only remind him of his failures.”
His comment reminded me of my own history. How I wish I’d had parents who sat down with me to develop a long-term plan for my life. What a difference it would have made if they could have helped me conduct a realistic assessment of my life, establish my core values, put my dreams into words and guide me in crafting a workable plan for long-term success. Unfortunately, my parents had neither the ability nor the interest. They left it to me to figure things out and, for the most part, I made a mess of my life until I was in my early 40s. Better late than never, but sooner would have been better still.
The man sitting with me in my study wanted to help his son. He had the will, but he did not know how to begin. All he needed was support. I retrieved the spare copy of the book by Steve Hitz, Launching Leaders: An Empowering Journey for a New Generation, I keep on my bookshelf and opened it to the table of contents. “This book will help you help your son,” I said. “Launching Leaders will provide a broad outline and general principles.” We reviewed the chapters by name and content, then discussed specifics.
“Let’s say I had to give up my dream of becoming a professional baseball player, but I still loved baseball and wanted to be paid to go to the ball park. What questions do I wish my parents had discussed with me? First, what other jobs would allow me to remain in baseball as a career? Coaching and managing are obvious answers. Other possibilities include sports medicine (anything from trainer to physician); agent; broadcaster; equipment manager; groundskeeper; travel secretary or other front office job, etc. The list is almost endless. And then the answers need to be refined with follow-up questions. Let’s say I wanted to be a coach. At what levels – youth leagues, college, university, minors, majors, domestic or foreign – do I want or need to coach to progress toward my ultimate goal? What specific steps must I take? In what order should those steps be taken? What’s the time-line? What way-points can I build in to evaluate my progress and stay on course? How will I fund my life as I go along? And who could I ask to be my mentor, my personal ‘coach’ to help me succeed?”
The father smiled. “I get it,” he said. “My job as his father is to help him see beyond his disappointment to the possibilities that remain. I can do that.”
Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey once said, “Luck is the residue of design.” Laurence Day said, “In order to do good it helps to have done well.” Like the Torah and Moses, the Launching Leaders book and online course offer the possibility of journeying from our current situations, whatever they may be, toward ever-brighter futures.
