Power and Responsibility

Whether you are a Coach, CEO, Director, Athlete, Manager, Mother or Father – no matter what title you have – you have some sort of power and with that power comes great responsibility.  It is when you only seek that power and don’t really want the responsibility that comes with it that things begin to fall apart.  We see that each and every day in every aspect of our lives regardless of what power we carry or answer too.

When parents choose to coach their children they have the power to make line up decisions, play decisions, practice decisions and so on… however if they are only making those choices for their children and not the rest of the players this is when they are not taking the responsibility necessary for the position.  This responsibility falls on every youth coach in America, regardless of why they are coaching they have the responsibility of their players to keep in mind to teach all of them the skills of the game -just being called Coach can’t and shouldn’t be all they aspire too.

Same power and responsibility dichotomy goes with being a parent,  if you have kids you know you have a lot of power to make them brush their teeth, comb their hair, make their bed, take out the trash and so on but you also have the same power and responsibility to teach them right from wrong, how to be good citizens, friends and people.  How to study hard and aim for greatness.  If you shirked that responsibility you would be rolling the dice at who your children turn out to be.

There are also ways to exercise power and responsibility for the good at work.  If you are a CEO, director, manager or worker you have some sort of power in your position.   When we are given a promotion or a new position we are given more power to act in that situation – when we don’t take that power and responsibility seriously and act accordingly we fail, our businesses fail and our people fail.

As an athlete you have the power to play a position for the great good of your team.  Let’s take football as an example; when you take the responsibility of your role for granted and don’t block or tackle the way the game of football requires you could lose the game or even worse one of your team mates could get hurt.  With power comes great responsibility

I look back on my life as an athlete, student and business woman and I see instances where people in my life have taken the power they have had and created situations for me to be successful.  I also see times when that hasn’t happened.  I am going to choose to focus on the times where power and responsiblity have been taken to their greatest hieights and use the times I see where people just want the title to have the title and learn from that.

For our children, we will continue to work to put them in situations where the people who are coaching/teaching them see the power and responsibility in front of them and use it wisely, and when they run into those who just want the title – we will use it as yet another life lesson.

Advertisement