Tell me and I'll forget; Show me and I may remember; Involve me and I'll understand. - Confucius

I received this today from my friend, Marie Dudek, who was my guest Blogger a while back on our discussion about suicide prevention.

This was a perfect reminder for me of why I created the Leadership Garden Fund with a focus on leader-friendly gardening practices project.

I wanted to provide youth and non-profit organizations the opportunity to practice leadership behaviors that do good in the world and further their unique personal and group mission.

When it comes to leadership development, much of the training provided in our institutions and boardrooms contain a lot of discussion that is intellectually based. Books are filled with theory as well as examples that demonstrate the type of leadership theory being discussed.

Seldom does the average person who is not in a position of leadership in the traditional sense have the opportunity to practice leadership. Why? For the most part, we still view leadership as a function of a job, position, or title of a select few.

Leadership is a way of life that expresses your imagination, purpose, and spirit, but not spirit in the religious sense, but the spirit to engage your unique expression and lead a life that you choose.

In order to do so, you need to learn both theory and examples, but unless you actively engage yourself in leadership actions that matter to you, you will fail to understand the importance of who you are, and experience the power you have to create the life you desire.

Central to growing a thriving Leadership Garden is to nurture the softer side of human nature that consists of love, compassion, and kindness. You will learn six leader-friendly gardening practices: be nonjudgmental, do not enable harmful behaviors, use empathy, prune gossip, eliminate blame, and eradicate victimization.

The Cultivation Grant practice projects allow you to engage in activities that you design that foster inclusion, promote safe and healthy behavior, evoke compassion, encourage kindness, demonstrate accountability, and help heal the wounded heart, mind, body, or spirit by taking your best self and making a difference with others.

That is the kind of leadership development necessary to carry us into the future. To learn how you can engage and practice your best self, visit Leadership Garden Legacy