Little Leaders, Big Wisdom: Wear It Well Kids Return

Welcome to IgniteCast, where ideas spark action. Brought to you by the Community Development Foundation, your Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Engine for Tupelo in Lee County. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, iHeartMedia, for powering this season of IgniteCast.

I'm Taylor. I'm Judd. And welcome to IgniteCast. Taylor, I love a bonus session.

Do you like bonus sessions? I love a bonus anything. Well, guess what? It's season eight, but this is a bonus episode.

And we got an incredible studio audience here, don't we? Woo! Tell us about the bonus. This bonus episode is brought to you by Wear It Well Kids Camp.

And I'm so excited to have all of these kiddos here with us today. I would say we've got about 20 kids in the room of all ages. And I'm so excited to hear what wisdom they have to share with us. Yes, it's always good to learn from kids.

Kids think they've got to learn from adults, but we learn so much from them. That's right, Judd. And typically we start every episode with the question of what's the best leadership tip you've ever been given. But today I want to switch it up a bit.

Look at Taylor switching it up. I want to ask the kiddos, if you could give adults any piece of advice, what would you tell them? um if i had to give an adult a tip it would be this is from my experiment experience but don't make random assumptions if you don't see everything that happens then just

don't think that um somebody did something wrong wow i like that let's hear from the others Advice that I would have for an adult is It's not too late to find your purpose in life If you think that what you're doing is not for you

Just always go back and find your purpose Look at that, wow Maybe I need to do a little soul searching today Okay, I tell you, this is the question I want to ask

So this is a leadership podcast We teach leadership at the Ignite Conference To leaders all over our region What do you think a good leader is?

I think a good leader is someone that listens to what other people has to say Like she said, a leader isn't always the one that has to be in charge A leader can listen to what the people they're leading has to say as well But another thing that I've learned is that even though the people you're with may think you're wrong

If you think it's right and you're the leader, then just go with it sometimes What's a good leader look like? Somebody that doesn't follow everybody, does their own thing. Authenticity is what we call that.

That's good stuff. Yes, that is great stuff. And another thing, Judd really, really lives his life by this, being a servant leader. Isn't that right, Judd?

It does. Thank you for noticing, Taylor. That's because you paid me. but yes I think all of those make a great leader and I think leader one thing that a leader can do

is always be learning you can learn from those around you and a lot of times we're on a team with people and so when we're on a team that team should be made up of people that are different than us right we don't want everyone just like us on a team do we no because then only there's only one good thing we can do we need to be diverse in all of our skills and I think here at CDF we do a good

job of that. I think so, too. We're not all the same. We're not all the same. Yeah. Me and you may both be extroverts, but we're different. Could you imagine just a bunch of Judd and Taylors walking around? Oh, it'd be very loud. Yes, it would. But speaking of teams, sometimes you have to work in a team. So everyone has a role. Everyone has a position and the whole team has

to work together so that the goal can be accomplished. So what would you say makes someone a good teammate? When somebody can be uplifting

and conned is a good thing to have on a team because you're not always going to win. If you have a bunch of sore losers on a team

then that's going to make a very loud lose. I love that. What makes a good teammate for you?

Somebody that doesn't treat people different. Doesn't leave people out. Someone that's like a good teammate, I feel like is somebody that understands you.

Like if they notice that you're not doing the best that you could do, they just come to you and ask you, are you okay? And just have a lot of empathy for you. Empathy.

That's a good one. I like it. I like it. Here's another great question.

As leaders, we sometimes have to make hard choices. Not every choice you make as a leader is an easy choice to make. I mean, sometimes you might be in a situation where you have to, you know, discipline somebody or say, hey, you're not doing this right. So let's kind of play pretend here.

Let's say you were the principal of your school for one day. What decision would you make for that school? It might not be an easy decision to make, but what choice or decision or choice would you make as the school principal? I have wanted this for a long time.

So I've actually came up with a schedule this year in case that happened. He's ready. He's prepared. He said, I'm going to be principal next year. So, if I would do one hour of, not recess, classwork,

then all the time after that is recess, then lunch, then after lunch is activity. When you get done with activity, go back to recess. Lots of playing.

Yeah. But he was principal for the day. could make that happen. What choice would your change would you make or choice you'd make? The change I would make, I would try to make is kids only learn about what they want to be in life

instead of having to learn about other things. I just feel like they should just learn about their purpose and what they actually want to do. Like it would be like a test, a quiz, or like some type of exam about who they want to be. One thing that I would do if I was principal for the day is make all the teachers get up and teach instead of just giving us worksheets and then let's do it on our

We don't like busy work. You know, sometimes I still have busy work in my life. All right. What I want to do now is I want to pause, and I want to switch it up.

I want to switch it, change it, rearrange it.