Measure Success: Student Leadership & Student Success Series: 7

Jonathan Medina "Student Leaders Measure Success and Cleary see success" 

Muhammad Ali "The Greatest" - "I don't count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting because they're the only ones that count. That's what makes you a champion."

I love that quote from Muhammad Ali because so many of the things in student leadership are going to hurt. You will have to sacrifice personal goals. You will have to put in lots of hours. You will have to gain new skills. You will have to work with coaches and mentors to teach you. I am about to talk to you about measuring many things, but only you know what is in your heart. Nobody on the outside can measure your heart. 

You will need to measure your success. Start to count how many hurting sit ups it will take for you to accomplish your goals. If you want to go to a certain college you need to know the GPA that you will need. You will need to know the SAT score you need. If you are in a competition you need to know what kind of score you need to get from the judges.

How good are you at public speaking? How good are you at recruiting people to your club? Has your club grown? Have you grown? 

The only way to for you to know if you are growing as a leader is to measure the success. 

I remember when I became class president, our sponsor started the first meeting with me by telling me many of the stats. She told me how much money we had fundraised. She told me how much money we would need to raise over the next 2 years. She told me how many students had been attending the meetings. She told me how many students events we had planned over the past and how many to expect in the future. Because she had measured the success our class had in the past I was able to see how far we had to go. We had very far to go if our class was to do all the things we had hoped. 

I am forever grateful that she showed me how important it is to measure. We made a strategy and measured many important details. I then began to use her strategy of measuring in all aspects of my student leadership. 

As a student athlete measuring allowed me to see that I had a chance to play college football because I could see that I was not far from being strong and fast enough for someone my size. If I was smaller I would have to be even faster and even stronger to make up for size. Measuring allowed me to find the success. 

Measuring success also made me feel good as we were growing in success. Our student leadership team continued to grow and I kept seeing how much improvement we made to the club. 

Measuring success helped me to see the vision as we tracked closer and closer to the final goal. 

measuring success helped me to see that some decisions did not help the club or even hurt the club. 

Measuring success helped everyone to see how each persons part was helping us get closer to the goals. 

There are so many benefits to measuring success. Someday when you are older I want you to look back and see how much growth you had as a student leader. Measure where you are now and where you will be someday. Measuring will help you clarify the effectiveness of your student leadership. 

Lastly, we can't measure your potential because we can not see inside your heart. We don't know all the decisions that happen in your mind. Only you can see how your heart is measuring up. Be a Champion Student Leader inside and out.

Don't forget, You are a Champion Student Leader & It's GAMETIME. 

Booker T Washington, "If you truly want to measure the success of a man, you do not measure it by a position he has achieved, but by the obstacles he has overcome."

One Bonus thing I want you to measure is everything you have overcome. A few years ago my mom got into some trouble and I suddenly had to take care of all my siblings. I was suddenly parent to 4 kids. I was trying to seem strong, but on the inside I was very scared and very worried about how I was going to do it. Student Leadership skills you learn now will help you in your future. A great friend and second mom Laura told me could see that I was nervous so she gave me some great advice. She told me to remember all the things I had overcome in the past and that I could overcome this also. Measure and take note of all the things that you have overcome. The things you overcome now will give you confident to overcome in the future. Every bit of growth you measure now can help you have confidence in the future. 

Zig Ziglar, "Success is not measured by what you do compared to what somebody else does. Success is measured by what you do compared to what you are capable of doing."