What Skateboarding Can Teach Us About Leadership Competencies

Most of the articles I read about leadership competencies for future leaders say similar things — resilience, adaptability, problem-solving, creativity, collaboration. What strikes me is how similar these are to the very competencies we’ve tried to teach young people in schools. At one point, we called them “21st century competencies.”

In my book, Where The Trails Lead, I write about how certain physical activities naturally foster leadership skills. Skateboarding, for example, is an extraordinary teacher.

Every skateboarder learns resilience through failure, falling hundreds of times before finally landing a trick. They learn to operate without referees or a rulebook. They learn to make decisions in real time, and to view the world creatively, seeing possibility in a stair rail, a curb, or a ramp. 

When our children were younger, we added lots of ramps and rails to our newly paved driveway. It was such an experiential playground for our children and their friends. It was amazing to witness them become problem-solvers, innovators, and risk-takers. They learned to be relentless in pursuit of progress and to cheer each other on when they succeeded.

In many ways, skateboarding develops the same skills we value in great leaders. Perhaps leadership isn’t something we only learn through education, a job, or through leadership training programs, but something that begins on the street, in a driveway or a skateboard park — one scraped knee and one small victory at a time.

I would love to get your thoughts on leadership competences.

If you’re curious to explore more of these ideas, you can find my book, Where The Trails Lead, on Amazon https://lnkd.in/gcvceEEJ