Chris Collins (Leadership Therapy) answers a viewer question about cultivating leadership in children and criticizes political leadership/systemic issues in California. Collins emphasizes two key ingredients for raising leaders: (1) internal locus of control — teaching children they control their behavior, actions, and outcomes; and (2) high self-esteem — developed by identifying strengths, providing mentors, and surrounding children with high-performing peers while holding them to high standards. He also critiques California politics as corrupt and power-driven, calls for capping corporate political contributions and PAC influence, and advocates improving schools, police, and pay/standards for teachers and officers.
Chapters
Ben Book number 4117 says, I am very interested in what it takes to cultivate leadership and raise up natural leaders for children and why we live in a time of such apparent desolation of true political leaders.
I'm Chris Collins and this is leadership therapy. I'm not a professional therapist, but I know a ton about leadership and fixing businesses. I wrote a book on leadership called I Am Leader and when somebody gets that book, they activate the book and get access to an online community that has training courses in there on leadership, the 17 laws. But more importantly, a community of people like Ben.
That gets interact and ask questions like this. So I think that's, that's two questions, Ben. Do we charge Ben extra for asking two questions? Yeah.
So the, the thing I think about parenting, that is the, the two most important things in growing a leader.
Is internal locus of control. That the kid understands that they are in charge of their own behavior, actions and outcomes. They don't externalize it to.
Bad parenting or religion or the government or you know, their situation or the marketplace or whatever it is, but that they, you know, have the internal belief that they are in control of their own outcomes. It's their work ethic, their attitude, their energy that they bring to things that will create the desired.
Effect or outcome. And then the other one is self esteem. Like if you think about self esteem in kids, like the kid that has high self esteem isn't going to be the one that's easily manipulated. He's, he's not going to be as susceptible to peer pressure. Also, when they have high self esteem, they tend to have more optimism towards their future. They're less reactive and more of a planner and more and more strategic. So I would manufacture high self esteem through finding out what the kid is good at and then really pushing them in that direction. Whether it means getting them mentors, you know, whatever it is, but really building them up and surrounding them by other people that have high self esteem in a certain area. So if the kid was, wants to be an actor, then I, you know, I, I would surround them with people that can help them develop and become really good at that and manufacture self esteem but hold them to a high, high standard. If they're good at video games or sports or you know, science, whatever it is, I would make sure that, that they were, were in an environment. I would manufacture an environment for them to.
Succeed and develop skills in that area through who I surround them with where, you know, every tool that I would have available to me. So locus of control and self esteem, I think are the two ingredients to creating a self sufficient leader in, in young kids. Now the, the part about political leaders, I mean I, we live in California, Ben, and it's a one party system here and you would not believe how corrupt and power hungry people are here. It's more of a cult than it is anything else. It is absolutely nuts. And I, I was driving in to work today and I just can't believe all of the garbage and RVs and just chaos of homeless and drugs and it's just. And you know, the other thing is like the self esteem is so low. Like the self esteem in the police, in the community. It's.
Yeah. And they're all, it's all about power. It's just about power and maintaining their position. It's not about any sort of desired outcomes whatsoever. Like the government does not serve.
Serve us in any way, shape or form. And they, they almost here in California they vilify success in the small business. Like they make it impossible to function. They tax you at the highest rate in the country on everything. And then the, the bureaucracy and levels of nonsense that it takes to get anything done is, is just crazy. Absolutely crazy.
And it's just about power. So I don't know. I mean the, the other side of this is I'm complaining, but I could move and I probably should move.
I'm, I'm hoping that somehow we can create a different outcome here, but if we don't, I, I will have to relocate. But it's about power and corruption. Like if it was, if it was me and I, you know, I could do anything to.
Fix the, the government is. The first thing that I would do is I would cap the amount of money that corporations can contribute to politicians. Like it, the politics shouldn't.
Or let me say this a different way. Politicians shouldn't be elected by how much money they have. They should be elected by their results and how they serve the people that are electing them. But you know, oftentimes it's five people in a room that all write a big check and get somebody elected. And then those five people are owed favors. And it has nothing to do with the, the you know, average person in, in that community, in that state or in, in our country. It, it's, you know, when you see that Kamala raised a billion dollars.
And didn't get elect, like there's no reason anybody should be spending a billion dollars to run ads to try to agitate people about something that has nothing to do with anything. Like nobody's talking about the things that really matter in a sense. They're talking about the things that get people fired up and, and separate them from, from everybody else. And so yeah, the first thing that I would do is, is get rid of the packs and I would cap how much can be contributed to politicians so the average person contributes to them. And that, that matters because right now it doesn't matter if, if, you know, I'm Elon Musk and I can write a check for $140 million. Nobody cares about Tom over here and his hundred bucks or even his issues in a, you know, in a sense. So that part is very, very corrupt. And then the, the other thing that I would do is we have to make our schools and our police and you know, they're just those basic services.
Function and function well. Like.
Shouldn'T matter where you grow up. You should get the same education.
Everywhere. Like that's the American dream. But if you grow up in Brentwood, you get a completely different education than if you grow up in Crenshaw or Long beach or comp. Like it's, it's completely.
Swayed towards the, you know, the communities with the most money. And I, I just don't think that's fair for kids. And then I think our, our school system should evolve. We should be paying teachers more. We should, you know, hold them in higher esteem and hold them to a higher standard. It's hard to hold them to a higher standard when you're not paying them. And it's a, you know, it's a broken system like it is.
Then the police, like we need same thing. We need to pay them more, we need to treat them better, we need to train them more.
And it needs to be a priority, you know, and it just goes on and on and on. And there's so much of that that's broken. It's hard to even know where to start. But I, I think that starting with not letting people get elected through how much money they can raise and make it about their actual results and outcomes and hold people to that standard is a start because the politicians promise a bunch of stuff, then they get elected and none of it happens. And that isn't working for any of us, you know.
And you know, I think we're, we're all more similar than we are different. We should all want our kids to have the chance at a good education and we should want to raise patriotic.
Kids that, you know, have an internal locus of. Just back to your original question, like high self esteem, internal locus of control. Like it's it's incredible to me that we don't teach the stuff in my I am leader book in school, because if we did, we'd have patriotic kids that had high self esteem and we would be unstoppable as a country. But the reason why we don't, I believe, is because it's it's easier to control a population if they have low self esteem and if you can easily affect them and get them upset about something that doesn't really matter, it it.
Yeah. So that's a long winded answer to that. To that question. But back to the kids internal locus of control and high self esteem manufacture high self esteem in them early. That that is a super.
