Pride in the Passenger Seat
Eighteen. A part-time job. Money saved. A learner’s permit.
You know where this is going. Ellie is about to enter the world of driving.
Not many things have made me more anxious — how inherently risky driving is, how omnipresent cell phones are, the tension of recognizing a child is maturing into adulthood and doing the right things to be able to do the things adults do.
Ellie is taking driver’s ed, but of course she needs all those practice hours that happen with parents. That thing where parents in the passenger seat have the impulse to put their feet
through the floor on an imaginary brake and brace themselves against flying through the windshield by gripping the console and shout-out warnings … all right, we’ll move past that.
I hear a lot of you laughing. Or having adrenaline pulses just at the memory of teaching your own children to drive. Perhaps it’s a rite of passage as much for parents as it is for teenagers.
Andrea knows right off that she is not the best parent for this particular job. I give her a lot of
credit for her self-awareness. That leaves me in the seat beside Ellie. My tendency to
micromanage everything about her driving will be less than pleasing to her.
When I look at my daughter, a teenager eager behind the wheel, I can’t help also seeing the
toddler and preschooler and elementary age child she once was. All of that was — is — Ellie,
and so is the competence that will come in the driver’s seat. And so is the mature young
woman she will be.
Whatever hair I have left may be gone, but I’ll be so proud of Ellie when she has her license and
leaves the driveway for the first time without me in the passenger seat.
In the course of my career, I’ve seen so many people come into their own and make me proud
to work alongside them. As an organizational leader, I enjoy being in the passenger seat to
nurture, advise and guide. I hope my micromanaging stays within reasonable bounds.
At Aspire we have an amazing group of leaders, and I’m proud of them. I could only wish for
their skills and abilities to be successful. As a leader, I will be successful because of them, just as
the next group of our world will be successful because people of Ellie's age learn to navigate
and grow into their own futures.
Year rolls into year, but we can be aligned with each other, intentional about how we come
alongside one another and gratefully expect great things from one another.
