Dr. Tim clipson presents “Life Lessons for Today’s Leaders”
On Thursday March 7, Dr. Tim Clipson spoke at the Nessmith-Lane building as part of The Carter Lecture Series. Dr. Clipson received a degree in Training and Development for Business and Industry from Oklahoma State University and is currently a Professor of Executive Communication and Executive Leadership at Stephen F. Austin State University. Thursday night he spoke about leadership and life lessons in a lecture titled “Cracker Jacks, Kangaroos, and Snipe Hunting: LIFE Lessons for Today’s Leaders”.
Dr. Clipson brought enthusiasm, excitement and knowledge to the room as he began to speak. His speech focused on the three things that everyone’s leadership ability is based on. These three things were who you surround yourself with, the information you decide to put in your head and heart and the choices you make. Dr. Clipson’s speech was very interactive, engaging and full of great examples. In order to illustrate how much influence people can have on one another, he chose six volunteers from the audience and sent three to wait in the hall while the others were challenged to stack building blocks as high as they could in one minute. Clipson told these three boys that the world record was 28 blocks high and encouraged them to stack more blocks than the other two guys as well as the world record. The winner of this challenge was only five short of the “world record”. When the minute was up, he asked these three volunteers to sit back down and brought in the three girls who had been waiting outside. Clipson gave the girls the same challenge but this time he failed to mention anything about the “world record” and told them that they had to protect their blocks from the other girls.
Dr. Clipson also mentioned that he did not expect them to be able to stack more blocks than they could count on one hand. After an intense battle with challengers knocking down the blocks of their competitors, Dr. Clipson’s prediction held true, each girl only had one block in front of her. The lesson in this exercise was even though he had never met these volunteers before he was able to greatly impact the outcome of the two challenges, therefore can you imagine how much influence you can have over someone who actually knows and trust you? The challenges continued throughout the lecture all including another great lesson in how to be a better leader. However the main takeaway from Dr. Clipson’s speech was the quote “people don’t care how much you know until you show them how much you care.”
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