I recently worked an elementary school’s career day where the most common question was “what skills does it take to be a mayor?” The answer wasn’t too hard: You have to be willing to stand up for people, even when you’re the only one; you have to read a lot; and you have to constantly listen to people and be willing to learn new things and improve. Sometimes that listening and improvement comes from surprising places. Enter: Cub Scouts.
Generally, when I think of Scouting, I think of “be prepared” – it’s classic, right? It’s the official motto of both BSA and of Girl Scouts. But in a recent conversation about Cub Scouting, I learned that Cub Scouts have a different motto: “Do your best”.
Mayor Christine DeLisle
“Do your best”. Not gonna lie, I’m sort of in love with that. While “be prepared” is great, in my own mind, I always feel like I need to prepare more: prepare for a wider variety of scenarios or refine and re-prepare in a more efficient way. For those of us who live on a mental treadmill, “be prepared” can come with some anxiety. But “do your best”… “Do your best” is what I need to hear; it’s what I need to remember every time I feel like maybe I’m not as prepared as I’d like to be.
There is no manual for being mayor, no training program that gives you all the answers. It’s easy to doubt yourself, to worry you’re making the wrong choices, to feel like you’re failing. I struggle personally with giving myself the same grace I give to others. When I heard the motto “do your best” I was in awe for a moment and wondered what the world would be like if everyone, every day, was just reminded that all they really had to do was their best.
“Do your best” is not “be the best”. It’s not “have all the answers”. It’s human, it has room for flaws, room for failures. It’s a simplification of Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena speech – subtly insisting that you try and you strive and that effort and gumption alone are what make you good enough.
Twice a year, the Leander City Council has a retreat: it’s a multi-part work day where we set goals and discuss policy. At our retreat in January of this year, we were tasked with creating our council’s guiding values – a set of standards that we adhere by in our governance. One by one, we said out loud what values were important to us: be kind but firm; be truthful and honest with integrity; be respectful and consistent; take responsibility, ownership, and be accountable; be helpful – solution oriented; be people focused.
There was a long pause as we all read through what we had come up with and internally debated whether or not there was anything else that needed to be added. And then the perfect answer, the mantra I’d been playing in my head for several days, came to me: “do your best”.
I’m happy to report that thanks to listening to Cub Scouts, their motto of “Do your best” is now officially a guiding value of the Leander City Council. In every interaction we have with each other or the public, in every decision in front of us, in every meeting – we are keeping in mind to do our best.
It’s not often that kids get to hear from grown ups that they’ve taught us something. I’d like to thank the Cub Scouts for teaching me and the Leander City Council one of the most important guiding principles we can ever learn. And thank you, personally from me, for helping me to find grace with myself so long as I know that I too have done my best.
With appreciation,
Mayor Christine
