What Dorian's Avengers Taught Me About Leadership

Over the past month, I've watched something remarkable happen.

It started with a little friendly competition.

NextHome Experience has more than 150 agents across Maine, and as Dorian started thinking about how many boxes of cereal they could collect for local food pantries, he smiled and announced that he was “assembling the D-Max Avengers.”

It was funny but then people started joining.

Businesses. Families. Schools. Teammates. Neighbors.

Bangor Savings Bank and Acadia Federal Credit Union rallied behind the effort. Donations started coming in from communities across Maine. Watching it grow, I kept thinking about how easily we misunderstand leadership.

We tend to picture the person out front. But Dorian couldn't have collected all that cereal himself. That was never the point.

What he could do was give people a reason to join him.

As we began delivering the cereal to food pantries, we heard stories about families trying to make groceries stretch, kids losing access to school breakfast during the summer, and organizations working hard to keep their shelves stocked.

The boxes suddenly felt different.

Then someone sent Dorian a note that stopped me in my tracks.

It reminded me that while we were focused on how much cereal we could collect, something else had been happening.

Dorian was learning what it feels like when people believe in an idea enough to make it their own.

That's a leadership lesson I don't think we can teach from a textbook.

You have to experience it and to have an idea that feels a little too big.

You have to ask people to join you and then you have to watch what happens when they do.

That's what his D-Max Avengers gave him.

They showed him that leadership isn't about having the biggest platform or being able to do everything yourself. Sometimes it's simply having the courage to invite people into something worth caring about—and trusting them to bring their own energy, relationships and ideas with them.

That's how one person's idea becomes a community's work.

The cereal will be gone in a few weeks.

That's the nature of this kind of service. The shelves fill up, families take what they need, and eventually it's time to fill them again.

But Dorian will carry something from this experience long after the last box is gone.

He knows what can happen when you ask people to join you and he knows that people will.

To the businesses, families, schools, teammates and neighbors who became D-Max Avengers: thank you.

You helped put breakfast on tables across Maine but you also showed a 13-year-old what can happen when a community decides his idea is worth believing in.

That lesson will last much longer than the cereal.