I naively thought that when I packed my bags and left Australia four years ago I was about to take on the toughest leadership challenge I’d ever faced. While that was indeed true from a professional perspective, just less than three years after I touched down in Malaysia I became a father and I realized I’d been playing through life on easy mode.
Everyone can tell you that having a kid is difficult. It’s hard to manage your time and balance all of your work, social commitments, exercise, shopping, hobbies, and everything else. It can be physically exhausting, mentally draining, and emotionally painful. Unfortunately what no one can really prepare you for is that when you have a kid, there are no added magical hours that appear in your day. You’re still expected to manage all of the things you did before plus keep another human being fed, cleaned, and entertained.
Not easy, right? I think most parents would agree.
It’s a challenge and there’s no guidebook. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of similarities between being a father and being a leader. I took some of my workplace leadership approaches into my personal life and my little one year old has taught me quite a few lessons herself. I’d like to reflect on and share three of the most important ones from my perspective.
Establish an environment for creativity and exploration
When people are given the freedom to create and to explore, amazing things can happen. When people aren’t tied down with hierarchy and doing things the ‘right way’ you foster higher levels of engagement and you get better results. The role of a leader isn’t to sit next to their employees and watch every single move and point out each and every time they make a mistake. Nor is it about aggressively directing them when they fear the person might head in the wrong direction. By contrast, an effective leader provides space and guidance, encourages failure, and accepts that each person has a different way of learning, and a different speed. Create the right conditions for success and people will generally do the rest.
The natural instinct when you first become a parent is to read every book ever written on parenting and take the guidance and wisdom from the many people in your life who’ve been there before. Sure, you’ll receive some great tips, but you’ll also hear a lot of people telling you how you should do things, which way is right, and which way is wrong. While well intentioned, it’s pretty controlling and directive.
From my personal experience as a father I found the most effective way to help my daughter learn was to create the environment for learning and let her explore on her own. When she was first learning to walk I didn’t really change much in the house. I didn’t buy all the baby proof fittings for the furniture or a baby walker to have her sit inside and plod along with. Instead, I let her crawl around, get dirty, try to stand, fall over, bump her head, cry a little, and try again. Eventually after falling down enough times she learned to take a few independent steps and after some time was able to walk (albeit with a few wobbles).
Did I see a better way she could have done it? Absolutely. Did I instinctively want to rush over and comfort her when she stumbled? Definitely. Did I? Sometimes. But as I watched her slowly develop more and more each day, I became more and more relaxed and let her explore independently.
The result? A few months on and she’s walking fine, even running. While part of me now regrets that since she can pretty much get into and destroy everything inside my house, she’s learning quickly and without much active intervention from her parents, which is pretty neat.
Act out the culture you want
We judge ourselves based on our intentions, but we judge others based on their behaviors. That sort of thinking isn’t very consistent when you think about it. But, it happens to us all the time.
Let’s take an example. A colleague you’re working closely with on a joint project occasionally fails to deliver his or her work by the agreed deadline. You might assume he or she is unreliable or inconsistent. However, you also occasionally deliver parts of the project late. But, you always have a good reason! Your manager is always shifting your focus to priority projects so it’s not within your control; it’s not your fault! By giving too much weight to our good intentions and by quickly judging others only based on observable behaviors, we risk falling into this trap.
So why does it matter? Well, fortunately or unfortunately, it’s our behavior that drives culture both at home and in the workplace. A culture doesn’t get built on good intentions; you have to act in the way that you want your culture to be built. People tend to see behavior and they imitate it, good or bad. That’s leadership!
When I used to arrive home after a long day at work, child in one arm, bags in the other, I’ve often thrown the bags down so I could free up a hand to open the door and turn on the lights. Ever since my daughter started walking I’ve let her carry her own bag. I almost couldn’t believe it one day when I opened the front door, we walked inside, and she threw her bag across the room! I was about to tell her off when I realized she was only imitating the behavior she saw with me. Whoops.
In the workplace it’s really not so different. If you want to establish a good culture, act it out! If you want a culture of collaboration and support, then behave that way! When someone else’s phone rings in the office as you’re walking past, would you answer it if they’re not at their desk? If your answer is ‘probably not’ then you might need to think about the example you’re setting. When more people in an organization behave in a way that’s conducive to establishing and maintaining a good culture, it becomes abnormal to behave any differently. You can’t change others but you can influence culture by adjusting your own behavior.
Exercise patience and perseverance
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, things take longer than you’d like. Maybe it’s your employee delivering on a project task by the agreed deadline or perhaps it’s trying to feed your toddler spaghetti when all they want to do is paint the table with bolognese sauce. Either way, it can be frustrating and it can make you feel like giving up (and sometimes do).
Everyone learns in different ways and at different speeds. We’re not all running the same race. It’s not always fair to compare and benchmark people against each other. But our nature is to do exactly that. Both in our personal lives and in our organizations. If you’re a parent, think about all the times you looked at someone else’s child and thought to yourself “oh, my kid can do it better than that!”, or conversely, “their son can speak at 12 months, but my daughter is 18 months and hasn’t said a word yet, what could be wrong…”.
When I started my first leadership position I had the tendency to share my perspective with the team first, then only invite for discussion and opposing views. What I discovered (not so quickly, mind you) is that this approach, while to the point, was not creating a safe environment for hearing other’s opinions, especially if they disagreed with me. The default mode of my team was to ‘agree with the boss’ – and that’s not what I wanted! I really did want to hear opposing views and why my ideas might not work. After all, that’s the only way we’re going to work out the most effective solution together.
So, I changed my approach. I started asking for other’s perspectives first and then only afterwards sharing my view. It all worked out perfectly fine, right? Wrong! As it turns out, this is really hard. In my mind I had a lot of ideas already bubbling at the surface ready to be shared! When I asked my team for their opinion and saw them thinking and struggling to make suggestions, the temptation to jump in and fill the silence was huge! I found it difficult to control this urge and needed to very consciously think about applying the brakes and creating space for discussion. This is where patience comes into the equation. Sometimes it’s not what you say that counts, but what you don’t say that can make all the difference.
Appreciate that it’s not always about the finish line but instead it’s about the journey. Exercise patience and perseverance in your teams and in your personal life. Don’t give up and feel frustrated because people aren’t doing something at the speed or in the manner in which the leadership books and well-intentioned family members tell you. Create space for people and dedicate your time to helping them grow, not just simply making sure they do it ‘right’ (because ‘right’ can be very subjective!).
At the end of the day
I’ve found that after becoming a father I plan better and prioritize to make time for the things that matter. I’ve become a better leader and the skills I continue to develop in the workplace also help serve me in my personal life. I’m not perfect, and it doesn’t always work out like I’d want, but I can accept that knowing that I’m headed in the right direction.
Continue to create an environment for people to explore, embody the positive behaviors you want to see in others, and exercise patience and perseverance. Even when the going gets tough! I can assure you that you’ll develop a more effective leadership style, and become a more effective parent.
After all, you get to watch from a front row seat as the people you care about grow into successful and courageous individuals. That makes being a father, and a leader, very rewarding indeed!
