December 16, 2020

1 Leadership Thought

As we come closer to Christmas and the New Year holidays, we all shift towards intentionality with family.

Likewise, let's remember that parenting is one of the oldest forms of leadership. Like leading at your workplace, parenting is a great gift, honor, and privilege to steward faithfully.

Learning and growing in parenting will translate to learning and growing at leading at work through these commonalities:

  • Values are more important than rules: you pass on who you are more than what you do

  • Be a coach, not a commander: Help them know how to make good decisions instead of making decisions for them

  • Each individual is a unique human being: Quit projecting our your feelings, experiences, and responses onto each relationship

  • You win by serving them: The most important person to manage is yourself by getting your ego out of the way.

  • You need a team: You can’t do it on your own, and you actually take away value and dignity from others when you try to do it all yourself.

Here are two ways to apply this to your leadership:

  1. Create a weekly (minumim) habit of self-reflection: You always pass on who you are more than what you do, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Self-reflection will help you see yourself more clearly to understand where you're passing on what you hope to and ways in which you're passing on something unexpected. Record your self-reflections.

  2. Get better at the art of asking questions: If you want to teach people how to make good decisions instead of making decisions for people, you have to ask better questions instead of offering better advice. Start by asking open-ended questions and eliminating "why" questions - they create defensiveness. (Share this on Twitter)

1 Resource

Hal Edward Runkel on parenting and leadership:

"Responsibility without authority is tyranny. In both parenting and leadership at work, you give dignity when you trust people with a choice."

Source: What Leadership and Parenting Have in Common, Building a Story Brand Podcast

1 Question

What one value do you want to be most known for at the end of your life? How well does your current life trajectory tell that story?