Effective leadership involves more than just having a clear vision and strategic thinking. Find out several effective leadership lessons and key behaviors you can adopt to motivate your child for success.
There is no greater joy for a person than finding that the person they married is not just a good spouse but also a devoted father. I can’t dispute that my father had an impact on me, but my husband’s actions as a parent and renowned doctor have influenced the way I view the connection between fatherhood and leadership.
Here is a case for why you should imitate any brilliant parent, especially with Father’s Day approaching in the USA. Beyond the often mentioned traits, such as having a clear vision and strategic thinking, effective leadership encompasses much more. It also includes actions that are seen as typical of good fathers. Here are seven guidelines for beginning or continuing your leadership path.
1. Patience: Many parents have hard jobs that require lengthy hours. Even if they arrive home from work late in the evening, some men delay eating supper or taking an hour to unwind in order to calmly listen, offer advice, or offer support (including hugs) when their children ask for their time to talk about the events of the day or study a difficult math problem. Although some do not, we expect parents to be patient and relationship-focused. Patience is an undervalued quality for leaders.
578 working professionals from a variety of sectors participated in a study regarding the leadership styles and patience of their immediate supervisors, which was performed by associate professor David Sluss at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business. According to Sluss in the Harvard Business Review, “their responses revealed that patience had a powerful effect: When leaders demonstrated it (meaning their employees gave them the highest rating), their reports’ self-reported creativity and collaboration increased by an average of 16%, and their productivity by 13%.
2. Active listening: Patience training and careful listening go hand in hand. Giving up monologues and listening more than speaking are necessary for effective fathering and leadership. When dads pay attention to what their kids have to say about their struggles, passions, and goals, it’s a way of saying, “I feel you; I see you; I get you.” According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, active listening shows your youngster that you are interested in what they have to say.
Active listening may help you as a leader communicate better with your team, the company’s stakeholders, and, quite honestly, everyone else. Additionally, it makes comprehending easier.
According to Rick Fulwiler, PhD, CIH, CSHM, President of Transformational Leadership Associates, a program director at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the former Director of Health and Safety Worldwide at Procter and Gamble,
“Developing excellent connections is an essential component of leadership, and listening is a key component of developing relationships. By paying attention, you may demonstrate to people that you care about both their needs and what they have to say. When people feel that you care about them, they are more likely to follow your leadership.”
3. Safeguarding their own: Protecting children is a given for the majority of parents. We guard our kids from danger and misfortune like fierce mom and papa bears. In the workplace, I’ve seen examples of leaders who do stand up for their own, supporting promotions and giving individuals access to special initiatives. I’ve also observed leaders who don’t, which has a negative impact on their relationships with their team members.
4. Rewarding agency: Fathers that are successful know when to jump in and when to leave. People who are micromanaged don’t feel that they have any influence over their surroundings, whether they are children or employees. At work, a person’s agency may naturally manifest but may also run afoul of certain features of their management and environment. In the words of Madelyn Blair Ph.D., “Agency is about a person having both capability and permission to complete a task.”
For a book on advertising that Greg Braun and I am co-authoring, I spoke with Simon Usifo, president of 72andSunny Amsterdam, about leadership. Usifo stated that “true leadership focuses on empowering others to grow and setting up everyone around you for success.”
5. Integrity: Fathers and leaders become examples by acting morally no matter the situation or outside forces. Simply said, a parent or leader must continually practice what they preach.
6. Recognize bias: People have a propensity to generalize by making judgments about an individual based on the behavior of a group or community, which frequently has unfavorable effects when analyzing an individual’s behaviors or character. Leaders must be aware of their own unconscious biases while making choices and evaluating the work and views of others. Fathers and leaders should support variety and the individual.
7. Learn to lead: A youngster learns the value of lifelong learning through a parent’s commitment to it. Lifelong learning contributes to personal growth; you become a role model. It can be done for the sake of curiosity, enlightenment, skill-sharpening, adapting to change, or keeping up with the times. I’d even go so far as to argue that if you’re a leader, you have a duty to make every effort to develop your knowledge, abilities, and way of thinking.
