“I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn’t.” —Dee Dee Myers
There's a thought, especially given our culturally stereotypical use of football as a business metaphor. Leadership is about growth, no, not our growth, but the growth of those we lead. Certainly, we have a tendency to grow at the same time, but there are quotes upon quotes from great leaders expressing this point... “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” —Jack Welch
That's the truth of it, you aren't a leader if you are just leading yourself... that's just walking around. You are a leader if you are helping others do it. Sure, that means mentoring junior colleagues, and helping guide teams through difficult situations, but that also means bandaging up skinned knees, and giving that final push to get back into the seat and to ride off into the distance.
We need to get back to the idea that leadership isn't about where you do it, it's about who you do it for. It's about people. A core attribute of a leader is the ability to inspire and motivate those to do not necessarily what they want to do, but what they need to do. Have you ever convinced a judgy fourteen-year-old to do their homework instead of going out with their friends, or a four-year-old to go to bed instead of watch Paw Patrol? That's leadership.
When dealing with your employees think about your kids, and when dealing with your kids, think about your employees, or friends, or extended family, or peers at the local place where you do that thing you do. We're all people, and what you learn in one arena of leadership usually works in the others.
To really tie this into who we are at Leading in the Fast Lane, that is, people who believe that leadership belongs everywhere and that great leaders aren't isolated to the workplace, and aren't just leaders at work, I wanted to borrow a few quotes I found from Karen Caitlin's "The Best Quotes for Leadership AND Parenting."
Leadership Version: “Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.” — Tom Peters
Parenting Version: “Household management is about arranging and telling. Parenting is about nurturing and enhancing.”
Parenting Version: "Don’t yell at your kids. Lean in real close and whisper, it’s much scarier." — Unknown
Leadership Version: "Don’t yell at your employees. Lean in real close and whisper, it’s much more effective."
Leadership isn't about where you lead. It's about people. Little people. Big people. People.
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” —John Lennon
For the crowds. Have you ever had one of those leadership epiphanies when you realized you just told your colleague at the work the same thing you told your six-year-old the night before, or vice versa? Feel free to share.
-Alexander C. Cook MEng, MBA, PEng, PMP