Great CEO (Business Leader) Makes Great Parent

Posted on November 18, 2019 by Catherine Li-Yunxia, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

The 1st coaching session in the new year with the regional CEO went to a different level unexpectedly ( I wondered if it is a post-holidays reflection.)

It went all well as usual until the last 15 minutes of the session. After discussed what he wanted to discuss in the 1st 45 minutes, his eyes started drifting around and he became a little stammering, which is not how he normally behaves as a compelling leader. He’s famous in his industry for being visionary, clear-cut, caring, authentic and able to articulate complex thoughts, as well as demonstrates the ability of critical thinking.

I waited. He was still searching around but still seemed to avoid something. I gave him a bit time. Then asked “what is it? Would you like to share with me?”

He finally murmured out that he always thought he wasn’t a good father; he wanted to be capable at home and be a great father to his 3 children.

I’m so glad that he finally brought it out on the session. I had sensed from his indirect sharing earlier that he had significant concerns about handling his children. However, I didn’t point it out prior to his bringing this out himself. On the other hand, I am confident that he is a great father based on how much I know him.

I unusually extended the session so we were able to work this topic out and help him aware of all the qualities of a great father that he has; and had little practices in which he gained insights on how to apply his leadership skills with his children.

As a regional CEO of a renowned company, he’s not the only one who has the concern that running a company successfully but doubt their capabilities with own children at home (well, not everyone is Jeff Bezos who leads a world top company but has dinner with family and washes dishes every day- all though it might be a different story now after the life changing event with Bezos.)

The truth is that leadership and parenting are actually sharing the same skills, and those activities go hand-in-hand. Just mention a few:

1. Patience

As a successful CEO, you are a great listener. You ask questions to understand your leadership team and employees better. When crisis happens you take deep breathes to solve problems. Been leading an innovative organization, you respect and embrace challenges and processes. Same at home, you can absolutely apply the same skill with children. Dealing children requires a great deal of patience. If you are same patient with your children as at work with your leadership team, you will certainly turn them around and being an effective father.

2. Agility

Young kids can change your plan abruptly so you have to come up a solution or new plan without pre-leading time. Running a company requires great agility too in order to build a successful business and high performing organisation. Based on research, companies become more agile when C-suites are with agile minds and leading agile-friendly culture.

3. Confidence

When you first became a CEO, were you trained before hand? Did you know how to be a great CEO when you were just appointed on this role? However, you pave your way on. You learn and practise. You unlearn and learn more. You were confidence in yourself, your team, your people, your organisation and your customers! What’s the difference between first time becoming a CEO and first time becoming a father?

4. Empowerment

Without empowering children, they would not be able to learn and build skills in themselves as they may simply only worry about losing and failures or are scared of falling down. They would be afraid of trying and exploring things which would prevent them from gaining skills eventually. As the CEO of a competitive business, you are great at empowerment, you are developing leaders for the organisation. You are sharing the vision, creating sound decision-making process, effectively delegating, handling mistakes strategically and sustaining success. Children will grow to be capable and resourceful if you empower them in the way you develop your people at work.

5. Coaching

Effective business leaders help individual assess a situation, grown on their own and able to find solutions by themselves. Coaching is such a powerful way to develop children into a resourceful and fulfilling person. Another important aspect of coaching is asking questions.

According to HBR, Alison Wood Brooks observes that "Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organisations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members.”Same as being a parent, if you ask question to your children rather than commanding, ordering or simply telling, they will develop great ability of critical thinking and growing an independent mind.

6. Situational Leadership

CEO uses a personalised approach to manage the leadership team. Simply as it, every individual is different. Same to your children, every child has different personalities, motivations, interests, values and communication style. By applying your situation leadership at home, you would certainly be able to fulfil individual needs of each child effectively. It’s absolutely achievable to get time on the weekend to grasp a coffee, listen to music, read a book, or go to gym while having multiple young children requesting to spend time with you.

7. More than one way to solve problems

Based on how much I know about you, you always keep an open minded and do not make snap judgement. You always listen to different perspectives and acknowledge people have better solutions than your own. And you are not stubborn about the specific means to reach an end goal. Same at home, children would not always agree with your plans. What would you do when they do not like your ideas? Do you let them come out other ideas or solutions?

8. Vulnerability and Empathy

Vulnerability makes us a genuine leader with humility and contributes greatly to building connection with team and people around us in the business world. Empathy is also an extremely powerful and important element of effective leadership, it goes into overdrive when you become a parent and you realised the significant positive impact of your compassion on your people. How would you feel when your children cry for something or when they miss mummy if mummy is not home? You can show empathy by hugging them or saying that you understand how they feel. Trying to stand in their shoes helps build great bonding with children, same as how you show empathy and vulnerability to your employees.

Leading people in an organisation and being a parent at home are not too much difference. The only thing is that all though you are with children you still can apply leadership skills with them, and when you are leading at work you apply love, humanity, respect and empathy too.