Studies show that they are the two most beautiful, precious daughters in the world.
It's been proven. By science.
When the topic of leadership gets brought up, I instantly think of how I am a leader to them. Now I have to admit, I've never led a massive sales team, or infantry, or anything of great magnitude, though training upwards of 20 clients at a time in my personal training business should count for something. In fact, the largest "team" you could say I've led was a team of 24 high school boy's varsity baseball players as we put together and managed a course for a 5K race/walk to benefit a charity. Which some might say is more difficult to lead, considering they were teenage boys doing it on a Saturday morning for community service hours versus a motivated sales team or trained soldiers.
Any who, back to my daughters.
Looking at them, I realize there are few roles in this world more important than a father raising daughters (possibly only topped by a mother raising sons). And it's in this role that I realize a few things:
1. Who I am and how I treat my daughters is the exact kind of man they will bring home one day.
2. How I treat my daughters is how I should treat everyone.
3. How I raise my daughters is a direct reflection of my own level of personal development.
4. My daughters truly are the future. If they're going to make a difference in the world, it will be based on the values I've instilled within them in their developmental years.
So based on those realizations, I've come up with my top 3 lessons my daughters have taught me about being a leader. The point of these is to use them in growing and developing your own team as well as yourself.
1. Monkey see, monkey do. No matter what I tell my kids to do, if my actions speak otherwise, they won't listen. If I tell them every day the importance of telling the truth, and turn around and never uphold a promise to them, they'll do just that in life. This has really put my feet to the flame because my daughters, I'm sure like most, ask a million and one things starting with "Daddy can I..." and ending with some odd request either for a toy they saw in a commercial, or a grandiose place they want to visit. I have to be very careful to not just say "Yeah honey sure" to everything and just not follow through. Which also helps my kids learn to hear the word "No" every once in a while when its the most fitting answer. The point is, if you want to instill integrity in your team, you have to be it.
2. Empower them. So many times, I'll ask a request of one of my girls and they'll reply "but I can't." Now I have a bit of a rule in my household, and kind of a general rule about life. Never say "I can't." Instead, I make them ask themselves "how can I?" By doing so, they learn the value of being independent and even interdependent in order to find a solution to a problem. This is much better than the alternative, which is to do everything for them and raise them in a state of constant dependency. While many leaders are capable of doing all the roles within their team, its much easier to trust and delegate those roles to focus on the most productive and strength-driven tasks.
3. Let them explore their free will. I've never understood parents who jump at their kids the moment they try and do something on their own (sorry if you're one of those parents). Children are naturally curious. They're naturally creative. They naturally want to explore. (Interesting enough, so are adults) I say let em. My wife disagrees. When they're at the park, they have one rule, "be careful." With those two simple words, they get to run around to their heart's desire and be kids. If one tries to jump off a slide and gets hurt, they get the "were you being careful?" from me. They say no, I say "next time be more careful" and then they're off again. Let them explore their own limits, don't set them for them. When they're home making pictures or crafts, it's "just don't make a mess", which gives them the opportunity to use up all their creative energy on any project they'd like, as long as they don't make a mess. Now the opposite of all this is the dreaded "micro manager" who watches their every movement and tells them "don't do that" or "do it like this" at every turn. My goal is to develop my kids to use up their full potential for themselves and be leaders, not set predetermined limits on them they might never have the courage to explore for themselves as they grow older.
As my kids grow older, I learn more and more not just about myself and what kind of leader I am, but I also get to see their growth as a sort of feedback loop. I can reexamine how I've taught them life lessons, and compare it to the results. If I see my kids are polite, generous, respectful, bright, talented, and creative, then I can use that as a reflection of my methods. If, on the other hand, my kids start showing signs of greed, disrespect, bitterness, and even violence, well, then, maybe I need to rethink the kind of monkey my kids are following and do something to change those results.
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Mark Lopez blogs about leadership and personal development in order to strengthen his own leadership skills. As a Christian, father, husband, and CEO of his own life, Mark looks to empower others so they can lead life by their own design. To learn more about Mark, follow him on Facebook.
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