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Parenting Is Making You a Better Leader

by Peter Bregman

Quick Takes

A few days ago I was running in Central Park as fast as I could, pushing myself hard, trying to beat my previous best time.

About halfway around the park I passed a mother walking with her 2-year-old daughter. They were holding hands, and she was moving at the pace of her child, about one step every five seconds.

We were both enjoying ourselves, both in the moment, both focused on our task. But the contrast between us struck me.

I was the equivalent of an individual contributor in an organization. A specialist, striving to maximize my personal productivity and achievement. Specialist jobs are critical to the success of any organization, at all levels of the hierarchy.

She, on the other hand, was the equivalent of a leader, a different and equally critical job in an organization.

Here’s what occurred to me: If you’re a parent, you’re already a leader. And the skills you develop by necessity to be a good parent are precisely the skills you will draw from to be an exceptional leader. It’s the same job. Think about it:

Expressing Care

Parents love and care deeply for their children and, from that love, often make sacrifices to do what’s best for them.

Great leaders don’t simply care about their employee’s productivity, they care about their employees. And out of that care; they help employees make the right choices for them, even if these are not in the leader’s best interest. I remember one leader, early in my career, for whom I worked as hard as I could. I was his right-hand person. I felt so cared for by him—and trusted him so completely—that when I received a job offer from another organization, I asked him what he thought I should do. We discussed it, and, ultimately, he advised me to take the job because it was in my best interest. We’re still friends more than a decade later, and I would still do anything he asked.

Practicing Patience

Let’s face it, parenting can sometimes be excruciatingly boring. Successful parents require a tremendous amount of patience.

Likewise, great leaders pace themselves to the unique needs and abilities of each of their employees. They need tremendous patience because it’s not about their individual success; it’s about the contribution of their teams and the individuals on their teams. Great leaders are motivated by the success of others and recognize that their employees’ success is their success. Just like a parent.

The skills you develop by necessity to be a good parent are precisely the skills you will draw from to be an exceptional leader. Great parents don’t try to fit their kids into a box. They watch them carefully for signs of natural motivation and inclination and then try to provide opportunities for them to develop further into their areas of interest and passion.

Great leaders know that the best thing they can do for their employees—as well as their companies—is get the right people into the right jobs. Jobs that leverage their unique strengths and mitigate the negative consequences of their weaknesses.

This means that great leaders are always watching, taking note of their employees’ personalities, and putting them in the environments where they will be most successful. I know a guy, we’ll call him John, who was failing at his job. John loved being with people, but he was a technologist and spent his days coding in a cubicle all day with very little contact with people. The leader of his business noticed this and changed John’s role, putting him on a project team. Once John was collaborating with others, his performance shot up.

Developing Independent Capability

Great parents know they have only a few critical years to impact their children, and then, sooner than they imagine, their children will be out of the house. So great parents strive to foster independently capable children. Then, when their peers have more influence over them than their parents, they will still make the right choices.

Likewise, the best leaders build independently capable teams. They coach them to think for themselves. Great leaders know their job is to move their employees up and out of their teams into more challenging opportunities in other areas of the company while continuing to act as mentors and advisers. They nudge their employees out of the safety of the nest.

Setting Appropriate Expectations and Boundaries

If children are unclear about what’s acceptable and what’s not, they’ll freeze, unsure and insecure about whether they can act. The best parents set clear boundaries so their children feel secure and confident. And the best parents set appropriately high expectations so their children know to reach far, allowing for failure without giving up.

The best leaders also have appropriately high expectations of their employees and set clear boundaries about what’s acceptable and what’s not. And their employees know it and work tremendously hard to live up to those expectations.

Pivoting and Dealing with the Unexpected

When I submitted this article to my editor (also a parent), she reminded me of another reason becoming a great parent leads to becoming a great leader: Children are constantly throwing us curveballs—sometimes on purpose, sometimes because that’s life—and as parents, we must develop the resilience to face our own changing and disappointed expectations.

“I can remember at least two big times,” she wrote to me, “when I had to bring really bad news to two different parent-bosses—news that would justifiably make them upset—and they basically just shrugged their shoulders and moved forward. They listened and then pivoted to problem solving and exploring scenarios and outcomes. It was such a gift to experience this, as an employee and as a parent.”

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Leadership is a learned skill. So is parenting. When you work hard to become a better parent—by reading books, going to classes, experimenting, learning from mistakes—you are also, simultaneously, learning to become a better leader.

Of course, there are differences. The pressure for performance outcomes with a particular employee is often more immediate than with a child. And the relationship is shorter lived: How many of us expect to have the same employees for the next 50 years? Also, if it’s not working out, you could fire an employee, but it’s unlikely you’d fire your child.

Still, since so many of us spend so much of our time either parenting or working—and these days we’re often parenting and working at the same time in the same spaces—it’s useful to remember that your parenting is not distracting you from your work, it’s developing you for it.

And conversely, while your work may, at times, be taking you away from your children, it’s also helping you show up more fully, more competently, more helpfully, for them.

All this is to say that next time you’re in the park, walking at the pace of your 2-year-old, or you’re on a road trip with your teen touring colleges, and your boss or a client calls and asks what you’re doing, don’t hesitate to answer: “leadership development.”

Adapted from “Why Parents Make Great Managers,” on hbr.org, November 10, 2009 (product #H00405).