We all want our children to become leaders. We want them to be courageous, passionate and authentic. We want their actions to inspire other people to be their best.
As parents and caretakers of children, their path to leadership is in our hands. We can model and teach the skills that will equip them to lead themselves and others in this hyper-competitive world, or we can allow them to fall victim to the kind of thinking that makes them slaves to the status quo.
It’s a big responsibility—but when is being a parent not?
The beauty of building children into leaders is that the little things we do every day are the ones that mold them into the people they’ll become.
Focus on the eight actions below, and you’ll be able to build leadership in your children and yourself:
1. Model emotional intelligence (EQ)
Emotional intelligence is that “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible; it affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities and make personal decisions that achieve positive results.
Children learn emotional intelligence from their parents. As your children watch you every day, they absorb your behavior like a sponge. Children are particularly attuned to your awareness of emotions, the behavior you demonstrate in response to strong emotions, and how you react and respond to their emotions.
2. Don’t obsess about achievement
Parents are sucked into obsessing about achievement because they believe this will make their children high achievers. Fixating on achievement creates all sorts of problems for kids. This is especially true when it comes to leadership, where focusing on individual achievement gives kids the wrong idea about how work is done.
Achievement-obsessed children are so focused on awards and outcomes that they never fully understand this.
3. Don’t praise too much
Children need praise to build a healthy sense of self-esteem. Unfortunately, piling on the praise doesn’t give them extra self-esteem. Children need to believe in themselves and to develop the self-confidence required to become successful leaders. But if you gush every time they put pen to paper or kick a ball (the “everyone gets a trophy” mentality), this creates confusion and false confidence. Always show your children how proud you are of their passion and effort; just don’t paint them as superstars when you know it isn’t true.
4. Allow them to experience risk and failure
Success in business and in life is driven by risk. When parents go overboard protecting their children, they don’t allow them to take risks and reap the consequences. When you aren’t allowed to fail, you don’t understand risk. A leader can’t take appropriate risks until he or she knows the bitter taste of failure that comes with risking it all and coming up short.
5. Say no
Overindulging children is a surefire way to limit their development as leaders. To succeed as a leader, one must be able to delay gratification and work hard for important things. Children need to develop this patience. They need to set goals and experience the joy that comes with working diligently toward them. Saying no to your children will disappoint them momentarily, but they’ll get over that. They’ll never get over being spoiled.
6. Let children solve their own problems
A certain self-sufficiency comes with being a leader. When you’re the one making the calls, you should also be the one who needs to stay behind and clean up the mess these create. When parents constantly solve their children’s problems for them, children never develop the critical ability to stand on their own two feet. Children who always have someone swooping in to rescue them and clean up their mess spend their whole lives waiting for this to happen.
7. Show your humanity
No matter how indignant and defiant your children are at any moment, you’re still their hero and their model for the future. This can make you want to hide your past mistakes for fear they’ll be enticed to repeat them. The opposite is true. When you don’t show any vulnerability, your children develop intense guilt about every failure because they believe that they’re the only ones to make such terrible mistakes.
