Stepping down from the pedestal of a role model...

Being a parent and a leader for more than two decades now, I am still discovering some of the fascinating aspects of both topics. While, parenting your kid and leading people is not the same, there are quite a few remarkable similarities and I have always enjoyed the cross-learning between the two...

When you have a teenager at home, your temptations of giving advice is generally directly proportional to the casualness that you perceive in the behavior of your teenager....and mind you that advice session most of the times have an exact opposite impact than what you intended it to be! My household was no different at least till a few days back....

I have realized that the learnings in life come from the most unusual and unexpected sources. I was watching one of these comedy shows and the stand-up comedian was talking about Indian parenting style. One of the things he said was "We all love to tell them our stories to inspire them and they find those stories quite insipid!".... I smiled to myself as I thought he was talking about me and that set me thinking.... having done a decent corporate career, there have been occasions, where I faced stiff challenges and could overcome them with my team... in fact those happen to be my most cherished moments! Was there a particular behavior pattern that helped me?

Over the years I have come to believe that you find most of the answers within if you honestly introspect and the adjective 'honest' is as important as the verb 'introspect'! When I went through some of my professional experiences in my mind, a definite pattern emerged... all the successes that I got were, when I was working with along with my team and not 'guiding' them.... there was always an open dialogue about what would work best... I was one of the team. In critical situations, you can better help your people to achieve their goals by being with them and not sitting on a pedestal guiding them with your 'stories'.....The question is how do I apply this principle to parenting situation where arguably stakes are high ... at least emotionally.

The other fact that struck me was, I found it relatively easier to converse on similar topics with my daughter who is in twenties than talking to my teenager son! By the way he is a fairly reasonable fellow so the problem must be with the way I am approaching the situation. I realized that while I find it easy to be an 'equal' with my daughter, I was trying to be 'father' or more precisely a 'role model' with my son while talking to him. Unless I found a way to be his equal, this was not going to change.... easier said than done... then suddenly I had a lightbulb moment... We used the lockdown last year in a productive way. My MBA classmates did a series of experience sharing sessions over a period of five months and some of these sessions were even attended by the families! I knew my son was particularly impressed with the presentations that he attended. These were obviously the people far more accomplished than me and had achieved much more than whatever I have done. So I started chatting with my son about these people and at a point I told him, "Listen, we all did the same course but you know why some of these people are way ahead than me? Because they took the course far more seriously than I ever did and you see the results. It is all up to you about what you want to choose!" My son did not say anything ... but I saw his taking his studies a little more seriously.... he must have thought some of the case studies he witnessed must be better to follow than the 'role model' available at home :-)

I guess, I would be hypocrite if I don't admit that I want to be my son's hero... his role model... much similar to the way I wanted my team to 'look up' to me in professional life. But I always focused on the results and never had any problem in professional life not being a 'role model' and being one amongst them .... I always thought while role model is a great help in giving some positive aspirations to people, each person is different and sometimes limitations of the role model may not be fair to a person.... Do I want to be my son's hero? of course I do.... but more than that I want him to succeed in his own life figuring out what path he wants to choose and if that requires me stepping down from the pedestal of role model which every father dreams of .... I will always happily step down!