Wisdom From my Father

Today is Father’s Day in North America. My father was a business man. He wasn't rich, but he made his living and provided for his family by selling things. It didn’t matter what he sold. Over the years he represented a lot of different products and services. Rather than the Bible, his go-to texts were “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and “The Power of Positive Thinking.”

As I entered High School, he started to offer me wisdom which he would continue to do until his very last days. Chief among this wisdom was that if I applied myself and was willing to work hard, I could achieve anything I wanted. The world was there for me, and it wanted to hear what I had to offer.

Dad instilled in me the rock-solid belief that I if I wanted to do something, I could, and if I didn’t want to do it, I probably didn’t have to. “There’s always another opportunity, Todd. Bad business isn’t worth your time.” He wanted to see me succeed and he wanted to make sure I understood how to do that. Though neither of us would have categorized it this way at the time, the advice he gave me was really excellent advice for a successful white man to give to his white son who was growing up in a world that was built largely for the continuing success of other white men.

I took that advice with me as my career progressed: A career I built in the structure my Dad prepared me for. I started developing an interest in management and leadership, and as I did, Dad’s wisdom stayed with me. I took on progressively larger opportunities and bigger challenges and I felt good about my ability to make a difference in the careers of the people I led. A lot of these former team members continue to be people that I admire and follow today.

What if the wisdom I got from my father had sounded different, though?  What if he’d told me all the stuff about working hard and doing my best but instead he followed that with variations on “… and keep your head down,” or “… and don’t make waves?” What if, instead of an affirmation of my expectation of success, it was a warning about the world I was about to enter?  

In a 2018 Fathers Day article for Time Magazine called “Black Fathers Share Their Fears and Hopes for Their Sons in America Today” Eddie S. Glaude Jr. recalls the wisdom he received form his father:

"I am not here to be your friend. I have to prepare you for the world out there, and it ain’t a friendly place.” As if raising children isn’t hard enough, we have to do so with the added burden of preparing them for a racist world.

Like my Dad, Mr. Glaude’s father wanted to make sure his son would succeed. He also needed to make sure his son stayed safe in a society that was built by people who looked different from him. There were lots of reasons why Dad might have wanted to keep me safe, but my skin wasn’t one of them.

I’m ashamed to admit that it’s only recently I’ve come to start realizing how deep this all goes.

Allow me, please, to move away from our dads for a minute. Most of them do the best they can with the tools they have within the context of their understandings of the world. Instead, just for some illustration, I’d like to offer you a bit of a leadership review from my own life. I offer this from my experience in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, which we’re often told is one of the most culturally diverse in North America.

• In a career that spans over 20 years , I have gone on countless interviews for full time jobs, contracts, and short term consulting gigs. I’ve been interviewed by non-white people maybe half a dozen times. Maybe less.
• Over that same period of time, while working at a lot of different places, I have had a direct manager who wasn’t white once, for about 2 months.
• In my entire career, I’ve never worked for or contracted with a company that had a non-white owner, president or CEO.

I don’t believe for a second that my experience can be explained because there isn’t an enormous pool of diverse talent in Toronto. I also don’t believe that it’s because the wisdom from non-white parents might have prioritized their kids’ safety in a world they observed would be hostile to them. 

How about merit?

“Todd, shouldn’t we just be looking to hire the best person for the job no matter who it is? How do you know that doesn’t account for your list of experiences? Isn’t hiring the best person for the job, regardless of their race, the right thing to do?”

We should want to hire the best person, and merit should matter! I agree!

Who gets to define “merit,” though?  The understanding of merit I learned conforms largely to the understanding of the mostly middle-aged-white-men making decisions in business and politics today. My ability to be meritorious is defined by my ability to contribute to a system that was designed almost entirely by people who look like me. I suspect there are a lot of us middle-class white guys who grew up in middle-class white families who got similar wisdom from our fathers: If you’re willing to work hard you can accomplish anything you want: The world is full of opportunities. How might my understanding of merit be different if the wisdom I got was “keep your head down” and “don’t make waves” and “the world won’t be friendly to you?” How might our understanding of merit be different if the voices of leadership we heard were more varied and diverse, specifically in race and gender?

I think we’re all missing out because of this. We’re a choir with only tenors, a thanksgiving dinner with only stuffing.

I don’t think the wisdom I received from my father was wrong. I think he was speaking from his own experience, in his own position, which he understood completely. He gave me wisdom that worked great for me, and that probably wouldn’t work nearly as well if I wasn’t white, too. If I were a father giving advice to my child today, I’d add that not everybody will have the same experience that they will. Specifically, I’d want to tell them that we will all be so much better off when we can be led by, and be mentored by people who don’t look like us and who probably got different advice from their moms and dads . This isn’t just important because it’s unfair that the world is stacked in favour of people who look like me. It’s also important because this uncomfortable reality keeps all of us in the same place where the same voices, perspectives and experiences are always celebrated. It’s important because diversity from this perspective is about what we’re not learning, not what we ought to be giving. 

There is a richness in this world that we’re missing out on, and I believe we continue to do so at our peril.

Happy Fathers Day, posthumously, to you Dad. I thank you for your wisdom and I miss you every single day. And Happy Fathers Day to all the dads who’ve offered wisdom to their kids. I’d love to know what wisdom you received from your parents, or if any of you have had experiences you'd like to share.