Parenting and Leadership: Following Children’s Rights In Teamwork
There’re a lot of posts about the similarities between parenting and leadership. One of key concepts in both is the rights of children in parenting and a team in leadership. Like every manager who has become a parent, I’ve been discovering this from the first months of fatherhood.
Hopefully, the children’s rights declared by the United Nations will one day be followed everywhere and the past will just become legacy, reminding us about the terrible past times. Instead, let’s overview new children’s rights evolving out of emotional intelligence and psychology.
Right to be strong
When parents are overprotective, they doubt their children are strong enough to deal with a situation. This affects their independence, responsibility, and motivation.
I learned not to interfere when my son was successfully climbing ladders at the playground — I tried to give him a lift when it wasn’t needed and he immediately gave up climbing. I felt like I ruined everything without any need.
The same happens with teams who are being micromanaged by their leaders. Both have the right to be strong and to be treated as strong, and take more responsibility.
Right for inclusivity
When you unwrap a candy in front of a baby who isn’t allowed to eat sugar and say “It’s for adults”, you exclude them from sharing the experience. When you drink some wine for dinner but don’t even offer a glass of water to children, you also exclude them.
When you treat a child differently, you exclude them by definition — you must start treating them as the same person as you are, but a bit smaller and with fewer skills.
Do you treat your team differently?
Right to be informed
When you leave your children at preschool, you explain that you’ll pick them up in the afternoon. When you go out together, you don’t do it silently — you explain that you’re heading to the market. They understand what’s happening and can make their own decisions, not just follow your lead.
Children can pick up a lot of information: where you store vegetables, how to turn on the vacuum cleaner, how to use a knife for cooking. You don’t limit access to this information if they are interested. You create an inclusive environment where they can see what’s happening around them and get interested.
Do you go back to work and keep discussions in private chats, have a closed calendar, and limit attendance of your team at “unnecessary” (as defined by yourself) meetings?
Voting right
You’re visiting your friends but your child wants to go to the playground. Will you drop your plans and go with them instead? Will you patiently explain, but agree to go to the playground the next day? Or do you say you’re an adult and you know better, so you all must make this visit?
How well do you hear your team? Do you count their voices?
Right to think out of the box
Try to watch children drawing — they draw on a table, on the chair, on walls. It’s unfair to limit them with small A4 paper sheets. But when we do, they stick to inside the box thinking, limiting their creativity to a small area. This is not about allowing them to draw on walls — this is about finding larger paper where they can not only draw sitting at the table, but crawling around.
It’s the same for your team — they deserve no artificial limitations until it comes to safety or irreversible activities.
Right to games
Children learn to adapt when they play games — that’s how they become adults. More time spent playing games correlates with a higher intelligence level.
Teams learn to adapt when they run experiments. The more experiments they try, the more mature they become.
Right to face difficulties
When your child climbs a high tree and can’t get down, what do you do? Do you just take them down, protecting them — or do you express your support and advise them on how they can get down on their own?
They want to learn how to overcome difficulties, and so do teams. When a leader is afraid of delegation and organizes all the work around themselves, they treat their team as if they are weak and don’t give them a chance to develop.
Right to childhood
A common issue for adults is when they recall their childhood, they refer to old, unemotional approaches. “You must do that,” “You’re an adult” — no, you’re not! Pushing the development of responsibility to the detriment of an emotionally balanced personality is not a good idea, as we can hear from adults who experienced it as children.
“You must share your toys.” “You must cook dinner once a week.” “You must help me with your little brother or sister.” This deprives children of being simply children with their own desires.
“You must help your colleague.” “You must participate in deploy duty.” “You must help me to onboard a newcomer.” In a good, balanced team, this isn’t even an issue. Everyone is already involved in all these activities. Your job as a leader is to create such an environment, as your job as a parent is to care for your child.
Right to disagree
When my kid refuses to put on the clothes that I’m asking him to, he usually proposes another outfit. If it’s reasonable, why shouldn’t I let him wear it? If it’s just a t-shirt and he has to go outside in mid winter, I have to explain what’s wrong.
That’s how a leader should make demands of their team — not just to implement something, but to describe an end goal and ask for a way to achieve it.
Right to make mistakes
The most important thing when children make mistakes is to define consequences and ensure they are safe. All the rest can be forgotten for the sake of experience.
You’ve been putting on a sock for ten minutes and still haven’t managed it? We’re late for preschool, but it’s fine — you’d better finish it. You can’t build your Lego car? Keep trying, why should I step in and distract you with my help? You want to cross the road at a red light? That’s a bad idea and here’s why.
You’re defining a better approach to task decomposition? Keep trying, even if we’re late with this feature — it’s fine when you learn. You want to run some experiments with a production database? Here comes my job of risk management. Why don’t we clone this data to test the environment instead?
Right to your support
Every child should know that they can rely on their parents to unconditionally accept them. It’s important for them to feel safe.
The same relationships should exist between a team and their leader.
Right to feel good without us
Separation is always painful for both sides. When you see your child enjoying their time with other people without you, they have this right, even though it feels awful for you.
For me, as a leader who was once a regular engineer, it was hard to accept that they don’t need me anymore. I don’t work on regular tasks and I lose some conversations and some fun. I don’t understand some of the latest local memes. I’m even incapable of advising on some technical topics anymore.
In both cases and on all four sides, separation is painful but necessary. Unfinished separation causes serious issues.
Right to feedback
Children seek your reaction on their undertakings. It’s hard for them to understand if what they’re doing is right or wrong. They deserve to learn whether such behaviour is acceptable in society.
So do teams — and if their leader is incapable of sharing direct feedback, it could make any current issues even worse.
Right to have parents
Children deserve parents who will play with them, and go to playgrounds, amusement parks, and museums. Parents who’ll teach them how to watch stars, explain the sorts of mushrooms in the forest, take them to football games, or organize cool road trips. They don’t deserve parents who spend their mental and physical health in parenting deprived of sleep, rest, free time, interests, and hobbies. It’s parents’ responsibility to get out of this state.
Same for your team — they deserve a leader who can motivate others, who is not overloaded and burning out in routines but who has enough time to think about team development, plan, and drive it, to help other people become the better version of themselves.
Some of the things above seem obvious, but they’re the basics for parenting that work. They made me reconsider my approach to teamwork, and I believe it’s good to check that we don’t get lost in routines and follow all the rights of our teams.
Pavel,
Dad of 2.5-years old Daniel,
Engineering Manager
