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Parents as leaders: five things parenting and leadership have in common

May 18, 2022 by Sanya Pelini, Ph.D. Leave a Comment

Any parent who wonders about what it takes to be a “good parent” must answer a simple question: Do you want to be a leader or a boss? A boss’s primary role is management. A leader empowers, inspires, shows the way forward and makes it their business to connect with their staff every day.

Good parents make great leaders, but being a successful leader is no easy task. 

Two development consultants were interested in determining whether it was possible to identify similar characteristics and qualities of good leaders. They undertook a study in which they analyzed the behavior of 300 000 business leaders. Their study helped them identify common characteristics of good leaders.

As it turns out, good leaders and good parents share similar characteristics. Here are five characteristics of good parents and good leaders.

Five characteristics of parents as leaders

1) Great leaders and great parents know that strong relationships must be founded on good communication

In a recent Interact/Harris survey about the “Top complaints from employees about their leaders”, 91% of the respondents considered that their leaders had poor communication skills. Up to 57% felt unsure of what was expected of them.

Communication is a key foundation of strong relationships. The study conducted by Zenger and Folkman, the two development consultants, found that effective leaders communicated clearly and regularly with their employees.

The same is true for parent leaders. Several studies suggest that having clear and appropriate expectations of your child largely influence their behavior and their educational outcomes. They say that the best expectations are those that take into account their personality , their level of development and their actual skills and capacities.

Here are five things that you can do improve your communication with your child:

• Clearly identify your expectations and make sure that your child is aware of them
• Give clear and regular feedback, even when that feedback is negative. Remember that giving feedback has nothing to do with giving lectures.
• Be upfront and honest in your communication with your child
• Listen more than you talk. Show empathy and put yourself in your child’s shoes
• Find time to connect everyday

2) Great parents and great leaders inspire

Did you know that anxious parents are more likely to raise anxious children? Research says that this happens because of how parents react to anxiety-provoking situations, rather than to any genetic transmission of anxiety.

In other words, if you act anxious around a dog or a bee, your child is likely to mimic your behavior and start acting in a similar way when faced with the same situation.

Great leaders inspire and motivate others, so do great parents. We now know that children learn how to react to different situations by watching us. When we model the behavior that we want our kids to adopt, we are more likely to be succesful.

3) Great parents and great leaders are also great cheerleaders

A great leader knows that their employees success is their success. They know that it is important for employees to believe that their leader is on their side.

In the survey mentioned earlier, 63% of the employees considered that leaders who did not recognize their achievements were ineffective leaders.

Just as employees need to have their achievements recognized, your child needs to know that you’ve noticed when they are doing a good job, even when (especially when) that progress is slow and painful.

Instead of simply praising them, let them know exactly what they have done right – “ you’ve gotten so much better at reading since you began reading everyday ”, “ you hardly made any mistakes – look how your music practice is paying off ”.

As Carol Dweck’s growth mindset has shown, your child grows and develops when they feel like they have the power to change the events that happen in their lives. The more they feel capable of success, the higher the chances that they will make an effort to achieve their goals.

4) Great parents and great leaders focus on building trust in their relationships

Like great leaders, great parents care about building relationships built on trust. When it comes to parenting, this is more than just being able to trust your child; they too need to be able to trust you and to count on you.

Trust and accountability go together. Your child will make mistakes, all kids do, but allowing them to make amends when those mistakes happen shows your faith in them. 

5) Great parents and great leaders are not omnipresent

Great leaders do not micromanage their employees. They do not hover over them, watching their every move and waiting to catch them in the wrong.

In 1996, David Bredehoft, Jean Illsley Clarke and Connie Dawson observed over 3 500 children over several years. They wanted to know if it was possible to “overparent” and how overparenting affected children’s development.

The researchers found that over-indulgent parents regularly stepped in to solve their children’s problems and failed to hold them accountable for their mistakes. These parents were determined to make life easier for their kids at all costs.

In the book they published “ How Much Is Too Much? Raising Likeable, Responsible, Respectful Children -From Toddlers To Teens- In An Age Of Overindulgence”, they say that doing too much for your children is bad for them.

• Make them less confident in their ability to succeed
• Decrease the likelihood that they will take up leadership roles, and thus prevent them from developing problem-solving skills
• Prevent them from reaching their full potential. As Bredehoft, Clarke and Dawson note, it can “ hinder children from performing their needed developmental tasks, and from learning necessary life lessons ”.

Clarke says that there are three types of over-indulgence: doing too much for your child or giving them too many things; giving your child too much attention (you have a constant need to know where they are and what they are doing”); and providing a soft structure, meaning that you do for them what they should be doing for themselves.

Doing too much for your child harms you and it harms them too.

A major similarity between great parents and great leaders is that they both know that without a strong relationship, none of their other efforts will matter. They know that strong relationships do not develop by themselves, they need nurturing to grow.

Setting aside a few minutes everyday to hang out with your kids is an easy way to strengthen your relationship. Download your free 30-day challenge and get started today!

French version

An earlier version of this article was published on ParentMap .

At Risk for Anxiety: I. Psychopathology in the Offspring of Anxious Parents

About Sanya Pelini, Ph.D.

Sanya Pelini holds a Ph.D. in Education. Her work has been published on Motherly, ParentMap, The Goffman Institute and Psych Central, among others. She lives in the south of France with her husband and three children.

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Leading by example: How our parents influence our leadership style

For better or for worse, you likely attribute a number of traits to one (or both!) of your parents. The way you look, the way you talk, and the way you think can all be traced back to your genetic makeup and formative experiences in childhood. 

But there’s one area of your adult life that you probably never thought had any connection to your parents: your leadership style.

The reality is that our parents have more of an impact on the way we lead than you may think. 

Understanding your parents 

Parents are the first people children interact with, which is why they play such an important role in the development of an individual’s leadership skills. For many of my clients, if they’re facing a particular challenge when it comes to leadership, I can trace it back to a parenting style they experienced as a kid.

For example, if you had a parent who was very strong with difficult, fearful, negative consequences, you may be implementing that with your team, because you truly believe that’s the best way to motivate people—because hey, it worked with you. 

Or sometimes I’ll ask: How did your mom deal with conflict? The response is often, “Oh my mom didn’t deal with conflict. She was too much of a people pleaser.” This is one of the most formative experiences for leaders. A number of female leaders in 2023 grew up with people-pleasing moms, and now, especially for women leaders, it doesn’t feel comfortable or natural for them to speak loudly or assertively when dealing with conflict. It can be really confusing when establishing your own personal leadership style.

Parenting also affects the way we respond to leaders. I have a client that’s admitted she suffers from a daddy-daughter complex, and that she can get emotionally triggered when her professional leaders exhibit behaviors that remind her of her childhood—particularly, the way she felt judged and micromanaged as a kid.

Some people will gravitate toward leaders that actually replicate different parental figures–they’re trying to get their approval, trying to win their love. It’s a very interesting exercise when reflecting and evaluating your own leadership style and the way you interact with your leaders.

And then once you realize how your parents have impacted your leadership style, if you’re a parent or plan to become a parent, you have an opportunity to change your parenting style to impact your children’s leadership skills. 

Understanding your role as a parent 

I always encourage parents to genuinely think about how their behavior will impact their children’s view of leadership. What kind of leadership do you want to display for your kids?

It can sometimes feel inconsequential to throw in the towel on certain lessons when you’re a parent or just say, “ah, let them learn the hard way,” but the truth is that there’s no leadership in that.

You may not think it makes a difference, but it does. 

Children need guidance and direction. How do you build a system where they have a consequence and they understand what’s coming next? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you can’t be loving and playful (those are amazing parenting qualities too!) but I’ve found one of the most important roles you play as a parent is as a leader for your kids. 

This is especially true when that child first enters the workforce, and may not have a plethora of good bosses to emulate. It’s in these early years, employees often don’t know who to mirror and so the gut instinct is to mirror the very first leaders you ever had: your parents.

A PSA about working parents

And while we’re here, I’d like to just insert a PSA for corporations everywhere. If you have the opportunity to hire a parent that’s been out of the workforce for years raising a kid (or several!), please hire them. I’ve found these are often the best types of leaders.

You probably will never meet a better manager than a parent who’s been home with multiple kids. Talk about leaders that know how to organize groups, move people in the same direction, keep things on track, and give clear directions.

Parents often learn some of the most important leadership skills instinctively when they are trying to manage a bunch of children that are running in different directions. You really understand how to anticipate different personalities, how to modify your style, you start to edit the way you speak to certain people in order to have a specific impact or elicit a particular response.

All that to say, there’s a lot of power that happens when you’re parenting, and that often correlates into how you manage people.

So the next time you’re facing a challenging situation as a leader or a manager, I encourage you to go way back to the beginning and try to identify where some of those patterns may have come from. 

What do you think? Can you see a connection between your parents’ leadership style and your own?  Join me on LinkedIn and let’s continue the conversation.

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Why Good Parents Make Great Leaders

Posted by Brandon Smith | Apr 4, 2019 | Dysfunctions - Leading Others , Featured Dysfunction , Why Good Parents Make Great Leaders | 5

I need to come clean with you.  Open kimono.  Full transparency.  The naked truth.  Here it is:

I’m tired. 

I’m cranky .

I have less patience with others. 

And I’m a better leader and person today than I used to be. 

“What are you talking about Brandon?  What could have happened to you?  After all, you used to be so ‘nice’.”  My answer is three words: I HAD CHILDREN, three of them – a girl (Abbigail) and two boys (Noah and Aaron).  Through my own journey as a parent, I have become convinced that parenting can be one of the best training grounds for leadership.   It is a trial like no other.  It forces you to determine what you stand for, defend those beliefs, set boundaries, make sacrifices, consistently and clearly communicate your expectations and hold others accountable on a daily basis.  Sounds a lot like leadership, huh?  And like leadership, most people are not very good at it.   The unholy truth is that there are many more ineffective parents than there are effective ones.  Go to any public place and you’ll find more lazy or failing parents than you’ll find parenting rock stars.  How can you tell?  Easy.  Just look at their kids.  If you see children exhibiting any of the following behaviors, you’ve got clear signs of ineffective parents: rudeness, anxiety, disrespect, whining, paralyzing fear, abuse, self-centered attitudes and demanding “prince and princesses.”  These are all signs of parents that do not lead.

Want to avoid all that stuff and be an effective leader at home?  Consider the following traits of parenting rock stars:

Effective parents:

• Set a culture of what is acceptable and not acceptable clearly, consistently and regularly
• Are not afraid of initiating conflict and must always be prepared to lecture, punish or deliver time-outs at the drop of a hat.
• Must be prepared to hold the line . A parent’s authority will be challenged on a daily basis.
• Are committed to their leadership team first and foremost. The most effective parents are committed first to their spouses and second to their children.  Parenting is not a democracy where everyone has an equal vote.
• Focus on developing their children and recognize that they will likely have to adjust their development approach for each child in order to be effective.
• Are master cheerleaders.  They love their children unconditionally and let them hear and feel that love on a daily basis.
• Communicate what is going on in the world and what it means to the family in a way that reinforces values and lowers anxiety.
• Raise their children so that the role of parent is no longer necessary. Effective parents strive to raise healthy fully-formed adults that contribute to society (and others) positively.

Is leadership in any business or organization materially different?    And yet, we rarely give parenting its proper due.   In an effort to be politically correct, we tend to downplay the role of parenting as if it is equivalent to some sort of hobby to be taken up on the weekends like adopting a puppy or joining a skeeball league.

Parenting is hard.  Leadership is hard.  Over the next few posts, my hope is to make you more efficient and effective on both fronts.

In the meantime, get off my lawn.  I’m taking a nap.

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Very good article. Parenting is hard work and so is leadership. Great connection you have made between the two. It is also undervalued. It takes a lot of commitment. It is an eternal responsibility. “No success in the world will compensate for failure in the home. When you fail at home, you have failed”. David McKay, LDS Church President.

Thanks Daryl for you comments. I couldn’t agree more!

This is so very realistic article and am confident that most of the successful leaders and parents will find this factual.

The traits of effective parents and leaders are symbolic to each other and thus repesent your personality to external world.

While I will discover this fact as the life progresses but as I read this article I would love to assess my performance on both the fronts and make sure that this topic reflects in my life.

Congrats and this ia a worthy piece of true leadership reflection.

Thanks Sumeet. Glad you liked it and I agree with your point 100%!

now that’s funny!

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Never Doubt the Power of Mom: Why Mothers Make Great Leaders

Annette Walker 1

If there’s one image that says everything about the super powers of mothers, it’s that of Whitney Wolfe Herd, the self-made billionaire CEO of Bumble, who took her company public by ringing the stock exchange with a baby on her hip. The video of Herd in a yellow power suit and bouncing baby Bo went viral with the caption, “This is what leadership looks like.”

That may have seemed like an extraordinary statement to some people but it wasn’t to me. I’ve known all along that mothers make exceptional leaders. As a mother of six, grandmother of 13 and a health care executive with more than four decades of experience, I can tell you that mothers have the qualities organizations need to lead them to new levels.

Yet, only 6.7% of S&P 500 companies have women CEOs, and 2.7% of venture capital dollars go to women-founded companies. It’s time to stop doubting the power of women and of moms.

To all those boards, corporate hirers, and venture capitalists who look upon motherhood as a distraction, think again. The arms that hold babies become strong, capable of lifting and carrying heavy weights. This is about much more than the physical; it’s an apt analogy for all the exceptional capabilities mothers strengthen as they care for a child: They strategize, plan, anticipate, innovate, juggle and of course, protect, nurture and love.

These same capabilities make for great leaders. Here are some reasons why I think motherhood should be viewed as an asset in the workplace.

Mission-focused: What is a mother’s mission? Most moms can instantly articulate why they work so hard: We want to keep our children safe and help them thrive. The best leaders also look upon their responsibility to the company’s mission the same way. The mission is what gives employees purpose and defines the organizational agenda. Mission-focused leaders are not distracted from their goals; they know what they must do to get things done.

Innovating: Moms know a lot about embracing change. In the blink of an eye, their cuddly toddlers become complex adolescents. Their work evolves from diaper duty to driver’s ed, and they shift gears accordingly, always focused on the child’s well-being. This year, almost all companies experienced unprecedented change, with our GDP diminishing 3.5% — the biggest contraction since 1946. It’s said those organizations that will survive need a leader who can guide her team through dramatic change and a tough transformation. Ask a mom with a teenager how that’s done.

Listening: A 2020 Dale Carnegie Training study revealed 88% of employees value a boss who listens, but only 60% of workers said their managers do so. With an unresponsive boss, employees feel disconnected and misunderstood. Great mothers are attentive to their children’s needs. They listen to them and know when a little one requires their help and they address those concerns. Can you imagine if every boss you ever had was a good listener? Our work experiences would all be outstanding.

Efficiency : This one is knottier because I believe mothers take on too much multi-tasking. However, the ability to do many things is typically a skill set of motherhood. Who else but a mom can find lost homework, avert a pre-teen melt-down, throw a sweater on a kid and still get him or her to school on time? Similarly, good leaders keep many balls in the air to ensure their organization runs smoothly. Put mom in charge of a corporation and she’s likely to have it humming with efficiency, like mom-CEO Marilyn Hewson who ushered in a year of financial growth for Lockheed Martin.

Strength: Mothers quickly discover strengths they didn’t know they had. We gird ourselves to become our children’s rock in good times and bad. When I look at Ms. Herd, with her 1-year-old in her arms, I see a woman who has probably developed a lot more than just upper body strength in the past year. That’s the fortitude that can easily take on a robust company.

Mentoring: Mothers are hard-wired to teach their children lessons. They understand that part of their responsibility is to pass wisdom down from one generation to the next. The best leaders do the same, sharing their knowledge as mentors for those who come after them.

I realize there are many great fathers who are wonderful leaders, as well as exceptional women leaders who are not moms. The point is not to underestimate the enormous capabilities of women who also care for children. Although we recognize them on Mother’s Day, they deserve more credit and consideration throughout the year.

That’s why, when considering who we want to lead our organizations, we need to put more mothers in the picture and pay them what they’re worth. Someday, leadership will look more like the executive in the bright colored suit with a baby by her side. For everyone who understands the many talents of a mother, that’s the right image for our future.

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Family leadership: Becoming a successful and effective parent leader

By Lori Radun | February 2, 2022 | Motherhood & Family

What is leadership and why should parents care? Leadership is the ability to inspire yourself and others to take positive action in life. Every individual and organization needs leadership. What is an organization exactly? An organization is a social arrangement that pursues collective goals, controls its own performance and has a boundary separating it from its environment. Your family is one of the most important organizations in the world and your family needs leadership.

Take a leadership role in your family and become more effective and successful as a parent leader.

You can’t be an effective and successful leader to your children if you aren’t a leader of your own life.

You need to decide who you want to be as a Mom. Our kids watch our behavior to learn how to behave in the world. We need to make sure that we are the positive examples we want our children to model . One way we become better leaders of our own lives is to practice self-awareness and self- growth . Without self-awareness it’s very hard to create a vision for your own or your family’s future. Self-growth lets us bridge the gaps of where we are today and where we want to be.

Use positive communication in your family to be a successful parent leader.

When you use positive communication with your children, you tend to get better results. Yelling creates a negative reaction with your children and causes us to become out of control. Once we as the parent are out of control, the child becomes out of control. A real leader has the ability to communicate to anybody to take positive action. An effective leader has the tools to respond instead of reacting to a situation. When you respond instead of react, you pause and think about what you’re going to say or do. This is much more effective than just impulsively reacting. Think about what you’re going to ask of your child and give them choices. This puts the responsibility and the consequences into their hands.

View problems as opportunities.

I don’t know a family on this Earth that doesn’t experience “problems.” One way to view problems as opportunities is to view change as a natural part of life. Your perspective and attitude regarding change will largely determine how well you deal with it. In addition, we want to develop our problem solving skills. The more problems we solve, the more confidence we have in our ability to solve problems, and the better we become at quickly generating solutions to challenges that come up in life. Instead of going into stress mode when problems arise, jump into problem solving mode.

A great parent leader practices emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify, assess, manage, and control the emotions of one’s self . To practice emotional intelligence, one must recognize and develop the five competencies of emotional intelligence – self-awareness, intelligently managing our emotions, motivation, empathy, and social skills. At the same time, as parents, we must provide opportunities for our children to learn these same skills. Emotional intelligence is one of the greatest predictors of success in people today, over intelligence and education.

Maintaining balance within your family is important.

You may become stressed if your family doesn’t have balance. It may be difficult to cope with problems that occur. Try to avoid over committing your life . Make sure you take time to be together as a family, develop your relationships, and align your life with your vision and family values.

Raise your kids to do great things and inspire others.

John Quincy Adams said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” How does your leadership as a parent let your children do these things? Help your children to be the best that they can be and in the process you may just become the best parent you can be.

How do you lead your family? What else would you add to this list?

Lori Radun is a mom of two boys, life coach, speaker, author of The Momnificent Life: Healthy and Balanced Living for Busy Moms , and lover of chocolate and Tae Kwon Do.

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Positive communication, emotional intelligence are some of the important characteristics each parent should possess so that they can raise their children in a good way that they will stick to even in the future. Thanks for sharing this informative and useful tips that are more beneficial.

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Leading with Trust

Leadership begins with trust.

5 leadership lessons from being a dad.

Being a dad has been, and continues to be, one of the greatest joys of my life. I’ve experienced tremendous highs, suffered through some lows, doubted myself, learned much, and have been stretched to grow in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I first started this journey twenty-five years ago. The same could be said for my journey as a leader!

• There’s no substitute for time — I’ve learned that “quality” time is just a convenient rationalization to justify our busyness and to ease our guilt from not spending “quantity” time with our kids. The “quality” happens in those unexpected moments during the “quantity.” Being a leader requires spending large amounts of time with your people and not isolating yourself in your own little world. Devote yourself to investing in the growth and development of your people and you’ll reap the rewards.
• Set clear expectations — Part of being a good dad is setting clear expectations for his kids. They should know what’s expected in terms of their behavior and attitudes, and what the consequences will be (either positive or negative) for meeting or not meeting those expectations. Your people at work need the same clear expectations regarding their performance. They need clear targets with identifiable rewards or consequences. It’s not fair to judge your people (or kids) for their actions if they weren’t clear on the goal in the first place.
• Be the example — Being a dad means setting the right example for his kids and the same is true in being a leader. Your attitudes, the tone of voice you use in speaking to others, your work ethic, and the way you treat people are just a few of the ways you will influence your people. Just as a child will observe and often imitate every move of his dad, your people are always taking their cue from the actions of their leader. Make sure you’re leading well!
• Have fun — It’s easy to get bogged down in all the stress and anxiety that comes with being a dad, but I’ve learned to have fun and enjoy the journey as much as possible. Leaders need to remember to take work seriously, but not take themselves too seriously. Laugh at yourself, keep the mood light, and don’t be afraid to have fun with your staff. When the stressful times come, your people will be more willing to put in the extra effort that’s necessary.
• Validate them — One of the primary roles of a father is to validate his children. A father’s approval imparts a tremendous amount of psychological and emotional confidence in a child that empowers him to grow in confidence and faith in his own abilities. Your staff needs your approval as well. When your people know that you accept them, desire the best for them, and will do whatever you can to help them succeed, you will have their loyalty and commitment in following your lead.

Leading and managing adults at work is obviously not the same as parenting children, although some days it can certainly feel that way! However, the principles one uses to be a successful father (or mother) can be equally beneficial for success as a leader. Just like being a father, the key is being consistent in your approach and having the best interests of your people in mind.

By no means are these five principles a definitive list. I’m curious to know what lessons you’ve learned from being a parent that apply to leadership. Feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment. Happy Father’s Day!

by @RandyConley

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 Posted on June 18, 2017 by Randy Conley

 Category: Leadership , Parenting

 Tags: Father's Day , Leadership

6 Comments on “ 5 Leadership Lessons From Being a Dad ”

Thank you for a great comparison. I have learned that positive, affirming feedback far outweighs negative criticism both at homes & in the workplace.

Thanks Andrew! I appreciate your feedback. Happy Father’s Day!

Hi Randy, although your sons are different they both bear a great deal of resemblance to you. A very nice picture!

Although I have no children I dare standing on my (small) soapbox by emphasizing that confidence is the most important point of the ones you listed. It is very empowering and in my memories it made me forget if my parents did something I considered a mistake. That is maybe why I apply confidence strongly towards the people I work with. Have a great week, Brigitte

Thanks Brigitte!

I agree with you about the importance of confidence. It can make a world of difference.

Many times confidence is a product of positive reassurance by your mentor and or parents.

I agree Tom!

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Learning from the best: my father's lessons on leadership.

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Some people are born leaders, exuding a natural confidence and demonstrating an innate ability to encourage and nurture those around them. Most leaders, however, learn by watching the example set forth by others. I fall into the category of “learned leader”  The charisma that often defines the natural leader has never come easily for me. Fortunately, I've had great mentors who have helped me to learn and grow, both personally and professionally. Of all the people who have provided strong examples of leadership , no one stands out more than my father.

One would be hard-pressed to find a better leader than my dad. With Father’s Day just around the corner, I thought the best tribute I could pay to the greatest leader I've ever known, would be to share the three most important lessons he taught me.

Be courageous

My father is a huge fan of Westerns, and one of his favorite John Wayne quotes is “Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway.” To him, this isn’t a throwaway sentiment; it’s a way of life. My father taught me that there was a difference between courage and bravado. Courage isn’t a matter of being fearless; it’s a matter of being willing to accept the outcomes of your decisions, no matter what.

My dad started his company when he was 29 years old. He was working at an engineering firm when one of his clients, a little company called Coca-Cola , asked him to strike out on his own. They promised to come along with him if he left, but he had no formal guarantee. He had a young family at home that depended on him, but he was shrewd enough to recognize the incredible opportunity ahead of him. After weeks of agonizing and soul-searching, he made the decision to move forward on his own. He knew that there was risk involved, and he had the courage to move forward in spite of it.

I once asked him about how he became comfortable with the situation. His answer was plainspoken and simple—whether the business succeeded or failed, he would do whatever it took to provide for his family. He was willing to accept the outcome of his decision, regardless of how hard he would have to work. The prospect of jumping into the unknown still scared him to death, but he had the confidence to saddle up anyway and take on the challenge.

Fortunately, his business grew quickly and became quite successful. Before he knew it, he was the head of a reasonably large company, signing large deals and influencing the industry. This type of success would swell most egos, but my father was unaffected. He remained the straightforward and uncomplicated man he had always been. Over the years, his humility and simple tastes became a trademark of sorts.

When I was in my early twenties, I had a fair bit of success in my career and was pretty proud of myself. My father took me aside and encouraged me to remain humble.

“Everybody falls down at some point,” he told me, “stay humble so that the people around you want to help you up, not knock you back down.”

His words struck a chord with me, and suddenly his decisions to embrace simplicity made sense. His humility was genuine, and it encouraged those around him to demonstrate compassion and understanding when things got rough. In business, everyone is jockeying for position and prestige.My father taught me to take a different path. He taught through example that cultivating humility and focusing on others always pays off in the long run.

Be generous

Perhaps the most important lesson he taught me was to be generous. While running his company, he learned that a young employee on his team had tragically lost their young child to a terminal illness. The employee held a junior role inside of the organization and didn’t have much money. Worse yet, he didn’t have sufficient insurance to cover the medical costs, let alone pay for a funeral for the child.

News of this tragedy reached my father, and he quietly and privately paid for the funeral costs out of his pocket. There was no need for a company fundraiser, to him that was too opportunistic. This was not a PR stunt. A member of his team was in pain and needed help, and he responded personally. To this day, none of his colleagues know what he did. That act of generosity and compassion has remained with me over the years and served as the best example of what a leader should be.

Leadership is not about titles. It’s about bringing out the best in others and serving as an example for your team. That is often easier said than done. Fortunately for me, my father was always there to provide an example of what a leader should be: courageous, humble, and generous. I couldn’t ask for a better role model, both personally and professionally.

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How Your Leadership Style Can Inform Your Parenting

Apply strengths from work to communicate more effectively with your teenager.

Being a working parent of a teenager doesn’t mean you no longer need to worry about balancing career and family; it just means you face new and different challenges. Raising teens is like leading other leaders in some ways — working with people who developmentally crave more autonomy and are seeking more empowerment and freedom. You can use your leader of leaders skills to communicate more effectively with your teen and help them develop the skills, judgment, and resilience they need to be fully independent.

Todd seemed especially distracted during our coaching meeting. I paused to ask him what was on his mind. He apologized and said that he couldn’t stop thinking about an exchange he had with his teenage son the previous evening where they both ended up frustrated at each other. Todd shared that as a working parent, he cherished the moments he and his son were free at the same time given both of their busy schedules. He couldn’t understand why when they were finally together, their interactions ended up tense or not going as he had hoped.

• AS Amy Jen Su is a co-founder and managing partner of Paravis Partners , a premier executive coaching and leadership development firm. For the past two decades, she has coached CEOs, executives, and rising stars in organizations. She is the author of the HBR Press book The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self—Every Day,   and co-author of Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence  with Muriel Maignan Wilkins.

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Leadership Freak

The power of mother-leader.

I’ve been asking people to complete this sentence. “My mom is reflected in my life when I ….” (You can add a bit of explanation.)

If leadership is influence, mother is the first leader most meet.

I know mom is an important influence because there’s deep emotion when people reflect on their mothers. Often there’s joy. A few people don’t want to talk about their mothers.

It doesn’t matter if you love mom or push her out of memory. Mom is a powerful influence.

The power of mother-leadership:

Admiration:

If you don’t admire mom, you wish you could. Admiration is an open door.

A good word from someone you admire does more good. A hurtful word does more harm.

Admiration multiplies your power to help or harm.

Admiration is power.

“Study finds that mothers determine chimps’ lifelong grooming behavior.” ( Harvard Gazette )

Mom is in your life even if you wish she weren’t. You strive to follow her example or you aspire to live otherwise. But, she’s there. Even an absent mom is present.

Example is more powerful than words.

A boss might encourage you to take time off, but if she always comes early and stays late, you’ll follow her example. Or you worry about not following it.

Example is often unquestioned when it’s the behavior of someone we highly regard. If you do something a certain way, the people who admire you often follow your example.

Lessons in leadership from mom:

#1. People would love to admire you. We love having someone to look up to.

#2. Admiration is opportunity. Seeking admiration is obvious and preposterous. But if people admire you, serve them humbly.

How would you complete the sentence, “My mom is reflected in my life when I ….”

How are motherhood and leadership connected?

Bonus material:

How a Mother’s Love Changes a Child’s Brain ( Live Science )

Thanks for sharing.

Post navigation, 41 thoughts on “ the power of mother-leader ”.

My mom is reflected in my life when I …. quote her. “You can get better or bitter and the difference is “I”. “Life isn’t fair … so what are YOU going to do?” “You can complain about it or do something about it. Which is it?” I find myself saying the same things to my kids.

Thanks Duane. Your comment brings a smile to my face. Plus, I’ve never heard the better-bitter quote put so clearly.

Dan very interesting concept. I have been attempting to sour the breast milk for my non-productive students and they still hang on. Amazing.

Thanks for being a source of great information.

Thanks Elaine. Fascinating. I have a feeling I’m going to be smiling a lot today.

You out did yourself with this one. Such a powerful comparison. You actually brought tears to my eyes this morning, thinking about my mother’s influence on my professional and personal success. You are a master of words. Thank you!

Thank you Donna. Be well.

My mother never worked on admiration. Shouting orders and administering slaps to the head was more her pace.

Thanks Mitch. Did it help?

Hasn’t worked so well for me! 😀

I would say it has ! by not doing(to others) what she did to you ? Think about it.. mom does that with your welfare in mind..

My Mom is reflected in my life when I am no-nonsense and meticulous. When I just do what has to be done and do it right. (And thanks, I never thought about this until now–it’s something I have a little bit of that I don’t always realize I’m tapping into.) She was a nurse-midwife training in Scotland in the 1950s, pushing herself to get somewhere, later a traveling nurse making her way to the U.S. So it makes sense.

Thanks Kate. That’s great. It’s so good to see your mom in your life.

Dan my mother, Dot, enlisted in WWII, trained pilots on aircraft identification, left the service as a Staff Sergeant and told me whatever people skills I have. And, like the old song, also taught me right from wrong that’s a lot to learn. Great post, Brad

Thanks Brad. Your mom had some big shoes! 🙂

Agree. Where my mother is, it is a “house”.

Thanks Fyza.

My mom is reflected in my life when I show humility. My mom is one of the most humble people I know of. She really had no idea how many and how much people admire her. I believe humility is one of the two most important leadership qualities and am thankful to her for modeling it. (The other is genuinely valuing other perspectives / opinions) which is closely related to humility in my view.) Thanks for the post. Jerry

Thanks Jerry. What I love about your comment is your acknowledgement that you exhibit some measure of humility. Thanks for joining the conversation.

I am so proud to be a “mother leader” to my own children and to the hundreds of students I have loved and led as a teacher and a school principal. A school board member once said to me, “You’re the mother of this school, aren’t you?” I was touched that he recognized that this was my approach to my work. . . I have loved being a mother and an educator. It’s the honor of my life. I love this comparison. Thank you so much.

Hi Janet. It’s so freeing and enabling to know who we are. Best wishes

I just realized reading your post – my mother was a get on and do it, person. I never thought about where that came from and now I recognize that in myself. It wasn’t until she was dying I really understood her bravery in the face of adversity. I always thought I took after my father. He taught me humility – she gave me courage.

Thank you for the insight Dan – I really appreciate it. This was hard to think about.

Thanks for sharing your story Carolyn. Isn’t it wonderful to learn something new about yourself? It sounds like you had two great examples.

My mother is reflected in my life when I accept people for who they are, their gifts and what they struggle with in life.

Thanks Robyn. What a great expression of her influence!

There are many varieties of Moms out there. Just like leaders, mothers are not always perfect and no one way, is right or wrong. What we take and learn from our mothers, good or bad, is up to us at the end of the day. I did not have the greatest relationship with my mom growing up, however, I took slices of what she did and grew from them, helping me develop into who I am today. My mom is reflected in most everything I do. I indirectly learned independence and to trust cautiously. She showed me perseverance and taught me to maintain strength to never give up or give in. Hard work and dedication will lead to eventual success. A mother can be the best leader in one’s life, regardless of who our mothers are. With the craziness of children as well as normal day to day activities, it is essential to be able to adjust and respond appropriately in stressful situations. Prioritizing and maintaining focus are also great skills many mothers possess, all of which are great attributes to have in the workplace. If leaders were to dedicate the attention and support to their teams that a mother dedicates to her children, there may be an increase in growth and success of that team.

Thanks Sarah. If we took time to reflect, I think we would be surprised at how much we reflect our parents – or the people who brought us up.

My mom is reflected in my life when I…show hospitality to those who come across my path, treating and serving strangers and friends alike (in words and deeds).

Wow… that’s a great quality. Thanks, CaroK.

This was an incredibly powerful and profound post. A leader in any aspect that has the admiration of his/her followers is a great marker of a good leader. Mothers teach us so much, as you have pointed out, chimps learn their lifelong grooming habits from their mothers, while we may take away some different habits form our mothers there us no question that these are lifelong. I know for sure that my mother has shaped my work ethic. Not only has she instilled a good work ethic in me as a child, encouraging me in my schoolwork, she also was my first boss at my first job. From this I learned what was expected in the workplace, and what kind of work to put forth. My mother is a very hard-working person, starting from nothing and building up quite the business. Many of her employees have a deep sense of admiration for her and have worked for her for decades now. I would like to think that this should be a standard of leadership in the world of business that should be strived for amongst leaders. Having leadership like that enables success, for not just the leader but also the followers.

Thanks Emma. Your story is a powerful illustration of the power of example. I wish you well as you exhibit the qualities of your mom.

Wow, what a great post Dan. I really enjoyed reading the responses and taking the time to reflect on your question. As I grow older, I am more aware of the qualities in myself that came from both of my parents. Some I am proud of and others not so much. It is amazing how much we inherit from them without any conscience effort. I know my mother is reflected in me in many ways, but I have never really thought about how specifically until reading this post. To answer your question, my mom is reflected in my life when I persevere and when I accept people for who they are. I know most moms are special, but I believe mine to be extra special. My mom is a paraplegic from an armed robbery and has been wheelchair bound my whole life. She taught me to accept others even if they were not the same as me, because she was different too. Whenever I felt like I could not accomplish a goal or was feeling down about whatever life threw my way, her famous saying was, “If life was too hard, you would not be here.” She is my motivation to be successful personally and professionally. If she can make it through all she has, so can I.

Thanks Megan. What a powerful story. I love the quote. Your mom successfully navigated the unfairness in life!! Very encouraging.

This has me thinking about the bosses I’ve had and how my mom was definitely my first boss. Admiration certainly isn’t blanket and can be circumstantial when reflecting on the same person, just from a different viewpoint. In many ways, she showed/shows me how not to lead. Micromanaging, quick to criticize, lacking in praise, and ill-placed emotionality shows me how to be a poor leader.

What I learned was actually great management skills instead. She’s highly organized and mindblowingly resourceful. I don’t admire how she lacks in articulate reasoning or discourages thinking or doing outside what’s comfortable. I do admire, however, how she will jump to your aid if she knows she has a solution. I’ve not come across another person who knows more about the ins and outs of anything to do with a document. Court systems, taxes, bookkeeping, law….and tons of things I don’t know the name for. Need to know how to register your business, transfer a deed, anything with loans, wills, federal or state programs? She’ll likely know how to do most of if off the top of her head, and know exactly where to look if she’s missing pieces to the puzzle. She’s fantastic at absorbing information and using it. Not the best at delegating or instructing, but will offer up her skills in a heartbeat.

Being a leader is akin to being a mentor in that you’re not meant to just do for others; you are meant to show them how to do for themselves. To be fair, I am also very resourceful and tend to absorb all of the ho-to’s without much effort. That may have come from observations or it may be a natural pension. This is to say, I learned how to be a leader/mentor in a what-not-to-do sort of fashion. With my children (9 & 13), I’ve taken great pride in seeing how they have figured out their own means to the same ends, no micromanaging needed.

Thanks Chloe. It sounds like you aren’t an over-protective mom. Navigating the tension between support and challenge is one of leadership’s most important and difficult challenges.

As you mentioned, many admire mom and for those who don’t wish they could. Luckily, I was able to see the power of not only my mother, but my grandmother and great grandmother as well. Growing up with three generations of women in a different cultural setting (Japan) allowed me to see differences in leadership amongst my family members. My great grandmother was the primary caretaker in the household while my grandmother and mother ran the family business day and night. Although each woman had their own methods of raising children, I admire all three in different ways and their perspectives have helped me turn into who I am today. It’s interesting as my mother would always tell me the ways she learned to cope with us (her two insane children) was based on how her own mother raised her. She also would acknowledge the cultural differences between Japan and the U.S. and taught me how to adjust after moving to America. Despite the fact that I gave my mother quite a stressful time throughout my teenage years, her patience and methods of raising two children guided me to understand everything mothers do. Many will say that their mother is the best and I’m happily one of those individuals. Without the leadership of my mother, who knows where I’d be! I thank my mother for my patience, ability to connect with others through empathy, and humility. I can only hope to be half the woman my mother is.

Thanks Misa. I must say that I feel your admiration and aspiration. You also remind me that success is about the team. Each person has a role. We compensate for each other’s weaknesses.

My mother was a workhorse raising six kids alone. She is long gone and at 60 years old, I’m not holding her responsible for anything but the good I’ve made in my life. I am also a mother of two and a grandmother of three; I hope my children look back after I’ve passed and credit me the same way. I am just so proud of them and how they turned out in spite of any obstacles they had to overcome. God bless all mothers and grandmothers; we are just doing the best we can with what we have. Our innate love for our children and grandchildren is what drives us forward, and whatever kind of leadership results from that, it’s all circumstantial. Finally, as the middle child of six, I believe family order has more to do with leadership than anything. After your Mother’s Day article, why don’t you research that for a National Sibling Day piece.

My mom is reflected in my life when I became a mother myself. Having this tiny creature constantly watch and learn from me has been uniquely eye opening. I have held leadership positions in the past in school and in my career, but this type of leadership has been the most daunting. Am I doing right? Will she grow up to be kind? At work, my concerns ebb and flow depending on the project. Sure, maybe some people look up to me, but for the most part I am keeping the schedule on track and maintaining organization. At home, every minute feels like an opportunity to have her grow and learn, which quite frankly is exhausting. Being thrown into the role of mom while also being back in school to obtain a graduate degree has made me realize how much time, self-care, and career growth my own mother sacrificed by being a stay at home mom. But her guidance and leadership allowed me to feel confident enough to both be a mom and have a career. Admiration truly is power, and while it is easy to push things like childish admiration of a mother aside, it is the building block for confidence and long-lasting relationships. I never seek to be admired in the workplace, but the admiration I observe from my daughter has shone a light on the increased admiration I have for my own mom now that we have this relatable experience. It is something to keep in mind when returning to work.

Motherhood is a potent example of leadership. Women are honored to be able to experience motherhood, and aside from the gender roles, motherhood aligns in many ways with leadership. The matriarch of a family is often looked at for words of advice, wisdom, and for the last and final say. This can be seen in my nurse job, when a matriarch of a southern family is hospitalized, the family unit outside of the hospital is severely disrupted. Family members still want to visit “grandma” every day, bring her food, and watch Sunday Football with her. The level of respect and admiration that a matriarch receives does not occur naturally. It can take decades of hard work and sleepless nights to earn the title. This is similar to being a successful leader, as this title is not a given but gained. Motherhood and leadership share specific qualities, such as flexibility, openness, confidence, and dedication. My own mother didn’t earn many accolades for her time spent as a mother, but I have learned from her mistakes, which is a value in its own. Mother’s Day used to give me much resentment for children with present mothers, but now I look forward to the day I have children and become a source of leadership to future generations.

May 8 My mom is reflected in my life when I express my unconditional love to my children and family time and time again. I am totally blessed to be a mother of three thriving active and intelligent kids. They are my proudest accomplishment today. As much energy and time that I have put into each of them, they have given me back all that and some more in return. By each of them striving for excellence in their academic achievements, volunteering in the community and just being good kids. I never knew how hard it was going to be to juggle the multiple schedules, assignments and engagements for each child. Not to mention the personality changes that you endure from each child as they grow into young adults.

But I am also blessed to have had a mother that showed me by example what love looked like. She was always there for each of us (I am one of four). I admired how she showed her unconditional love to each of us by being supportive, having an active listener to all of our concerns and giving her time with each of us.

Yes, being a mother has shown me alot. You must take on leadership traits to be the best mom you choose to be. Being the leader of my tribe, setting the tone for my household, showing your kids who to depend on when in need, being everything to each kid at any given time is what a Mother’s love is. That is something to be admired!

I thoroughly enjoy your posts, and today is no exception. My mother burned my love for her out of me long ago with her unrepentant behaviors. She taught me clearly how not to make people feel, and that serves me well as a leader every single day.

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5 Things That Great Parents and Great Leaders Have in Common

From communication to inspiration, do you have what it takes.

By Sanya Pelini, Ph.D.

Published on: august 23, 2024.

Raising successful kids comes down to a simple question: Do you want to be a leader or a boss? A boss manages things; a leader empowers, inspires, shows the way forward and makes it their business to connect with their employees every day.

Being a successful leader is tough. In the book “Speed: How Leaders Accelerate Successful Execution,” Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman published the results of a study they undertook of 300,000 business leaders. These development consultants wanted to identify the characteristics and qualities of good leaders. It turns out that good leaders and good parents share quite a number of similar qualities. Here are just a few of them.

1. Great leaders and great parents know that good relationships are built on clear communication.

In a 2015 Interact/Harris survey about the “Top Complaints from Employees About Their Leaders,” 91 percent of the respondents considered their leaders lacking in communication skills. Up to 57 percent of respondents felt that they rarely received clear directions about what was expected of them.

Communication is a key foundation of strong relationships. Zenger and Folkman found that effective leaders communicate clearly and regularly with their employees. The same can be said about effective parents. Several studies suggest that having clear and appropriate (neither too high nor too low) expectations of your child has a large impact on their behavioral and educational outcomes.

Here are five things you can do to improve parent-child communication:

• Clearly identify your expectations and share those with your child.
• Give clear and regular feedback, even when that feedback is negative, but avoid lectures.
• Be up front and honest in your communication with your child.
• Listen more than you talk. Show empathy and put yourself in your child’s shoes.
• Find time to connect every day.

2. Great parents and great leaders inspire.

Research has shown that anxious parents are more likely to raise anxious children, not necessarily because of genetic issues, but because of their display of anxious behavior. In other words, if a child sees their parent react anxiously to a given situation, they are likely to begin reacting anxiously to that situation themselves.

Great leaders inspire and motivate others, and so do great parents. We now know that children learn how to react to different situations by watching us. In other words, modeling the behavior that you want your child to display is the most effective way of inspiring them.

3. Great parents and great leaders are also great cheerleaders.

A great leader knows that their employees’ success is their success. They know that it is important for employees to believe that their leader is on their side. In the Interact/Harris survey on effective leadership mentioned earlier, 63 percent of the employees thought that leaders who did not recognize their achievements were ineffective leaders.

Just as employees need to have their achievements recognized, your child needs to know that you’ve noticed when they are doing a good job, even when — especially when — that progress is slow and painful.

Instead of simply praising your child, let them know exactly what they have done right. For example, “You’ve gotten so much better at reading since you began reading every day,” “You hardly made any mistakes — look how your music practice is paying off.” Over 30 years ago, Carol Dweck coined the term “growth mindset” after studying student attitudes toward failure. As Dweck’s research has shown, your child grows and develops when they feel like they have the power to change the events that happen in their lives. The more they feel capable of success, the higher the chances are that they will make an effort to achieve their goals.

4. Great parents and great leaders focus on building trust in their relationships.

Great leaders and great parents care about building relationships that are based on trust. As a parent, this is not only about being able to trust your child; he or she also needs to know that they can trust you and count on you.

Trust and accountability go together. Your child will make mistakes — all kids do — but allowing them to make amends when those mistakes happen shows your faith in them.

5. Great parents and great leaders never hover.

Great leaders do not micromanage their employees. They do not hover over them, watching their every move and waiting to catch them in the wrong.

In 1996, researchers David Bredehoft, Jean Illsley Clarke and Connie Dawson observed more than 3,500 children over several years. They wanted to know if it was possible to “overparent” and how overparenting affected children’s development. The researchers found that overindulgent parents regularly stepped in to solve their children’s problems and failed to hold them accountable for their mistakes. These parents were determined to make life easier for their kids at all costs.

In the book the researchers published, “How Much Is Too Much? Raising Likeable, Responsible, Respectful Children — From Toddlers to Teens — In an Age of Overindulgence,” they explain that doing too much for your children is bad for them. It can:

• Make them less confident in their ability to succeed.
• Decrease the likelihood that they will take up leadership roles and thus hamper them in developing problem-solving skills.
• Prevent them from reaching their full potential. As Bredehoft, Clarke and Dawson note, it can “hinder children from performing their needed developmental tasks, and from learning necessary life lessons.”

Clarke says that there are three types of overindulgence: doing too much for your child or giving them too many things; giving your child too much attention (i.e., you have a constant need to know where they are and what they are doing); and providing a soft structure, meaning that you do for them what they should be doing for themselves. Doing too much for your child harms you and it harms them.

Both great parents and great leaders know that without a strong relationship, none of their other efforts will matter. They know that strong relationships do not develop by themselves; they need nurturing to grow.

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About the author.

Sanya Pelini is a parent and researcher in education. She is passionate about child development issues and holds a Ph.D. in educational research. She transforms educational research into practical tools and resources on her blog Raising Independent Kids .

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Leadership, Management and Parenting

My mother-in-law was an experienced teacher and a manager at an adult education institute. Many years ago, when she was still alive, she told me about a management course she was taking that shook her perception of her work. She was very surprised to discover that there were many types of managers.

After her course, we had many discussions about how management, leadership and parenting are very similar in their essence. At that time, I was running my first business, where I was a manager, a leader and a parent. I managed all the aspects of the business and led the educational program, while being a young mother.

I thought about these three roles we play for years and managed to combine them into something that worked really well for my family and me. Hopefully, the ideas below will work well for your family and you too.

Parenting is a management position. For the family “business” or “operation” to run properly, we need to manage time, manage our emotions and those of our family members, manage money, manage habits, manage education, manage health, manage work and manage time off. In fact, all aspects of family life, we even need to manage things we have no control over (yes, it is very frustrating that we cannot control everything).

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

There are also many similarities between parenting and leadership, which I really like. We, the Baras Family, navigate life together. United we stand, divided we fall. Still, someone needs to be King Arthur.

In my leadership programs , I help the participants understand that leaders are not born leaders, just like parents are not born parents. We can develop these skills. The main difference is that we can get by in most areas without being leaders, but when we have kids, we really must develop our parenting skills.

Here is the comparison between leaders, mangers and parents. I hope it will make it easy for you to develop leadership and management skills in your parenting and have strong foundations, with a strong “king” and strong “knights”.

Why parenting is like leadership and management

• Leaders need followers . Leaders always have a small group of supporters who believe in the same things they do. Managers need staff. Usually, staff members need to follow some kind of instructions in order for the business to run smoothly. Parents need children. They need their children to follow some kind of instructions in order for the family to run smoothly.

• Leaders can think on their feet. They sometimes need to make fast decisions and they know they might make mistakes. Yet, they do not linger. Mangers must think fast when things do not happen as they expect. Parents need to make fast decisions sometimes.
• Leaders lead the way by example. Leading does not mean telling others what they should do. Leaders show the way. They do not pull or push others aggressively to do what the leader wants. Mangers lead by example. If the manger expects staff members to notify when they cannot come to work, he or she does the same to show respect. Parents are role models. Children know what their parents believe in based on what they do, not what they say.

• Leaders have good time management skills. They look for ways to do things faster, better and more efficiently. Leaders have the same time as their followers, but they use it better. They prioritize and focus on the most important tasks first. Managers must develop good time management skills to do things better and more efficiently. Someone who is unorganized and does not meet deadlines or come to meetings on time will not be able to manage anyone else. Parenting requires lots of task juggling. In-between work, home, kids, driving, sleep, shower, food, cleaning and romantic time, only those who can manage their time well can do a good job raising kids.
• Leaders need to move their followers in the same direction with motivation. They are at the front of the line and need to motivate their followers to follow them. If they use force, they will lose their followers. Managers have tasks to complete and they need to motivate their staff to achieve it. If they use force, they will lose their staff. Parents need things to be done and they need to motivate their kids to accomplish them. If they use force, they lose trust, and without trust, nothing can be done. It is like King Arthur, sitting at the round table, all by himself, without any knights to do the job.

• Leaders ask their followers for their opinion, so that they are in line with what they think and believe. Managers ask their staff for suggestions and input as the staff members know more about what is happening in their field than the managers do. This way, the managers show respect and appreciation to their staff’s input. Parents need to treat their kids with respect and appreciate their input and suggestions. In this atmosphere, children see their parents in a role, rather than as “higher”. This way, the respect is mutual.

Think of your role as a parent as a type of manager or leader and it will make it easier to feel like you are King Arthur, sitting at the round table, with your kid knights in shiny armor.

Happy parenting, Ronit

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What parenting and leadership have in common

Former US president, Dwight D. Eisenhower defined leadership as being the “ Art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it ”. What’s remarkable about this quote is that it applies as much to parenting as it does to leadership, because isn’t this exactly what we are trying to achieve with our children every day?  Unfortunately, we’re not always successful at trying to get our children to cooperate and do as we ask, and at times it can put a lot of pressure on our relationship with them.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could get our children to do as we ask without having to resort to nagging, reminding and shouting? And wouldn’t it be even better if there was a simple, yet effective way for us to improve our parenting skills in order to achieve this? By transferring some of the soft skills that we are already familiar with using in the workplace, this is actually easier than you might initially think.

Indeed, what I’ve discovered through my research into parenting best practices is that they have a lot in common with leadership best practices and that these soft skills are transferable. And they can prove to be just as effective at home as they are in the workplace.

Being a good parent is much like being a good leader, in that you have to create a path for those under your charge to succeed. You should have an interest in their development and show confidence in their abilities, and you must provide them with the tools they need to overcome obstacles and succeed.

However, it’s worth clarifying that this is not at all about creating stringent and inflexible business processes at home. What it is about is finding ways to engage cooperation, motivate and inspire in order to build a stronger connection with your children and maximise their chances of happiness and success. Because like any other ability, parenting is a skill that can be developed and honed, particularly when informed by the best practices of leadership.

I have given many presentations for globally renowned companies and I always ask attendees to name what they consider to be the top leadership skills. They consistently name the same skills and these are (thankfully) totally in line with the latest research on leadership. So let’s define these top leadership skills and explore how we can implement them effectively at home to make family life more harmonious and enjoyable.

Top 10 leadership skills and how to apply them at home:

1. Vision and strategy

Having clear expectations and goals is essential both in the workplace and at home. Vision allows us to look ahead and to anticipate potential problems before they arise, while strategy enables us to plan how we are going to deal with parenting challenges on the occasions when they do. Planning ahead in this way helps to prevent a lot of challenges from occurring, and makes us better at coping with them when they do present themselves because we become less ‘reactive’ to our children’s behaviour.

2. Leading by example

It’s key to be a role model for those around us and to treat them in the way that we would wish to be treated.  But unfortunately, at home, we sometimes fall into the trap of applying the adage, “Do as I say, not as I do”. It’s important to realise that we cannot hold our children to higher standards than we can maintain ourselves. So if we have difficulty managing our own emotions, it’s important to recognise that it’s even more difficult for children to be able to do this when their pre-frontal cortex – the part of the brain that allows them to control emotions – is far from being as developed as ours.

3. Effective 2-way communication

Clear communication of rules and expectations is essential both at home and in the workplace because this is what enables a team/family to function effectively.

Whether speaking to staff or children, the key to effective communication is to ensure that we reduce commands, orders and reminders and replace them with more effective alternatives. We should also make our point calmly and without anger as shouting will cause people to go into ‘fight or flight’ mode, which makes it even more difficult for them to do what we’re asking of them. Similarly, the best leaders know how to listen to their team and allow the interaction and the ‘creative juices’ to flow, rather than stifling them.

4. Being directive and participative

Effective communication often involves being directive and sometimes making ‘executive decisions’ for the benefit of the organisation or the family.

However, the best leaders also use participative leadership as it helps build confidence in people and can empower teams both in the workplace and at home. In both roles, participative leadership allows people to express themselves so they feel like a valued and integral part of the process. It’s essential that each team member feels as though their voice is being heard and that their contribution is important, as this helps to create a sense of shared purpose.

5. Emotional intelligence

Listening and having the ability to understanding social cues are essential skills for leaders. When we take the time to listen to others and we use empathy we truly connect with them because we are making them  feel valued and understood.  As Stephen Covey, author of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ famously says so well: “When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.”

6. Ability to motivate and inspire

As per Eisenhower’s definition above, leadership is very much about motivating and inspiring our teams to want to do things for themselves, rather than doing something because they have been told to. This is probably one of the most difficult feats and it usually requires a strong connection with each team member.

7. Positive attitude and flexibility/pragmatism

Having a positive attitude and reducing the number of negative statements we make are both essential to motivating those around us. And adopting a pragmatic approach allows for more flexibility in situations where things don’t go as planned, which often happens, particularly at home.

8. Understanding and acceptance of mistakes

No one likes to be told off for making a mistake, but research proves that it is through mistakes that we learn the most. It is therefore essential to embrace them and to model that mistakes are not something to be afraid of, but rather something that we can learn from.

9. Trust and integrity

Without trust and connection, it’s very difficult to create a sense of safety, which has been proven by Google’s Project Aristotle to be the key to effective team interactions. This is equally true for the family where trust is essential, and integrity is a crucial element to establishing this connection as both go hand in hand.

10. Determination and commitment

The final skill is the glue that holds everything together: our determination and commitment is what motivates us to be the best leaders that we can be – without them, we probably wouldn’t even be able to be parents!

Applying these top leadership skills may sound like a tall order as it’s already quite challenging to implement these skills at work, let alone doing it at home. Indeed, leadership is not easy – not in the workplace or in our family lives. It’s not as straightforward as just being ‘a boss’ and ordering people around, and it’s far more time-consuming. It involves coaching, modelling, patience, do-overs, problem solving, listening, teaching and being very thoughtful in our communication. As time-consuming as it is, using these skills is worth it – knowing that our kids will learn to respond from a place of trust rather than responding out of fear-based obedience.

To make these skills easier to apply at home, we have studied the latest research into child development, neuroscience and leadership to offer a series of tools that will help any parent, whatever their parenting style, utilise these skills effectively at home.

You can find these in my new book The Working Parents’ Guide to Raising Happy and Confident Children (Best of Parenting Publishing, RRP: £11.99) in our books section , or you can buy it on  Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com .

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• Published: 17 June 2019

“You have a status”: a case study of parent leadership in a U.S. school readiness initiative

• Anne L. Douglass   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8162-8355 1 ,
• Meredith R. Maroney 1 ,
• Mary Coonan 2 ,
• Donna Haig Friedman 2 &
• Alice Carter 3  

International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy volume  13 , Article number:  2 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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This study examined an urban school readiness initiative that developed parent leadership as a key strategy for increasing the likelihood that all children enter kindergarten ready to succeed. Parent Leaders were primarily immigrant mothers who conducted outreach activities and child developmental screenings with low income, under-served, urban and immigrant families with young children. Using a rigorous case study design, this qualitative study investigated what strategies Parent Leaders used to engage families and how their leadership influenced families, neighborhoods, and the Parent Leaders themselves. The study found that Parent Leaders (1) used highly relational strategies to engage families, (2) shifted community norms about parent leadership, and (3) developed their own identities as leaders. These findings contribute to an increased understanding of how and why parent leadership matters for school readiness research, practice, and policy, particularly in immigrant and under-served communities.

This study examined parent leadership in an urban school readiness initiative in a northeast U.S. city. This school readiness initiative (hereafter referred to as Ready for K) took a unique approach by mobilizing parent leadership as one key strategy toward meeting its goal that every child in the city would enter kindergarten ready to succeed. Ready for K determined that parents in under-resourced neighborhoods could be the most effective “ambassadors” conducting outreach and engagement, and leading the efforts to connect families to early learning and developmental supports. Their approach was based on the idea that effective connections of families to resources, supports, and services are vital to children’s developmental growth, yet these connections needed to be enhanced for sub-groups of families with young children, particularly low-resourced, immigrant families who are the least connected to services and resources.

Ready for K pursued a strategy of mobilizing local parent leadership to strengthen families’ connections with school readiness support systems. It recruited community parents to conduct outreach to underserved and immigrant parents of young children to connect them with local resources. It also trained these parents to conduct developmental screenings of children birth to age three to raise family and community awareness about children’s development and, when appropriate, early intervention services. Few early childhood school readiness or developmental screening initiatives involve parents as the implementers and leaders. Moreover, little research has examined parent leadership as a strategy for promoting early learning or school readiness. Therefore, this paper offers an innovative and useful contribution.

This qualitative case study of Ready to K investigated (1) the strategies Parent Leaders used in their efforts to engage families and (2) how the development of parent leadership influenced families, neighborhoods, and the Parent Leaders themselves. We begin with a review of the literature on parent leadership in the early childhood education context. Next, we describe the context for this study and the research methods. We present the key research findings and discuss our findings in relation to implications for future research, policy, and practice.

Literature review

Improving parent engagement has garnered attention as a way to achieve more equitable access to quality early care and education (ECE) and school readiness opportunities (Hepburn 2004 ; Park and McHugh 2014 ; Souto-Manning and Swick 2006 ). There is strong evidence that parent engagement in education during the early childhood years contributes to positive child outcomes and academic achievement, and parent engagement is considered as a key strategy for closing the achievement gap (Henderson et al. 2004 ; Hepburn 2004 ; Vlasov and Hujala 2017 ). This literature explores various approaches to and/or benefits of parent involvement, and how parent engagement might influence children’s academic learning (Hakyemez-Paul et al. 2018 ; Morrow and Malin 2004 ; Park and McHugh 2014 ). Research across international contexts notes the importance of parent engagement and parent–teacher partnerships as a core element of quality ECE and one that merits further attention in both research and practice (OECD 2012 , 2017 ; Vlasov and Hujala 2017 ; Douglass 2011 ; Douglass and Klerman 2012 ).

The parent engagement literature also considers how parent involvement may shift as a result of a range of contextual factors. For example, Vlasov and Hujula ( 2017 ) examined the evolution of parent–teacher relationships in ECE over time in Russia, the US, and Finland. They describe societal changes that may influence how parents are positioned in relation to teachers with regards to power and status, as well as differences in these power dynamics across the three country contexts in their study. This and other research identify power relations between parents and teachers as a key issue for parent engagement research and practice (Douglass 2011 ). The parent leadership literature addresses these issues of power, status, and empowerment.

Parent leadership

Parent leadership is considered as one core dimension of comprehensive parent and family engagement frameworks in the U.S., yet very little research has examined this specific dimension of family engagement or how parent leadership might influence parents’ role and empowerment (Cunningham et al. 2012 ; National Center on Parent, Family and Community Engagement 2019 ; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2011 ). For example, parent leadership is a central element of Head Start’s comprehensive parent and family engagement framework. This framework defines parent leadership in a range of ways, including participation in decision-making, policy development, and organizing activities in communities to improve children’s health, safety, development, and/or learning experiences. However, little guidance or research evidence is available about how to development, support, sustain, and measure outcomes of parent leadership in ECE programs and systems (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2011 ).

Parent leadership, particularly in the context of ECE and school readiness, and its impact on communities as well as on child outcomes, has received little attention in the ECE research literature. The existing research on parent leadership comes primarily from other disciplines, specifically family support and K-12 education, rather than from ECE (Bolívar and Chrispeels 2011 ; Hepburn 2004 ). The family support approach to parent leadership recognizes the value of supporting natural leaders in communities to be change agents (Langford and Weissbourd 1997 ; Toso and Gungor 2012 ). In the education literature, parent leadership has been described as advocating for change on behalf of one’s own child or a community, participating in educational councils or parent boards, recruiting new parents to become engaged, participating in education reform and community organizing, and authentic input in decision-making (Cunningham et al. 2012 ). In Ready for K, Parent Leaders engaged families in their neighborhoods to connect them with local early learning resources such as play groups, public library story times, and family support organizations. They also conducted developmental screenings of young children with their parents and made referrals to early intervention services when appropriate.

Parent leadership development

How is parent leadership cultivated and developed? Parent leadership development is a concept that has not yet been widely applied in the field of human services, and even less so within early education and school readiness contexts. The limited research in this area and the dearth of robust frameworks or models for effectively promoting leadership development presents challenges (Brittain 2014 ). Although the research is limited, studies do offer some ideas about key components of parent leadership development, such as the importance of intentional emphasis on diversity, identity, cultural competency, and empowerment (Ball 2008 ; Blitz and Greene 2014 ; Brittain 2014 ; Gutierrez 2013 ; Park and McHugh 2014 ; Solloway and Girouard 2004 ; Swick 2001 ). Cunningham et al. ( 2012 ) found that when parents were provided training that incorporated an empowerment approach, there were both immediate and long-term gains in parents’ leadership capacity and activity. Connecting parents with one another to facilitate their mutual learning and to serve as mentors for less experienced parents has been suggested as a way of empowering parents (Swick 2001 ). Efforts to support parents’ identity as leaders may also be important. For example, Walker ( 2009 ) examined how the “language of leadership can help shape parents as leaders,” in a developmental process toward “intentionally constructing their own social reality as leaders” (p. 80). The importance of developing a leadership identity is supported by research on women’s leadership, which may be particularly relevant to this study given that all of the parent leaders in Ready for K were women (Douglass 2018 ). Because dominant notions of leadership often conform to societal stereotypes about men, Ely et al. ( 2011 ) argue that leadership identity must be the foundation of women’s leadership development. They highlight how this identity strengthens women’s confidence as leaders: “An elevated sense of purpose challenges leaders to move outside of their comfort zones, shifts their attention from what is to what is possible, and gives them a compelling reason to face down their fears and insecurities and take action despite them” (p. 476).

Benefits of parent leadership

Research points to a wide range of possible positive outcomes of parent leadership, including increased parental self-confidence, increased social capital and civic and school engagement, empowerment, and enhancement of skills leading to employment (Ball 2008 ; Bray and Kenney 2014 ; Cunningham et al. 2012 ). Recent research suggests that when parents are involved with their child’s education and view themselves as leaders of their families, their confidence increases, as does their capacity to be effective advocates and parents (Bray and Kenney 2014 ; Bray et al. 2014 ; Gutierrez 2013 ). Bolívar and Chrispeels ( 2011 ) found that “when parents participate in leadership development, they are empowered to effect changes that benefit their children through individual and collective actions” (p. 4). These findings suggest a range of potential positive impacts of parent leadership programs.

Parent leadership development may also influence educators, and the way they view and interact with parents. Geller and colleagues ( 2015 ) studied a parent leadership effort and found that increasing interactions that promote trust and respect between parents and teachers may reduce the deficit-based perspectives held by many educators, such as the belief that parents are not capable of being good parents (Geller et al. 2015 ). They suggest that training teachers about parent engagement is, by itself, an insufficient strategy to promote effective parent–teacher partnerships, and they argue that parent leadership development is an important and complementary strategy. They propose a dual-capacity building approach that includes both educator professional development and parent leadership development.

In summary, the literature suggests that (1) parent leadership is an important but often neglected element of parent engagement, and (2) parent leadership development may offer a wide range of potential benefits that can positively influence the parents themselves, as well as children, families, community professionals, and neighborhoods. The limited research on parent leadership development highlights a gap in our understanding of how parent leadership might matter, and what outcomes are possible from investing in this approach. There is still much to be learned about how to conceptualize and effectively facilitate the development of parent leaders within ECE contexts. This study seeks to examine several of the areas in which there are gaps in the ECE parent leadership literature, such as what parent leaders do, how their leadership development influences them, and how their leadership influences others.

Study context

The context for this study is one city’s efforts to build neighborhood capacity to support children’s learning and healthy development. Ready for K sought to achieve its goal, in part, by engaging parents as neighborhood leaders. This paper focuses specifically on the parent leadership component of Ready for K.

Ready for K focused on five under-served neighborhoods with diverse, large populations of young children likely to be affected by the achievement gap. Poverty rates of children birth through five living in these neighborhoods ranged from approximately 30% to 60% of all young children (Friedman et al. 2016 ). The majority of families engaged by Ready for K was born outside the U.S., self-identified as members of a racial minority group, and spoke a language other than or in addition to English. One organization in each neighborhood, referred to as the lead agency, served as the backbone support for Ready for K, and provided overall leadership and management of its implementation. Each lead agency identified a high-level administrator to take on this role, which included coordinating the hiring of the Parent Leaders in their neighborhood. The lead agency also established a Neighborhood Advisory Council made up of parent leaders, partnering agencies and businesses, and other local stakeholders. For example, some of these councils included representatives from local libraries, early childhood programs, community health centers, anti-poverty non-profit organizations, and early intervention programs. These councils met regularly to build a coordinated neighborhood network of resources and supports for school readiness.

Ready for K recruited neighborhood parents to work as leaders within their community networks to reach under-resourced families through a peer-to-peer model, which emphasized connecting families to school readiness-related activities and resources. Parent Leaders, whose demographics were representative of the families living in these neighborhoods, were recruited to engage families who were not receiving services. Notably, these families may not have been reached through traditional channels due to service access barriers such as language, cultural beliefs, and/or socioeconomic status. Each Parent Leader worked with a supervisor or multiple supervisors in their neighborhood. Ready for K included a developmental screening initiative, which recruited and trained many of the Parent Leaders to conduct the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) screening with families (Squires et al. 1997 ; Squires and Bricker 2009 ). To develop and support the ASQ screening component, Parent Leaders participated in leadership training, training on how to administer the ASQ and post-screening referral protocols, and were shadowed by an experienced screener prior to conducting screenings on their own; they also received stipends as payment for their work and supervisory support, attended workshops on early childhood development, and participated in ongoing peer-to-peer learning and support. They were organized into teams based on the neighborhood they served.

The reach of the Parent Leaders’ work in these neighborhoods was substantial. Over a 4-year period, they engaged approximately 4156 families, which included 6403 adults and 6426 children (Friedman et al. 2016 ).

Research methods

This study addresses the following research questions:

What strategies did Parent Leaders use in their efforts to engage families?

How did parent leadership influence families, neighborhoods, and the Parent Leaders themselves?

To answer these questions, this study used a rigorous, qualitative single case study design (Yin 2014 ). Case studies provide rich and contextually situated data that can be used to inform and improve practice and policy, and are “the preferred method for studying interventions or innovations” (Toma 2006 , p. 408). The use of case study methodology made it possible to examine and incorporate multiple sources of data about this innovative approach to engaging parents as leaders. These multiple sources of data, collected across 3 years, are represented in Tables  1 and 2 . Informed consent was obtained from study participants, in accordance with the study’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. The study authors were hired by Ready for K to serve as the external evaluation team for this initiative.

Sources of data

Parent leaders.

A total of forty Parent Leaders were consistently and actively engaged with Ready for K between 2011 and 2014, and these were the parents invited to participate in the study. Twenty-nine of these forty Parent Leaders (73%) agreed to participate in the study. We do not have additional information about the eleven Parent Leaders who did not respond to the invitation to participate in this study, and thus are not included. Of the Parent Leaders ( N  = 29) who elected to participate, they were primarily mothers, immigrants, and spoke the following languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Cape Verdean Creole, and Arabic. They were diverse racially and ethnically, with 37.9% identifying as Hispanic/Latina, 17.2% identifying as Black/African American, 13.8% identifying as Asian, 3.4% identifying as White, 8.7% identifying as Other, and 20.7% not reporting race or identity (see Table  3 ).

Table  1 presents the data collected from the Parent Leader study participants. In the 1st year, all of the Parent Leaders were invited to participate in a focus group conducted by the first author. In the 3rd year, the Parent Leaders requested the option to participate either in a focus group or in an individual interview. Therefore, in the 3rd year, the second author conducted two Parent Leader focus groups. Some Parent Leaders from the 1st year focus group also participated in the 3rd year data collection, along with new Parent Leaders who had joined after the 1st year. The transcript from the 1st year focus group did not identify individuals and therefore, it is not possible for us to determine which parent leaders participated in both the 1st- and 3rd-year focus groups. Semi-structured qualitative individual interviews were conducted during the 3rd year in a variety of settings (cafes/restaurants, parks/playgrounds, community based organizations) or via phone, based on the availability and convenience of the participant. The individual interviews ranged from 25 to 60 min. The focus groups lasted 90 min, were semi-structured, and utilized a set of questions in different domains to understand the responsibilities, experiences, development, and challenges of becoming a Parent Leader. Topics of the interviews and focus groups included outreach and engagement strategies and experiences, experiences as a Parent Leader, leadership development, and ASQ screening. Lastly, in the fall of the 3rd year, the second author conducted an observation of three of the Parent Leaders speaking at and facilitating components of a city-wide Ready for K conference. This observation was more informal in nature, with the observation guide focused on domains of leadership, how their parent leadership led to present work opportunities, the roles they took on in the conference if any (e.g., presenting, leading small group discussions), and how others engaged with them at the conference (e.g., as a parent only vs. as a professional).

Neighborhood lead agents

The third and fourth authors conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with all five neighborhood lead agents who oversaw and managed Ready for K. These included questions about lead agents’ experience with and perceptions of the parent leadership efforts. Neighborhood lead agents were interviewed during the 1st and 3rd years of the initiative and questions were revised to capture changes throughout the involvement. Five lead agencies participated in the first round of interviews, and two participated again in the second round of interviews conducted in the 3rd year.

Neighborhood advisory councils

The third and fourth authors conducted semi-structured qualitative focus groups with each of the five neighborhood school readiness advisory councils that included questions about members’ experience with and perceptions of the parent leadership efforts. Each focus group lasted approximately 60–90 min and took place at a Ready for K Neighborhood Advisory Council meeting which was attended by a variety of individuals from community organizations such as child care, human services, and health centers; and the Ready for K leadership. Parent Leaders were also part of these advisory councils, but were not identified individually in this data collection. The focus group protocols contained different questions each year to capture the changes happening within each neighborhood. For instance, in the final year, participants were asked “What changes or growth you have seen throughout the initiative?” as well as “What have you accomplished that you are proud of?” and “What have been your challenges to [collaborative] work?”

The final data collection component was individual interviews with families who were engaged by Parent Leaders to connect with school readiness resources and screenings. Six graduate research assistants conducted these interviews, assisted by two undergraduate students who served as secondary interviewers. They conducted a total of 16 interviews with families during the 3rd year. Interviews lasted from 40 to 60 min and were conducted in the families’ preferred language by an interviewer fluent in that language, which included: English, Vietnamese, and Spanish. Interviews were primarily conducted in person, taking place in the interviewee’s home, with one interview conducted via phone. Interview topics included experience with the ASQ screening for their child, participation in Ready for K activities, experience with Parent Leader(s), ideas about school readiness, changes in parenting style, noticeable changes in child or children, community participation and neighborhood changes. Interviews were translated and transcribed by the graduate student interviewers who were fluent in these languages. Participants were provided with a $25 gift card.

Data analysis

The second author entered these data into ATLAS.ti software, and conducted qualitative analysis (Muhr 2004 ). She analyzed data through qualitative coding procedures, first using a priori codes drawn from the data collection protocol and the literature on parent leadership, for example, social networks, friendship, confidence, and training (Miles et al. 2014 ). She and the first author developed detailed code definitions, and the second author used these definitions to guide ongoing coding to ensure reliability in the use of the codes (Miles et al. 2014 ). Then, through an inductive thematic coding process, she identified empirically grounded emergent codes, such as boundaries, compensation, increased access to services, being viewed as a leader, shifting attitudes about parent leadership potential, and professionalism . The second author checked these codes against the data, refined and defined with a detailed code definition, reviewed them with the first author, and re-checked (Miles et al. 2014 ). Given the limited existing research on parent leadership in the urban school readiness context, this inductive approach was essential to enable themes to emerge from the data and deepen the scholarly understanding of parent leadership in this specific context. The data from the multiple sources were compared across sources, referred to as triangulation, to increase validity (Stake 1988 ; Yin 2014 ).

The analysis focused on identifying themes from the data about what Parent Leaders did to engage families, as well as study participants’ perceptions about how parent leadership influenced the Parent Leaders and others in their neighborhoods. Eleven themes emerged from the analysis. We defined something as a theme when it (1) appeared across two or more different sources of data (e.g., from both family and Parent Leader interviews) or (2) appeared for a majority of respondents within a single source of data and we did not find counter-evidence from other data sources (this occurred in two instances with data from Parent Leaders). The second definition was included because some aspects of the second research question, which addressed facilitators and barriers to parents’ development as leaders, relied primarily on the data from the Parent Leaders.

The analysis showed that Parent Leaders used several highly relational strategies to engage families, and that their leadership influenced families, their neighborhoods, as well as their own identities and experiences as leaders. Table  4 presents each of the research questions alongside the themes that emerged in our analysis, each of which is described more fully below.

Parent Leader strategies

The first research question asked what Parent Leaders did as leaders to engage families. The results point to three primary strategies these leaders used: building informal relationships with families, communicating in parents’ own language, and engaging neighborhood parents as potential new leaders.

Relationship-based outreach and engagement

Parent Leaders conducted their outreach and engagement activities with families using culturally responsive and relationship-based strategies. The majority of Parent Leaders stated that their preferred outreach strategy was word of mouth in the day-to-day context of life in their neighborhoods. Parent Leaders found that talking with families at community events, parks and playgrounds, neighborhood businesses, and schools were ideal places to reach and engage parents. In these settings, Parent Leaders were able to provide face-to-face reminders about events and build relationships with families, increasing feelings of comfort about attending events. Reaching out to family members, neighbors and friends in their community was typically the first step, and then they asked involved parents to pass the word along to their friends. Parent Leaders who spoke the same language, and had similar cultural values, described their efforts to build trust with families and increase their comfort about attending early learning activities and events. On this foundation of trust, they connected families to local resources, focusing on families who were less comfortable speaking English or talking with providers from different cultural backgrounds. Many Parent Leaders found that sharing their personal story or journey was a particularly effective way to build trust and engage families. As one Parent Leader explained,

I tell them my story first so they can feel comfortable with me. I just tell them ‘I’ve been there’. (Parent Leader 28)

Parent Leaders described learning through experience that families were more likely to try new parenting strategies, such as reading aloud to a child, after seeing Parent Leaders using these strategies effectively with their own children. Due to their membership in the community, Parent Leaders were able to share information in informal ways, such as telling families about a strategy they found helpful while at the park with their children. This was another way that Parent Leaders increased the access of families in the community to child development information. As one parent explained in a family interview:

My family uses the playgroups a lot and that’s just something that he [child] has been getting a lot from, like the social interaction and learning new skills. It’s good for parents as well, to be able to have play groups. [I] learn a certain tip or get some input and I’ll try to practice that. I watched another kid who was throwing something. [The Parent Leader] said ‘here’s a ball, you can throw a ball’, I realized that I need to immediately … redirect and go do something else. Now I’ll do that, scan the room to find the ball and replace it with a new activity. I know it’s like a very common thing, but that was actually the first time I heard it, when the Parent Leader was with my group.

As Parent Leaders worked to connect new families to playgroups, events, and resources, they strongly relied on relationships as a tool for retention and sustaining engagement. Building ongoing relationships with families was a strategy Parent Leaders developed over time with families. One Parent Leader summed this up by saying that “eventually becoming friends” with the parents is part of the job. Parent Leaders found that establishing a friendship with a parent in the community increased the likelihood that parents would reach out with questions or seek help related to child development as well as personal challenges. “[If you] friend with them as person, after that you can like, get them to come to our event or to whatever program you have” (Parent Leader 13). It quickly became the norm to share personal cell phone numbers, which made Parent Leaders more accessible, as “everyone exchanges phone numbers” to make plans to attend neighborhood events together. Parent Leaders appeared to connect with participants on a deeper level than a typical professional might, as they took the time to create “trustful relationships” with families not only as a leader, but as a peer or friend (Parent Leader 2). Parent Leaders expressed caring about the families they served, as evidenced by their provision of individualized support, attending events with parents in the community, and allowing extra time on screening visits to spend time with the parents.

Findings from the family interviews and neighborhood-level data sources provide additional sources of evidence supporting this theme of a highly relational and culturally responsive approach. For example, one parent in a family interview reported, “even after the [child development] screening we still see her [Parent Leader], we became friends and she was the connection with [Ready for K] and all the rest of the programs that we are participating in”. Neighborhood organizations reported that the parent leadership program had positively impacted their capacity to engage families who they considered hard to reach. They described how families tend to have greater trust and acceptance of Parent Leaders from the same cultures. By recruiting Parent Leaders with diverse cultural backgrounds, more families who were traditionally hard to reach became involved in programming, and created “circles of support” for families as described by one partnering agency leader. The use of parent leadership increased the diversity of involved families, thus connecting providers to communities and families from cultural backgrounds who were previously isolated from available services.

Communicated in a shared language

Communication in a shared language was a central aspect of the approach developed by Parent Leaders, sharing information, parenting strategies and facilitating the connection to events and resources. Both the style and the specific language of communication between Parent Leaders and families appeared to be important to successful engagement. Parent Leaders were more likely to communicate with families in a manner that was free of professional jargon and status hierarchies. One Parent Leader viewed her role as translational, bringing “research from books (and) from scholars to (the) people’s language” (Parent Leader 5). When providing developmental screening results to families, Parent Leaders spoke about the importance of walking the families through the ASQ results, in their native language to ensure understanding. They spoke about the importance of reassuring the parents and providing information about the child’s strengths, weaknesses, and specific strategies and resources available as needed. These approaches may have eliminated power differentials that would have been present when working with a provider, thus making parents more comfortable and receptive to the information. The importance of language was a theme in the family interviews, as reflected in this quote by a parent who shared her experience of asking for advice following her child’s ASQ screening,

When I knew the result [of ASQ] I knew what my disadvantages were, thus I asked. I seek advice from them [the Parent Leader] [She] helped me a lot, gave me toys and tools to teach my kid…they showed me at which month she had to know how to do certain things. They guided me a lot. Even though I am 33 years old now, I have to admit I barely know much about educating kids. I just followed my instinct, but my knowledge is still limited.

In addition to reducing language barriers, Parent Leaders were also able to use their cultural membership to communicate with parents in ways that they understood, and were more likely to be receptive to, as well as increase motivation of the parents by understanding cultural beliefs and traditions. Being from the same cultural background appeared to increase comfort with families and build trust. As one family member described in a family interview,

Those [Parent Leaders] are so nice, so great. Like the reading activities, they often remind me to come to them. They call or text me in advance to remind me of the dates. Those Vietnamese ladies [Parent Leaders]…They keep Vietnamese traditions. Because we’re all Vietnamese in the group, we got to keep the traditions. This past Mid-Autumn Festival, the kids all wore Ao Dai [A Vietnamese national garment]. They looked so cute, the festival was so much fun.

Engaging neighborhood parents as new leaders

Another strategy Parent Leaders used was to not only connect families to school readiness resources, but also seek out parents who might want to become Parent Leaders themselves. In this way, Parent Leaders identified and engaged potential new leaders. Many Parent Leaders got their start through their own involvement in Ready for K parenting activities, and were recruited for leadership by Ready for K organizers. Parent Leaders recognized commitment or qualities of parents in the community, seeing them as strong candidates for future Parent Leader positions, and saw their work as part of a cycle for empowering parents in their communities. Parents in the community were empowered to lead playgroups, volunteer at events, participate in Neighborhood Advisory Council meetings, and eventually become Parent Leaders. As stated by one neighborhood leader, “either they are [a] Parent Leader or they become leaders” [referring to engagement of parents in the community]. In one instance, Parent Leaders took initiative to teach each other new skills that would be valuable in future work settings, such as learning new languages or learning how to set up an email. Parent Leaders viewed part of their roles as recognizing skills in parents, to “lead and inspire others in the community” (Parent Leader 10), exposing parents to the work they are already doing with their children, and providing them with support so they are able to lead their own workshop or playgroup, as we observed in the Parent Leader-led training. The mindset of Parent Leaders was very often one of “paying it forward,” as stated by one Parent Leader (Parent Leader 5), referring to the practice of extending kindness and good deeds to someone else after you have been the recipient of the kindness of others. As one Parent Leader stated in the first focus group, “Participating in this group as a parent, having opportunities that empowered me to empower other parents in this community has been just such beautiful work. I call it a job done with the heart.”

Influence of parent leadership on families

There were two key impacts of Parent Leadership reported for neighborhood families: an increase in social connection and children’s learning.

Social connection

Families reported meeting and connecting with new people, increased opportunities to talk with other parents, and experiencing an increased sense of social connection in their neighborhood, as a result of Ready for K involvement. Several families described feeling isolated until they were engaged by Parent Leaders and began attending events and participating in family activities where they formed connections. Involvement in Ready for K increased feelings of connectedness and broadened participants’ social network. One family interview participant explained,

The truth is that we have been engaging because we don’t want to feel alone or isolated; we don’t know anything or anybody and this has helped us, it has connected us, from one place to the other one, from one person to the other one and then that’s how we got to know this program that has helped us a lot.

Parent Leaders reported observing increased engagement among families in their communities as a result of their outreach efforts with Ready for K. As shared by one Parent Leader,

Every afternoon when you go to the library …you know different moms with different kids, it’s the place to be and that’s come out of I would say [Ready for K] because everyone wasn’t as united. Parent engagement was a tough idea (Parent Leader 5).

Increased connection was particularly evident in traditionally hard to reach populations, such as families who recently immigrated to the U.S., which was reported by parent leaders and neighborhood lead agents. As stated by one lead agent,

I can see [families] participating in a lot of different things, learning new things, getting to know each other. Isolation, all those barriers we’re able to break or at least try to break because of the collaboration.

Children’s learning

Families who were engaged also reported positive impacts of Ready for K for their children. Almost all families interviewed described increased school readiness in their children in areas such as fine motor skills, play, communication, early literacy, self-regulation, social skills and openness to new experiences. They attributed these gains to the playgroups and literacy activities, and to the structure, consistency, and peer interactions offered by these activities.

Influence on neighborhoods

Moving beyond their influence directly with families, Parent Leaders influenced changes in attitudes of professionals in their neighborhood about parent leadership.

A “new norm” about parents as leaders

Parent Leaders came to be viewed with great respect, and were increasingly involved in opportunities such as the Neighborhood Advisory Council meetings. They were given the opportunity to share their voice and experiences with the organizations with which they worked and from which they potentially received resources. Many of the neighborhood organizational partners described a new awareness about the contributions Parent Leaders can make, resulting in a shift in norms in their organization. One neighborhood lead agent explained,

The new norm is ‘ask the Parent (leaders)’. Three or four years ago, I would be asking our [other] agencies. Now, they even call and ask us….’can you ask the Parent Leaders about this or that?’…that’s what the talk is all about. We’re looking for the parent’s perspective. I think that’s a huge shift, because it wasn’t that way four years ago. Of course, we could always do surveys for parents on what they wanted….but nothing with actual parent representatives…

In another example, one public agency previously hired college student interns, but as a result of the parent leadership successes, they began hiring parents as interns and family engagement specialists.

When asked what was most promising or effective based on what was learned doing this work, one neighborhood agency leader stated,

I would be putting more time and resources into the parent leadership side of it. I think that’s where the real potential gains are. We’ve had parents go on to actually lead playgroups themselves. Or parents who become parent–child home visitors. One of the best visitors that we’ve had who is serving a large number of families is Maria [pseudonym]. She is now working for the Head Start program. She got a full-time job there. She still does the parent [leadership] work. So I think the parent [leadership] program is focusing on particular neighborhoods in engaging families who we’re not likely to reach through other methods.

There was widespread agreement that attitudes about parent leadership have been transformed by increasing recognition of Parent Leaders in the community. According to Ready for K lead agents, the role of parents has become “really big” and has changed the focus of family engagement. For example, the influence of Parent Leaders led to structural changes to further promote parent involvement. These included changing meetings to a time that was more convenient for parents, to promote their involvement. As one neighborhood lead agent explained,

We started looking at parents more as leaders rather than the people that we serve and that really changed the tone of the conversation because we saw them as people with their own expertise and we consulted with them. So it was very fruitful because they knew exactly how to run things - what things work and what did not work.

Parent Leaders came to be viewed as people who can make a difference in the community. These neighborhood lead agents found that the Parent Leaders were strongly successful due to their determination and the initiative they took within their community, as illustrated by one neighborhood agency leaders who stated, “they were leaders because they learned how to be leaders and to see the needs of the community and ‘jump to it’.”

Influence on Parent Leaders

The analysis also revealed that becoming a leader influenced the Parent Leaders themselves in five key ways.

Developing leadership identities

As Parent Leaders came to be recognized and valued as leaders in the community, there was a shift in how they saw themselves. We described how community members came to see parents differently as a result of their leadership development, and we found that the Parent Leaders also came to see themselves differently, newly identifying as a leader. Parent Leaders developed their own individual and collective identities as leaders, recognized their capacity to make a difference, and gained a sense of belonging to a collective force for positive change.

Many Parent Leaders spoke about the experience and process of finding their voice as a leader. They described feeling more confident, more likely to speak up, and more comfortable speaking English. Many noted that they were previously shy or became less shy through their experiences. “I was very shy to talk in public… I feel more confident about that—talking with people and now I run workshops” (Parent Leader 6). Similarly, another Parent Leader reported “Before, I never confident. I cannot, even with Vietnamese parents, I cannot confident to communicate with them but now I can communicate with everyone, not only Vietnamese” (Parent Leader 12). Three Parent Leaders were observed speaking on a panel at a leadership conference, confidently sharing their experiences and leading attendees in activities focused on their individual areas of expertise. During this observation, a number of attendees approached these Parent Leaders to exchange contact information and indicated they hoped to invite them for additional speaking engagements.

Making a difference

Parent Leaders spoke about the impact they believed they were making on their community as a whole, and the rewarding feelings that stemmed from this. Parent Leaders spoke about feeling happy and proud to have the ability to help others, as well as feeling good about the difference they were making in the lives of those they reached, knowing that they were “being part of a driving force for a good change in people’s lives” (Parent Leader 5). Several spoke about a responsibility to families that came with their new recognition as a Parent Leader, with parents in the community increasingly reaching out with questions surrounding access to resources. As one Parent Leader explained,

Now when I see people I wanna advise them like if I know information- ok I’m gonna tell you what’s going on and then I’m gonna call you back – I feel this responsibility … you feel like the community needs you (Parent Leader 7).

Many Parent Leaders reported increased feelings of belongingness as a result of their leadership experience. This consisted of an expanded support network, building of friendships and relationships, and greater connection with the community. For example,

In a way it’s connected me a little bit more to the community where I live…I wasn’t very – we came from Brazil three years ago and I’m very connected to [that] community around here…but I wasn’t very connected to the people in my neighborhood (Parent Leader 2).

In addition, one participant highlighted the importance of her title as Parent Leader that contributed to her feelings of belongingness. She explained,

And there’s this word for this belonging feeling where [I feel] I am important you know - I don’t know the word. Not entitlement. Like a recognition, you have a status (Parent Leader 5).

All Parent Leaders interviewed, as well as those who participated in focus groups, spoke about learning from their fellow Parent Leaders as a major part of their experience, reinforcing the sense of belonging to a supportive learning community. Parent Leaders worked together, helped each other out with challenges and difficult situations, shared resources and information at their meetings and served as a general support network. Those with the most experience provided support to newer Parent Leaders, orienting each other to their new roles by modeling skills and working on projects with new members.

Learned concrete skills

Parent Leaders and neighborhood respondents attested to the Parent Leaders’ acquisition of new professional skills. As a result of these new skills, many Parent Leaders accessed new professional employment opportunities, often as a result of contacts they made while collaborating with partnering community agencies. Some of the interpersonal skills acquired included how to engage in self-advocacy, how to talk to families, how to make connections with others, being flexible, and developing greater patience and empathy. Many Parent Leaders shared that their involvement shaped their future professional goals and the career they hoped to pursue. The experiences and skills acquired helped Parent Leaders realize their ability to succeed in a field related to this work, which in many cases led to a change in career. As reported by one neighborhood lead agent, a Parent Leader who came to her organization to receive services is now employed by that agency, and “Her role is to mobilize other parents to be their children’s first and most important teacher and she does that”. This appeared to be particularly salient to individuals who immigrated to the United States, finding a new sense of purpose and gaining work experience in the U.S. These findings were supported by data from multiple sources, including Parent Leaders as well as neighborhood partners. For instance, in one neighborhood, the practical experience working with children bolstered a Parent Leader’s resume enabling her to apply for a new professional work opportunity,

So in order to be able to apply for this paraprofessional training program we’d need to have a kind of background of working with kids so [Ready for K] help us to put on the resume and they pick us and it’s great and I know it’s because we have all these background of working with families from the community (Parent Leader 21).

Negotiating professional boundaries

This study also surfaced one theme that reflected a challenge Parent Leaders encountered in their work. Some Parent Leaders struggled with defining professional roles and boundaries in their work with parents. Parent leaders came to be viewed as role models and advocates in their communities. With this recognition, neighborhood parents approached some of the Parent Leaders for information and advice about child development, parenting, family crises, and interpersonal violence. Parent leaders grappled with how to balance being “real” with families and being professional at the same time. What are the boundaries of the role? Under what circumstances might they do “for” someone, rather than empowering parents to do something for themselves, or vice versa? Determining what kinds of personal information sharing and support was appropriate was largely unclear and not specified by Ready for K. Parent leaders had to determine how to set boundaries with families based on their own comfort level, but inevitably ended up fulfilling many complex needs and donating their time to help. One Parent Leader described this challenge,

Sometimes families they see you as a social worker…it’s not easy to just take this huge responsibility… you just wanna but some families are in really big needs and they see you as a leader and they just come to you and say help me out please and you’re like oh my god what are you gonna do you know? (Parent Leader 21)

Another Parent Leader explained a similar challenge, saying

When we sign up a family we become their friend they can call at any time of the day like they call us in the weekend and ask what’s happening during this weekend? What programs provided? (Parent Leader 2)

Some of the Parent Leaders spoke about feeling overwhelmed attempting to manage the multiple roles they played in the lives of families, such as the balance of being a friend and connecting them to resources, while hoping to empower parents to help themselves.

This study contributes to an increased understanding about what parent leadership is and how it might matter in urban, predominantly immigrant communities such as those that were the context for this study. Like prior research on parent leadership development, we found that developing a leadership identity was a part of a transformational process of individual and collective empowerment that influenced how others viewed parent leadership (Cunningham et al. 2012 ; Ely et al. 2011 ; Walker 2009 ). Parent Leaders engaged large numbers of families to participate in school readiness activities and did so in ways that built trust with the families they engaged. They employed many of the community organizing strategies identified by Cunningham et al. ( 2012 ), such as relationship-based outreach and recruiting new parent leaders in their neighborhoods. Families described the powerful experiences they had with Parent Leaders that supported them and their children. Families reported benefits for themselves of greater social connections and benefits for their children’s learning as a result of participation in community school readiness supports. When families described the impact of Parent Leaders, they often described the level of trust, familiarity, and cultural connection they experienced in their interactions with Parent Leaders. Some described the Parent Leaders as a peer or a role model for them as a parent. This lack of a professional distance between the Parent Leader and families may have fostered greater engagement of families, but it also created challenges for some of the Parent Leaders when it came to setting boundaries between their personal life and their role as a Parent Leader in their neighborhood.

We also found that the leadership development of parents might act to reduce professionals’ deficit-based attitudes about parents, as did Geller et al. ( 2015 ) in their study of parents and teachers. Given our finding that parent leadership influenced professionals’ attitudes, an area for further research could be to examine how this kind of parent leadership development initiative might influence early childhood educators’ attitudes about parents. Prior research highlights differential power relations between parents and professionals as a barrier to parent engagement and parent leadership (Vlasov and Hujala 2017 ; Douglass 2011 ). This study showed how parent leadership influenced a shift in that balance of power. Exposure to parent leadership prompted some community leaders to adopt new attitudes about parents as people who can make a difference rather than as service recipients, offering an important insight about this pathway of influence of parent leadership development.

Parent leadership influenced not only how others saw these parents in their neighborhoods, but also how they saw themselves and their opportunities for personal and professional growth. Parent Leaders drew upon their unique strengths as well as their cultural and linguistic capacities. They learned new professional skills in this process. Prior research has shown that parent leadership development can result in new skills, increased confidence, and new employment opportunities (Ball 2008 ; Bray and Kenney 2014 ; Cunningham et al. 2012 ) and we found evidence of this in our study. As parents developed their identity as leaders, they gained confidence and an enhanced sense of purpose about their leadership. They gained knowledge and skills related to parenting, community engagement, child development, and developmental screening, and some chose to take new jobs working in early childhood and/or family support professional positions.

Several recommendations for parent leadership have emerged based on the results of this study. First, important benefits may come from developing parent leadership pathways and expanding parent voice in community school readiness and early childhood initiatives. Many lessons were learned from this study about how to develop parent leadership that can inform efforts to implement a similar parent leadership pathway. Parent Leaders had distinct and authentic roles in recruiting and conducting screening with families, and they became part of a cohort of parent leaders that provided a sense of belonging and mutual support. These may be important aspects of the successes of this initiative when it came to influencing families and the neighborhoods in which they worked. Future research can test this finding in other contexts to further develop the evidence based about parent leadership in early childhood.

Another recommendation is about planning for sustainability. Because Ready for K was funded through philanthropic grant funding, when the funding came close to an end many participants, including Parent Leaders became concerned about its sustainability. They reported that while the Parent Leadership efforts were viewed as one of the most highly successful components of Ready for K, it was in jeopardy for the future without ongoing funding. It is important to consider how more sustainable funding might be secured to support parent leadership efforts, and to evaluate this and its impact. Lastly, the parent leadership strategy highlights the importance of addressing the boundaries of the parent leadership role from the beginning. Defining role boundaries should include the co-creation of guidelines to support effective interpersonal relationships between parent leaders and the families with whom they work, and the family support literature offers guidance about this (Bruner 1998 ). Other supportive strategies may include reflective orientation, supervision and mentoring for parent leaders. Parent leadership may be a promising practice in urban school readiness and early education efforts, and should be a focus of new research, policy, and practice innovations.

This paper contributes to a small but important and timely literature on parent leadership for early learning and school readiness. Strong, linguistic and culturally diverse cadres of Parent Leaders were considered central to Ready for K’s successes in reaching and engaging under-resourced families. While most school readiness efforts to date have focused on the school-based professional approach to enhancing children’s academic and social preparation for school, Ready for K took a more comprehensive approach, both in engaging and supporting parents, and also by promoting strong parent leadership. The importance of an intentional emphasis on diversity, cultural competency and the empowerment of families is noted in this and other studies, and is an area that would benefit from continued attention in research and practice. Parent leadership holds transformative potential, and demands a new era of research and innovation.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to the way the study was funded and conducted, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

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This study was conducted as a program evaluation funded by Thrive in Five, Boston, MA.

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Anne L. Douglass & Meredith R. Maroney

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Mary Coonan & Donna Haig Friedman

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ALD made substantial contributions to conception and design, data analysis, and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. MRM was involved in data collection, data analysis, writing and revising the manuscript. MC, DHF and AC were involved in data collection/analysis and MC and DHF were involved in manuscript revisions. All authors read and approved final manuscript.

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Douglass, A.L., Maroney, M.R., Coonan, M. et al. “You have a status”: a case study of parent leadership in a U.S. school readiness initiative. ICEP 13 , 2 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-019-0058-5

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-019-0058-5

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Parenting skills: what makes a good leader.

When it comes to parenting, child rearing, and child discipline, there’s no shortage of advice or opinions . Some advocate for a gentle, easygoing style; others insist that children need firm guidance. It’s no wonder that as parents, we wonder about the best parenting style .

Every family, every child, and every situation is different. Sometimes, simply changing how we frame the role of parenting can offer clarification. Think of your family and your home as a company. You and your partner are the CEOs of the company. In this scenario, your focus becomes that of being an effective leader, neither a pushover nor a dictator. Depending on the circumstances, you may take the role of friend, mentor, coach, or law enforcement officer. In every situation, you remember that you are the leader, capable of providing guidance, training, and encouragement. With this viewpoint of situational leadership in mind, below are some characteristics of an effective leader and how those characteristics apply to family life and parenting.

What Makes a Good Leader

Training. We’ve probably all had the experience of working with someone who expects results without offering clear directions or guidance. We know how frustrating this can be! Young children have an innate desire to please their parents, but may lack the experience or developmental maturity. As an effective parent leader, we can help children gain the skills they need to be successful in life . This training happens incrementally, in small steps over time. Leaders understand that mistakes are part of the training process and use them as opportunities for growth.

Accountability. Just like adults, children gain confidence through setting and achieving goals. As parent leaders, we can help children identify and build on their strengths while addressing areas of growth with patience and encouragement. Effective parents practicing situational leadership don’t expect everyone to achieve the same goals at the same time, but instead customize their approaches to each individual.

Teamwork. The most satisfying work experiences are those in which everyone feels valued and everyone contributes. Family life is no different. Effective parent leaders take time to build strong parent-child relationships through wholesome family activities , family projects, and service . One family’s mantra is: “We work together so we play together.”

Growth mindset. Growth mindset is a buzzword in education and business circles right now, but it’s grounded in common-sense principles. Growth mindset is the idea that we are all progressing all the time. Just because we don’t know something today doesn’t mean we can’t learn it tomorrow. Effective parent leaders use growth mindset not only to support their children, e.g., “You don’t know how to ride a bike…yet,” but also to encourage themselves. Parents, like any busy CEO, know that the ship can only sail if it has a strong captain. We need to surround ourselves with attitudes, people, and activities that help develop our parenting skills by nurturing and encouraging us.

Be the CEO of Your Home

The “leaders of our homes” viewpoint is a healthy attitude that puts parents back in the driver’s seat and cuts through anxiety about “getting it right.” Instead of wondering what the latest expert says about good parenting, we can remember that we are the parenting experts. The question to ask is not, “Am I being too lenient?” or “Am I being too harsh?” but, “What does my child need from me right now?” and then, as the CEO of the home, doing it.

More on This Topic:

• Many of the positive traits of toddlerhood can be seen in some of the best CEOs . Check out this Financial Times column for a fun and refreshing read that may help you appreciate your toddler’s energetic and inquisitive behaviors.
• It’s unfortunate that sometimes our daughters’ executive leadership skills are lumped in with ‘bossy’ behaviors. Here’s why it’s important to encourage girls to take charge.
• Relying on external praise and recognition can have adverse effects on children’s confidence and development of internal motivation. Here are ways you can offer your child encouragement instead of praise .
• A “get tough” approach to bullying might not be the answer. Learn how you can parent with positivity and teach your child how to be empathetic and confident in a bully situation .

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Leadership Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on leadership.

First of all, Leadership refers to the quality of leading people. Probably, it is one of the most important aspects of life. Above all, Leadership has led to the progress of human civilization . Without good Leadership, no organization or group can succeed. Furthermore, not everyone has this quality. This is because effective Leadership requires certain important characteristics.

Qualities of a Good Leader

First of all, confidence is the most quality. A leader must have strong self-confidence. A person lacking in confidence can never be a good leader. A person must be confident enough to ensure others follow him. The leader must have confidence in his decisions and actions. If he is unsure, then how can people have the desire to follow him.

A good leader must certainly inspire others. A leader must be a role model for his followers. Furthermore, he must motivate them whenever possible. Also, in difficult situations, a leader must not lose hope. How can a leader inspire people if he himself is hopeless?

Honesty is another notable quality of a leader. Honesty and Integrity are important to earn the love of followers. Above all, honesty is essential to win the trust of the people. Probably, every Leadership which loses trust is bound to fail. People will not work with full effort due to an immoral leader.

Good communication is a must for a good leader. This is because poor communication means the wrong message to followers. Furthermore, good communication will increase the rate of work. Also, the chances of mistakes by followers will reduce.

Another important quality is decision making. Above all, if a leader makes poor decisions then other qualities will not matter. Furthermore, good decision making ensures the success of the entire group. If the leader makes poor decisions, then the efforts of followers won’t matter.

A good leader must be an excellent innovator. He must display a creative attitude in his work. Most noteworthy, innovation is a guarantee of survival of a group or innovation. Without creative thinking, progress is not possible.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Real-Life Examples of Good Leadership

Mahatma Gandhi was an excellent example of a good leader. He was a staunch believer in non-violence. With his brilliant Leadership skills, he made the British leave India. Probably, this was the most unique independence struggle. This is because Gandhi got freedom without any violence.

Abraham Lincoln was another notable leader. Most noteworthy, he ended the slavery system in the United States. Consequently, he made many enemies. However, he was a man of massive self-confidence. His struggle against slavery certainly became an inspiration.

Sir Winston Churchill was a great patriotic Englishman. Most noteworthy, he led Britain in the 2nd World War. Furthermore, he was extremely inspirational. He inspired Britain to fight against Nazi Germany. His great communication motivated the entire country at a time of hopelessness.

To conclude, Leadership is required in probably every sphere of life. Good leadership is the door to success. In contrast, bad leadership is a guarantee of failure. Consequently, good leaders are what make the world go round.

FAQs on Leadership

Q.1 Which is the most important quality for being a good leader? A.1 The most important quality for being a good leader is self-confidence.

Q.2 Why Sir Winston Churchill is a good leader? A.2 Sir Winston Churchill is a good leader because he inspired Britain to fight in 2nd World War. Furthermore, his excellent communication also raised the motivation of his people.

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A Full Guide On How To Create Good Leadership Essay

Attempting a leadership essay isn’t such a daunting task, provided you have a grasp of the necessary information needed for a leadership paper. To write this special essay, you’ll need to redefine what exactly an essay on leadership is, how to choose the perfect topic, what should be in the content, and how to organize and structure the paper. Let’s delve deeper!

What Is A Leadership Essay?

A leadership essay is a well-formatted, organized and specialized type of formal writing which elaborates on a generic leadership topic or a superior human figure exercising a great influence on people and transmitting desire and optimism to achieve goals.

What Makes A Good Leader Essay?

There are some peculiarities needed to infuse in your write-up if, for example, you’re trying to learn how to write a leadership essay about yourself.

Also, if you’re just trying to produce leadership essays for college, then you’d first and foremost, learn  how to structure an essay , among other skills needed for this type of essay. Here are some qualities which can be found in a good essay about leadership.

• Choose a creative topic
• Avoid the passive voice (the active voice sounds stronger)
• Search for and study leadership essay examples
• Follow the appropriate essay style
• Focus on the essay structure
• Review the essay

How To Choose A Topic And Make A Great Title?

To choose a topic for a paper on leadership, you need to do some research on the concept of a leader (whether in the corporate industry, political society or even in the criminal world). You have to know the current leadership tendencies in organizational groups or society. You can choose to make a leader the point of your reference by explaining the consequences of their leadership abilities or inabilities.

In the body of your essay, don’t forget to mention several types of leadership styles and point out which one the subject portrays. Finally, you should not rule out making comparisons of famous leaders in the modern world or in history. An example of a great prompt for a leadership essay that deploys the comparison technique would be the leadership styles of President Trump and The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte as both leadership styles have been subjected to political reviews in recent times since their emergence as president of their respective countries.

Outline For A Leadership Essay

When writing a college or professional essay such as -long and short essays on leadership, planning is the key to perfection. The general outline for any essay, including leadership papers, include an introduction, the body paragraphs (which must be properly linked with transition words and/or phrases) and a recapitulating or finding-based conclusions. Here’s what your outline should look like:

Introduction

Knowing how to start a leadership essay depends on your introduction writing ability. The introduction is the gateway to the essay. Aided by punchy opening words, which are the hook, the purpose of the introduction is to draw the reader’s attention. The introduction presents the thesis statement and leaves the body paragraphs to sustain the reader’s interest.

Body Paragraphs

Having informed the readers of the topic of the essay in the introductory paragraph(s), the body paragraphs follow immediately.

Here, you can elaborate on the concept of leadership and do a meaningful interpretation of the subject – the topic or the thesis statement. Don’t forget to talk about your leadership philosophies and leadership experience in whatever capacity you might have found yourself in. Remember, people are more interested in personal experiences. They are great in helping to sustain readers’ attention.

Remember to state a thesis or hypothesis in the opening paragraphs – which is the intro. In each of the body paragraphs of the essay, try to relate your points to the thesis and use each point to prove its validity.

The conclusion is the end part of any well-structured essay. Its purpose is a no-brainer. You don’t want to leave your reader hanging by ending the essay cold turkey. Any standard essay without a conclusion is just as useless as an essay with no purpose. However, be careful not to present new ideas not mentioned in the body.

As mentioned, the conclusion serves to summarize the developed points, restate the thesis and/or present the findings. It is your last opportunity to create an impression on the reader, and this is where they take the message away. If your conclusion is weak, then we might say the essay’s objectives are not achieved.

What To Include In A Leadership Essay?

Here are some tips on what your leadership essay should include.

Your Definition Of A Good Leader And Why He Or She Is Important

Since your essay revolves around leadership and the traits of a good leader, you’ll need to define what it takes to be one. You may also take this opportunity to trash some common myths on what a leader is (i.e., a manager being confused for a leader).

For reference purposes, the concepts of leadership and being a good leader are explained:

Leadership is the quality of a leader and is that person capable of exercising a great influence on people and transmitting desire and optimism to achieve goals. A leader is a guide; someone with ideas and goals that can spread to a large group of people who still believe he or she can lead them in the right direction.

There are many types of leaders and therefore, of leadership since people generally always look for a person or group that shows them a direction to follow. You can find religious, political, social, or philosophical leadership. Leadership can be exercised in a traditional way. In many countries, there is a monarchy. The king or queen is a leader with limited political power, at least in western democracies, but still have the respect and consideration of the people. Their words continue to be heard and taken into account, especially in problematic times. There are other types of leadership that are not given by birth, such as legitimate leadership exercised by, for example, political leaders freely chosen by their people, or charismatic leaders.

In a way, charismatic leaders are what many understand as leaders since they are people who, by their way of behavior and characteristics, get many people to follow and adhere to their ideas. Some charismatic leaders can become legitimate leaders if they choose the path of politics. A traditional leader can also be charismatic. There have always been kings loved by his people more than others. But it can also be a person who prefers independent movements outside of power.

Charisma is the personal magnetism a person has. It is something very difficult to define but makes one capable of convincing others without too much effort, making people follow and trust the leading figure. Charisma can be used positively or negatively. The leaders of the most destructive sects are very charismatic people that are capable of convincing their followers of the eeriest ideas, including donating all their belongings or committing collective suicide.

Examples Of Your Leadership Style

In the content of your essay, you may consider giving an interpretation to your (or your chosen leader’s) leadership traits. Below are some examples of leadership qualities that separate a good leader from a bad leader.

What qualities are necessary for leadership

• Communication
• Emotional intelligence
• Strategic thinking
• Commitment and passion
• Knowledge and experience
• Leading by example
• Active listening
• Ability to enhance talent
• Setting goals and expectations
• People investment
• Discernment
• Concentration
• Positive attitude
• Problem-solving
• Self-discipline

Leadership Essay Example

To know how to do essay fast, you’ll need some ready-made essay examples for the sake of guidance and inspiration. You may find below a leadership essay written by Oliver Smith useful in your leadership paper.

Writing a leadership essay should be easy. A good essay on leadership starts from the hook, and the thesis statement in the introduction. The points developed in the body paragraphs help affirm the hypothesis. Finally, the conclusion offers the reader a summary through the restatement of the essay’s main idea.

As required for every essay type, your essay on leadership has to follow a definite style and format. Examples are MLA, APA, Chicago and AP styles. Take your time in choosing a creative but new topic and also in writing the content. By following this guide, everything should be as perfect as possible.

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