The opinions expressed by Entrepreneur authors are their very own.
Running a business is not the same as having a family, but some necessary lessons apply to each. As a parent, you would like to discover and nurture your kids’s natural skills and encourage them to improve in the areas where they need them most. It’s similar in management.
Many of the lessons I’ve learned from raising my daughters have also informed my pondering on FutureFund, a free fundraising effort platform for K-12 school groups that I founded over a decade ago. Here are three things I’ve learned from parenting that have also helped me develop talents in the workplace.
1. Find the intersection of passion and skill
Parents often send their children to a number of sports – often starting with those who interest them most. But this is not only an effort to live vicariously through one’s offspring; they do it because they’re trying to work out what’s going to stick. It’s natural to start with what’s known and grow from there.
I like to think of it this fashion: you are trying to find the intersection of two equally necessary things: their raw talent or ability and their willingness or passion to participate.
You might have a 6’4″ teenager and assume he can be a great basketball player, but having that natural advantage is only half of the equation. If it seems that he hates basketball, he’ll likely have no motivation to practice, and he will not be an asset to his team when it comes time to play.
As a parent, you’ll be able to try them out with basketball to start with, but be prepared to switch them to soccer if they like to play that game. If they will make a team, great; you found the intersection. If they do not do this, you are trying to keep them occupied until they do something that is interesting to them and suits their skills.
The same applies to assigning roles in the office. Many years ago, I managed a young engineer whose performance was suboptimal. In fact, he was close to being fired, but when I moved him to one other team, he performed brilliantly. After all, he was leading this team and managing others. He eventually became the manager of a horizontal team – a role that got here with much greater pressures than what he had initially faced.
2. Don’t surrender – find “why”
Another key lesson that may be learned from the above examples is that it’s best to not surrender on people until you have to. Most parents don’t surrender on their children, at least not in an obvious way. However, some people subconsciously evaluate them too early in a way which will affect their self-perception and prevent them from developing in an interesting direction. This is what you would like to avoid as a parent and leader in the workplace.
When your child says, “I don’t like basketball,” don’t say, “OK, don’t play anymore.” Instead, ask them why. Maybe they don’t love all the scrums and pushing, so they’ll excel at softball or something else. Finding the “why” is essential here – you are looking for the underlying reason that provides them a passion or ability for certain things and not others.
You do this by asking questions. Understanding a person’s motivation will enable you provide them with the support they need. For children, this may occasionally mean moving them to one other effective sport. Your child may not like basketball, but he or she’s going to love soccer. They may not like golf, but they’ll love playing tennis.
The engineer I discussed earlier had been doing well in his recent position for years. If I assumed he was just a bad worker and fired him, I can be doing him and the company a disservice. It’s not that he didn’t have value. We just had to find the right place for it.
Find a team. Find chemistry. Find your passion and talent together. This is the job of the parent and manager. And don’t surrender too early.
3. Take people out of their comfort zone
As a parent or manager, it is your job to bring out the best in people – even if they do not see their very own potential. Not everyone knows where their skills or interests lie, and they cannot all the time discover these items without your guidance.
My daughter took AP Psychology in highschool because she thought it could be an easy C – but it turned out she actually enjoyed the course. Her mother and I encouraged her to consider this as a possible future profession direction. Today she is ending her studies in psychology and already has a job offer that she likes.
Sometimes a person discovers, almost by accident, where his skills and interests intersect. As a role model, a part of your job is to help them recognize when this is happening.
This happens even at very elite skill levels. Professional athletes still have coaches, doctors and nutritionists. Older employees proceed to profit from the advice of consultants and mentors. This is because it is improper to think that perfection may be achieved. You’re all the time improving and you mostly need people to concentrate to things you’ll be able to’t see yourself.
Remember: As a parent or business mentor, you mostly want to push people to do things they didn’t think they may do. It’s amazing how far a little encouragement can go in parenting and management.