Welcome
The focus of this issue is dealing with resistance.
Whether it is struggles over homework or battles about chores, we need to try new approaches when we find ourselves repeatedly
engaging in the same conflicts. Challenges provide great opportunities to apply the principles of good leadership. Parent
leaders confront resistance by seeing through their child's eyes and enlisting their child in seeing a different
possibility.
In each issue of The Parent Leader Newsletter,
you will find helpful strategies, inspiring stories, descriptions of best practices, recommended resources, and a schedule of upcoming
events. If you have a parenting challenge, success story, suggestions, or a question you'd like to share, please send e-mail to
inquiries@theparentleader.com. Of special interest this month:
What leadership lessons did you learn from your parents?
In this issue:
Discover your parent leader style. Take this assessment with your
spouse to inspire rich conversations! Click here to download assessment tool.
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Upcoming Public
Events
Working Mother Web
Seminar
Working Parents - Take
Your Leadership Skills Home
with Carol Evans, Working Mother CEO and Jamie
Woolf
Air Date:
November 16, 2006
9:00-10:30 am PST
Are you an excellent leader on the job, but find your parental
effectiveness tested at home? Join author and CEO, Carol Evans, and Jamie Woolf, Leadership Consultant, and our Working Parent panel as they
discuss their own experiences, and identify the characteristics that make the best leaders stand out. Tap into the skills that have made you
successful in your career, and take home techniques, attitudes and behaviors that work.
To register: Click here: Working Mother Media: Working Mother Magazine Cost:
$225
_________________________________
Working Mother Balance Seekers
conference
November 30, 2006, Chicago
To register: Click here: Working Mother Media: Working Mother Magazine Cost
$225
________________________________________
Parenting with a Leadership
Advantage
Piedmont Community Church
7:00-9:00, November 3, 2006
inquiries@theparentleader.com
________________________________________
Leadership Lessons for Parents
Oakland, Location TBA
2:00-5:00, December 10, 2006
inquiries@theparentleader.com
__________________________________
Taking the Fight Out of
Homework
by Jamie Woolf
"I feel far more competent at work than at home,"
said a woman who recently attended my Balance Work and Family with Greater Ease workshop at
her company. Her statement captured everyone's attention and inspired a flurry of similar
confessions.
"I lead a high performing team here.
I'm confident about my leadership skills and yet when I go home, I turn into an impatient short-order cook," shared another
participant.
A father raised a challenge that will be
familiar to many parents. "I oversee people doing their work all day long and yet I can't get my son to do his homework
without daily struggles."
What if we frame our parenting challenges as
leadership challenges? Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, authors of The Leadership Challenge, write that "leaders are possibility thinkers, not
probability thinkers." Visionary thinking may seem funny in the context of homework, but isn't it preferable to engaging in the same
power struggles week after week? You might start with:
A delightful vision of your child eagerly
unpacking their backpack with a look of excitement and determination begins to emerge. (Resist the urge to think of all the reasons that this is
impossible. Leaders think boldly).
Your vision may sound inspiring to you but the real test
comes in enlisting others. Transformational leaders raise others to higher levels of motivation by having them take ownership.
Therefore, the next leadership question is:
The problem many parents face is that they hold 100%
of the accountability for shifting their child's behavior. Leaders know that if there is no buy-in then there is no lasting change.
If your answer to increasing ownership is rewards and punishments, you're on
the wrong track. The minute the extrinsic motivation disappears, so does the desired behavior. You're on the right track if
you 're thinking about how you can build your child's capacity to make meaningful decisions about their homework.
Begin by
clearly explaining your non-negotiable expectations and then step back to allow your child to come forward with
potential solutions. Leaders create conditions for others to solve their own problems. The savvy parent
leader gets the child involved in the solution.
Getting your child involved in the solution will be
much easier if you truly listen and respect their emotions. An additional benefit to "truly listening" is you will better
understand your child's needs, desires, and concerns. It is quite probable that you'll hear clues for possible solutions that
require less struggle and promote family harmony.
For example, a single working mother, tired of homework
battles day after day, described how she decided to simply listen to her three daughters complain about their homework. After listening
openly without comment for quite a while, she and her daughters made a big poster with pictures and words describing how they felt about
homework. Then she asked her daughters to write a list of all the things they would like to do instead of homework. She read each
daughter's list and posted each list on the wall. By now, the girls felt heard, the mood shifted regarding homework, and instead of struggling,
they were laughing. Then the mother articulated a new possibility. She asked, "Would you be willing to do your homework in a more
focused and efficient way so that there was time for the activities on your list?" The girls asked if they could create
a special space for homework and became engaged in decorating their homework corner. The mother asked what support she could give them and
they asked if she would stay in the room with them in case they had questions about their homework. They posted a calendar that tracked the time of
day for homework and the time for other activities. When her daughters fall back into their old habits, the mother resists falling
back into her old habits, which leads us to the next leadership principle.
Leaders take responsibility for the
role they play instead of pointing fingers of blame. They possess the self-awareness to see how they perpetuate difficult situations. So here's
the next leadership question:
Do you
unwittingly send a message, by word or by deed, that your child's behavior is acceptable? Do you engage in the I
nag-he moans-I nag-he moans pattern? A friend once related a useful statement she heard from a teacher: "What's reinforced is what results." Often, the power of stepping back and recognizing the role you play is enough of a
catalyst to adopt new behaviors.
There are no easy answers when it comes to parenting or
leadership. There are, however, good questions.
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Best Practice: The Chore
Challenge
My kids are strongly
unengaged when it comes to chores. As I grew more and more cranky about making lunches, driving carpools, and doing laundry, I kept
thinking about how I never understood or fully appreciated how much my mother did for me. I didn't want my kids to wait until they became
parents to understand and appreciate just how much mommy and daddy do for them. But no matter how much I talked about the chore inequities
in our house, I wasn't getting through.
Heather, a mother of
three daughters under 12, used this parent leadership strategy for opening up conversation and fostering appreciation and
responsibility.
Ask your children to
write down on a piece of paper all the things they can think of that mommy and daddy do to support them and the household. When they are done,
ask them to write a list of all the things they need to do during the day and the things they do to support the household. Then begin
the conversation. This is not about a guilt trip. You simply begin the conversation by saying, "What do you think about
these lists?" You probably won't need to say much more to get a creative conversation going. From there, you have a great starting
place for generating new behavior. In Heather's case, her children wrote up a list of ways they would help more around the
house. They drew chore charts and hung them on the kitchen wall. At last report, the children were doing far more chores than
Heather ever dreamed possible.
Let us know how this
works for you...
Check out www.tabletopics.com, a great tool for opening up conversations.
Please forward this newsletter to
fellow parents, leaders, and friends.
