Are You a Boss or a Parent?

“Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a life­time.” — Chi­nese proverb

One night, I was out with my kids, walk­ing a dog we were look­ing after. We stopped to chat to a guy with anoth­er dog – just pleas­ant, idle chit chat, as the dogs hap­pi­ly greet­ed each oth­er. As we part­ed I said, ​“Have a great night.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he snarled, as he turned away.

It was an inter­est­ing moment: while I want­ed to wish him well, he inter­pret­ed it as con­trol­ling or diminishing.

As humans, many of us have that voice in our head: we don’t want to be par­ent­ed or told what to do – to feel our capa­bil­i­ty and intel­li­gence disrespected.

The exchange brought me back to one of the lead­ing tenets of lead­er­ship: being there to help peo­ple find their own answers and to see things for themselves.

In Chap­ter 12 of Your Oxy­gen Mask First — Stop Being Chief Prob­lem Solver — I talk about how even the most effec­tive lead­ers do them­selves and their teams a dis­ser­vice by answer­ing ques­tions, and solv­ing prob­lems, even though it’s faster.

Instead, they should say things like:

• “Have you considered…”
• “When I was in a sit­u­a­tion like that, this is what hap­pened…” or
• “What do you think?”

And they’ll cre­ate the right dis­cus­sions so that the team can define where they want to go and key strate­gies to get there. Then step back to let them do the rest of the think­ing for themselves.

This approach expands your team’s capa­bil­i­ties. It also forces them to be stronger lead­ers and frees your time and ener­gy to do the things that matter.

The Chal­lenge

• When are you parental in your approach by telling peo­ple what to do?
• Go back and read Chap­ter 12 in the book.