I am a career coach. My specialty is helping professionals navigate through difficult career decisions. I provide my clients the tools and support to set and achieve their professional goals.
But coaching has a positive effect beyond career development and success. Over the years, many clients have reported that improving their leadership and influence at work helped them better manage other relationships in their life; especially the skills learned in managing change. The experience of going through change at work has changed their parenting approach and practices for the better.
Now I do not coach children, but I am happy to share my clients’ insights on helping their children manage change and innovation.
Implementing the Innovation 70-20-10 rule at home: Innovative companies encourage their employees to spend 70% of their time and resources on the company’s core business, 20% on related ideas, and 10% on new business ideas.
This rule can certainly apply to children’s planned activities. For some career-minded people, being achievement focused and having a “time-is-money” mindset has created a sense of urgency to make every moment count not only in their professional life but also in grooming their children for success. Keeping up with the Joneses has been taken to a whole new level of unnecessary competition scheduling a constant round of activities for their offsprings. Many have reported being afraid of doing less than the other parents in preparing their children to get into a good college and giving them every possible advantage. They found themselves schlepping their kids around after work hours and over the weekends to endless lessons, sports and resume enhancing activities. However, realizing how important it is to have unstructured time to explore and create has led them to rethink this approach. In the words of one such client: “free time is the greatest gift I have given my daughters.”
Recognizing and rewarding Innovation: To make Innovation stick employers need to recognize and reward new behaviors so that they become new habits. Incentive programs play a key role in driving innovative behaviors, and thus the Recognition space is growing exponentially.
This workplace practice of providing incentives for employees to suggest or try new ideas, led some of my clients to think more deeply about how to prepare their children to thrive in a fast-pace and complex world. The answer lies in being able to think independently and handle new challenges with confidence, enthusiasm, and creativity. But how do we teach our children theses skills? First, we need to let them do their own work. Many parents joke about the grades they got for a child’s homework or school project. Without addressing the moral implications here, the level of parental involvement is directly correlated to the development of these skills; the more the parents take over homework assignments and school projects, the less confident and creative the kids become about learning. When we do their work for them, we undermine their experience of accomplishment and success. We send the message that we don’t believe they are capable. So parents, please give your kids credit for being able to do their own work. And come up with your own reward and recognition program to ensure these behaviors become lifelong learning habits. One client was so worried about his son’s future academic success; he sat with him for hours every night to help him get through his homework and 5th grade. He says the hardest decision of his life was to butt out and trust his son to step up but that it was also one of the best decisions that he has ever made.
Rewarding Failure: The greatest challenge to leaders trying to encourage innovation is giving employees permission to fail as they take on new challenges. Every failed initiative results in new insights. Each mistake teaches us something new.
One of the hardest things we have to do as parents is sit back and allow our children to make their own choices and possibly make a mistake. As hard as it is, we must let our children experience failure. It is a big part of life and can teach them something very valuable. The lessons learned can help them regain their creativity and achieve success in the future. Let’s not forget that while Babe Ruth set the record for home runs in a single baseball season, he also led the league in strikeouts. Thomas Edison tried thousands light-bulb filaments before finding the right one. As parents we need to fight the urge to protect our children to allow them to develop resiliency and creativity. Let’s stop jumping in to rescue our children when they mess up. Consequences can teach them who they are and to find new ways to own their success. And sometimes when we think our children are making a terrible mistake it can turn out it’s the best thing that ever happened to them. And I’ll share a personal story. Our public school had to create mixed-grade combination classes. When my older son was placed in a 4th/5th combo class I was not concerned. The class consisted of a large majority of fifth-graders with only a few fourth-graders, and I knew most of the kids and the families. I felt confident my son would get the curriculum and everything he needed. However, when my daughter was placed in a 3rd/4th combo class consisting of a majority of third graders with only her and 7 other fourth-graders, I was ready to run to the principal’s office to ask that she be moved to another class. My daughter, on the other hand, had a different perspective. She loved the teacher who was her teacher in third-grade, and she liked the chosen few fourth-graders. She felt it would be a great year for her. I was skeptical. My gut was telling my otherwise. But I got over myself and trusted my daughter to make the decision. Turned out she was right. This was by far her most joyful year at school. She really came into her own academically and socially.
Behind every successful person, there’s someone who helped them become great. Let’s help our children find out what they are good at and teach them the life skills needed to pursue and achieve lifelong learning and success.
