Objectives for Parenting & Managing

You'd think these might be very different - the objectives you have to successfully parent your child, and those for managing people in your organization, but I might humbly suggest there are many similarities.  Let's start with what we're aiming for as parents.

Firstly, it's an interesting exercise I suggest you undertake as well - coming up with parenting objectives.  It's not something we normally do as our kids are always a work in progress, and the very personal nature of the relationships we share means laying out a structured approach is often not viable.  It doesn't speak to the nature of the role of parents as loving caring, guiding etc - or so it would seem.  While that is a valid perspective, I'd offer a different view to say that if you don't have defined objectives then there's little chance of taking the right steps to achieve the desired end result.  It becomes very grey and hard to pin down.  And while I do like to have a defined set of goals, the magic is clearly in how you go about realizing them, it's not ever about employing an unnatural structure upon your parent-child relationship.

So here goes - what I'd like to have as objectives for my child - rearing.  I've expressed these as capabilities the child should possess as outcomes of my/our efforts*.

1. The ability to think for themselves.
2. The ability to know the right thing to do when presented with a murky situation - morally.
3. An ability to understand and pursue that which makes them happy.
4. Respect for their fellow human being, and their opinions with which you may not agree.
5. A capability to construct a compelling argument in favour of what they believe in.
6. An appreciation for the natural world.
7. An ability to bring all your abilities to focus, and an understanding of what you're capable of.

There's a few more as well that get into the emotional and spiritual side of an individual, but for the purposes of this discussion, I'll leave these out for now.

Now - let's switch gears and look at the same list above with an eye on how to manage staff.  An ideal manager has compassion and an appreciation of what each of their people can bring to the table.  Ideally, we have a set of personal development objectives for each individual as well, as ultimately it helps the organization if your employees are exceptionally capable.

Do any of the above list of 7 criteria strike you as unnecessary in an employee, or perhaps as non-core goals in terms of staff development..?  You're free to think as you wish about the list here - it is personal to me* in a number of ways, and reflects values, experience and so on that I think are goal-worthy.  My point here is to stimulate in you the same thought - create a parental list of what you'd aim for, and compare that to what character you'd like to see exhibited in your staff.  Does it match..?  If not why not ?  Secondarily, what are you doing today to achieve this outcome.?  

Building great people -whether children or lieutenants- is rarely accidental.




** you'll note some asterisks above.  I need to acknowledge that raising children is often done as part of a team, and alignment on goals and objectives is pretty important.  You can imagine the issue if opinons differ here.  Similarly, the development of staff is rarely done in a vacuum in a workplace, so getting the same message out is critical there too.   The core points above work with both single and team direction I believe.