First of all, there is one important issue that we need to cover: our culture has a schizophrenic relationship with real leadership. We desperately desire it, but when it arrives, we despise it. Leadership can be a code word for all that is good in the world for some parents. Here are the facts: not everyone is going to be a leader to the same extent as everyone else, and everyone is going to have some degree of leadership in one’s life. Even great followers lead, and great leaders often train by learning to follow other great leaders.
Each of us has an opportunity to be a leader. This post is about helping your children develop the skills they need to lead in whatever sphere God calls them to lead, and it is to help parents avoid giving in to cultural trends that can hamper or destroy the leadership skills that their children should develop.
Skill 1: Don’t Avoid Challenging Situations But Talk Afterwards
Avoid the parenting pattern that is so popular in our culture where parents hover over their children to keep them out of any stressful situation. Remember, challenges and difficulties are the places where children grow up. These situations are incredibly important for developing leadership skills. Instead of hovering over your children, you should be a haven for them. A hovering parent jumps into the situation. A haven parent guides their children through the crisis with good advice. Always try to be the person that your children can talk to and get good advice from, but don’t remove the need for the children to seek advice (as they get older, the hours at which they want to talk will get later!). There are times to step in and stand up for your children (when there is imminent serious danger or when the children are just too young to handle a complicated situation), but look to encourage, influence, and guide first.
Skill 2: Encourage Principled Thinking and Expect It to Be Messy
Leaders are principled people. If you want your children to lead, make sure they know the principles that direct your life (and theirs). Keep the principles simple: we don’t lie; we stand up for the weak. Note, knowing these principles will help them, but knowing principles will also cause more problems because they are immature. We have four girls, and each of them has had to face situations where their friends don’t want to hang around with their younger siblings. We work to help the younger girls to give the older ones “alone time” with their friends, but we also tell our older daughters that you have to stand up for your sister if someone is excluding her. We work on understanding this principle and then—low and behold—someone does stand up for her sister but in a way that is more hurtful than the original problem. Yikes! In these situations, you must continue to coach and help them (even praise them if they took a good stand) and make apologies (face-to-face) when good principles go wrong. Remember, practicing and failing is the prelude to practicing and succeeding.
Skill 3: Redirect, Don’t Destroy
When your children are leading by standing up for something good, don’t punish them as if they are totally wrong. This is akin to the social trend of hating real leaders when they show up. (I will say more on this in Part 2.) Leaders, especially great leaders, make mistakes. My goal as a parent is to help my children grow into maturity—not to keep them from making any mistakes. When your children blow it, don’t complicate the matter by blowing it yourself. As they get older, ask them why they did what they did—even if it seems completely obvious (and stupid). Often you will find they were motivated by something good. As children mature encourage them to use those leadership muscles by redirecting them toward better ways to do things rather than shutting them down.
Skill 4: Avoid Perfectionism
Finally, do not train them to be perfect. Perfectionism is the archenemy of developing leadership. Be careful! Parents can subtly train in perfectionism by just paying too much attention to small mistakes. When children are aiming at being perfect, it often makes them very cautious. They want (desperately!) to avoid a mistake. This can freeze their ability to lead. Remember, the skill of leadership is something born out of virtue. Virtues are not passive. The virtuous person does things—he does not simply attempt to avoid doing wrong things. Teach your children to lead by knowing principles, standing on them, and being content to let the chips fall where they may. Mistakes will be made, and we will deal with them as they come.
As a parent you can help your children reach their full leadership potential by mastering these four skills.
