As it’s getting near Father’s Day. Here in Canada, Father’s Day is on every 3rd Sunday of June. So, this is coming up real soon.
Since becoming a father, I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on my role as a father to my daughter. I’m also keen on leadership. I love to learn more about them and apply and practice them. The way I see leadership is it’s like a tool. Let’s say, for instance, leadership is like a hammer. What most of us will know about a hammer is we can use it to put a nail on the wall and then post up a picture of yourself, your family, or anything you like up there. Or you could use it to build a door. Or even bigger, a house however you want. All these examples I mentioned, they could be done for yourself. You can even do these for others, hang up a picture for someone, build a door for someone, or even build a house for someone. You can even do this for the whole block! I’m sure this feels great because you do something for yourself, your neighbour, or even your community. But if you want to do more, you only have 24 hours in a day, just like we all do, and with just this hammer you have, you can only go so far that you’ll likely exhaust yourself. And that’s where you’ll hit your limit. So, you’ll think to yourself, “I’ll need a team.” Then this is where you start to find someone to be on your team, then you train them how to use the hammer you’ve always used to hang up pictures, build doors, and houses. Again, with just the same hammer you have going in this direction, it’s very linear. I can explain more in the next post as this is going off the point here of this post.
Let’s back up a bit especially about the hammer. This hammer is like leadership. It’s a tool and how you utilize it can only go as big as you envision it to be like I explained, just to put a nail on the wall, build a door or build a house. Or anything beyond that. Leadership is a tool where you are in a position of power, in a position of authority, in a position of privilege, etc.
So, this led me to where I am at this moment. Aside from leadership, we’ll move on to fatherhood. I’m in the position of being a father to my daughter. For me as a father, I raise her by providing love, fostering care, being present, providing language, food, etc. More importantly to develop a relationship. Having a relationship will give us the opportunity to grow together and develop a bond. There will certainly be times when we’ll have our ups and downs and we’ll only get better with open communication, love, and forgiveness. This relationship will give me the opportunity to grow as a father. This is the same way it’ll give me the opportunity to grow as a leader.
By being in this position – as a leader and as a father – it comes with responsibilities. For those who know Spiderman, Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben said this: With great power comes with great responsibility. I know there are many similar quotes but I’m using this as it appears to be what most people are familiar with. For those in these positions, it takes wisdom to know how to utilize it. I’m sure there are people you may know who were in leadership positions who are either great or not so great. The ones who were not so great are often because they didn’t know how to handle being in a leadership position. Or even had the skills to utilize it. Like the hammer. For those who didn’t know how to use it, often it makes them less effective leaders or fathers.
So, being a father and a leader comes with responsibility. I am by far not perfect. And I will make mistakes and I will learn from them. Be quick to forgive. Strengthen relationships and so on. It’s like walking around with a hammer, there are ways how this can be utilized either to destroy a house, door, or picture. Or to build them all.
What else here do you see fatherhood and leadership have in common?