Leadership is Action and Example

I would imagine that my life experience has been vastly different than that of my classmates. I have not yet started a career. I got married and started a family when I was very young, making my work outside the home very limited. My experience is no less important or relevant to this topic. Managing the home of a large family requires good leadership. For my blog this week, I will draw on my own life experience with leadership.

My husband and I are the parents of six children ranging in age from five to twenty. When we started our family, my husband and I decided that he would be the breadwinner and I would stay home with the kids and manage the home. It’s been a nice set-up. As our youngest child is approaching the age when he will go to school full time, I am finishing my degree and am preparing to enter the workforce. It is a major life change, but I am looking forward to it.

Throughout most of our marriage, my husband has had work that has taken him away from home for long periods of time. I have been the only parent at home, taking care of the six kids, home maintenance, finances, etc., all while pursuing my education a class or two at a time. Getting my kids to work as a family team and providing good leadership for them has been the essential part of success during my husband’s absence. Each child has had to take on a little more responsibility for either themselves or for someone else. All of which has been good for them.

I noticed within the first couple days that my husband was away, my attitude made all the difference in the world. If I had a bad or “poor me” attitude about our situation, so did my kids. If I had a “can do” attitude, so did my kids. I began to realize I needed to have a good attitude and mobilize them as a team for the success of our family. I provided incentives to make it through each day. It might be a pizza party complete with root beer floats on a Tuesday night, or if work got done early we would have a movie night with popcorn and M&M’s. I constantly praised good behavior or simple acts of kindness or help. These incentives created a desire in my kids to work harder and be happier.

I had to create the culture I wanted with my team. I was leading a group with different cultures. I had a young adult culture, high school culture, middle school culture, elementary school culture, and pre-school culture, all of which needed to come together to create success. Balancing the hormonal and the hangry wasn’t always easy. Our textbook says that leaders are “aware of the cultural influences on the personalities, motivations, and values of their counterparts, skillful leaders are able to influence others, whether it is by giving orders and directions to individuals under their authority or by  “influencing with authority.” (Moran, R., Abramson, N., Moran, S., 2014) I have always tried to make each individual on my team my ally and build relationships with each so they each know they are valued and needed. (Moran, R., Abramson, N., Moran, S., 2014)

I read an interesting article related to this topic entitled Transforming Workplace Culture. Of transforming the workplace culture and providing good leadership, the article says, “If this represents the culture you’d like, what are you doing to create it? You’ve articulated the values and behaviors that you want. What are you doing every day to show that you’re living those values?” Because if leadership does X, the people will do X. If a leader does Y, people will do Y. Leaders need to be extremely conscious of what they’re doing every single day.” (Montgomery, C., Sharkey, L., 2016) As our textbook says, “leadership is behavior.” (Moran, R., Abramson, N., Moran, S., 2014)

References

Montgomery, C., Sharkey, L. (2016) Transforming Workplace Culture. Retrieved on September 30, 2018 from http://constructiveculture.com/transforming-workplace-culture-one-companys-story/.

Moran, R., Abramson, N., Moran, S. (2014) Managing Cultural Differences. Routledge. New York, New York.