Feature: How the bond with your father makes you a leader

During a leadership programme, I counselled senior executives from around the world for a week. One of them spoke often and for a long time. At one point I raised my hand as a sign that he had to stop. That worked like a red rag, and I got the full treatment. I tried everything, but nothing could restore the connection.

Gradually I started to make less contact with the group: I retreated and routinely did my own thing. The evaluations were painfully negative. When I looked back with my mentor on how things ‘went wrong’, I realised that subconsciously I had been sitting opposite my father. I would have liked to say ‘stop’ to him so badly; I would have liked to have had room to tell my story as well. Instead, I learned to retreat.

More effective leader

That participant in the leadership programme became the starting point for a quest into how his relationship with his father had shaped him: ‘I started to have long, sometimes difficult conversations with my father, felt the anger and sadness, joined a men’s group that deals with leadership and vulnerability, asked for help, and started practising new behaviour. Getting started with the theme of fatherhood has made me connect more, become clearer, and dare to rely more on my intuition. It has made me a better and more effective leader, partner, friend and entrepreneur.’

The influence of fathers is often underestimated. When it comes to our emotional development and emotional life, we are predominantly (and undeservedly) focused on our mother. Fathers are crucial in children’s lives, even when they are (completely) absent. They are an example of how you connect with the outside world, how you deal with vulnerability, how you shape your relationships, and also how you deal with money.

Plumber

Stephan Poulter came up with the idea of the ‘father factor’ when he worked as a policeman in Los Angeles. ‘Almost all the gang members I met had no father in their lives and were all angry,’ he says. When Poulter later studied this phenomenon as a psychologist, he discovered how much fathers determine how work, money and relationships are handled.

This is often an unconscious process that people at first deny. Few leaders make the connection between their careers and their childhood. For example, I often hear: ‘My father was a plumber, I’m a lawyer, we chose totally different career paths.’ Then I invite people to look beneath the surface, for example at how it felt that their father was never there or showed no interest in them. Children block unpleasant experiences but will often unconsciously copy them as adults.

Midlife crisis

The relationship with their fathers often emerges in leaders during the so-called third leadership phase, somewhere between the ages of 35 and 50, which is often the period of a midlife crisis. During these years major personal and business changes often take place: promotions, marriages, children, relocations.

This often leads to life questions such as ‘how do I connect with others, dare I ask for help, take risks, develop my talents, make mistakes’? The answers are sometimes sought in a more expensive car or a larger house … until those material things no longer offer satisfaction or happiness either.

Leaders who get stuck are challenged to return to their roots. I often ask them: Who was your father? What example did he give? Could you have difficult conversations with him, or did he avoid them? How did he teach you to deal with competition? The answers provide insight into the way they lead.

Not infrequently, leaders with absent fathers struggle with the primary emotions of love, anger and fear, and fall into the category of ‘dominant bosses’. They fight with employees or their leaders and often have to deal with emptiness because employees don’t feel safe and don’t dare to give feedback anymore.

Find a connection

I once supervised a CEO who had been criticised by his employees for not connecting with them. Some questioning revealed that the atmosphere at his home was not so good either. His son was playing a lot of games, and he was mainly fussing about this. I suggested taking an interest in his son’s hobby by sitting next to him while he was gaming.

At first his son didn’t like it, but slowly a conversation started, also about homework and the rules at home. The CEO then started to organise more conversations in his team, letting people question each other about what was important to the others, what gave them pleasure, what activities they dropped out of. This resulted in more job satisfaction and mutual understanding, less absenteeism and better results.

It is often enlightening to say which (unwritten) rules your father told you to comply with. Then you can try to do it differently and break the toxic pattern, although I don’t believe in the concept of the self-made leader. Research also shows that this is a myth: leadership is not in our DNA but is formed by our earliest experiences at home, by the positive and negative examples we got.

Honesty

The emotional immaturity leaders can suffer from is one of the seven ‘roadblocks’ or behavioural patterns that make them get stuck in their careers. The other six are shame, doubt about one’s abilities, a lack of focus, motivation, and personal responsibility, and a fear of failure.

Anyone who understands how his or her father dealt with these behavioural patterns will understand why they fails to achieve certain successes. If you are not fully aware of how you were influenced by your father, you are driving your car with one foot on the brake.

It is a pity that our youth and parents are not items for discussion on the agenda. Knowing how someone grew up helps you to understand your employees and colleagues. Family is your starting point, not the end.

Five father styles

• The absent father − Makes you feel depressed and often causes the imposter syndrome: doubt of your ability, shame, and the feeling that you are falling through the cracks.
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  The career father − For this father, results and outward appearance are important. He teaches his children that it’s all about scoring and winning. As adults, they can become insecure and find the opinions of others more important than their own feelings. They have to meet an invisible requirement because it’s never good enough.
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  The time bomb father − This father is unpredictable, for example due to drug or alcohol use. He has sudden outbursts of anger, which teach these children to ‘read’ others at an early age. As adults, they are often peacekeepers, have a great sense of responsibility, and are often avoiding conflict.
• The passive father − The stable, hardworking, emotionally distant man. He is barely involved with his children and does not enthuse or motivate them. The children are hardworking, loyal employees who often have difficulty making emotional commitments.
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  The mentor father − Only 10% of fathers fall into this category: they are the fathers we would all like to have or want to be. This father engages in activities with his children, gives them confidence, and teaches them about emotions. His children often become stable, responsible leaders.

Author
Fred de Boer, Expert Management consultancy at PUM