Good morning, Team! It’s Friday! (Father’s Day weekend is almost here)

Leadership lessons start at home. How did your Father (and Mother) prepare you to be a good citizen and a leader?

Kouzes and Posner, in the Leadership Challenge, break leadership development into five categories:

•model the way

•inspire a shared vision

•challenge the process

•enable others to act

•encourage the heart

I’ll focus on how my Dad prepped me for a potential leadership role…

•I was taught to work hard. Long hours, strenuous work, and Dad was always in front.

•I was told why we were doing what we did.

-Push the snow to the end of the storage location or the piles would freeze up and prevent you from using all of the space.

-Balance the truck tires after repair and reinstall so they don’t prematurely wear

-Grade the road to drain so soft spots don’t form resulting in stuck and/or damaged unusable equipment

•I was encouraged to think outside the box. Starting with the big picture, top of the funnel, here is what we need, this is the time we have to complete, you figure it out.

•I was often delegated to. I once heard my father say, a manager’s job is to do your work for 10 minutes that you then do for an entire day. Do it like this, per se. This was not Dad’s forte’.Enabling others to act might sound more like, a managers job is to ensure you have the tools, the training, the resources and the clarity to do your job well and to remove any hurdles that hinder your progress.

•Good Morning! Welcome to the land of the living! That site looks good! You really know how to operate that blade! You kept things moving while we were out!We were not awash with praise in my household. It was rationed like cheese during the Great Depression. It came once in a while so it stood out. The absence then and how it made me feel then created empathy so that I would pay attention today. I had a boss who used to say, “I believe everyone wants to do a good job.” My former, more cynical self would silently disagree. Today, I can admit I was wrong about that.

Leaders, no one likes false praise but everyone likes to be caught doing something right. One of your jobs is to pay close enough attention when it happens that you acknowledge it in the way that individual most appreciates it.

Personal note:My father had Alzheimer’s during the last four and a half years of his life. Visits toward his end of life seemed futile and selfish. The last day I stopped to see him, he was in bed, face down … I spoke up from the doorway to his memory care unit room and asked how he was doing and he simply said “Tough”. That was it. A few days later he was gone.

Love your Fathers while they are here.

Honor their memory when they are gone.

Carry the leadership lessons forward that they first taught you.

Have a blessed weekend!