I had the privilege of hearing Kim Nelson, President of the Snacks Division at General Mills deliver a presentation to a group of new managers. One of her messages was about “The Best Lessons on Leadership You Learn From Your Kids. It was a very insightful component of her talk and it helped me think about the relationship of our personal lives to our work lives and vice versa.
Some of the best leaders with whom I have worked have at least one characteristic in common , they show up as the same person at both home and work. In other words they bring their entire self to work and that same person is fully present at home as well. When I do the MBTI”with managers and leaders, someone will say something like, “I’m different when I’m at work. That is, they leave the way they really are at home. How unfortunate.
Great leaders have evolved their style and their way of being so they are comfortable in their skin regardless of whether they are at home or at work. And in reality children can help us be our true selves. Maybe that’s because those lessons they learned in kindergarten about working and playing well with others are still fresh in their minds.