Everything I need to know about leadership I learnt from the kids

‘Everything I really need to know about leadership I learnt from the kids’ is a book in progress. A process that my partners note somewhat wirily is proving to be as long as the title! But kids, like wine and good leadership, take time to mature I constantly remind them � something I suspect they will soon ‘get’ as they watch their own families grow. Life is seasonal and unfortunately it is often that the rich joy of a particular season is only appreciated with the wisdom that comes from hindsight. For instance remember how for the first two years of our children’s existence we enthusiastically teach them how to talk and walk, only to spend the next sixteen years telling them to ‚shut-up and sit down‛!

Over the years as I have watched my three kids grow there have been bundles of rich, hard-to-ignore lessons for life and leadership that have been experienced. Bringing these to you will open up some of the inner sanctums of the Coats household, yet will I’m sure, resonate with any parent or person who lives surrounded by family. If ‘allowed’ there are many more of these accounts that can be aired through TomorrowToday.biz’s eZine. Of course it may also be necessary to keep them out of public consumption for fear of loss of reputation and more to the point, for the good of public wellbeing! We shall have to wait and see and your response will be the jury sitting‌

‚I’m six now‛ were the first words to greet me on the morning of 1 December (a nice change to the usual rasping‌‛coffee‛, emerging from the semi-comatose form lying next to me). It was also the first morning in six that the sun had shown itself, a nice touch I thought and somewhat appropriate for Sipho’s birthday.

Six years is a momentous milestone. It heralds the first of many years spent in formal education � a process where the kid gets smarter and the parents poorer. It is marked by the acquisition of his own set of wheels and will become the year of mastering the skills that will help keep him on top of them, not under them. Though the tough part is knowing that the latter invariable precedes the former. Still it is a skill that lasts a lifetime as portrayed by a 90 year old riding her bicycle around Scotland on some late night travel programme I happened to watch the other night.

It will be the only year that he attends the same school as both his older brother and sister (spare a thought for the teaching staff won’t you). It will be the time he learns all those important six-year-old-type-things that, stacked together, reveal further glimpses of the life being shaped before our very eyes. An awesome process indeed and of course every parent of a six-year old knows exactly what I am talking about.

It doesn’t seem six years ago that as a family we sat on the lawn of a children’s home laying siege to a tiny baby on a blanket whom our presence surrounded. I had come directly from a bus that had transported 60 rowdy young people home from a youth camp, and was tired yet elated to be meeting ‘our new son’. Our adoption application had been in process for several months and finally we were nearing the end, or I guess, the beginning. As we sat there I remember the social worker repeatedly asking us, ‚do you like him?‛ A strange question I remember thinking at the time.

It wasn’t difficult to settle on the name ‘Sipho’ (meaning ‘Gift’ in Zulu) and somehow ‘Daniel’ tagged along bringing with it the heroic exploits of the biblical Daniel of old. So Daniel Sipho arrived and suddenly the theory of adoption gave way to the practical. There were many moments in those early years that we wished we could just freeze the frame � except of course for the nappies! There were so many and often humorous encounters with curious strangers who more often than not proved to be generous in their on-the-spot support, encouragement and on one occasion loud prayers. We in turn had to find a way to explain ‘adoption’ as there is no such Zulu word for a concept that is unknown.

In both name and presence Sipho is a gift to those who inhabit the Coats household. People have often said to us, ‚Sipho is such a fortunate little boy!‛ They really don’t understand. It is the other tribe members who are the fortunate ones. At several points the adoption process brings you face to face with your most basic values and motivations. What a gift that is!

Leaders are often tempted to avoid those situations or processes that force them to confront their values or motivations. We readily apply ourselves and the resources at our disposal to the ‘what?’ ‘how?’ and ‘when?’ type questions‌after all they are the ones which keep us busy and looking productive. But it is the ‘why?’ question we neglect. Perhaps we started with it but then over the long haul it fades into the disappearing horizon and we think that having entertained it once means that we never have to return to its demanding scrutiny. We need to take the time to revisit the ‘why?’ � it takes us to the very core of things and once there we must be prepared not always for answers but sometimes to just be content that we are in that space. To be content that we have found a clearing in the thicket of our schedules, activities and busyness that surrounds us. That pause space that gifts us with the exhilarating, perhaps scary opportunities to recreate and discover new beginnings.

Celebrate the milestones but remember the beginnings.

(Sipho is now eleven, almost twelve he would add, and completing final preparations before setting sail into the challenging waters of adolescence. The harbour masters are battening down the hatches, reading themselves for what is sure to be yet another eventful voyage of discovery!)

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