Shayne is cofounder and CEO of Blooma, a data-driven solution for the commercial real estate industry. Connect with Shayne on LinkedIn.
As parents, we spend an inordinate amount of time fussing over our children. Often, it’s about whether we’re teaching them the right mix of values and exposing them to the lessons that will, hopefully, turn them into “good humans.”
As our kids get older, the dynamic changes. In the act of parenting, we sometimes end up learning a thing or two instead. It’s generally subtle, albeit embarrassing, when we get schooled on arithmetic or history. But when your teenager ends up teaching you a profound lesson, the shift in dynamic feels jarring. And when it happened to me the other day, it caught me so off guard that I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
What I’m trying to say is that I got Miyagi’d by my teenage daughter about leadership.
Here’s what happened: My daughter plays lacrosse for her high school. What started as a pastime quickly developed into something she was becoming passionate about, even though she was spending most of her time during games on the bench. The problem? She was struggling with her coach. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but rest assured that this is not a story about an overbearing and love-blind parent immediately siding with their child.
My wife and I noticed that our daughter was becoming increasingly frustrated with the game. Over a period of months, she sought guidance from her coach after practice and asked for additional support in improving her technique. The response she got was to practice and watch YouTube. Seeing that she was not getting the support she was looking for, our daughter was investing long hours at home practicing drills, buying new equipment and trying some out-of-the-box ideas to improve on her own. Things went on like this for some time until, eventually, they peaked with her coming home after practice one night in tears. She was completely deflated.
What was unfolding on the field sounds like an early episode of Ted Lasso: The team’s coach relied on a tried-and-true playbook and ran the same plays with the same players (the A team), game in and game out. That meant that my daughter and a handful of other players were sitting on the bench, totally disengaged.
Instead of letting her emotions get the best of her, which I would have found understandable, our daughter went to her room and wrote out a letter to her coach. The letter was honest and angsty, but it didn’t resort to name-calling. It simply explained how the coach’s actions made her feel ignored and belittled by someone she felt should be building her up.
Here’s what struck me: Our job as parents, coaches and leaders isn’t all that different. Sure, the environment changes, but if you can master the principles of one, you’re well on your way to being good at the others. And it’s not an easy thing to do. As someone with lots of experience hiring talent and building teams, I think about optimizing team performance a lot. If you’re like me, you want to nail the talent piece of things upstream because, frankly, it’s a lot less work. An A player starts delivering value from day one. But what about those who don’t possess the skills but have the right mindset? Aren’t these players just as worthy of our time and attention—perhaps even more so?
I had to ask myself: When have I fallen prey to this coach’s folly? When have I prioritized giving time to those who are obvious performers and neglecting and self-selecting out others? You might tell yourself, “It’s for the good of the company.”
I’m not saying that a letter written by a 13-year-old put me into an existential crisis. I’m also not saying it didn’t. What is the real “job description” of a leader anyway? I think it’s easy to focus on the things we’re accountable for: numbers, revenue, etc. But if you’re managing a team that’s responsible for those outcomes, your focus is better spent on your people than micro-managing the outcomes themselves. This is not a passive process or a set-it-and-forget-it activity. Good leadership, which I’ve experienced and seen put to work on the job, is a constant titration and recalibration of a living, breathing thing. A great team runs like a machine, but lest we forget, it’s made of people.
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