parentsasleaders

                           Parents as Leaders
                              By Coleen Mitchell
    If you are a parent and have never been in a leadership role in work and question your ability to do this, think again.
You have been the "Manager" of the family. The day to day things we do with our children are the tools for excellent managers.
    A good manager has a laundry list of skills that they need in order for any operation to run efficiently. Some of the charcteristics are as follows;

   Discipline- To set and enforce limits for the overall good of
    the company/ family
   Empathy- the ability to put one's self in another's shoes
   Delegator- to assign tasks to individuals to acchieve overall
    goals, assigning tasks based on the ability of the individual and
    the importance of the task
   Insight- the ability to step back and look at one's self
    before reacting to a situation
   Counselor- to listen and provide encouragement, support,
     and direction if needed.
   Accounting, Accountabilty- the ability to acchieve goals
    within a monetary limit and maintain a account of
    monies needed, teaching and accepting responsibilty
    to others and accepting responsiblity for your own
    actions
   Teacher- to instruct someone to learn a new skill
   Ideas/ Tactics- the ability to come up with a plan and resources
     to meet objectives
   Objectives- the goals, "The Big Picture", what needs to be
      done and how to acchieve it
   Nimbleness- the ability to be flexible, "to bend" and
      make decisions based on all the facts

The most important aspect of a good manager is taken from the first letter in each characteristics above D-E-D-I-C-A-T-I-O-N. Which is probably the hardest and most important feature of a good manager. Being commited to both the needs of the group and the needs of the individual and being able to balance the two diplomatically.
To those parents out there " Do these features sound familiar?" They should, you have been doing them all along with parenting. Please understand, Iam not abducating treating adults as children at all, but enforcing the fact that parents have the skills needed to make good managers. So to those parents out there apprehensive about going for that promotion, jump in with both feet. You have been a manager for along time, place these experiences fearlessly on that application because you have done all these things at one time or another through the parenting process. Good luck.