Stephen H Baum Leadership

Parenting at work means providing leadership through treating employees as part of a special family, aligning family and individual goals, teaching employees to put the family first, encouraging them when they are down as well as when they succeed, giving tough love when needed. This is not to say to treat them like children, not at all.

Barbara Corcoran’s Family Approach
Barbara Corcoran grew up with a strong sense of belonging to a special family. She took that sense and transplanted it into her business: She promoted a family atmosphere and gave her employees a feeling of belonging. She parented at work. In her “real” family, her mother was the drill sergeant, making sure that the nine members of the household shared the workload, making sure everything ran right. But her father’s antics and the message they conveyed time and time again shaped Barbara’s approach to leading others.

He engendered a sense of fun, mischief, and family intimacy by creating great unusual shared experiences, such as taking the family through the car wash with the windows open, whisking everyone into the sea with their T-shirts and shorts still on, spending his first check from his new business on a vacation when more pressing needs for the money were at hand.

From these and similar experiences, Barbara learned how to cheerlead: engaging and inspiring an army of brokers when commissions were unavailable owing to a cash crunch in the business; to do their creative best to beat the larger and more established competition, as they were just the upstart in town. During a recession when the brokers’ spirits (and sales) were really low, she ended the weekly brokers’ meeting by pretending to be an out-of-work broker, carrying on about how terrible things were. She called the meeting a “pity party,” making fun of the resigned, negative attitudes she saw around the room. She painted a verbal picture of what would happen if they remembered how really good they were at their jobs and got out and went after business instead of feeling sorry for themselves.

Clowning around in meetings, throwing parties, celebrating successes, publicly charting the progress the firm made against its rivals, awarding — with great fanfare — ribbons for closing deals, and taking top producers on trips to resorts all reinforced the sense of belonging. The industry often mocked “Camp Corcoran” for these and other antics. But Barbara and her business family had the last laugh, growing against the odds into the largest residential real estate brokerage in New York City.

You will recall that Steve Kaufman of Arrow explicitly included in his survival skills and ten commandments the notion of treating employees as you would want your children treated. The intent is not to treat them like small children, but to be developmental, caring, encouraging, fair, tough, and boundary setting when needed.

One of my clients drew on family experiences, but perhaps the wrong ones in her dealings with subordinates. I was asked by the president of Coca-Cola to coach a very bright, very demanding young executive with a good track record for results and plenty of self-confidence. The corridor gossip, however, was that she could be overbearing. We had been in several meetings together and had had a few work–related conversations. One day, she asked me to dinner and opened the door for a real dialogue, saying, “Okay, I’ve been told you’re available to coach me, so give it to me straight.”

I decided that she really did want it straight, so I told her: “You should think of yourself as a new, unproven member of the company’s varsity. You work in a place that seeks to operate collegially and collaboratively. But you don’t do that. You instill fear in the way you manage. Have any of your appraisals mentioned this topic?” Yes, they had. I continued: “In fact, if I had to use just one word to describe how you come across, the word would be imperious.” She gulped and allowed as how no one had used that particular word.

Rather than closing down at this sharp criticism, she opened the door further, asking, “Where do you think that comes from?” Not knowing anything about her personal background, I took an obvious guess and said, “Tell me about your parents.” She told me this story: “My father was a tough, hard-nosed senior exec at a major industrial company. I learned a lot from him, and in my mind I take him to work with me every day. He’s my model for how to treat people.” “And how is that?” I asked.

She responded with a story: “One Sunday, on the way home from the early morning church service, he quizzed me about the sermon, as he often did. I failed the test. Without saying a word, he made a U-turn back to the church, and we sat through a second service. This time my attention didn’t wander during the sermon.” She described her mother quite differently: a nurturer, a supporter, someone who engendered her desire to perform well and please. I offered: “Perhaps you should take your mother to work some days, too. The people who work for you are looking to you for some parenting at work: guidance, direction, support, understanding, encouragement, development. If you show you care about them as people, they will respond with more energy and heart for your agenda and you.” Unbelievably, it was a new thought to her.

The blame is not entirely her father’s. Until recently, and for a long period of time, the Coca-Cola culture produced many managers who demanded extreme loyalty from an inner circle and showed disrespect for, and instilled fear in, nonmembers. She was a product of both her father’s training and the company culture.

Seeing your parents as two different people, understanding their worldview and how it shaped yours, selecting the best of both for appropriate application — there is more learning in this reflection than many people realize. When you lead your own group, consider that you are in a parenting role. Ask what you want for the family and for each family member. Remember, you won’t get very far up the line without a reputation for a loyal followership that everyone knows you helped grow.