Building Leadership Skills Early: Engaging Children in a Leadership Discussion

0:10 - Welcome back to extra shot of leadership. Hey, Kimberly, what's going on over there?

0:16 - Got a great day. Another great day.

0:18 - I'm fired up too.

0:19 - Yeah. Just had a good workout. Pumped some iron.

0:22 - That was fun building those muscles. I enjoyed it.

0:26 - Cleared our brain.

0:27 - I'm ready for it.

0:29 - See it's, catchy it's.

0:31 - Like, let's go. Yeah, I'm ready to talk. I want to talk a little bit about kids and leadership. It is on my mind. I've got two young ins. They're entering teenage years. Oh, girl. And I know you've got some experience with kids. You've got some family. You've got some kids in your life. I got some stories, for sure. And maybe they're a little bit older than mine. So for me, it's like the thing that's on my mind today is, do you talk to your kids about leadership being leaders? The whole idea of it? Have you done that? What does that look like? You can tell. I'm ready to go. My brain is ready. I'm ready to talk. I love it.

1:11 - Is there a specific reason that it's on your mind? Like, is there something that's happening, or is it just that they're hitting their teenage years and it's just time to have these conversations, and then I have another one? Like, did you start the conversation, like, much, much younger than the teens are? Like, we just starting to have leadership conversations now?

1:28 - Yeah, that's a great question. Right? Context. Context matters. I think for me, right now, my daughter is starting to do a little bit more from a leadership perspective. She sees herself as a leader in some of her extracurricular activities. I think others see her as a leader as well. And what is interesting to me is she sees herself as a leader. They see her as a leader, but I don't think she really knows what a leader does looks like, and it's allowed me the opportunity to start having these conversations with her.

2:04 - Nice.

2:05 - And so it's been fun. It's been energizing. I've really enjoyed it. I've been enjoying asking her some questions and really trying to understand how does she think about it.

2:13 - Oh, okay. And so she must be like, she has natural tendencies for leadership, because it's like she doesn't even see it.

2:20 - She's like, I don't know. I'm just doing it. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point. I don't know that I've thought about that. A natural tendencies, maybe so. Yeah, I think so. Clearly. Right. People are adults are putting her in positions of a leader, and they see her as that, so there must be some natural okay, look, she's just doing.

2:42 - Inherently doing some things.

2:45 - I don't think I thought about that. Yeah.

2:47 - Because there are some people that are just better at it than others. Some of us have to work a little extra harder, have to really think think about it.

2:55 - I think that's right. I do agree with that. Some of us, it just doesn't come as naturally as others.

3:00 - But what's cool is though, if you can get them to think about why they're doing what they're doing and how they're doing, I think that's pretty cool.

3:07 - You already got me going, right? You already got me going there. How they're doing it, why they're doing it. So that's my first question here is do you have any thoughts around, hey, should I start talking to my kids about leadership? When did you, did you what did that look like? So I think it's, it's really to start off with is, is it valuable to have conversations of leadership with your kids?

3:32 - Yes. And listen, I think the more you can talk to your kids about anything, I think that's one of the problems these days is there's not as much conversation going on and not as much deep conversation going on. Some thought, but it's so, so important. So I've never had kids of my own, but I'm a step mom to a lot of kids and so I. Really, when it came, tough job, I would imagine it can be, it can. Be, but when I would never wanted to be the, listen, I'm trying to be your mom, right? And I'm going to tell you what to do. I kind of did the softer approach coming in and just have little side conversations, things like that, to supplement what they were getting somewhere else. And that worked really well for us to have little bit deeper conversations. But I've seen two different styles of parenting where there was a lot of conversation. They would literally sit down and have conversations at the dinner table, which seems to have kind of gone away. And I saw some parents, some great parenting where they were doing such an excellent job of asking questions and having deeper conversations like why do you think that or where is that coming from? And I think that is so, so important because then I see the other side where there's really no questions. And what I saw was the kids that had the conversation, more conversations, deep conversations, and questions are just so much better at decision making. They can now ask themselves these questions. And I think it's just so important to start as young as you possibly can with doing that.

5:26 - Oh, that's an interesting thought. Right. I think as parents or as leaders, whoever's listening, leadership is about making decisions. When you make a decision, how you make the decision, who you include in the decision making. So it's a fundamental skill set that really all leaders need to have. And that's an interesting connection that you're making there, right? It's having these deeper conversations with your kids, asking them questions about kind of what's driving that. What do you see, why do you see it that way to help them create that decision making skill?

6:04 - And if you did this, why would you do it? Why would you not do it? What would happen if you did, what would happen if you didn't?

6:09 - All of that.

6:10 - So then you're not just shooting from the hip with your decisions, right. You're just teaching them to think through it. And as a leader, you have so many decisions to make.

6:20 - Yeah. Constantly. Right. It's ongoing all day long about people, about things, about work, about your boss. I mean, you're just constantly thinking through things and making decisions and owning your decisions. Right. I think that's probably the second aspect there, is you're helping your kids make decisions, think through decisions, and then owning the decisions they made. That's probably a little bit further down the line. I'm thinking about my own kids and the ages that they're at and still figuring out how they are making decisions. I'm kind of thinking through as we're going through this. I'm thinking about it and gosh, the number of decisions they're making already every day and helping them to understand. You made that decision. I didn't make that decision for you. We're running late out of the house, trying to get to wherever we're going because you were dragging your feet. Right. We leave the house every day.

7:19 - You already know what success looks like.

7:23 - We go to this thing every day at this time, so you should be able to kind of work backwards, and let's talk about what working backwards might look like. Okay. I love that. I really think that that's a fantastic kind of right out of the gate, asking them some questions to help build their decision making skill set. Yeah.

7:42 - And I think you can go as they get older and older and older, you can go deeper and deeper and deeper where when they're four or five.

7:48 - They're just simple yeah. Little baby questions. I love that. Okay, so you're, like, start early, start early.

7:55 - So I'm just wondering, with your kids, did you start early talking? Because leadership is your wheelhouse, right? So did you talk about leadership early, or are we really starting to kind of were they other types of questions, and now we're really starting to hone in on leadership?

8:09 - I think they were other types of questions. It's funny when you ask that. It makes me think I went to have some happy hour. I went to have a couple of drinks with some people. This has been a while ago. And I was sharing with the group something that was happening at the house at that time. It's probably a couple of years ago now. And I remember somebody at the table saying, can you imagine living with Pepper as your mother? Everything is a learning lesson.

8:39 - That was probably me, because I do I think about your kids. I'm like, Whoo, y'all, y'all got it rough over there.

8:48 - It's like, what can we learn from what just happened? It's hard to turn that off. So I do think everything maybe not everything that's probably a little dramatic, but I do think many things in our house are learning lessons. What did we learn? What is your takeaway? What are you going to take forward for the rest of your life based on this learning lesson? So I do think that has been embedded in our home for many, many years. More recently, my daughter has had some experience with doing some very specific leadership things. She's a junior black belt, and wow. Yeah, she helps out at the karate studio and these little four year old little little white belts and, you know, little cuties gold belts, and, I mean, they're just so cute. Right? And and there she is. And and you can just see they kind of they're like, wow, one day I might be a black belt. Right. It's the cutest thing. And she loves me to go watch her, and I don't always get to go watch her. My schedule, I'm not able to get away, but when I do get away, there I am with my lens of leadership. I walk in the door and what does she look like and how is she presenting herself? And I immediately go into these things of, is she inspiring? Right. What would demonstrate a level of inspiration for her being a helper? How would that show up? What can she do? What is she doing? Well, I look at, you know, me, and you listen to our previous conversations. I'm always thinking about how do you present yourself?

10:35 - Sure.

10:35 - Because I think that's an important thing. So just recently, I went and checked her out, and, man, my big thing is, like, shoulders, back, shoulders got to be back. And so she just has a little bit of a curve to her shoulder. I don't know how to explain it. So anyways, yeah, we walked away from a recent session where she was helping out, and so she wanted me to go. And so afterwards, I asked. I said, so tell me why you wanted me to go. What did you want me to see? What were you excited for me?

11:06 - Again? We're like, yeah, I just wanted you to go.

11:09 - I don't really know what I wanted. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. She's like, oh, come on, mom. And I'm like, no, I'm curious, right? You were excited for me to go. What were you hoping for? And so that launches into the whole conversation. And then I say to her, she's at that age where I don't want to be critical. I want to be very supportive. I want to be in her corner. And she says to me, I know you have some feedback. I love it. And she's like, Are you going to give it to me? I want to know what you think. And I'm like, do you do you really want to know what I think? She's like, yeah. And so it's funny. I'm trying really to help her think about, yeah, what does she look like?

11:59 - What do others see?

12:00 - What do others see? And I don't know at this point if she is processing that, right? She's at that age, they want to be cool. They want to be cool. And I get it. I wanted to be cool, too, right? I still want to be cool. I think I'm pretty cool. So she's wanting to be cool in her whole posture, her style. Everything she's building right now is cool. And so I said to her, I said, there's definitely an expectation of what a Junior Black belt looks like, how they enter the mat, how they leave the mat, how they stand. There is an expectation from the head person, the head instructor in there on what a black belt looks like, okay? And I asked her, I said, are you meeting that? Do you know what it is? And are you actually meeting that? And so she asked me clarifying questions. Anyways, I said, the way you're standing is not the way I would expect a Junior Black belt to stand. Your hands are forward. They're kind of over draped over your belt. It's different. I don't know that I've ever seen anybody stand like that. Where did that come from? How did you learn that? What is driving you to do that? And of course, she's like, oh, mom.

13:20 - Overall, she's like, listen, I'm just here helping out. I'm not in black belt mode.

13:24 - That's exactly right. She's like, I'm volunteering, mom. Get off my back. And I'm like, but these are some things you want to start thinking about, right, is what is the expectation of the head instructor for his Junior Black belts? You have exposure to 50 little girls in there who are looking up to you going, I want to be like that one day. What are you demonstrating? What are you looking like? What are they seeing every day? And so she very candidly, directly said to me, okay, so what am I supposed to do? And I said, well, look at the other Junior Black belts, right? They stand there, shoulders back, hands behind their back. That's how they walk around. But you put your hands forward and drape them over your belt, you're different. There's a reason why you want to be different. Tell me a little bit about that, right? We just go into this long conversation. I'm coming you today to go overdone. Is it overdone? Kim, let it go. Keep going. Keep talking about it. I do think it's important, right? She has this opportunity to be this leader to all these little kids, right? And they have this vision of who they might be one day after whatever number of years of studying. And I think it's important for her to start out right. Too much?

14:46 - No, I think you're spot on, honestly, because she is volunteering, right? This is kind of a fun time where I'm not, like, on the mat doing my thing. But I do think it's important to get her to think about, what does she want it to look like? What should it look like and what does it look like now? And what do other people see? Because that's leadership. That's leadership 101 when you're we just talked about it. Leadership presence, the last episode, right? How you walk into the room. What do you need to be when you're walking into the room? What are you supposed to be doing? What's your purpose while you're there? And is what you're doing matching that? I think, man, you can learn that young. It's one of those things that will. Be just like it'll just be so. Automatic by the time you're in early career mode. I think that's cool.

15:39 - Super cool. So I'll tell you a little quick follow up. So I went and watched her, kind of gave her that feedback to think about some things, right. How is she showing up? We did go further into kind of, like, her facial features and is she smiling at the kids and how does she encourage them? Right? Because, again, a leader is encouraging. They're motivating. They're demonstrating some level of empathy. I think she can learn all of these things now. And we are we're talking about these influence, and it's like, how do you motivate them when there's these two little kids and they're grappling and they're struggling with how to punch or how to kick and how do you say you can do it? Let me show you where to put your hand. Or here's how to move your hips, or here's how to do your legs. You can start motivating and encouraging now today. Anyways, so I go back, she changed where she put her hands. Nice. I was happy about that. Yes. I was like, I see that girl, I see that, and I'm like, Way to go. It was her decision. I didn't tell her what to do. I do want to say that's important to me. I really don't take the approach of saying, don't do this. You need to do this. I really want them to think a little bit about who do I want to be? How do I want to show up every day, and do I want to be in that leader role? Right. That's really the ultimate question. It's hard to be a leader.

17:04 - Yeah.

17:04 - Because people are looking at you and they're looking at kind of what you're doing wrong.

17:09 - And if you're not doing these things, should you be in that role? If you're not doing these things, if that's what really it should look like. But I think you're just going back to my point about not telling them you will do this and you won't do that. There are some moments like that, sure.

17:26 - There's a lot of moments like that.

17:28 - As parenting one on one, but getting them to a place where they can think for themselves and make that decision, because what I love, it's like there was a decision to be made when she stepped on the mat. The next time either Am or I'm not, I'm going to listen to my mom consider this or just poo poo that conversation. And there was a decision to be made, and she made a great decision.

17:53 - I love it. I was really excited about it, really excited about it. And I see right now, what I see is her getting excited about it and really wanting to influence. Right. I think that's the interesting thing is she's starting to make this connection of, oh, these four and five and six year olds, they want to be something like me one day, and so what am I showing them today? And for her to make that connection, I'm like, yes. You know me, right. I think about leadership all the time, and I'm so excited about it. So it's like I can talk to somebody else about leadership. Yeah, that's really cool.

18:38 - And then I think about too. It's just a very cool moment as a leader, when you're able to give someone so let's just say she's got the young kids in front of her. When you're able to give them pointers, instructions, things to consider, here's what you need to do, here's how to do it better. And then she sees them improve. That's the thing where I get super motivated as a leader, right. When I've given feedback and you see people start to change and develop and grow and get better at what they do, it's so rewarding. I'm just wondering if she's starting to see that.

19:14 - That's a good question. I'm going to have to try that one with her. I haven't quite gotten to that point yet. It's like helping her connect who she is, how she's showing up, how she's encouraging to impact. Right. I haven't done that. That's my next thing. I'm going to have to do that here in the next couple of months.

19:32 - Yeah. And do you have the patience to go back week after week after week to keep trying? Right. And then finally you see it and.

19:39 - You're like, it's happening. It's happening. I see it. So interesting thoughts here. It's a fun conversation for me, certainly, because I'm seeing the results of it happen right in front of my face with my own daughter. Any thoughts on discouraging people? Hey, look, it's too early to start this conversation around leadership. You know what? You might want to wait or from your perspective, is it gosh, you can really talk about kids in leadership, really, at any point because they can be a leader in any way. Right. We've talked about informal leaders, but I'm just curious your thoughts, man.

20:19 - Listen, now you're going to be like, well, you never had kids here on in my opinion, I think you can start them as early as they can understand right and wrong conversations, like preschool.

20:33 - Right.

20:33 - Because they're a kid with a group of other peers in there and there's right. And wrong. And so it's like, are you going to be the one that's going to drag everybody down? Are you going to be the one that's like, we're going to do the right thing? And I think you can start having those conversations very early.

20:53 - That's a good one. So get them going.

20:56 - Yeah, you can get everybody in trouble. Like, let's hit everybody over the head with blocks.

21:01 - Let's throw the rocks to the cars, everybody, come on. Yes.

21:06 - That's not right. We don't do that. We don't hit kids over the head. With blocks or whatever. And so when they start to know right from wrong and like, well, what did you do? Well, little Johnny, he was hitting everybody over the head with a block. Well, what did you do? Did you join in with little Johnny? Or did you just say Little Johnny? Not doing that. That is not right. Come on, kids, let's go do something else.

21:29 - I love it. I love it. Some of them are just naturally good at that, throwing the rocks and also pulling everybody to the side and going, we're not going to go do that. We're going to go color over here, y'all. Come on. All right, so I'm hearing just as a quick wrap up here, I'm hearing, hey, look, start those conversations. At a minimum, what you're really trying to build is decision making skills and talking asking questions versus directing and telling them, this is what you should go do.

22:04 - Yes.

22:04 - But really getting them to think about some things. And yes, certainly as parents, this is not about Parenting 101, right? I mean, yes, parents got to be directive and tell them what to do and what not to. We're not talking about that. We're really talking about building a foundation of leadership skills, starting with some level of right and wrong. How are you influencing people, moving into decision making? What decisions are you making? And then how are you holding yourself accountable to those decisions, owning those decisions, and then really evolving into, hey, look, here's how you're impacting others, and this is the result of that. Are you happy with that? Are you happy with where you're leading everybody and where they're going?

22:47 - Yes. The other thing I would say is these are really great conversations for grandparents, aunts, uncles. When you have someone young in your life, and I don't care if they're five or they're 25, when you have those moments and you have that leadership mindset, that one moment may be literally a life changing moment for them. Because I was literally in my 40s when I sat at the dinner table with someone that could ask amazing questions, and light bulbs just started to go off for me about how they raised their kids doing the same thing. And I was like, because they're attorneys, right? Attorneys know how to ask really good questions. And so I just thought about how that really influenced their kids, what a.

23:41 - Great comment, and it really starts with strong questions to engage, right. You're really trying to hear what's in their mind, what are they thinking, and trying to help them understand who they are as a leader, what that looks like as they move forward, and whether or not really they want to be in that role. Some may not, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's right. So those of you listening to this episode, think a little bit about it. How are you talking to your kids about leadership? Have you started that conversation? What's their level of engagement? It are they interested in taking that conversation along with you?

24:13 - Then, if you got parenting friends that need to hear this and need to have a little conversation about leadership, don't forget to share this podcast out. Don't forget to subscribe that'll put us in your feed every week so you can come back again for an extra shot of leadership.