How management is similar to parenthood; or, Why parents often make good managers

Parenthood and people management have much in common. So it is no surprise that people who have experience raising children often make good managers. And vice versa. This article will show ways in which parenthood and people management are similar.

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This text is derived from an article on Entrepreneur.com.

Communication skills

Communication skills are key to success in both parenthood and team leadership. Any misunderstandings lead to big problems, so both managers and parents learn quite quickly to communicate clearly what it is they want from their subordinates and children respectively. Both managers and parents also need to pay attention to what the other person is thinking and saying. If parents and managers ignore their children and subordinates, it leads to justified frustration as well as unnecessary yet significant misunderstandings.

Patience

Every parent quickly discovers you cannot tell a child something just once and expect them to understand it. Usually you need to repeat it several times. A parent often has to go back to basics and patiently explain everything again from the beginning multiple times. Parents need to accept that a child makes mistakes when learning and also will sometimes do things differently from what the parent would expect. To some extent all this applies also to manager-subordinate relations.

Time management

When you become a parent, you find out you need to deal with time differently. There are a lot of things you no longer have under control and you need to learn not only to plan efficiently but also be ready to change these plans ad hoc at the last minute. This is the same with managers too. Therefore both parents and managers should be good planners who manage their time well and are also resilient to the stress caused by situations in which things do not go according to plan.



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Article source Entrepreneur.com - website of a leading U.S. magazine for entrepreneurs
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