The harm done by “parenting”... and “leadership”

I was shocked to learn recently the term parenting only became part of the lexicon in the 1950s.  Even though there were more than a few parents before then, we apparently didn’t need a separate word for what parents DID.  Parents were people who had children - and for the most part - followed their instincts to raise those children (or put the older siblings in charge).  For good and for bad.

The term parenting ushered in a new era that took off in the 1970s with bestselling books like How to Parent.  “Parenting” now meant there was a method to raising children – one that can be studied, analyzed, and written about (endlessly).  Today, an entire industry – generating billions of dollars a year – exists for parents who want to spend money on books, podcasts, channels, and experts who are on hand to guide us through nearly every conceivable aspect of raising a child: from their birth to their first feeds to their college applications.  

As a parent (and parenting consumer), I feel like some good has surely come from all of this guidance and help.  But it’s also made me see parenting as something that – at least to some extent – I need others to tell me how to do it.  If I just trust my instincts, maybe I’ll end up doing something that will damage my kid.

And yet, as the “parenting industry” has exploded, so have the rates of anxiety and mental health disorders among American children.  This is probably more to do with technology and social media than misguided parenting approaches, but it does make me wonder if we’ve actually done some damage by divorcing parents from their natural, human parenting instincts.  Certainly, there are still entire cultures where parents are supremely comfortable relying on their instincts to raise children, without the need (and/or the means) to invest in parenting tools or guidance.  And, in at least many cases, they are producing more well-adjusted children.

It might be that making parenting a field of study has had mixed results. The same might be true for leadership.

As evidenced by any airport bookstore, the “leadership” industry is exponentially bigger than the parenting one.  Humans have been leading other humans for at least 10,000 years but “leadership” has been a field of study for less than 100 years.  In that time it has been dissected and frameworked ad nauseum.  Many of the organizations we’ve supported have put considerable effort into building out extensive leadership “competencies.”  There’s enough jargon in leadership to merit its own Duolingo application.  Leadership blogs are everywhere (oh … wait). 

The implicit message is the same as with “parenting.”  Leadership is something you have to learn.  It’s not already inside of you.

But what if that’s mostly bogus?

The most exhaustive study of leadership ever done was arguably when Gallup conducted 80,000 interviews of managers over a 25 year period.  Their findings about what the most effective leaders had in common were presented in the terrific book First, Break All the Rules – no doubt widely available in airport bookstores in its day.  Do you know what was NOT a finding?  That those managers had ever read a book about leadership.  Or had any training in leadership whatsoever.

The work that we do with leaders is based on the premise that you already have the instincts and inner-wisdom you need to be an effective leader.  There’s nothing we can “teach” you that will be more impactful than the incredibly sophisticated gut instincts, inner-wisdom, and emotional intelligence that have been finely tuned over six million years of human evolution.  So instead, we provide the space for leaders to slow down, get in touch with their inner-guidance, and then unlearn much of their conditioning about what leaders do.

If you want to learn physics, how to write code, or put together your new bed from Ikea, then by all means find the right text or tutorial (or AI platform).  There’s nothing in your deeply evolved human nature that has set you up to do those things naturally.  But helping other humans be safe, connected, and grow?  Whether it’s parenting or leadership, THAT is something you’ve already got powerful instincts and inner-knowing to draw from.

So if you want to open a book about leadership, there are many great ones.  But you might be best off opening a journal instead.  Then you can slow down and get in touch with what your gut and heart are already telling you about what you need or want to do.  If you’re struggling because of deeply ingrained patterns like people-pleasing, excessive self-criticism, or controlling behavior – then the remedy might require deeper inner-work, not more extensive “outer-work” of theories, frameworks, or competencies.

Just like parenting, this is hard stuff.  It demands deep presence, self-awareness, and will push you to grow as a person.  But just because it’s a struggle, doesn’t mean you don’t know how to do it.

In fact, in my opinion, you do.