Taking business lessons from work to home.

Thoughtful leaders know they achieve the best results when they give up control and put decision-making in the hands of their coworkers.  Let’s say you want to streamline the process your company uses to produce their main product or service.  As any good leader you have strong opinions about how this should be accomplished.  

You attend the initial meeting of the group charged with finding a better way to work, but instead of using your power and authority to dictate your more precise direction, you simply work your "suggestions" into the discussion at appropriate times during the meeting so that your ideas are being implemented, but perhaps in just a slightly different form than you would have dictated them in a top-down style of leadership.

This can be a tough transition for many authoritarian leaders to make.  But chances are your coworkers will be far more excited about the new procedures because they were an active part of setting the new policy.  They have ownership in the process and chances of successful execution just increased dramatically.

This is just as true for your kids.  Little people want to be in control too.  For example, if you encourage your kids to help select the evening's dinner menu, with proper nutritional guidelines, they will learn how to eat nutritiously, they will learn how to plan a healthy meal and because they made the selections for dinner, chances are they’ll clean their plate because it was their decision what to have for dinner and not yours. 

Plus it is an easy way to engage your kids and share a fun activity.  And then when they grow up and leave your nest with huge smiles on their faces as they are waving goodbye you can rest assured they will have the skills to choose and eat their own healthy meals.  And that is no small thing.

It is amazing what you can accomplish at home and work if you don’t care who gets the credit and if, for one night, you can live with green peas instead of yellow corn.