Does Parenting Make One A Better Manager?

A couple of years ago, with my colleagues, I participated in a heated debate on whether parenting contributes to improvement of managerial competence at the workplace or not. The rationale was that a parent naturally acquires accommodation of various characters and/or moods whilst maintaining overall objectivity of making the child's life better. The argument was that a manager will therefore accommodate and understand various temperaments and characters and deliberately effectively channel those competencies to hopefully achieve organisational productivity. Conversely, a non-parent will not have the natural patience and skill to bring out the best in people and will, in most cases, be inconsiderate, impatient and may consequently fail to achieve productivity through harnessing the different characters in staff.

After much interaction and a bit of experience, I would propose a conclusion to the debate as follows. Parenting does contribute to managerial competency albeit the value add being very very marginal. Here's why.

The environments existing under parenting and work place managerial are very different. While one is relational and social, driven by a sort of 'parasitic' model where there is largely taking or receiving, the other is very symbiotic. A skill, time, or other is offered for a reward that should ideally be commensurate to the offered competence or time.

Very few organisations will adopt a relational approach at the work place- where they will deliberately identify and accommodate characters and channel these towards strength fields eventually achieving their objectives. I know of very few international ones and even fewer local ones. The challenge of adopting relational approaches at work place is that the model is highly time intensive and would require adoption of tools that would assist quantify ROI for soft skills.

In conclusion, parenting will naturally equip a manager with tolerance and patience to understand and nurture characters towards productivity. This is however a marginal value add in work place environments where the employer-employee relationship is a give and take one characterised with strict timelines, objectives and performance indicators. There are however few institutions which go a step further to nurture and coach/mentor characters to mould them to certain performance levels although such approaches are highly time resource intensive and require deliberate effort.

In conclusion, parenting will naturally equip a manager with tolerance and patience to understand and nurture characters towards productivity. This is however a marginal value add in work place environments where the employer-employee relationship is a give and take one characterised with strict timelines, objectives and performance indicators.