South Africa’s leaders are orphans
by Fred Roed on 13/02/08 at 9:35 am
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I had a thought while driving to the shop with my 3yr old daughter this morning. She’s a beautiful, confident well-adjusted young madam, and the teachers at her school call her ‘a little leader’.
So, exactly how did she become a leader? I thought of her situation. She has a home, food, decent school, and two very adoring (if slightly obsessive) parents. We’re there for her. I’ve read now in countless parenting books (again, we’re obsessive!) that one of the keys to strong kids and adolescents is involved parenting. The worst thing for a kid is absence of parenting.
What does this require? Well, it’s not rocket science, even though it sometimes seems pretty hard. As parents, we should be present, engaged and involved. We should be consistent and firm with discipline. We should be fair and loving. These are things that my wife and I are trying really hard to provide, and we can see the fruit in a happy, confident little girl. We make mistakes all the time, but I think the direction is what is important. The way to think about it is to imagine what it would be like for her if we weren’t there. Imagine if she was an orphan?
Did the new leaders of industry and government in SA receive this type of attention? Were they parented when they were thrust into their various positions of leadership? I often hear the argument that there is a ‘hand-out mentality’ in South Africa. I think this is nonsense. I think that there is a lack of accountability.
Maybe those of us who were / are leaders have to learn how to be better parents?
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
