Modeling Leadership Behavior for Our Children
It’s safe to say that most parents would love for their children to become leaders.
We want our children to become confident, independent and compassionate people that will end up being the teachers, presidents and CEO’s of the next generation. If we model behavior for our children, they are more likely to use behaviors of a leader.
Setting a great example of being a leader is what we as parents must do for our children. There are specific ways that we can go about helping to model leadership behaviors.
Modeling behavior that creates a leadership mentality in our children is to model behavior that strengthens emotional intelligence or EQ. Emotional intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to be able to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.
Our children learn emotional intelligence from how we demonstrate emotions in response to others and how we react to our children’s emotions as well. When we are interacting with our children, we have to remember to allow our children to feel different emotions without responding negatively ourselves. For example, if our child is having a meltdown, we need to be able to control our own emotional reactions in response. TalentSmart an Emotional Intelligence company states that EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is responsible for 58% of a leader’s job performance. Similarly, 90% of high performing leaders have a high emotional intelligence.
Another factor of Emotional Intelligence is focus. We can help our children learn to have strong attention skills by showing them what it means to pay attention. In order for our children to learn to pay attention we must model this behavior for them. At a very young age, children learn to master executive attention; the capacity to filter out interruptions and ignore distractions. Of course this can be a very difficult skill for anyone, but we can model this behavior by turning off our phones and giving direct attention to our children when they need it. Executive attention can be referred to as self control as well. This self control ends up manifesting into mental skills like self-awareness and self-regulation, imperative for navigating our lives and becoming successful adults with leadership skills.
Modeling behavior for our children is the first step in creating a leader. Of course this means parents have to exhibit focus and self control when it comes to our emotions. Helping our children to develop strong Emotional Intelligence is a key factor in helping to develop a strong leader!
