Sandra McDowell, the founder, and voice behind leadership Academy caught my attention in her recent post about how comfortable leaders are (or aren’t) with silence. As a recovering corporate professional, I immediately related. As a parent, an adoptive mom of two men in their twenties, I related. The idea that leaders with a Coach approach are more successful today than those with a Command or Compliant approach is painfully obvious. It also parallels the role of a parent with adult children. In Sandra’s post, presented below, insert the word parent before leader or leadership and you will see the parallels too. When our kids are young they need varying degrees of control, direction, and acceptable choice. As they leave High School and launch their independence, they need a Coach and a Raving Fan. A parent’s ability to handle silence, power, and really listen has a direct correlation to the success of their kid’s launch.

Love is in the air. Women have no doubt chosen special cards for the people they love, especially their spouse. They have planned a special meal or dessert and are thinking about candles and other things to make dinner memorable for their spouse and family.

At what time in your life have you felt safe enough to make a mistake, loved enough to take a risk, valued enough to be authentic, and accepted enough to just go for it? Think about it. It is an important question.

Heated family discussions can go so wrong so fast. Has that ever happened to you? You walk into the conversation with every intention to learn about someone’s day or to engage them in conversation and you walk out of it shaking your head in disbelief and asking how someone could think that or say that to you. It happens to everyone and has for all time. The tricky part, especially in family dynamics, is separating fact from opinion … usually their fact and your opinion. And stopping yourself from assigning meaning or a motive to what was said or done. Here is an example from a recent conversation with a client.

This blog is for adoption parents –

Raising our adopted kids is a love story for sure, along with it come mountain top highs and deep valley lows. The milestones for raising biological kids and adopted kids are the same. However, each stage in an adoption life comes with that extra layer of complexity.

Personal growth is predicated by openness to consider and learn what we don’t already know without giving way to feelings of weakness, failure, or inferiority because we don’t already know it. WOW … read that again. It’s true.

Investing in a coach means personal growth. You will be better on the other side of this experience because you choose to learn, grow, change, and achieve. That was the feedback from a client just last week.

“I’m frustrated! I thought we were past this *#!&* and it feels like we are right back to where we started. Will we ever be a family that feels connected and trusts each other? I just don’t know.” She said in exasperation.

My client and I were meeting on the hiking trails in the National Park near my house. Her family had found some common ground and peace for a while and now it seemed that it was lost, again. She adopted a brother and sister from another country and the oldest had begun pushing away and resisting her as his mom. He met a group of kids with his cultural background at school and had begun to feel a strong connection there.

That famous and much repeated line from Empire Strikes Back, was a shocker and a pivotal moment for most people as they sat in the audience. I remember being on the edge of my seat for those fight scenes. On the way home I was excited about the next release and felt comfort in knowing who my dad was and knowing the love, kindness, and good that came with him. No surprises for me. Whew!