The following is a guest piece by this month’s guest blogger, Roberta Hill. Roberta “complains” she has too many fingers in too many pies. It seems the older she gets the more interests she discovers.  Lately she has been calling herself a digital nomad.  She writes three blogs, runs an online assessment business and maintains a coaching practice. In her real life, parenting is her recent challenge. She tells me, it is the most worthwhile, time consuming and difficult role she has ever assumed.  You can read more of her insights on leadership and personal development on her blog.

While the focus on leadership is important, it is my opinion that good management is a lost skill in “Corporate America”. This may be a reflection on the well being of our family structure as well. Leadership is an interesting topic and since taking on the role of a parent, I have found that the family is the best microcosm of larger corporate organizations.

I have always considered myself a pretty good manager and by association tend to assume I am a good leader. Don’t misunderstand me; I do recognize the difference. I stepped out of the corporate world years ago and my formal role of managing others ended. Since then, I have been the Chair on a few non-for-profit boards. I have coordinated large projects with consultants. I coach executives on how to be global leaders. Surely I know how to lead! Looking at how well I parent, I often wonder.

In my family, I organize, plan, control and direct.¹ I use my power effectively and I balance coercion, reward, position and even informational influence. Things get done. However, I am not sure I inspire my children. I can motivate then to do what I think needs doing; but not sure I fully engage them. Am I stuck in the sixties? Am I a good manager but not a modern leader?

I am a strong believer that Click here to continue reading »”Do You Manage or Lead? Look to Your Family Role”

Over the Thanksgiving Day long weekend, one of the many activities I did with my wife and kids was heading out into the countryside to go apple-picking.  After spending some time foraging for the best apples from the wide variety offered within the orchard’s groves, we decided to take a short break at one of the many playgrounds found around the orchard.  While my wife went off to purchase some of the local, freshly made treats being sold at one of the farm’s shops, I found us a picnic table on which to place our sizable share of apples as our children ran off to enjoy the large wooden playground nearby.  Waiting for her to return, I soon found myself mesmerized with watching my girls play; of seeing them taking turns sharing the rocking-horse swing and leading each other in and around the playground fort.  It was a simple moment and yet at the same time, it helped to shine a light on what all those daily struggles during the work week were for. Click here to continue reading »”Savouring The Bounty of Our Lives”

If Paris is “the city of lights”, then without question Montreal is the city of festivals.  And the one festival that best demonstrates this has to be Montreal’s world renowned jazz festival, the “Festival International de Jazz de Montreal”.  Of course, this year’s event was certainly bigger than previous ones as the festival was celebrating its 30th anniversary of bringing this musical genre out onto the streets of Montreal and into the various clubs and theatres throughout the city.  But the festival’s organizers were not the only ones celebrating a major milestone with this year’s edition of the jazz festival.  In fact, this year’s festival also marked my 20th consecutive year of attending this amazing celebration of the world of jazz.  And just as the jazz festival itself has evolved over the years, so too has my own personal experiences being an attendee of this event.

Walking around this year’s festival grounds, I couldn’t help but reminisce about how I first started attending this event as Click here to continue reading »”Jazz and Montreal – Celebrating a Major Milestone”

The first time I met my maternal grandfather I was eleven years old, on a trip to visit the homes and places where my parents grew up and lived before moving to Canada. Sadly, it also turned out to be the only time I got to be with him as two months after our return home, he died from a brain aneurysm. While the news hit me hard, what I remember most from that fateful morning was the sounds of my mother’s mournful and inconsolable weeping, of a daughter crying out to her father who just mere weeks earlier had held her in his arms to say what turned out to be his last good-bye. Although that trip was the first and only time I ever got to be with my grandfather, as is the case with life, his passing was to be the first of many times where I’d be reminded of the inevitable truth that no one lives forever.

Of course, the loss of a loved one is Click here to continue reading »”Saying Goodbye To The Ones We Love”

Over this past long weekend, there were two events that had me thinking about the impact being a father has had on my life. The first was the news of a good friend of mine welcoming the birth of his baby daughter while the second was my family celebrating our oldest daughter’s birthday. Although they’re disparate events, they serve to highlight what I’ve experienced so far being a dad and what I expect will come around the corner in the years ahead.

Near the end of last week, my good friend Matt and his wife gave birth to a baby girl. Talking to him mere hours after the birth of his daughter and hearing him struggle for words, I couldn’t help but smile and remember how the birth of my daughters had had the same impact on me, of how seeing my newborn daughter for the very first time brought to light the reality that our family had now grown by one. You see for men, the idea of there now being this new little person sharing our life doesn’t really sink in until that moment when we meet face to face, and especially when we finally cradle this little package in our arms. Sure, thanks to our wives, we’re aware of how the baby is wrecking havoc on their bladder or that the baby’s calisthenics routine is keeping them up at night to prove the incoming change in our lives. There’s also the undeniable growing belly our wives’ start to carry and that unforgettable moment when we can actually feel our baby kicking from inside the womb. But in the end, Click here to continue reading »”Of Fathers and Daughters”