Do you know what kind of people can make great people managers? Parents. Having children teaches you a lot about managing people.
And I believe this rule works in reverse too. Good managers can be good parents. That idea motivated the approach I took when I was a people manager; I thought like a parent as I managed my team.
Hopefully, it has helped. Here's why:
It was sometime around my freshman year of college when I got the call. I still remember it to this day.
Cute as a button and small as a purse, Ginger was a scampering, yipping puff of hair. She was a tiny black Pomeranian, which is classified as a toy dog breed because they're small like children's toys.
Our cousins gave her to us, back when she could fit in a mug. They called her Cookie, because she loved cookies. My Mom carried her home in her purse.
"You're such an instigator," my Dad told me.
"Instigator?" I wondered. "What does that word mean?" I had no idea. I was in pre-SAT grade school at the time. So I looked it up in a dictionary.
"Remember that song that made you cry?" asked my Mom.
"Yea, I think so." I scratched my cheek. "It was some song by Chicago."
"No, it wasn't. It was a song called 'Honey.' Let's find it."
"Find it? Why? You want to make me cry right now?"
"How did you get up there?" our little cousins asked. They were on their tippy-toes, as if their toes would magically get them on the roof too.
"We flew," my brother and I answered.
"No you didn't. Did you?"
"Yup, we did. And you can't come up because you don't believe us."
I'm not sure what possessed me to light that bush on fire.
Maybe it was because I knew where my Mom kept the matches. That's just about all the reason an adolescent male needs to light anything on fire.
Yeh-Yeh is what you call your grandfather, your father's father, in Cantonese. Ngeen-Ngeen is what you call your grandmother, your father's mother.
It was the waterfall of blood that shocked me the most. But before I get ahead of myself, let me tell you why I hit him on the forehead.
My parents had never had a vacation without my brother and me until that week. Being the archetypical Chinese parents, our family vacations were to Adventure Land (a lame rip-off of Six Flags Great Adventure), Hershey Park (a lame rip-off of Disney World), and, um, that's about it. It was just those two.
Chinese parents have stomachs of iron. Literally; their stomach lining is cold hard metal. Rivets line their intestines. There is very little they cannot digest; I kid you not. Want me to prove it?
Well, pull up a chair and let me tell you a story. 'Tis a true story, a story from my youth.
"Michael, come with me," commanded my father. I blinked, got up from my homework, and followed him. We walked into the family TV room.
"Sit down."
I sat down.
Weekly random rambles, musings & writings of Mike Lee in San Francisco, CA