If you’re a father, you have a superpower that may be untapped. If you’re not a father, you may have a superpower you ought to intentionally develop.
If you’re a woman, you may be able to find some parallels to your “Mom Voice” – but I think the “Mom Voice” may have some different qualities to be considered, and different or additional strategies to apply to bring it to work. I am only a father, so I can’t say anything for sure about how to bring a “Mom Voice” to work.
In a recent discussion with a mentee I commented, “You should work on bringing your Dad Voice to work.”
At first glance, this seemed incompatible with some feedback he’d received from some members of his team about being too authoritative, which turned into a great opportunity to explore what a “Dad Voice” is and how to use it at work.
Love and Authority
There are two foundational aspects to a “Dad Voice”: Love and Authority. As a good father your children have spent their whole lives knowing that you love them and that they are subject to your authority. More than that, they’ve learned that even when your authority overrides their wishes, it is for their good and that things turn out better for them in the end. Your children also love you, and that makes them more receptive to your authority.
But, how does that translate into your work environment?
No one at work loves you the way you love your children do at home. And even if you work with your children, they’ve grown up enough that your direct authority over them is waning, if it has not already completely dissipated.
Neither is it not correct to view your employees / team members as your children. Not in the positive and loving sense, nor in the negative and expectation-lowering sense.
To “bring your Dad Voice to work,” requires that you are invested in seeing people become better individuals and teammates, while at the same time prioritizing the mission and purpose of the work you all have to accomplish to achieve business success.
That is, you build mutual respect and trust (a kind of love) by engaging with each person as a person, and you enrich your organizational (hierarchical) authority by developing a shared sense of purpose within your team.
Just as it has taken time and personal investments to develop an effective “Dad Voice” at home, so too will it take time and personal investments to do so at work. In the end, however, those investments not only make you and your team more performant, they make everyone happier and more confident, and create better business outcomes for you and your customers / clients.
