How to Raise Your Child to be A Success In Business

It’s very exciting to really find your niche.  You know the idea that we shouldn’t be generalists, but should niche down into a specialty area that represents our passion.  Only, you’d think that would be easy – well I did.  So how come it’s taken me decades to finally feel – YES! THIS IS IT!  Someone smack me for taking so long.  And yet, in a way, I couldn’t have found it sooner, because I was still stepping on the stones that were leading the way.

What am I going on about?  Well, for years my number one priority between my coaching, training, writing and public speaking work has been…none of the above.  Not that it wasn’t dear to me.  But being a mother topped it all.  Quite right too.  But then I found that my interest in finding the tools to communicate well with my er, challenging and spirited children, tied completely into my NLP work and all my other interests.  Thus, I started running Parenting Strategy Groups and produced my first E book:  Parenting By Stealth (with the subtitle: because ‘do as I say because I say so’ doesn’t work any more!) Aint that the truth!

And then I was asked to be involved in a project with local authorities, wanting to bridge the large gap that employers complained about – that the school leavers were often ‘not fit for purpose’.  Yikes.  This was to do with the youngsters’ general inability in the area of interpersonal skills, ie communicating with confidence, showing initiative, being able to be a team member, taking criticism, presenting information clearly etc etc.    Ah, but then I had a son leave University and became aware of the problems facing graduates too.  300 graduates after one job?  Almost none in my son’s year getting work in their chosen field (he was one of the ‘lucky’ ones but went abroad to find this work)..and so on.

There’s a crisis!  It’s not going to ease up either.  Jobs are scarcer and even if you’ve cadjoled your child into the hardest of work and a first class degree – there’s still no guaranteed work at the end of the line.  We just can’t keep spinning that lie.  The old ‘guaranteed’ route to a great working life has evaporated.  The reality is that neither university nor school are positioned to act as grooming for the employment agencies.

So that’s where we parents had better step in and change what we’re doing in our part of the equation!  We need to nurture the skills that will enable our kids to become superstar employees or awesome entrepreneurs.

We’re going to have to foster the soft skills and all the traits that employers want.  We have to take the time to truly listen to our children and let them set out their thoughts and arguments to prove their points.  We’ll need to fill up their confidence and self-esteem troughs without it turning into arrogance.  And we need to stop solving their problems but instead, supporting their own endeavours to solve them for themselves.  We also have to make it safe for our younger children to fail and for us not to finish all their homework and coursework for them.   Our pride was at stake, our intentions were good – but our children never learned their own deadlines or consequences when we did that.  Blast.  Guilty as charged.

So the book is being crafted and it’s beginning to write itself as I tap into my passion.  But if you have thoughts for my new book as an entrepreneur, employer, educator, youth or parent – let me have them.  I don’t think this book is a minute too soon in the current economic climate – so excuse me, I’ve got an imminent deadline to meet!