Leadership lessons from dad

Growing up I never saw much of my dad.

Mostly they were glimpses of him asleep till late on Sunday, snoring loud and long. Or watching him occasionally when he went bowling with his bank mates at the defunct Orchard Bowl. Dad was a remote figure and mum was in my day to day. We never really had a meaningful conversation and then as grown-ups, with family of my own, somehow the chasm seemed harder to bridge.

When he had heart failure and was about to undergo a heart bypass operation, I realised I needed to say everything I should say about him, to him, to his face. I was quite unabashedly maudlin about it too. I think I realised then that remote or not, I did love him and I guess, now that he has survived that heart episode and other subsequent harrowing health escapes, he knew too how I feel about him. Ours is a typical Asian father-daughter relationship - stiff, distant, not very communicative but with heart buried underneath all that facade.

We don't usually have long conversations. Partly my fault as an intellectual snob. Conversations with dad sometimes took exhausting convolutions in reason/argument/meaning.  And so I generally steer clear - quite happy to just sit with him and watch the news together.

Until the other day. When my father taught me the first real lesson he's ever had as a dad.

We were just sitting in front of the TV as usual when I was just moaning about work and how rough its been, how much I have to do and how I feel obliged to stay and fight with my team in the trenches even when I was clearly of no use to them.

He listened and said: "So you think leadership by example is the best way ah?"

And I said, "Yeah. If I can do so much, I expect my team to do the same or more. If I stick by them and show my grit, I expect the same from them."

Dad smiled his lazy smile and shook his head: "You're wrong."

"Leadership by example is the worst way to lead. If leading by example means you do more than you should then that is a bad example. You will burn out. Your team will also burn out. What kind of example is that? You should lead by knowing your strengths, knowing your team's strengths and using those appropriately. It is not about work and more work. When you learn how to pull back, your team also learns from you that the message is not about quantity and effort but how you use what you are good in."

Man, I was dumbfounded. I knew my dad can be an intellectual - this man reads the novels of Jin Yong, DC Comics and Marvel comics and is one of the best conspiracy theorists I know - but this was really the first time he has said anything to me that just blew me away.

It's never too late. At the age of 50, I sit at my father's knee and learn new lessons about life.

It's about time.