NOTE: I am actively editing this website this week. Please forgive any typos or unfinished sections.
The skills that build great executive teams also build great families.
You're exhausted before the day even begins. Some days, you're counting the minutes until the next nap or until bedtime.
You've read the parenting books. You've tried all the apps and hacks. You're doing everything you can, but the same arguments keep happening and the resentment is starting to build.
Two capable adults were handed the hardest leadership job of their lives with no training, no onboarding, and no guidelines. The job is 24/7 without sick days.
Burnout is almost inevitable.
You knew parenthood would be hard, but you didn't think it would be this hard.
Nobody ever trained you for this leadership role. Parents in the trenches of the baby years are our most under-resourced leaders.
I spent a decade in leadership development. Then I spent five years at home with our two sons. In the thick of it, with a baby, a toddler, and a home remodel, I started looking at the issues in my family the way a management consultant looks at a struggling organization. It changed me for the better as a mom, and I've been building Home Executive ever since.
In business and in family:
The best leaders are self aware.
The best leaders invest in their team.
The best leaders know where they're going.
The best leaders protect what's important.
Christina Hannon Luehring
Most parenting advice focuses on logistics. How to divide the grocery shopping. Organization tips for toys. Best sleep sacks to buy. Which app or calendar to use. How to survive another busy week.
Those things matter. They help you with the operations of running a family.
But operations only work when they're built with a strategy in place and when they are led by a healthy leadership team.
What is missing is self-awareness and strategy. Knowing what drains you quicker than others, knowing how to communicate your needs and trust each other, and knowing what matters most to your unique family helps you weed through all the parenting hacks and advice.
When two people understand themselves, trust each other, and share a common vision, they're equipped to build systems that fit their family, and adapt them when life inevitably changes.
Executives don't expect their job to be easy. Teams go through predictable rough patches. They have to build trust, have healthy conflict, and develop norms and goals to be productive and thrive. That takes sacrifice and hard work.
When you look at parenting as an executive leadership challenge, stage of life is hard for everyone, and if you feel defeated and depleted.
We invest heavily in our
leaders at work.
We give new parents a village metaphor and a casserole.
An executive coach works with the person in charge on how they operate. What they're good at, what drains them, what they should stop trying to do themselves.
A management consultant looks at the whole organization. Where the trouble is actually coming from. Who owns what. Where this is all going. Then they help build a plan.
None of this is soft. It's the most practical work there is, and companies pay well for it, because a team that doesn't understand itself burns through its best people.
Nobody does management consulting for families. But you can do it for yourself.
This is leadership development work. It doesn't replace therapy or parenting books. It enhances and supports all of that hard work.
One page. What is important to your family, what you're looking forward to, what you actually need to do in the next ninety days. This is the strategic plan that moves you out of survival mode.
Use this Home Executive Tool: Same Page Strategic Plan
Your Plan
You and your partner are thoroughly invested in the success of your organization. Success doesn't happen overnight. Trust, honest disagreement, and understanding why you frustrate each other, so that you tackle problems together, and don't take them out on each other.
Use this Home Executive Tool: Leadership Team Profile
Your Team
The best leaders are self-aware. Do you know what drains you faster than it seems to drain other people? What is easier for you that is hard for others? What margin do you need in your week to work best? That's your wiring. Personality assessments make that visible, and every one of them holds clues. Once you can see it, a lot of what felt like personal failure turns out to be friction that has an explanation.
Yourself
The logistics. Make a million decisions a little easier by working with your wiring and not against it. Build rhythms and routines that make even your worst day a bit smoother.
Your Day-to-Day
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