OPINION: Good Dads Make Good Bosses

The integration of work and family in the lives of executive men may be one of the most substantial transitions affecting businesses today.

BY ARTHUR COLEMAN, MBA '85

WE ARE WITNESSING a widespread phenomenon among American men--one that is as likely to affect a fast-track senior executive as it is a middle manager who has decided to sacrifice career advancement in favor of more family time, and one that may affect women managers as much as it does men. This phenomenon--the integration of work and family in the lives of key executive men--will radically change how companies relate to their employees' families, their male executives, and, just as important, their female executives.
       In fact, this change in social attitudes may be the quiet pin drop that finally shatters the glass ceiling and fills a large percentage of executive positions with highly qualified women. As executive men assume stereotypically female roles in the home, the values and managerial styles expected in senior executives will shift to styles that make it easier to promote women into the executive suite.
       The situation seems to be the result of interlocking social trends. As married women move into the workforce, they are spending substantially less time on household maintenance and child care. Statistics show that married men in the workforce have effectively increased their time on household maintenance and child care by almost the exact amount their spouses have decreased it, to the point where married men spend just slightly less time than their spouses on household duties. In other words, gender roles are equalizing.
       Whether as a result of such role equalization or because of other social factors, this generation of fathers has very different attitudes toward fathering than the previous generation. Today's fathers increasingly want both high achievement and the ability to spend time with their families. This is a fundamental change from the older model (termed the "mañana model" by Fernando Bartolome of Harvard Business School), where male managers willingly pushed family concerns off into the future.
       The change has profound implications for today's families, but it has been largely ignored by the press and by the fathers themselves. The press generally covers only the extremes of behavior, focusing either on the full-time stay-at-home father (Mr. Mom) or on the father who has run away from his responsibilities to his family. The more important silence comes from working fathers. Like mothers before them, these men have created an unintentional conspiracy of silence for fear of being pigeonholed into a second-tier career, or "daddy track." How many men (and women) reading this article have ever quietly left a meeting early, claiming another meeting when in fact they needed to pick up their children--out of fear that leaving work early for family reasons would be perceived as a lack of commitment to the company?
       Managers would be well advised to pay attention to this trend and work to help their employees--especially men--create an integrated work/family environment. There are five solid business reasons for doing this:
       1. EMPLOYEE RETENTION. Many high achievers in today's corporations, whether male or female, have coparenting responsibilities. Helping to reduce their stress in balancing work and family will be considered a key employee benefit and will enhance retention of these critical people.
       2. INCREASED EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT. A 1992 study at St. Paul Companies found that "staff who believed work was causing problems in their personal lives were much more likely to make mistakes than those who had few job-related personal problems." Another study, released by DuPont in October 1995, found that employees who use work/life programs are 45 percent more likely to "go the extra mile" to assure that DuPont succeeds. Study after study shows that there is a direct correlation between a supportive work environment and increased employee commitment.
       3. IMPROVED PROFITABILITY. These same studies show that companies can actually measure a positive return from such programs. First Tennessee National Corp. started treating family issues as part of business strategy and found that "supervisors rated by their subordinates as supportive of work-family balance retained employees twice as long as the bank average and kept 7 percent more retail customers," contributing to a 55 percent profit gain over two years.
       4. HEALTHIER, WELL-ADJUSTED CHILDREN. The involvement of fathers in their children's lives has important, positive impacts at every stage of development, studies show. This includes higher reading levels, better math competence, and greater willingness of children to take initiative and direct themselves--as well as reduced drug use, juvenile delinquency, and teen pregnancy. Considering the costs to companies of dealing with these issues (such as remedial training programs to bring employees' math or reading skills to needed levels), it is clear that helping employees develop well-adjusted children is in companies' best short- and long-term interest.
       But there is an even subtler point to be made here. Senior executives at corporations are the company's best and brightest leaders, with the best people skills and organizational abilities. We might hope that at least some of these skills would transfer by example from the active parents among them to the next generation. Such a transfer would ensure that a fundamentally higher level of leadership skill and managerial competence is brought to bear as the next generation enters the workforce. Instead of having children who resent "the company" because it took daddy or mommy away from them too often and who avoid business careers because of this resentment, companies would have an enhanced foundation on which to build their future.
       5. ENHANCED MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP SKILLS. It has been my experience, and that of other active fathers I work with, that many of the skills we develop by handling family situations are ones we need for managing teams in the corporation.
       A personal anecdote: I used to say "no" a lot to people making requests of me, and I was perceived as being difficult to deal with. In dealing with my young son, however, I learned quickly that "no" worked badly as a management tool. Instead, I learned to give my child two choices. This empowered him, made him feel in control, and got me a lot more cooperation in the long term. Today, I use that same technique extensively at work. As a result, I get much more cooperation from coworkers and an improved perception of my style.
       Attitudes toward work/family integration for men as well as for women are changing. The senior-executive mothers and fathers of the future will be active parents. Executives building the corporation of today will have to respect the needs of these young leaders if they hope to retain them. By helping them attain a satisfying balance of their business and parenting roles, corporations will achieve long-term success while achieving their short-term goals.

Excerpted from Sun Journal, a publication of Sun Microsystems.