According to the woman who has raised three successful daughters, two of whom became CEOs, the biggest mistake parents make is doing too much for one’s kids. If you want to raise a future CEO, it is important to teach them to be responsible for themselves to develop leadership skills.
The number one rule of good parenting, according to Esther Wojcicki is – Don’t do anything for your kids that they can do for themselves. Her daughter, Susan, is the CEO of YouTube while Anne is the co-founder of 23andMe. A third daughter, Janet, is a highly-accomplished epidemiologist and Fullbright scholar.
So, what did Esther Wojciciki do right that led her to develop CEO qualities in her daughters?
The journalist and educator believes that self-reliance is key to leadership, and recommends cultivating the below-listed values as they are the precursors to developing the qualities of a good CEO.
Her TRICK to raising successful kids with CEO qualities stands for Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, and Kindness.
Encourage Guided Independence
Esther Wojcicki feels very strongly about parents who coddle their kids. She states that kids must be given the freedom to try things on their own, but at the same time parents must be available to offer unconditional support and guidance.
In her words, the more you trust them, the more empowered they will be. It is also key to helping them feel secure and developing a positive parent-child relationship.
She states that children must feel confident enough to approach you for help. Instead of telling them how you want it done, they should be allowed to share their input and ideas.
Children grow up according to your expectations. But helicopter parenting has never helped anyone nor will it result in future CEOs. In an interview with CNBC she shared that she prefers letting kids figure things out by themselves and when they are stuck, nudges them along in the right direction.
In her book, How To Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons to Help Your Child Become Self-Driven, Respectful, and Resilient, Esther Wojciciki revealed that she would let her grandchildren shop for themselves at Target at around age eight. Her reason behind doing so was that as kids who wanted to buy some school supplies, they knew what they needed. With her own kids, when they were school-going, she would give them the freedom to set their own alarm, pick their outfit, help out with lunch and dinner prep, and plan activities for the weekend.
In the interview she communicated that this can also be applied to the corporate world as employers look for ways to get workers to be more productive and passionate. And to companies like Gap, which approached her, her advice was “people work really well when they feel trusted and respected. That is what everybody wants.” To do this, companies must treat employees better and trust them to do the work assigned.
As a teenager, when her daughter Susan went for a seminar, she was the only one among children who admitted that she does not hide things from her parents. Rather she is allowed to voice her opinions and respected for them.
In the book she writes, “No one has ever changed the world by doing what the world has told them to do.” She reiterates that children know who they are, and if parents want to raise CEOs for the future, kids must be allowed to take the lead. American actor James Franco, who was Wojcicki’s student, admitted that he believed in himself because she believed in him.
Growth Mindset Vs Fixed Mindset
With Esther Wojcicki, the door to improvement is always open. The educator stresses on the importance of rewarding effort over result — a key indicator of CEO qualities.
For her, mastery means doing something repeatedly until you get it right. As a teacher in the 1980s and 1990s, she offered kids who got a ‘D’ multiple opportunities to improve. Usually, kids who got the failing grade felt discouraged and lost the motivation to continue. However, Esther Wojcicki’s students were given as many opportunities as they needed. Their grades were based on the final product, as she wanted to instill in them the value of effort.
When her students sat for tests, they performed in the 90th percentile of state exams, proving her theory right. Although Wojcicki’s principles were in practice long before research proved her right, in recent times, Stanford professor Carol S Dweck proved the power of the mindset through her studies. Called the growth mindset and the fixed mindset, Dweck teaches about the effect of rewarding effort over results.
Dweck’s research shows that those who have a growth mindset – where people believe intelligence and talent can be cultivated through effort – go on to become successful while those with a fixed mindset – where people believe intelligence and talent is fixed – find it tough to adjust to changes. In her research, she found students with a growth mindset were three times more likely to score in the top 20% on the test, while students with a fixed mindset were four times more likely to score in the bottom 20%.
Those who adopt a growth mindset embrace lifelong learning and put in more effort to master something. She says, “No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.” To raise CEOs for future, it is important to develop a growth mindset so that they know how to rally those around them.
People with a fixed mindset rarely develop confidence in being independent and when they fail at tasks, believe it is because they are not smart enough to do it. This ignites a cycle of negative thinking that leads them to avoid challenges to avoid failure.
If you wish to groom your kids or employees to become future CEOs, it is imperative that failure is not seen as a dead-end. People must be given multiple chances to make things right and taught that effort is more important than getting it right at the first try. Rewarding consistent effort will reinforce the value of hardwork and help educators in different roles groom CEOs for the future. Leadership excellence is a byproduct of being unafraid to fail.
Cultivating Kindness
The brilliant author attributes her success as a teacher to treating kids with kindness. Instead of forcing her opinion on them, she lets them know that she trusts them.
The mother of two CEOs, she says, “Kindness is at the heart of what parenting really is: bringing children into the world and hoping they’ll make it a better place.” While teaching journalism, she admits that she trusted her students. “I respected their ideas, no matter how crazy they were—and I can tell you, teenagers have a lot of crazy ideas.”
She counsels parents who want to raise future CEOs to treat their children with kindness. At the workplace, employers must make it a point to be kind. According to Wojcicki, kindness can be the antidote to fear. People tend to hold back from exploring new things because they are afraid. Business leaders must be empathetic towards their colleagues.
“The number one thing that a kid needs, to be able to learn effectively, it’s kindness,” Wojcicki said. “And so, what you want is to provide an atmosphere where, if you make a mistake, you’re treated with kindness. It’s not like the mistake doesn’t go unnoticed, it’s just that you’re not traumatized.” The same principle can be put into practice at a workplace.
The rule of kindness applies to students, educators, and oneself. We must also find it in our hearts to be kind to ourselves, when we make mistakes. Children pick up on our behaviors and teaching them also involves setting a good example.
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant and writer Allison Sweet Grant have found that kindness and success go hand in hand. In an Atlantic Monthly article, they shared an overwhelming amount of evidence that pointed to the fact that children who help others end up achieving more.
- Middle-school students who were helpful and collaborated with their peers got better grades on standardized test scores.
- Middle-school students who believe their parents value being helpful, respectful, and kind over excelling academically, attending a good college, and having a successful career perform better in school.
The Grants suggest developing kindness in children by asking them more questions on how they helped others and fewer ones on what they scored or how they did on a test.
In the 2022 Humankindex research, Signature Consultants continued to examine the impact of kind leadership and cultural values amid a complex landscape. The survey which included over 1,000 full-time workers found that 83% of employees agreed with the fact that “kind leadership is more important to me than ever when choosing an employer/job.”
More importantly, an organization is five times more likely to be considered innovative if it is kind. Organizations who put kindness ahead of profits have employees who are 120% more likely to feel a sense of meaning and purpose in their current job, and 89% more likely to have a strong desire to think of new and innovative ideas.
Often, leadership is not about titles or positions, but about relationships. To cultivate the qualities of a good CEO, it is imperative that the person is a good human being and a contributor to society. Esther Wojciciki’s TRICK focuses on how to develop these virtues in kids and employees so that they are confident enough to lead the way when the time comes. Eventually, they will become success stories in their own right.
