Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell??!!
A son is telling his mother what a bad new driver his sister is, carrying on about near misses, highway swerves and spin outs on gravel roads. His mother looks at him with terror and replies ‘Kid - don’t tell me about your driving lives, and I won’t ask about your sex lives.”
Questions:
Do we need to know EVERYTHING about our kids lives? Is this statement good parenting or bad parenting.
Does this idea transfer over into business? Does the boss need to know everything about what employees are doing in parts of their lives that don’t apply to business?
Are there parellels between parenting and supervising employees?
Have fun with this!
Kelly
July 10th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Hi Kelly,
Personally, I wanted to know how my kids’ were driving. Too many teen deaths due to packing kids in cars and not paying attention, going too fast, etc. There were a lot of things I wanted to know…for my own sanity to realize if they were growing into solid individuals.
However, there were things that I preferred not to know. And it’s important for kids to have SOME space to spread their wings, make mistakes, before leaving home. Certainly who they hung around with was important. It gave me a better idea of which garden path they’d be going down!
I business, there are some areas of people’s privates lives that would make a difference to me knowing. And some that would not. I think it really boils down to character/integrity issues.
Whether it be about my kids or people I work with, I hope they’re hanging with the crowd that will steer them down the right road. Like it or not, those we surround ourselves with do impact our lives in ways we can’t predict.
Cheers,
Mary