It’s Father’s Day 2007 and I’m still beaming from a special card I received in the mail yesterday from my nearly 30-year-old son. The card’s sentiment was humorous; a reflection of his personality (and some of mine as well), but it was the handwritten note that caught my attention. He is celebrating this day in Tennessee, enjoying the last day of a rock and roll festival, so I won’t be receiving my usual weekly phone call from him. Instead he promised in the card to “pause and reflect on my nearly three decades of impeccable fatherhood and then go right back to rockin’.”
Imagine, interrupting a personal event long enough to reflect on his dad! Well, I must confess, his pause will probably be brief at best but I’m not too upset about it. Just knowing that he thinks I’m an “impeccable father” is enough for me.
Fathers really are leaders in every sense of the word. We model behaviors that shape the lives of our children for generations. Many of us know first hand the disappointments of a father who failed us along the way. Others have been blessed by a dad who, in spite of those disappointments, had the courage to say, “I’m sorry” and ask our forgiveness. Some of us heard “I love you” on a regular basis while others may never have experienced the sound of those sweet words from the person we looked up to as a child.
Regardless of the experiences you now carry as memories of your father, I hope you will consider the kind of leader you are now as a dad, or the one you aspire to be someday. Many of the leadership lessons I have shared in previous postings apply to fatherhood. It’s not too late to change your attitude and behavior as a father. We all dream of our children pausing from their work or play to remember us as the one leader they can call dad.
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