30: Crisis Management
Episode 30: Crisis Management
This podcast episode opens with a crisis of sorts: a very scary surprise (to Tricia, at least) that happens in the first two minutes! Fortunately, it all ends well.
Today Rob wanted to talk about the book Drive, by Daniel Pink. Written back in 2009, it is best described as the science behind what motivates people. Pink’s three concepts on how to best motivate people: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. “Heads will spring off pillows in the morning if people know that they get to go and do the work they are great at today!”
As a way to discuss the benefits of doing what we LOVE to do, Tricia wanted to compare this principle with the opposite today: the time she watched her son learn about the kind of job he never, EVER wanted to do again! Her two sons decided to try being baseball umpires for a season. One of them found exactly these concepts for his own life through his baseball experience: autonomy, mastery and purpose. And for one of them, well…it was a disaster and a learning experience, all rolled into just a few weeks.
Tricia shares an important principle she learned through through raising boys, part of the time as a single mother: you cannot nurture a boy into manhood. It just doesn’t work that way. “You cannot keep him safe, cozy, cuddly and free from hard things, though that is our nature, as moms.” She quotes her dad’s advice for fathers of sons: “A boy becomes a man when his father tells him he is.”
“Are you raising a son whom you want to become a leader, who loves his wife, who contributes to his community and can handle criticism and be responsible in his circle of influence? You cannot nurture a little boy into manhood. There comes a time when he needs to step away from his mom and be really bold, really brave, and do the hard thing, to stretch those muscles just to see that he can.” – Tricia
“You cannot nurture a boy to manhood. There comes a point when he has to be brave, to do the thing you think he cannot do. He has to prove it to both of you.” – Tricia
“Let your sons take risks, because at some point they will be people in a situation of crisis, and someone will look to them to handle it. If they have never had to handle it before, they won’t know how. Let them climb too high in the tree, wander too far from home, be heckled at a baseball game…let them try it so they can figure out, ‘can I do this?’ Because some day somebody will look to them and say, “Oh no! What do we do right now?” and you want to have raised a son who will say, “I’ve got this, here we go.” -Tricia
As much as these principles—autonomy, mastery and purpose—are essential in parenting, Rob has relied upon them in his work as a director and motivator of creatives: to let them do the things on their own, give them the time and space to become great at it, and always point them back to “here’s why we are doing this project.”
Rob closes out this episode with…an update on his beard!