Now, I've got a lot to say about this, but I'll keep this version brief.
I was out on the Thames with a friend and her daughter this summer. Our kayak was a 3-seater, me at the back, the teenage daughter in the middle, my friend at the front. So I could see everything. Which mainly involved seeing the daughter take an awful lot of breaks. Dipping the paddle in the water seemed more like an exercise in stretching her arms. For the purposes of the story, we'll call her Betty. Because that's her name. Anyway, I had a small epiphany that I thought I would share with her, rather than command her to pull her weight.
"Betty, do you know the difference between parents and their children?"
"No." (Which was a long answer for her.)
"Parents don't have the option of quitting."
She thought about this for a bit.
"Wha'?"
"Your mum and I, we don't have the option of sitting back and joining you in not overly exerting ourselves."
"I am paddling."
I laughed at her protest. "Betty, I've been sat behind watching you do anything but rowing."
To prove her point she paddled. For a bit.
"I'm tired."
"Of course you. They reckon one of the most exhausting things known to man is sitting in a kayak on a sunny afternoon whilst two other people paddle it for you."
"OKKKKKKK."
Now, as she surrendered to my sarcasm (which my daughters have learned to bat away the same way Ian Botham could have bat away my best efforts at bowling in his heyday - or any day, for that matter) my mind wandered. It wandered to business. To memories of running my own business over a decade ago. I remembered how any of those amazing employees could have walked out on me any time. How they could have tossed away their paddles and told me to get everybody to shore by myself.
Like it or not, leaders are the parents in any relationship - especially founders. They have to paddle the hardest, and they have to paddle even if nobody else feels like it. Of course, the trick is to get everybody to pull their weight. Ideally in an inspired fashion, but, in a crisis, a small dose of wry parental sarcasm has been known to cut through.
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