How a father’s influence can have a dramatic impact on the success of his daughter, which is the key to seeing more woman at C-level positions.
For the last two decades, I have built my career in the digital media and marketing industry as an entrepreneur, executive leader, venture partner, board of directors member, and an operating resource partner in the private equity industry. As a management consultant, I have worked with hundreds of companies providing them with strategic guidance to execute business strategies for their go-to-market, product positioning, and revenue growth plans. This guidance, through a method that I have developed, and they have leveraged, has helped lead to the successful sale or investment into more than fifty leading technology companies.
My path to executive leadership was quite different from that of the comrades in my field. I hadn’t attended an Ivy League school, or followed a traditional education or attended a prep school. I was diagnosed with ADHD and Dyslexia as a child, I never took the SAT’s and continued my education by attending culinary school.
A Father’s Influence
My father, an entrepreneur and expert in market research, is my mentor. For many kids, the gender roles of their parents are concrete. Dad makes the money, and mom is the homemaker. Fathers mentor the boys, and daughters are mentored by their mothers. My family was different. It is best to think of my dad the CEO, my mom the COO, and us kids, their employees. My father managed the external, while my mother managed the internal.
My father came from a well-educated, white-collar Jewish family, and my mother from a poor Canadian family, that lacked cultural and worldly views. While my father focused on our education and values, my mother focused on instilling the value of taking care of the home. Inside the Jewish culture, in which my father was raised, he was focused on sharing and educating our family community on our values — what we stood for and how we all understood ourselves. My dad used his market research and business background to advise us, to help us grow, and to understand our own individual unique value. He amplified our strengths and taught us to use them to leverage and build our personal value and brand. Nights at the dinner table were like business school. He taught us how to set goals and how to achieve them. We listened to my father’s stories — his highs and his lows. We watched him struggle; blood, sweat and tears. We saw first-hand what success was made of. He taught us to think with a business and entrepreneurial mindset. My father invested his time and energy to teach us about money management. I learned from him that if you invest in your children the way you invest in a business that you will raise successful kids.
Gender Roles
My upbringing was different because my parents didn’t raise us to fall in line with gender roles. My brothers didn’t turn to my father just because they were boys, just as my sister and I didn’t flock to my mother because we were girls. My dad didn’t share his business insights and marketing expertise with only my brothers, He shared and taught all of us. There were no gender boundaries in our household. Dr. Meg Meeker, the author of Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters believes that a father’s influence is a major factor in raising a strong and successful young woman, if not the most important one. Meeker writes that if admiration, respect and affection are present and reciprocated in the father-daughter relationship, it is the recipe for a successful woman.
The Method
My father’s mentorship and methods have influenced me throughout
my life and are the foundations of the method that I use today to help
companies and individuals grow. I realized that if I could position companies
for success then I could do it for individuals too. Throughout my life I have
been drawn to growing things; companies, teams, and people. Growing, is my “Happy
High.”
I started to notice people around me struggling every day, unfulfilled, stuck and unhappy with their lives; whether it was in the business world, or the mom down the street. I began to use my tested growth method for companies on individuals. I realized that what I was doing was in fact helping people to understand their unique skills and purpose the way my father had done for me when I was a child. I knew that if I could coach people through this process, it would help them to discover their personal value so that they could not only live a more successful life, but also a happier one. What I was doing was enabling them to utilize their strengths, find confidence, and embrace realistic opportunities.
My method makes use of an internal audit and applies aspects of mindset and confidence levels to determine one’s purpose. Essentially, what gives you your Happy High. The reality is, you already know your purpose; it is within you. The hard part is understanding and manifesting the vision to make your purpose a reality.
My growth method can be tailored and leveraged as a workshop for
executives and teams as well. To align company purpose and goals to those of
the executives and teams, a bottom-up vs. top-down approach is utilized to
create the culture from the inside out. In a report published by The Harvard Business
Review, The
Business Case for Purpose, which illustrates through supporting data how
companies that pursue purpose instead
of profit are the most successful.
According to the research, 89% of executives surveyed said that a strong sense
of collective purpose drives employee satisfaction; 84% said it can affect an
organization’s ability to transform, and 80% said that it helps increase
customer loyalty. Amazon, Facebook, and Airbnb are companies that are at the
front of this mindset, pursuing purpose over profit.
The job market is changing. Young people in the workforce look for purpose in their work, not just a paycheck. The greatest challenge facing companies today is employee turnover. It costs a lot of money to hire and train employees, not to mention to do it multiple times per year. According to research presented by PwC, millennials who have a strong connection to the purpose of their organization are 5.3 times more likely to stay. But the vast majority of employees remain disengaged from work, and only 33% draw real meaning from their employer’s purpose. The benefit of a strong company purpose aligned with employee purpose drives productivity, employee retainment, engagement, overall workplace happiness and, in turn, revenue.
My vision is to solve the disconnect with purpose. I’ve said it before, “You already know your purpose.” What you don’t know is how to manifest and make your vision and purpose a reality. Today, I launch the Meyers Growth Method to define purpose for yourself, your team and your company.
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