by Durgesh Kumar Mishra

I am an agile coach by practice and visualize everything in an agile way, where happiness and culture are major ingredients. Happiness at work or at home is a win-win situation. Happy, engaged people are healthier, more productive; they have more ideas, are more likely to contribute over and above the responsibilities of their job and perform to the best of their ability. So, if your team or family is happy, you and others around them are more likely to be happy too.

Management 3.0 Practices in Parenting

Problem Statement: My kid got an assignment of reciting a memorized poem of around 18 lines with tough words in it. Per my observation he was very much lacking intrinsic motivation and some sort of fear with 18 lines of long poem that was expected to be delivered very next day in a school competition.

Initial Observations:

1. He was very much lacking intrinsic motivation and happiness.
2. If he is not happy, it impacts his performance as well as mine as it kills me to go to work, knowing that he’s unhappy.
3. He was asked by his mom to complete it in an hour or two.
4. Mom was acting in a command and control system, increasing pressure and fear.
5. As he was not motivated and was not feeling interested, it was a bit difficult for him to learn the complete poem of 18 lines with actions in just one day.

Experiment:

So, my experiment was adapting the Management 3.0 Workout of Happiness Door for my Kids. As my day continually goes through the home-office-home cycle, I believe everyday should be a day of “Happy Mind” and that emanates through the happy faces of my family when I leave for the office (waving their hands with smiles.) It really bugs me when I found/realised during my experiment that, I spent very little time with my kids every day because of busy schedules, and they hardly get time to share their feedback or concerns with me. So, I tried to experiment with the Happiness Door a little differently and check how I can make my kids happy by listening to most of their feedback—positive or opportunities—no matter if it’s about school, personal, complaining, etc. The objective was for them to use the Happiness Door to do this in a form that I can try to help make them happier.

Learn more Practices such as Happiness Door at a Management 3.0 Workshop:

Execution:

As I am very much close to my kids and never try to act in “Command and Control” mode of parenting, they feel more comfortable sharing things with me, although time constraints mean this hasn’t happened enough. My son came to me seeking help with a “Fear” in his mind born by the assignment and his mom’s behavior. This issue popped up on fly. My belief as a father, agile coach and Management 3.0 practitioner is: A happy mind can achieve anything. I came up with how I can make him delighted with some new practice which really help him as intrinsic motivation and make him stronger in fighting with his own fear. I had a quick chat with him and he loved to move out from command-and-control mode and was ready to learn something new.

I introduced a new thing that as soon as he learned his Poem we will play a game “Happiness Door” and will try to remove his impediments and make him happy every day. This raised curiosity and excitement and happy to play game.

I had some leftover multi-color stickies from my training workshops at home. I explained to him the very simple rule:

Start writing your expectations on stickies, starting from top with highest happiness value and working your way down the door to things that make you less happy. I promised/committed him to check the sticky every night when I get home and try my best as a father to make him happy so that I can always see the happy face when I head to my office.

Results:

He loved it and very first day (night) when I got home) I got three stickies:
1) One was he needed two candies.  
2)  He would love to play this game more.
3) He did a great job in his competition.

Continuity:

He continues to try to maintain the happiness door to keep himself happy and motivated, while helping me in achieving my parenting.

He is gaining confidence in his day-to-day activity as he feels like there is a safe place where he can share his concerns and feedback and that will be working as information radiator for others in resolving his issues or concerns and make him happy in achieving his goals and not just wandering what, how, and with whom to share.

I’m also trying to implement Kudo Cards and Personal Maps with my kids in an effort to help my family and myself be a “Happy Family”.

How do you apply business skills to home life? Or lessons learned at home at work? Tell us below!