Leaders and Their Moms

I have written this blog in honor of Mother's Day coming up this Sunday. I hope you are all giving the day the due reverance it deserves. Some of you may extend an extra note of gratitude once you've finished reading.

At the risk of upsetting my brother and sister but who know nothing of this blog anyway, I want to begin with what I find to be a facinating paragraph from Donald T. Phillips' Lincoln On Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times. We use the book in some of our courses. Phillips writes:

"Studies of well-known leaders suggest that certain factors in childhood can predispose a person to great leadership. James McGregor Burns points out, for example, that the most important influences on the shaping of leaders lies 'almost wholly in their early years.' He observed that Gandhi, Lenin, and Franklin Roosevelt appeared to have 'a strong attachment to one parent coupled with some intensively negative attachment to the other.' Most of these leaders had a close relationship with their mothers, who appeared to favor them over other siblings. Sigmund Freud made a similar observation when, in The Interpretation of Dreams, he wrote, 'I have found that people who know that they are preferred or favoured by their mother[s] give evidence in their lives of a peculiar self-reliance and an unshakable optimism which often seem like heroic attributes and bring actual success to their possessors.' (p. 4)."

As the firstborn child and grandchild in my family blessed with everyone's, especially my mom's, undivided attention until I was going on four-years-old, you will understand why the book holds a prominent place in my professional library. Now you should know something about my mom and the 50% of her blood that runs through my viens.

Mom is 78 years old, widowed since she was 48. She has been working continuously since she was the "counter girl" in a Thomasville, North Carolina pastry shop at the age of 14. Mom still works a full-time job with the Guilford County Schools Child Nutrition Program. Because she wanted "to stay active," two years ago Mom started a one-woman clearning service for commercial and residential property in downtown Greensboro.  Mom is optimistic, tenacious, full of faith, and generous to a fault. She is disease-free. Mom reluctantly gave up dancing only last year. But Mom's greatest problem is finding age-alike peers with whom to socialize--they cannot keep up with her.  Is your mom like mine?

Leaders everywhere, thank your mom this Sunday. You are where you are in no small measure due to her.