When his brother saw his report card on the fridge, he said, “You mean that’s your report card? You must be some kind of a genius!”
I am convinced that part of the reason Sandra was able to have that kind of influence at that time in his life is because of her modeling, mentoring, and organizing. She placed a high value on education, and everyone in the family knew it. She had a great relationship with this son. She had spent hours and hours with him over the years, building the Emotional Bank Account and doing things he enjoyed. And she organized her time so that she could be with him to help him in this way.
These teaching moments are some of the supreme moments of family life—those incomparable times when you know you’ve made a significant difference in the life of another family member. This is the point at which your efforts help “empower” family members so that they develop the internal capacity and skill to live effectively. And this is at the heart of what parenting and family are all about.
Maria (daughter):
I’ll never forget an experience I had with my mother many years ago when I was a teenager. My father was away on a business trip, and it was my turn to stay up late with Mom. We made hot chocolate, chatted for a while, and then got comfortable in her big bed in time to watch a rerun of Starsky and Hutch.
She was a few months pregnant at the time, and while we were watching TV, she got up abruptly and ran to the bathroom where she stayed for a long time. After a while I realized that something was wrong as I heard her quietly weeping in the bathroom. I went in to find her with her nightgown covered in blood. She had just had a miscarriage.
When she saw me come in, she stopped crying and explained to me in a matter-of-fact way what had happened. She assured me that she was fine. She said that sometimes babies aren’t fully formed the way they should be, and this was for the best. I remember taking comfort in her words, and together we cleaned up and then went back to bed.
Now that I am a mother, I am amazed at how my mother was able to subordinate what must have been heart-wrenching emotions into a learning experience for her teenage daughter. Instead of wallowing in her grief, which would have been the natural thing to do, she cared more about my feelings than her own and turned what could have been a traumatic experience for me into a positive one.
Thus, the fourth level of the tree—the leaves and the fruit—represents your role as a teacher. This means that you explicitly teach others the Primary Laws of Life. You teach empowering principles so that as people understand them and live by them, they come to trust those principles and trust themselves because they have integrity. Having integrity means their lives are integrated around a balanced set of principles that are universal, timeless, and self-evident. When people see good examples or models, feel loved, and have good experiences, then they will hear what is taught. And the likelihood is very high that they will live what they hear so that they, too, become examples and models and even teachers for other people to see and trust. And this beautiful cycle begins again.
This kind of teaching creates “conscious competence.” People can be unconsciously incompetent—they can be completely ineffective and not even know it. Or they can be consciously incompetent—they know they’re ineffective but don’t have the internal desire or discipline to create needed change. Or they can be unconsciously competent—they’re effective but don’t know why. They’re living out positive scripts they’ve been handed by others; they can teach by example but not by precept because they don’t understand it. Or they can be consciously competent—they know what they’re doing and why it works. Then they can teach by both precept and example. It’s this level of conscious competence that enables people to effectively pass knowledge and skill from one generation to another.
Your role as a teacher—in creating conscious competence in your children—is absolutely irreplaceable. As we said in Habit 3, if you do not teach them, society will. And that is what will mold and shape them and their future.
Now, if you’ve done your own interior work so that you are modeling these Primary Laws of Life, if you’ve built relationships of trust by living the Primary Laws of Love, and if you’ve done the organizational work—having regular family times and one-on-ones—then this teaching will be much, much easier.
What you teach will essentially come out of your mission statement. It will be the principles and values that you have determined to be supremely important. And let me tell you here to pay no attention to people who say you shouldn’t teach values until your children are old enough to choose their own. (That statement itself is a “should” statement that represents a value system.) There is no such thing as value-free living or value-free teaching. Everything is hinged and infused in values. You therefore have to decide what your values are and what you want to live by and, since you have a sacred stewardship with these children, what you want them to live by as well. Get them into the wisdom literature. Expose them to the deepest thoughts and noblest feelings of the human heart and mind. Teach them how to recognize the whisperings of conscience and to be faithful and truthful—even when others are not.
When you teach will be a function of the needs of family members, the family times and one-on-ones you set up, and those serendipitous “teaching moments” that present themselves as wonderful gifts to the parent who is watching for opportunity and is aware.
With regard to teaching, I would offer four suggestions:
Discern the overall situation. When people feel threatened, an effort to teach by precept—or telling—will generally increase the resentment toward both the teacher and the teaching. It’s often better to wait for or create a new situation in which the person is in a secure and receptive frame of mind. Your forbearance in not scolding or correcting in the emotionally charged moment will communicate and teach respect and understanding. In other words, when you can’t teach one value by precept, you can teach another by example. And example teaching is infinitely more powerful and lasting than precept teaching. Combining both, of course, is even better.
Sense your own spirit and attitude. If you’re angry and frustrated, you can’t avoid communicating this regardless of the logic of your words or the value of the principle you’re trying to teach. Restrain yourself or distance yourself. Teach at another time when you have feelings of affection, respect, and inward security. A good rule of thumb: If you can gently touch or hold the arm or hand of your son or daughter while correcting or teaching and you both feel comfortable with this, you’ll have a positive influence. You simply cannot do this in an angry mood.
Distinguish between the time to teach and the time to give help and support. To rush in with preachments and success formulas when your spouse or child is emotionally fatigued or under a lot of pressure is comparable to trying to teach a drowning man to swim. He needs a rope or a helping hand, not a lecture.
Realize that in a larger sense we are teaching one thing or another all the time because we are constantly radiating what we are.
Always remember that, as with modeling and mentoring, you cannot not teach. Your own character and example, the relationship you have with your children, and the priorities that are served by your organization (or lack of it) in the home make you your children’s first and most influential teacher. Their learning or their ignorance of life’s most vital lessons is largely in your hands.
How the Leadership Roles Relate to the Four Needs and Gifts
In the following Principle-Centered Family Leadership model, you will see the four roles—modeling, mentoring, organizing, and teaching. In the left column, notice how the four basic universal needs—to live (physical/economic), to love (social), to learn (mental), and to leave a legacy (spiritual)—relate to those four roles. Remember, too, the fifth need in the family—to laugh and have fun. Notice in the right column how the four unique human gifts also relate to the four roles.
Modeling is essentially the spiritual. It draws primarily upon conscience for its energy and direction. Mentoring is essentially social and draws primarily upon self-awareness as manifested in respecting others, understanding others, empathizing and synergizing with others. Organizing is essentially the physical and taps into the independent as well as the social will to organize time and life—to set up a family mission statement, weekly family times, and one-on-ones. Teaching is primarily mental. The mind is the steering wheel of life as we are guided into a future that we create first in our minds through the power of our imagination.