I didn’t understand my father until I started coaching people trying to become better leaders, and realized most of what I know about leading came from watching him.
He never sat me down and explained accountability. He just lived it, every day, without announcing it.
Clarence Budington Kelland said something similar about his own father: “He lived, and let me watch him do it.” That’s the whole curriculum, really. Not lectures. Proximity..
I think about that a lot now, especially with the leaders I work with. The best ones didn’t learn leadership from a book. They learned it from someone who showed up, again and again, long before they had the title to prove it mattered.
Reed Markham put it simply: “Any man can be a father, but it takes a special person to be a dad.”
I’ve watched plenty of men who are good at the title and quiet about the job. The title is easy. Showing up on a random Tuesday with nothing to gain is the actual work.
Was my father perfect? Likely not. None are. Therein is a lesson to be learned.
But he was present, and I didn’t appreciate what that cost him until I started counting the cost of my own time.
This Father’s Day, I’m not writing this as advice. I’m writing it as a reminder to myself: don’t let the privilege become routine. Call him. Tell him you noticed.
And, in many ways, a small thank you for something I did not appreciate before and cannot share today.
