Leading others is one of the toughest tasks we can take on. What kind of leader are we going to be? Do we do our best imitation of a drill sergeant, dictating and demanding power and control, hoping that the rigid environment pushes people to get the job done? Do we act more like a friend, leading with support and nurturing? Do we trust others to do their job, or do we micromanage? At every step along the way, we’re faced with the question of how we want to lead. It gets even more complicated when the people we are leading are our own kids.
The range of parenting styles is vast and unique, from helicopter parenting to becoming a tiger mom to trying to be your kids’ best friend. A recent meta-analysis sheds light on what works best, and it has implications well beyond parenting.
In the analysis, researchers looked at over 200 studies, including over 125,000 participants, to see how parenting styles impact children’s well-being. Specifically, the researchers compared styles that were autonomy-supportive versus those that were controlling. The former refers to when you encourage independence and self-exploration, while the latter focuses on punishment, control, and contingent regard. It’s when we use guilt, shame, or withdrawal to manipulate a child’s behavior.
The researchers found that autonomy-supportive parenting was linked to an increase in well-being, while a more controlling approach was associated with ill-being. What’s fascinating is that these results were not culturally specific, meaning the results held in the United States, but also in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
When people hear about this research, they often think that autonomy means letting kids do whatever they want, but that’s not the case. It’s not permissive parenting; it’s combining clear expectations and boundaries with the freedom to explore within those expectations and boundaries. It’s about letting your kid be involved in age-appropriate decision-making and providing opportunities to explore.
In other words, autonomy-supportive parenting is teaching our kids the tools to be independent and then giving them opportunities to use those tools. It’s about pairing appropriate expectations with warmth, understanding, and respect for a child’s perspective. It’s recognizing that children thrive when they feel both empowered and nurtured.
It’s not surprising that this is exactly what other longstanding research shows works in sports and in the traditional workplace. When we combine appropriate expectations with the necessary support to do our job, without someone micromanaging us, we stoke the intrinsic motivation, and develop self-efficacy. Whether as a parent, boss, or coach, we often default towards overly controlling styles because it’s simple and straightforward. We tell our child, athlete, or employee to obey simply because we said so. We make them feel guilty or ashamed if they didn’t do the job exactly as we prescribed so that they remember that feeling next time. Control is easy. Autonomy support takes more work. It requires finding the right balance between challenge and skill, boundaries and freedom. But in the end, allowing people to explore and occasionally mess up and fail, without feeling overwhelming guilt for doing so, is how we learn and grow.
Unfortunately, much of our modern environment and culture pushes us away from autonomy-supportive leading and parenting. Consider the recent rise of safetyism, one of many factors that has led to only 27% of kids regularly playing outside of their homes, compared to 80% in their grandparents’ generation. Yes, there are other factors besides safetyism, but consider that when I was roaming around the neighborhoods as a kid in the 1990s, the violent crime rate was almost double what it is now. It’s the perception that the world is dangerous and scary, and that we need to protect, that drives much of our need for control, and subsequent lack of developing independence. Whether it’s with our kids or adults we’re leading, we often over-control in response to fear or anxiety.
I’m not here to tell you exactly how to parent, coach, or lead, but what I can tell you is that research aligns in all three domains. There’s a balance to be struck, and you are more than capable of figuring out where that balance lies.
When I was coaching high school and college athletes, my goal was always to coach towards independence, not dependence. What that looked like varied with each athlete, but the research backs up the general approach: you want to empower autonomy. For my wife working with elementary school kids, that might be offering a simple choice after they’ve been off task. For adults, it may mean giving people space to experiment, try, and occasionally fail in the workplace.
The bottom line is that we want to put people in a position to grow, to let them explore the world and develop the self-reliance to do so again and again in the future. This requires a threading the needle between boundaries and freedom, between leaning in during some circumstances and letting go during others.
— Steve
