The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Become a More Effective Father by Following the Foundational 5 | PPP #56

Episode Date: October 31, 2020

Sharing leader's intent, objectives, organization, resources, and communication tools I've learned as a Dad of 14 years.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. This is Kevin Pinnell. This is my sober October day 31. So I did the challenge, I've made it. I'm going to do a more in-depth episode on what I went through, the good, the bad, not too much ugly really. And quick lessons learned is it's not as hard as I thought it was going to be. I definitely have more clarity.

Good to wake up not groggy sometimes when you've had a couple extra drinks. But again, I'll focus on those benefits and share that in a future episode. For this one, I'm going to focus on fatherhood. I've been thinking about it a lot. My oldest son just turned 14 and really trying to, for myself, be an even better example, which we can always do every day. Raise the best kids I can in the world. Unfortunately, I see plenty of examples of kids that look like they didn't have good parenting that are on TV doing stupid stuff. I don't want my kids to do that. I'm sure you don't want your kids to do that. So what is fatherhood? Fatherhoodpredictionary.com is the

state of being father. For me, my definition and what I go by is the conscious co-decision to bring another life into this world, care for them, and raise them into good human beings. Now, why is that my definition? Because it's a co-decision between a man and a woman to be a father. Whether you're thinking with your brain, you're married, you're trying to build a family, you you're thinking with your brain, you're married, you're trying to build a family, you hook up and someone gets pregnant, you are part of that decision. Also, it's part of your decision if you choose to do that without protection, to care for that child and to raise them and contribute to the good in this world, not just go around having kids and not being responsible.

This message is for anybody that's a dad from any walk of life. So what do I recommend from my 14 years of experience with three sons and my wife raising kids, but as a father on people process progress, episode 56, the foundational five for fathers. I'll give you my two cents. Still here? Good. And thank you. So I'm going to go through the Foundational Five, right?

And if we recall, it used to be four. Now it's five. These foundations can be used to organize just teams and just about anything, emergency stuff, project stuff, in a boardroom, in the field, at home, building, whatever. And these are leaders intent, objectives, smart objectives, right? Organization, resources, and communication. So I'm going to talk about me as a dad, when I reflect on myself with some looking at other folks, particularly my dad and his dad and other dads that I know, what am I going to try and emulate or not or do? So I'm going to go through that, right? So the leader's intent for this episode is to share my 14 years of experience

with current, right? Compare notes, maybe if you're a dad already and future father. So if you're getting ready to be a dad, hopefully this is helpful. It's fantastic. I had friends that had kids well before, my wife and I, that I served in the Navy with. They said, hey, you'll never really know love other than when you have a child. I had no idea what that meant because I was still single or didn't have kids then. And they were right. It's a different kind of thing. So to the future fathers, you're going to love it. Be responsible.

Do what you can. Like I said, the intro. For fathers, for this episode, the leader's intent is, as a father, I will work to educate, protect, and enable my children. That's my job as a father. And I really believe in that. And I take it to heart. And we'll get into some more detail with that. And I think it to heart. And we'll get into kind of some more detail with that.

And I think it's a huge thing for us as dads. So that's my leader's intent, right? Educate, protect, and enable my kids. So what objectives can we drill down to to help us do that? So the first one is kind of that overarching one we use in incidents and events. And it's to provide for the safety and welfare of my children as long as I'm able. That's kind of a global statement we talk about for responders. But for me, I treat my wife and my kids as if I am the executive protection detail for them everywhere

I go. And as long as I am mentally and physically capable of doing that, I am going to do it. As a father, you don't have to be the end-all be-all discussion decision. I'll get into that as well. But you are typically bigger, stronger, faster if you're getting after it. We'll get into that too. And that's a traditional role of a father that I truly believe in as protector and welfare and all those kinds of things. So first objective for me all the time is to provide for the safety and welfare of my children, parenthesis and wife, as long as I'm able. The second one is I want to, as a father, contribute to the mental, physical, and emotional development of my children as long as I am able.

And when I say as long as I'm able, one, that's the time element of a smart objective, right? But what I mean is when I'm 90, 95, I may not be able to protect them as well as I can now at 46, right? And my mind may be tired then. So I'm going to do that until I can't. So I am going to contribute to their mental strengthening through positive reinforcement. That doesn't mean I'm not going to get after them, right? Or hold them accountable, but I'm not going to belittle them all the time. I'm not going to berate them. I'm not going to make them feel less. Physically, I'm going to help teach them how to get strong, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, all those kinds of things, jujitsu, grappling, boxing, whatever sport they want to, and emotional development. How do you deal with these emotions you have?

With a teenager, if you're a father of teenagers out there, you know, they start to get a little grumpy. They don't want to hang out. They don't want to be with you. They want to be independent. They think they're grown up. And we felt that way, right? I feel like I felt like or I thought I felt like an adult when I was a kid.

Now looking back, I'm like, you're not even close. But we want to contribute to all those, right? So I, and we, I don't have a mouse in my pocket per Brene Brown, great thing. So I want to contribute to the mental, physical, and emotional development of my children as long as I can. With that, my third objective is I also want to empower my children. I'm going to use the kind of ancient saying here, by teaching them to fish in many aspects of life instead of giving them fish as temporary fixes. What do I mean by that? I mean, if they say, may you please.

And I love their manners lately. My my almost 10 year olds like, you know, they're all good with it. And my almost eight year old, may you please open this? May you please help me with that? And sometimes if it's just a matter of strength, like a jar won't open and we don't have a little grippy thing to help them, absolutely. If it's a bag of chips, if it's something else and they're old enough now to use scissors, I say, well, do you know where the scissors are? Then go get the scissors and open the bag. Do you know where to cut that box, the tape on the box, right? I'll help you be careful.

But what I don't want to do is just do things for them now that they're big enough to do things for themselves. So that comes from the saying, teach a man to fish, feed him or give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish or woman, feed them for a lifetime. So as a father, I'm going to as many times as possible, teach them how to do things while showing them instead of just doing it for them. Cause that doesn't enable them, right? It doesn't, it doesn't teach them how to troubleshoot things. It doesn't teach them how to use tools. It doesn't teach them that sometimes I'm going to have to figure this out on my own. All it does, if I do all that stuff for them all the time, is just make it easy, and then they won't be as capable.

So my third objective, I'm going to empower my children by teaching them to fish in many aspects of life instead of giving them fish as temporary fixes. I really like that one, actually. The fourth objective, and again, you could have a larger list of objectives, but for me, this fourth one, I am also going to invest time to prepare them for the dangers of the world with practical, not merely fear-based principles and knowledge. So I'm not going to say these people that think this are all evil or the world's going

to destroy you if you get out there or huddle in your room or stay online or whatever. What I mean by that is, and this goes back to kind of the contribute to their mental and physical, I'm gonna let them know when appropriate, not when they're young. I'm not gonna walk them through the Holocaust when they're two years old. But when they're older,

I want them to know there's bad people in the world that wanna do bad things to people, including you all. Pay attention. Head up, shoulders back, like Jordan Peterson recommends, right? You're stronger than you let yourself be sometimes when they're when they're not pushing themselves, teaching them how to get physically strong, teaching them how to wrestle people how to throw punches, all those

things I mentioned before, letting them scrap with each other. Because it helps them get tougher, it helps them work through things, it bonds them, I'm not gonna let them start doing, you know, wrestling things off the top of the couch and hurt each other. But if they want to go at it, we actually have boxing gloves. And I say, all right, we're putting the gloves on. Go for it. If you guys really want to do it, usually that deescalates things because somebody gets bopped in the nose and it's over and they feel better. One of them doesn't feel good for a little bit and then that's it. But I also teach them, and I tell this too to other folks, and I'm not a super high trained expert. I've just been around

a little bit and on the streets a little bit. It's to pay attention. Pay attention to who's around you. If a stranger comes up to you and something, scream and fight and run away and let people know. I'm going to teach them practical things to help keep them safe when I'm not there to do it, right? And not just based on be afraid. I'm going to give them tools. And sometimes kids have nightmares or they think about things like, oh, I'm afraid. What if this happens and this will happen to me?

So then I walk them through practically, let's say being home alone or not home alone, but home and they're scared. Okay, well, we live in a brick house that's strong. I always check the doors that are locked. I'm pretty strong. My wife's pretty strong. We have a dog. We have guns. We have lights. We have room to move. We have your big brother, right? So I'm going to explain kind of these layers of things to them practically that helps put their mind at ease to some aspect, right? And you don't have to have all those things. But I think preparing your kids without freaking them out or walking them through the super details of horrible things is just going to make them better prepared for the world.

So those objectives provide for that safety and welfare of my children as long as I'm able, contribute to the mental, physical, and emotional development of my children as long as I'm able, empower my children by teaching them to fish in many aspects of life instead of giving them fish as temporary fixes, and I'm gonna invest time to prepare them for those dangers of the world with practical skills and knowledge, not merely fear-based principles, right?

So that's my objectives. That's what I focus on. And there could be other things as well, but for me, that's what I choose. Maybe that's some thoughts that'll spark things for you all. So the third of the foundational five things is organization or chart, right? I'm going to use the incident command system. Um, it's kind of the most prescriptive that we talked about. There's project management stuff, functional groups,

all these different things. But so I'm thinking about these, you know, for, for me, I'll go over my positions and then I can't be as effective as a father alone, right? Then without my wife, right? Because she enables time for me to spend with them. And there's other sayings, you know, I have to stand alone and do this and that. But for me, she's a huge part of it. So for me, I'm in a unified command. I'm not the incident commander just because I'm the male and the dad.

Unified, that means my wife and I are in charge of the family, right? We wax and wane and who's the lead in positions, just like unified commanders do, just like I think should happen in any marriage, in any relationship. Not one person always in charge, always dominating, always domineering, and I don't do that either. So the next kind of for sure that I am the lead in is the safety officer. I'm always the one that makes sure kids have their helmets and pads. And part of that is from being in public safety and public health and being a corpsman. And so I automatically think ahead of what could happen and have seen what can happen with kids. And I don't want that to happen.

Just like I told my son the other day who didn't want to wear a helmet while he's skateboarding, I don't want to feed you banana pudding in a chair because you decided your helmet didn't look cool. Right. Practical stuff like that. So I am the safety officer. I am packing safety gear, medical equipment. And the other, you know, I'm partly the planning. I'm probably the resource unit leader. So I'm all about the accountability. Like I mentioned, I'm always who's where do we know where they are, what's good to go. And not like freaking out. I just things I do. I'm also from that logistics section, the medical unit leader. So the parts I do on did on the incident manager team in real life, I really emulate those. So I always have the medical

bag, I always have the tourniquets, the gauze, all that kind of stuff. I'm also the security element, right with that, which is kind of a logistical or operational thing, probably operations. So I'm doing security for our folks and my wife, you know, in partnership, she's unified commander. She is also planning. We're both project managers or project management background. She's for sure the more logistical overall person for the family and finance. And we're both kind of the operational piece. So, you know, for me, that's my organization. I make leadership decisions with my wife, sometimes for sure on my own. As we go back and forth, I for sure am primary kind of in their safety and security focus and helping them plan for things, plan how to be a young man, right?

How to be a young man for yourself, how to be a young man with your friends, with girlfriend or boyfriend, how to, you know, what kind of safety and medical things should you look at? My kids know when they get hurt, if it's a scrape, let's wash it out, soap and water, rinse it off. Like they have that down pat. My oldest leads that charge sometimes and I stand back and wait. So I'm very proud of that organizational piece. So those are just some things that I equate to kind of me as a father and with my wife and partnership. So the fourth of these foundational five things, what about resources for dads?

And I'm not going to give any books, any links, any websites. I'm giving from the world who I've drawn from and who I'll continue to draw from and who you all probably have too, because there are too many, be a good dad, great dad, dad, child, whatever is out there and they're awesome. And that's great resources, but there's just too many and I'm not invested in them. So here's for me, the resources I feel is this number four of these foundational five for fathers is the first one is what do I want to emulate from my experience as a son? So as the son of my father, what do I want to emulate that I knew did or didn't impact me positively or negatively?

Too lenient, too harsh, too loud, too quiet as far as interactions. Or letting me try things, not letting me try things. All that whole balance of everything I went through. Right. Um, and there's endless roads to go down. I also look at what do I for sure want to emulate from my father? What did my father help me with? You know, one example, he was, my dad was in the Navy. He was a sub guy, nuclear sub guy. Um, so kind of a, you know, in some instances, sometimes a drill instructor kind of feedback. But you know what? When I got to Navy boot camp, it was a breeze, right?

Sure, I did push ups and we ran in boots sometimes and whatever. But I wasn't surprised with somebody raising their voice to me or kind of treating me harshly to do the right thing, so to speak, because, you know, not that my dad really, you know, treated me harshly. I wasn't like abused, but I was used to somebody giving me a hard time when I did made bad decisions. Right. And I was used to someone holding me accountable.

And yeah, I was used to somebody yelling me sometimes. Right. And so it makes you it does prepare you, you know, too much is a bad thing. And that leads me to, you know, what I choose not to emulate for my dad, just like every other, you know, current father should or shouldn't do from their father. You know, sometimes you get yelled at too much. Sometimes maybe that's spanking her a little too much. Sometimes, you know, being grounded at a certain time or getting embarrassed in front of your friends or all these different things, you know, so think about what do I want to pick?

We have the advantage now of I'll do this, I'll try and do this. And you, and again, we can say that I think, but in the heat of the moment, maybe when you're your son and I have three sons. So when my son is totally broken the rules and been disrespectful for my life and just pushed all the right buttons, sometimes you're just getting mad and you're going to yell. Right. And, and, and there's, it's hard to hold it back. And sure. There's all things. Well, that's just a control issue or this or that. But you know what, I'm human and emotion and you know, sometimes emotions are hard to hold back. So consciously, though, I can think about for me, focusing on that and making it better. And certainly over the past few years, and over all the years, 14 years, you know, you wax and wane and what your day was like outside of the family and in the family with your spouse,

your significant other that affects how you interact with your child and all that kind of stuff. So the first thing, again, with resources, I'm going to look at me as a son. What do I like, not like from my father? What did I, what I want to take and not take? What don't I want to take from my father? And then family and friends too, that are good examples. First individually, how are they as people, right? And individually how are they as people right and then how are they as fathers and typically there's a good correlation right if they're a decent person if they're getting after it if they're a good example mentally physically emotionally then they're going to be a pretty good example for their child and so I look to them and I have

great friends that are awesome examples the the guy that got me into Jocko Willink great friend of mine great example as a father. Works out hard, takes care of his kids, has interests. I have family like that for sure. And just like stuff I don't want to take maybe from my dad, also there's stuff I don't want to take

from other parts of my family. So think about that. We have the advantage now of having lived, I'm 46, to look back at our life and say, what do I see that's worked well for their kids of my family and friends? What do I see that's not? What do I see that I've done that has or hasn't worked well? And then chip away to get rid of what you don't want and then solidify and build up what you do. And then the last thing, and really could be the first thing,

I want to look at myself, the good, the bad, and the ugly of my time as a father, right? And real talk, no father's perfect throughout their whole time as a father. I, you know, with child number one, you know, went through that tiredness and all this and great. Oh, it's baby. It's one baby. It's so easy. Then you have two, then you have three and you're like, Holy smokes. There's a lot all on me. And just like I talked about in that definition, right? It's a co co-decision. So no regrets. Um, and at times the glaring example, being patient, walking super slow, holding my little two year old's hand as we walked down the road, I'm not rushing them. Um, to when I was totally burnt out dealing with post-traumatic stress from critical

incidents and work stuff and marriage stuff and then was a horrible father from the standpoint of being grumpy and yelling and just you know there's lessons learned that we all have as fathers so looking back and developing ourselves where we are a process, a dynamic process as a father to look back and say, don't do that anymore. Do your best not to do that anymore. Keep doing more of this. What's happening? And we'll get into here in a second, this five of the foundational five of communication, but and then talking to your kids. Right.

So let's jump into that communication piece. So communication, both when you're on an incident or an event or a project or a program, communication ties all this other stuff together. It ties together the leader's intent, the objectives, the organization, and the resources. So for me, the most important thing, and I got this a lot from my parents, from my father, from other folks in my family is to tell them that you love them often. Right? Because you won't be able to tell them when you're gone, or God forbid, if they're gone. Tell them all the time. Get them in the habit of telling you, you don't have to tell them, oh, you have to tell me you love me. But I tell my kids, I love them every single day.

Because I do hug them every chance you get. Right? Hugs are a form of, you know, nonverbal communication. And I tell my kids this, don't give me that weak hug that's like a shoulder thing or I'm not squeezing. Like we hug because a hug shows, you know, and they're my kids, so there's no COVID social distancing going on there. But it really shows I am sending my love, my care to you, and I'm concerned about you. A third critical thing I think for communication is explaining the why when you provide guidance. Now, sometimes you don't have time. You know, someone has to get out of the way because they're in the road, like just get out of the road. You don't have to go, here's why you need to get out of the road. One, I'm your father. Two, it's unsafe. Like you don't have to go down

that road all the time. However, if you are checking on what your teenager is doing online, who they're going to be with, what kind of, you know, uh, transportation mode they're going to be, are they going to ride like in a golf cart or on their bike or whatever? Tell them why I am asking you all these questions because I am concerned as your father about these things. And I know what you can control and all these kinds of things. And it opens the doors just like it does with an adult at work or on a deployment or a mission or whatever. Why are we doing something? Why am I asking these questions? Why does it seem like I'm a pain in your butt teenager, grumpy guy? And tell them why. Does that mean they're always going to accept it and be like, oh, okay, cool. No, but it's better than because I said so, or because I'm the dad or because I'm whatever

that has some merit and there's times to do it. But by and large, I try and explain why I'm doing things or why I'm not doing something for you that goes back to kind of having them do stuff on their own. We do as fathers need to provide firm, but controlled feedback, right? So if my son starts getting mouthy with his mom and being disrespectful, which he's really good at not doing, I have an obligation for that as my wife to say, hey, you need to stop doing it. And I'm not always going to do that in a flowering, nice voice. I don't have to scream though and get enraged, but I'm going to let them know that's completely unacceptable from you or anybody else. Right. And so, you know, sometimes kids need that feedback and when they want to rebel and, and, or they're just not listening, you know, they're not doing their work. We're in this weird remote, we're asking kids to telework like adults are.

And you know what school systems, I hope are doing their best. It seems like they are. No, the teachers are working hard. But it's super hard. So when kids, you know, when my sons maybe don't do the work, just because they don't do it, they don't want to, there's less time to for the for the, you know, I'll tell you the why. It's because do you want to take your grade over again? It's because you have to do it. It's because it's COVID. It's because all these different things. But at some point, you have to just lay down the law, right?

When you do that, and in conjunction with that, you have to watch your body language, right? So these fifth communication thing, you know, if you are getting upset, and you're kind of bowed up, you know, with your teenager there, that's frightening, right? You're typically bigger than your kids. And so that's a body language to pay attention to. Again, being a good father to me is very similar to being a good project manager or a good incident management team member or a good corpsman or a good EMT or firefighter or whatever, a lot of these things that I've talked about

apply to all of those, right? Your body language and how you talk to somebody at work, your face, where your hands are, how you sit makes a huge difference. Same thing for your kids. If you're having a talk with your son or daughter and you're listening and your legs cross, your arms are crossed, you're looking away, you pick your phone up. You're not paying attention. You're not listening to listen.

So it's not just when you're maybe getting after them or laying down the law. It's when you're being the receiver and the listener for your kids that's huge. The last thing I had for communication in this kind of brief, and hopefully this has been insightful or at least going,, yeah, I do that too, is to talk to your kids like normal people because then they'll be able to talk like that back to you. I'm sure I have a couple times baby talked my kids, but by and large, since they were tiny,

I just talked to them, right? And I don't talk to them in big words and sentences when they were smaller and smaller, but if I talk to them normally, they talk to us normally faster we've found right and there's you've seen there's some kids that baby talk and they're a bit older than maybe you think they should um and then there's kids that communicate well and articulate and i think talking to your kids from when they're young like almost like you're talking to an adult is very helpful. And again, just not just the fact of the words and how you're using, you know, how you're talking to

them, but the fact that you're open with them and you're honest and you're talking to them and you discuss things. So thanks so much for listening to this episode, this last episode of October of Sober October 2020. What a year to do that in. Um, I've just really been thinking a lot about and trying to refine myself, you know, which could be a by-product of some clarity and, and getting after it this week and, um, post kidney stone that I had last weekend, which was, I don't recommend that as well. Um, but really thinking about how can I continue my evolution as a dad, seeing my son become a 14 yearyear-old, my other two boys getting ready to have birthdays, and knowing that there's plenty of fathers out there hopefully

doing well during these times. I know sometimes it's a struggle. We're around each other all the time. We're looking at our crazy kids' schedules. And whatever industry you all are in, you know, whatever hours you work. The one thing I probably didn't have on my list that for sure I found troublesome and kind of my harder times for myself that translated to my kids was trying to leave work at work, right? Whether it's the traumatic call that's still in your brain, which we're all going to have forever, whether it was the crappy coworker who has a horrible attitude, whether it was just the commute where you got stuck on the highway for an hour, it's not your kid's fault.

They didn't do it. They just want to see you. And we have an obligation as dads to let them see us and to be there. And I hope to consider some of those things I talked about. So I wish all of you the best. I thank you so much for every click, listen, subscription review.

Please reach out to me at pupilprocessprogress at gmail.com or pupilprocessprogress.com. On the website, I have all the contacts, PPP underscore POD on Instagram. There's a Facebook page. Please stay in touch. Thank you all again. Stay safe out there. Pay attention, wash your hands, and Godspeed.