Fresh off of a family getaway “Up North” that involved boating, swimming, family camp fires and maybe a firework or two (all fingers still attached!), I find myself reflecting on receiving a dose of my own leadership medicine. For one who dispenses a lot of thoughts on leaders and leading, it is appropriate and just a bit humbling to be on the receiving end, especially when you are learning the lesson from your young adult children.

For those that are parents, depending upon your life-stage and the age of your children, you will either relate to the leadership lesson or you can use this post as a means of anticipating one of the many that you will be served during this journey.

For everyone else, trust me that there are many parallels between leading as a parent and leading in the workplace. The primary difference is that it is much more difficult to be a parent.

My lesson this past weekend involved boating.

To fully appreciate the humbling experience, you have to be armed with a little background. First, it’s important to know that I come from a long line of people obsessed with keeping things working significantly beyond their useful lives.

There’s a certain pride that the adult males in my family take in caring for machines of all sorts. For example, the fact that my modest power-boat is a young eighteen years old and that it looks nearly as good as the day it was hitched to the bumper and trailed up to the family compound is something of a badge of honor between my Dad and myself. Never-mind the fact that my kids and wife drop frequent hints about visiting the boat show and “upgrading” from the antique that sits at the end of our pier. I ignore the hints. Why replace a perfectly good boat. Heck, this thing is barely broken in. Shoot, our season here in the upper Midwest is only 11 days long anyways.

If you’ve ever watched the movie “Christmas Story,” you might recall the Dad doing battle with his ancient and cantankerous furnace in the basement. The furnace tries to outwit him, but with a lot of banging and a fair amount of cursing, Dad always wins. This is a lot like what it takes to start out boat (generally minus the cursing). Don’t get me wrong, it runs like a precision-machine, but the starting part requires a bit of finesses with throttle, choke and ignition.  It helps if you have three hands, good ears (listening to the engine is critical to starting it), and the mechanical sense of a NASCAR pit crew chief.

We don’t let just anyone start the boat. It takes years of study and practice with both my Dad and I hovering over the understudy scrutinizing every move. My oldest son has been in training for years, and in my mind, in a few more, he might just be qualified to start the boat on his own.

Here comes the lesson part.

The boys (young men of 20 and 18) had friends up to the lake this past weekend and much to my surprise, there was little interest in me assuming my duties as boat captain for skiing, tubing or just cruising. While I know in my mind that the boat safety courses were taken, that the safety rules have been drilled into their heads for years and that there has been ample, supervised engine-starting practice, it didn’t help when I was suddenly and for the first-time faced with the reality that I was not needed or even wanted on this boating adventure. How could life have come to this? What if things went wrong? Who would be there to take control?

My wife wisely pulled me away from the bay where our boat is docked, and directed me to a chair on the patio overlooking the main body of water and handed me an iced-tea and my latest issue of Harvard Business Review. “Let them go,” she indicated.  “You’ve been teaching them for years, it’s time to let them try it on their own.”

“OK,” I responded, knowing full well that within minutes, someone would be shouting for my help to fix the flooded motor. In my mind, I had already run through the options of how to get out and tow them back.

Imagine my surprise when I heard the engine fire perfectly and then watched as the boys safely and responsibly managed to entertain their friends on the water. A short-while later, the boat was expertly docked and tied off and I was invited to play badminton on the beach.

The Bottom-Line:

As a parent or as a leader at work, train, teach, inspire and then let go and you’ll be doing your job. Success is not measured by how good you are at a task, but at how good you are at helping others become good at theirs. Their independence is your victory.