If you’re a caring parent, of course you want the best for your children. You think about their future and want them to be happy, healthy and successful in life.
You want them to have good relationships when they grow up; meaningful pastimes and success in whatever job or career they eventually choose.
When it comes to their future work life, they’ll need important guidance from you, their parents.
If you teach your children the following five attitudes and behaviours, they’re much more likely to achieve success in their future work life, whatever they end up choosing to do
1: Working well with others. Your children will never go wrong if you instill in them the importance of courtesy and consideration toward others. These values, as well as loyalty and kindness, will earn them the respect and admiration of their colleagues and supervisors.
Good communication skills are another essential element in creating success at work, and all of these social skills will be highly valued, often even more than their intelligence or abilities.
Certainly, a lack of social skills will prevent your children from doing as well as they could in their future work life, no matter how smart and talented they are.
2: Responsibility. Teaching your children to take responsibility for themselves will do them a world of good. They’ll be more empowered (because they won’t blame anyone else for their problems or mistakes) and they’ll be more highly regarded.
Taking responsibility for themselves will enable them to maximize their potential, as they’ll learn to confront the challenges facing them and they won’t be waiting for other people to deal with their problems.
3: Losing gracefully. Children need to learn how to lose, and lose gracefully, so that they’re prepared for moments of failure and disappointment in adult life.
They need to understand that even if they’ve done their best, a good outcome isn’t guaranteed. This will prevent them from becoming discouraged or angry and then giving up or lashing out when things go sideways.
Children need to be taught that failure is an inevitable part of life and that there are valuable lessons to be learned from it. Protecting your children from disappointment or failure deprives them of the opportunity to learn these crucial life lessons and to develop the emotional intelligence necessary for real success at work.
4: Integrity. So much of our success in work is based on following through with what we say we’ll do. Children need to learn the value of keeping the promises they’ve made, even if it isn’t always easy to do so. They need to see that this is how people come to trust them and depend on them, and that this is how they’ll end up advancing in their field.
5: Hard work and persistence. A lot of young people today would rather quit their job than stick with it if the commute is long, the job isn’t to their liking, or the pay isn’t great.
Often, these youngsters will choose not to apply themselves to tasks that seem overly dull, challenging or time-consuming. All successful adults, however, have paid their dues at previous jobs with long commutes, unpleasant work, or lousy pay.
Strategic parents will teach their children that it takes time and effort to rise through the ranks in their career. They’ll show their children that it’s in the trenches where they’ll learn the most valuable lessons necessary for their future success.
Loving your children is a necessity, but it’s not enough if you want them to succeed at work. Teaching them the above attitudes and behaviours will give them the tools to become brilliantly successful when they grow up.
