MILANO – “In recent months we have trained attention and otherness, abilities that develop automatically throughout the paternity process. As it is necessary to give children a lot of attention and reduce the space of their ego, so also in the company with their collaborators it is important transpose these modalities: gratitude, authenticity and a greater level of complicity between people will ensue. The era of authoritarian leadership is certainly over: we must bring out the potential of our collaborators, as we would do with our children “.
Reflection, that Isidoro Colluto, Barilla customer team director for Italy, gathered at the conference The era of leaders dad – New leadership styles one year after the pandemic, organized in recent days by Lifeed. For many managers, the mix of remote work and the pandemic has led to a deepening of the intertwining between family role and attitude towards the workplace. So much so that from the survey carried out on the participants in the training courses it emerged that agile work was for the vast majority of worker-fathers an occasion in which the greatest discovery concerns “a different way of putting together private life and working life” ( 62%).
Given the well-known Italian backwardness in the division of family burdens, for many this was the first occasion in which the crossroads between professional and private aspects arose in everyday life: in 52% of cases the fathers declared that they found themselves in this condition , much more than what happened to mothers. “In our family, my wife is mainly the parent of” last resort “, although I try to be as ready as possible. Of course, even considering the amount of time spent with my daughters, the relationship between them and my wife is different. compared to the one they have with me: they are both beautiful, but different, “said Davide Viale, Managing Director Rolling Stock Italia of Alstom and father of three daughters at the conference.
“Being present as much as possible is necessary to give your children the awareness of being loved: in a situation such as the pandemic one, where many points of reference have been lost, the awareness of affections allows you to find tranquility to face the state of uncertainty – has added Eraldo Federici, Automotive, LifeScience, Manufacturing, Aerospace and Defense Italy Market Head for Capgemini as well as a parent with four children. The experience of the family relationship made me reflect a lot on the hierarchical organization of many companies, which no longer works: a ‘interactive organization, in which it is possible to share doubts in order to try together to elaborate answers “.
Family, work and pandemic experience are therefore intertwined. Investigating the evolution of fathers’ feelings one year after the start of the Covid crisis, for the Lifeed survey, fathers also define themselves as more responsible (89%) and curious about the future (80%).
“It was clear – said the president of Lifeed, Giuseppe Donnagemma – that there is a lot to do to change the Italian managerial spirit, which is based on an outdated model: we must forget about the hierarchical organization and favor more direct relationships , human and pragmatic “. For Donnagemma (father of two daughters class 2000) there is a parallelism between parental role and leadership: “We need to build emotional and empathic human relationships, but set goals to pursue and limits to respect”. Empathy which, witnessed Vittorio Ratto, deputy general manager of Crédit Agricole, is expressed in the “importance of understanding the emotions that run through the organization, explaining and integrating them. Managing the uncertainty and partiality of things is a lesson that can be learned with children, when we are called as parents to give meaning and certainties, to explain and decipher their fears “.
The Lifeed survey shows that seven out of ten fathers, with a particular propensity among those who have recently become parents, believe they have improved their leadership skills in recent months.
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