Businessman or Daddy | Which Title is Your Heart After? |

Businessman or Daddy | Which Title is Your Heart After?

29 September, 2011 | Author: behave | Posted in Dealing with Tough Situations, Parenting, Therapeutic Boarding Schools for Troubled Teens

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Businessman or Daddy? Which Title is Your Heart After?

By Craig Rogers, Parent Coach – Co-founder of Zion Educational Systems

Businessman or Daddy? Which title are you seeking after? Which title are you more proud of? Which title are you more successful with? Which title gets your time, energy, and heart? Most men have their entire identity, personal value, and worthiness as a human being derived from their title and position representing their professional work world. A successful businessman rarely makes a great father. A successful father rarely makes a great businessman. The two positions are totally opposed to each other, always competing for the best parts of the man. Meaning, in order to be a successful businessman one must commit his total being, heart, mind, and energy into his job, or his project, or his company. The amount of effort required to reach “success” is immense, leaving little to no energy to be a father and husband. Many successful businessman are workaholics, meaning they devote themselves entirely to their jobs or businesses, leaving their spouse and children feeling abandoned, rejected, unimportant, and a burden.

The emotional and creative energy required to be a successful businessman is off the charts. The businessman must give everything he has, emotionally, and physically, or fail to succeed. When he gets home all he wants is to wind down, relax, and be served. Many times this businessman looks at his wife and kids with resentment. His wife and children want his time and energy, and they seem to demand a meaningful relationship. They want to engage in the relationship, they want their daddy. The successful businessman comes home and finds that there are more demands upon him, but he is spent, tired, and therefore the resentment grows and grows. He wants to be served at home, and therefore their is a major clash between the expectations of the tired and weary father and his children and wife who are craving for his presence. The successful businessman comes home and evaluates the performance of his wife and children. Is the house clean? Is dinner ready? Did the kids get their homework done, are they doing well in school? For the successful businessman the performance of his wife and children are qualified and quantified by the burden rate his family puts upon him. Meaning, are they lessening his load by having everything in order, or does he have to come home and direct, bark out orders, delegate, and manage?

More often or not the successful businessman attempts to run his household and direct his family in the same way that he runs his department, his company, or his executive team. The successful businessman believes that what works so well at work should work just as good at home. This is a disaster. In the home of the successful businessman children are valued by their performance, or lack there of. Children are not employees, and their value and worth should never be based on their performance. The wife of the successful businessman often suffers the most. The successful businessman treats his secretary and assistants better than he does his own wife. He comes home expecting the home to be clean, food on the table, and the kids subdued (Daddy’s home, and he is very tired…). The successful businessman that attempts to relate with his family in the same manner that he does at work will destroy his family. Then he will dismiss and fire his family, isolating from them, feeling like a loser, thus he spends more time and energy at work.

The question is “what has your heart? Does your business (title, position, project, identity) have your full attention? Do you find the success you achieve on the job satisfying, but at home you do not get the same successful results? Do you feel like a fish out of water, and while at home you are totally focused on your business? These are very important questions. Why? Because most successful businessmen have wive’s and children who suffer great consequences. Unfortunately, the unrepentant businessman often loses his family. Divorce is the norm for successful businessmen. Many rebellious teens are products of a “distant dad” (distant dads are either gone on the road, or always at work, and when they are home they are not emotionally connected or engaged with his wife or children). Wives often describe feelings of abandonment, rejection, and worthlessness. All caused by the successful businessmen and his out of control priorities. Not all businessmen end their marriages in defeat, many stay in a very unhappy marriage. They make all kinds of promises (promises to overcome the workaholicism) but never stick to their commitments, finding themselves jumping into new projects, new ideas, and a new vision that takes up all of his time and energy. Sooner or later his wife and children give up on him, finding their own way, accepting that they were never as important as his job, position, or title. Most stunning is the fact that most successful businessmen are in total denial and push all the fault upon his angry nagging wife and troubled children.

Successful businessman also struggle to run ministries. My next article is on the successful businessman that attempts to go into ministry, running his ministry like he does his business. It doesn’t work.
Craig Rogers

Zion Educational Services, Inc.

craigrogersala1@me.com