Ideas / Manage standards, not people
An idea from Sui Learning
Manage standards, not people
Good leaders don't manage people, they manage standards.
In plain words
Hold a child to their word, not to your mood. Agree on the standard ahead of time, make it specific, and then check the work against it, not the child against your patience. Consequences are promised in advance, delivered evenly, and never invented in anger. Talk like a kind stakeholder: "Still on schedule? When does the first version ship? What do you need from me?" The standard does the correcting, so you don't have to.
The research behind it
- Specific, difficult goals with feedback lead to higher performance than easy goals or "do your best," across nearly 400 studies. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, American Psychologist 57, no. 9 (2002).
- Parents who combine warmth, firm supervision, and room for independence have teenagers who do better in school, in a sample of about 6,400 students. Laurence Steinberg and others, Child Development 63, no. 5 (1992).
Questions this answers
- How do I hold my child accountable without nagging?
- How do I set expectations for my child?
- What is the difference between managing people and managing standards?
In the book
In Sui Learning: Standards; Working as a Team.
Read the full answers
How do I teach my child to focus and finish projects in homeschool?How do I know if my homeschooled child is really learning?
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