Continued From Page 3

How the Father Factor Works: The Many Sources of Its Power

The father factor can work for you or against you; it all depends on whether you understand and appreciate it or ignore it. Let us assume you prefer the former. The key to understanding and appreciating depends on looking at the father-child relationship from the following perspectives.

1. The four different types of attachment (your emotional bond with your father). The four types -- intermittent, avoidant, depressed, and secure -- provide clues on how you connect emotionally in personal and professional relationships. (They are described in detail in chapter 2). It shouldn't be surprising that people who formed a secure attachment with their dads when they were young usually enjoy strong, beneficial work and intimate relationships. A secure attachment means that a child and his father bonded early in the relationship and maintained that bond, giving the child a strong sense of security and a feeling of being loved. This attachment process provided a basis for all future relationships, allowing the adult-child to be open, communicative, and trusting of other people. Of course, not all attachments are equally positive. By understanding this bond, even under the worst of circumstances, you can still develop secure, strong emotional bonds with people.

2. Your father's rule book: your father's and grandfather's spoken and unspoken rules about work, relationships, ethics, and money matters. Hard work, ambition, and achievement are learned behaviors in families. The odds are that if you're highly successful, so, too, was your father and his father before him. While there are many exceptions to this rule, it generally holds that sons and daughters follow in the footsteps of their fathers and their grandfathers concerning work. Even more predictable are the rules of the ways of relating, which are all based on your internal rule book. This comprises powerful spoken and unspoken rules, which guide your behavior, thoughts, and beliefs. Once you are aware of your father's rule book, you have to update, rewrite, and make it all yours. Most adults live by their book but seldom consider changing the outdated, nonproductive behaviors in it. Your father handed this rule book to you, but it must be reread, rewritten, and re-evaluated for your career to move forward.

3. Fathering style (daily interactions, behaviors, and communication with your father). The five basic styles of fathering are the superachiever, the time bomb, the passive/negligent father, the absent father, and the compassionate-mentor (which are discussed in detail in chapters 3-8). These have a tremendous effect on your own work style, relationship style, and the rules by which you live. Whether you are a harsh and demanding boss or a pushover depends, to a significant extent, on your father's parenting style. How your father interacted with you is a critical piece of personal information that helped shape your current career choices, professional relationships, and career potential. Understanding fathering styles provides the foundation for insight into the father factor and thus into your career and personal life.

Sam's Story

To give you a sense how these three areas of daily interaction, behavior, and communication with your father influence jobs and careers, let's take a look at the case of Sam, a thirty-eight-year-old associate with a small Cleveland law firm. Sam's dad, Teddy, was a salesman who was frequently on the road. Sam remembers weeks going by without seeing or even hearing from his dad, who drove throughout the Midwest selling machinery parts to factories. Even when Teddy was around the house, though, he wasn't particularly involved with Sam's life except when it came to sports. An avid sports fan and former minor league pitcher, Teddy paid attention to Sam only when he had a little league game -- he would go to all the games, or, if he was on the road, he would call Sam after the game and ask how it went.

Though Teddy was often away because of work, he didn't work especially hard, or so it seemed to Sam. In fact, he was fired from the machinery parts company because the company felt he wasn't "pulling his weight" -- Sam remembered hearing the phrase during an argument his parents had. Over the next ten years or so, Teddy moved from one sales job to the next, never making much money or expressing much satisfaction with his work; his most common comment when he left a company or lost a position was, "It's just a job."