What We Inherit, What We Build, What We Pass On
Some of the deepest lessons I ever learned about leadership did not come from a classroom, a model, or a book.
They came from my parents.
My father loved his work. That alone taught me something. Not because work should define a life, but because there was something deeply honorable in the way he took responsibility. At one point, the oil refinery where he worked moved across the country. Five colleagues, including him, were chosen to help set up the new plant and form their own teams.
As the story was told to me, there were certain people everybody wanted on their team. And then there were the others. The people seen as difficult. Less attractive. More complicated. The ones likely to be left behind.
Apparently my father said something along the lines of: you choose first, and my team will be the ones left over.
That team became known as the most productive and reliable team of all.
Leadership Begins in How We See People
I have thought about that story many times over the years.
Not because I want to romanticize the past, and not because I imagine my father as flawless. He was not. He had a shadow too, and some of that shadow landed in me as it does in almost every child. But in that moment, he embodied something I still recognize as leadership: the willingness to see human potential where others mainly see inconvenience.
Modern leadership research gives language to what he may simply have known intuitively. Teams tend to perform better when people experience psychological safety, when they are not punished for speaking up, making mistakes, asking for help, or being fully present. Research associated with Amy Edmondson's work has repeatedly linked psychological safety with team learning and performance. Google's widely cited Project Aristotle likewise found psychological safety to be a key differentiator of high-performing teams.
That does not mean lowering standards. It means combining standards with dignity.
There is also research on the so-called Pygmalion effect: when leaders hold higher expectations, they often behave in ways that strengthen people's confidence and performance. In other words, people are not only shaped by their own capacity, but also by the expectations that meet them.
This is one reason I still love my father's story. He did not build a strong team by selecting only the obvious stars. He built it by refusing the lazy assumption that some people are simply the difficult ones.
He seems to have asked a deeper question: what becomes possible when someone is led well?
What My Mother Taught Me About Dignity
My mother taught me something different, but equally important.
She had a strong feel for what people needed in order to live with dignity, and also to leave the world with dignity. She could read beneath the surface. She sensed emotional reality. She understood care not as sentimentality, but as attentiveness to what really matters.
That too shaped my understanding of leadership.
Because leadership is not only about performance. It is also about how people are met. Whether they are reduced to function, or seen as human beings. Whether they are handled, or respected.
Research on workplace culture supports this as well. Respect is consistently ranked by employees as one of the most important behaviors they want from leaders, and disrespect has measurable consequences for engagement, burnout, health, and retention.
So when I think of my parents now, I do not think in simplistic terms. I do not think they were perfect, because they were not. I do not think their gifts erased their limitations, because they did not. But I do think they modeled something valuable that I could build on: authenticity, responsibility, dignity, and integrity.
And the older I get, the more I realize that this is not a small thing.
For Some Children, Distance Becomes the Healthiest Choice
In recent years, and again recently through some of my clients, I have met adults whose story is very different.
People who spent years battling with their parents. People who tried conversation, patience, loyalty, explanation, repair, distance, and renewed hope. People who wanted reconciliation not out of politeness, but out of something deeply human: the longing to remain connected to where one comes from.
And yet, for some of them, the painful truth was this: the only healthy option left was to break contact.
Even when such a decision is necessary, it is rarely clean. The grief can be enormous. The guilt can be enormous. The inner conflict can be enormous. The bond between parents and adult children is often deeply significant across the life course, which is one reason estrangement tends to be emotionally complex rather than casual. Research describes estrangement as a real and recurring phenomenon in family life, often associated with abuse, betrayal, poor parenting, boundary violations, value conflict, or long-standing emotional harm.
I will be honest: because I was raised in a relatively healthy environment, not perfect but healthy, it took me time to understand that some family systems are simply too wounded, too defended, or too unsafe for genuine repair.
That realization matters.
Because many spiritually mature or conscientious people stay far too long in the hope that more empathy, more understanding, or more patience will eventually create change. Sometimes it does. And sometimes it does not.
What Childhood Leaves Behind
Childhood environments matter deeply. Public health research has shown that adverse childhood experiences can have lasting effects on health, wellbeing, and life opportunity, and that such experiences are common rather than exceptional.
This does not mean people are doomed by their history. It does mean that family pain is not a sentimental topic. It leaves traces. It shapes the nervous system, identity, relationships, self-worth, and what a person comes to believe is normal.
That is why I find myself holding two truths at once.
The first truth is that as children, and later as adults, it can be deeply worthwhile to see our parents more fully. They were not only mother and father. They were human beings shaped by their own history, wounds, defenses, and limitations. Sometimes that broader view opens compassion. Sometimes it softens rigid judgment. Sometimes it helps us understand what we were carrying that was never really ours.
But the second truth is just as important.
Parents carry responsibility.
Not the responsibility to be perfect. Not the responsibility to never wound. That is impossible. But they do carry the responsibility to keep growing, keep reflecting, keep healing, and keep doing the best they can for the children entrusted to them.
And when parents are unwilling or unable to do that, then children, including adult children, may need to choose what protects life in them.
That choice is not always a rejection. Sometimes it is the final expression of self-respect.
Sometimes the most faithful thing a person can do is stop trying to earn from wounded parents what those parents are simply not capable of giving.
And if that is your story, I want to say this clearly: be proud of who you have become. Not only in spite of your upbringing. Also because of what your upbringing asked you to become.
Some people inherit enough safety to build from. Others have to build safety themselves.
Both are real. Both deserve to be named. And both tell us something essential about leadership.
Because whether we are leading a team, a family, or our own life, the question remains the same:
Do people become smaller around us, or more themselves?
That, to me, is where leadership and parenting meet.
In the end, both are about responsibility for the life that has been placed in our hands.
Sources & References
Amy Edmondson — research on psychological safety
Google Project Aristotle — team effectiveness research
Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies — Pygmalion effect and leadership expectations
Harvard Business Review — respect and dignity at work
Peer-reviewed research on family estrangement (PubMed Central)
CDC — Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
About the Author
Lead True Global Leader Andrea Henning’s vision is that when people discover their authenticity and dare to follow their bliss they are happier and more successful in their lives while serving as an inspiration to their communities.
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