“What books should my kids read to grow as leaders?”

When I was recently asked that at the end of a meeting, it reiterated how important this topic is. Many, if not most, parents are concerned about how they can raise their sons and daughters to lead.

While I went on a hunt to identify which books would be best, it made me think about a similar question that I one day hope to write my own book about: What is the best way to raise your children to be future leaders?

There is a wide variety of parenting styles and goals. For example, I grew up in the US where most parents focus on independence as the goal. Typically, in Western society, parents raise their children so that they will go off to a university and, upon graduation, become independent and live away from home.

As strange and harsh as it sounds, in Western society, parents pride themselves on raising their children to be independent and to live away from the tribe. Conversely, in the Arab world, group identity and sense of belonging are foundational.

It is shameful and inconceivable to kick children out of their homes. Just as Western parents are saying goodbye, Arab parents nearly require that their children stay home until they are married, and then may even encourage their son or daughter to bring their new spouse to live with them — or at least next door.

Arab fathers take pride in the familial relations model, and moms are the ultimate nurturers.

You can only imagine the conflicts we have in our house. I’m deeply rooted in the raise the kids to chart their independent course, and my wife, who’s Lebanese, excels as a nurturing mom. We debate heavily on which approach will result in our kids being future leaders.

Of course, parenting styles aren’t limited to the independence, belonging and nurturing orientation. Many other factors — cultural, religious, economic, ideological — influence the way parents around the world raise their kids.

Take China: building on the premise that nothing is fun until you’re good at it, the country is known for its “tiger moms” — mothers who teach their kids to override their preferences and instead work insanely hard at what matters most.

Let’s not forget, parenting styles are heavily conditioned by societal norms and I’m using the stereotypes of Western, Arab and the Chinese tiger mom, loosely. The question is, “Is one approach better than the others at producing a leader?”

The available research suggests not, but that’s possibly because raising future leaders isn’t the stated goal of any of them. Therefore, I’m proposing an alternative parenting style: the coaching style.

In my own case, it’s too early to see how effective it is, as only one of my five kids has made the move into the post-graduation real world — and that was just a few weeks ago — but here are a few examples of how I’m attempting to build future leadership potential.

When one of my kids wants something big, like to go on a school trip, they must make a PowerPoint presentation to sell their ideas to the family. If they want to grab something from the shelf in the mall and buy it, I teach deliberate versus impulse decision-making and encourage them to not allow circumstances to influence their actions or emotions.

I have my kids analyse TV shows to identify the patterns and learn what’s driving the actions. And of course, I place particular focus on performance character: they should work harder than everyone else.

I can’t say that it’s always easy or popular to do this — my experiment draws the intrigue of my friends, not the kids — but at the root of this approach is the desire to help them make conscious decisions, be aware of the possible outcomes, and to analyse and question the world around them. These are just some of the qualities that I see in the leaders I work with around the globe.

The question that we haven’t probed is: do you really want your child to be a leader? The answer shouldn’t be an automatic yes, but if that is your goal, you’re going to have to break from parenting norms.

If you want your kids to do things differently, you have to do things differently too.

— The writer is a CEO coach and author of “Leadership Dubai Style”. Contact him at tsw@tommyweir.com