Why 25 Million Dads Are Quietly Rewriting the Rules of Fatherhood

Most dads want to be more involved and intentional, but the language around fatherhood is often negative or confusing. Paul Sullivan, founder of The Company of Dads, shares the empowering concept of “Lead Dad,” a term that reframes involved fatherhood as uplifting, progressive, and masculine, without stigma. Discover how shifting the narrative can unlock greater engagement at home and in the workplace, helping men and companies thrive together.

In this episode, Paul narrates the origin story of “Lead Dad,” inspired by an Atlantic article and a desire to combat the negative stereotypes of involved fathers. He explains how this simple yet powerful phrase is changing perceptions, inspiring thousands of men who are balancing careers and family in a new way. You'll hear stories of NFL players, corporate leaders, and everyday parents redefining masculinity through involvement, presence, and partnership.

We break down practical tactics for fostering this shift: from monthly “paper tests” to measure engagement and resentment, to implementing low-lift, high-impact policies like shared calendars, flexible hours, and open conversations that challenge stigma. Paul highlights how companies can create resilient cultures by normalizing flexible parenting, empowering men to show up fully at work and home, and reducing the age-old penalties associated with caregiving.

This episode matters because the future of work and family depends on it. As more fathers embrace the role of Lead Dad, the opportunity to build more inclusive, supportive, and productive workplaces grows. By understanding the mental shifts and implementing simple systemic changes, leaders can shape a new normal, where family-first policies drive loyalty, performance, and culture.

Perfect for HR professionals, managers, entrepreneurs, and progressive fathers aiming to break stereotypes and foster authentic leadership. If you’re ready to reframe masculinity in your organization or life, this conversation offers clear, actionable steps to start today, and create a legacy of involvement and support that lasts beyond the paycheck.

Paul Sullivan is the founder of The Company of Dads, a media platform and community advancing positive fatherhood. His insights are rooted in extensive research, interviews with high-performing dads, and decades of experience changing the narrative around men's roles at home and work.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

No one on their deathbed has ever said, you know, I just wish I had more time to create a PowerPoint. I mean, we know that of the 25 million men in the United States who are lead dads, as a third of all fathers, only about 2 million of that 25 million are what people would call stay-at-home dads. But the other 23 million are in the workforce in some capacity. And fathers are doing more each and every generation than the generation before. They're trying to compare themselves with their spouses. And this is a positive thing. Nobody marries somebody who's just kind of lazy lab out. Those two lists will never match. They'll never be the same list. And that's where resentment starts to be produced because they were seen as insufficiently committed to the job. And the progress is coming from those leaders who have achieved a level of success. And that's something called a care shift. You sort of designate a certain number of hours per day when you're gonna work synchronously in 10, 20 years. It's just gonna be the norm. And you wouldn't go to a firm that didn't allow robust parental leave and flexibility.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

For a long time, fatherhood at work was something that we're expected to keep quiet about. Today's guest is Paul. He spent years as a columnist at the New York Times, raising two daughters, while quietly being called what he called the undercover lead dad. You know, that tension about being deeply involved at home and invisible at work pushed Paul to ask a bigger question. What would it look like if fathers were actually allowed to be present both at home and in the careers? In this conversation, we talk about what it means to be a lead dad, how many men still feel penalized or showing up as parents, and how redefining fatherhood can make work better for everyone. Paul tier tips that many companies can take. And I'm excited about it just because I resonate with a lot of what Paul said. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as well. Let's jump in. All right, folks. Well, thank you again for joining us for another session. I'm excited about my guest today with a lot of experience and a very unique journey. And I'm I'm excited about the space that he's creating for fathers. And there's a specific segment of fathers that he's gonna share here today. So I want to turn it over. I would love for you to introduce yourself to the audience today and just give a you know high-level overview of who you are and where you are today in the world.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Thanks, Damon. I appreciate that. I'm Paul Sullivan, founder of the Company of Dads. Uh, I started the Company of Dads four years ago uh in February 20 uh 22, after uh 13-year career as a business columnist at the New York Times. And the Company of Dads is a media company, community platform, and workplace educator. And we talk about lead dads, and lead dads are the go-to parent, whether they work full-time, part-time, or devote all their time to their family. They're they're all always there to support their spouse or partner in whatever they're doing. And of course, they're allies to working moms and caregivers in general in the workplace. But our motto is really helping families fulfill their full potential. Because we say if you don't have dads fully involved and engaged in not just the parenting, but also talking about the parenting at work, you're not gonna be uh able to fulfill that full potential as a family or you know, as as somebody in in the workplace. And I'm happy to be on here with you today, Damon. So so thank you. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

And um, if folks heard that, if you're like me, the first thing that should jump off in your mind is lead dads. Like what is this? It's Paul just making up terms right now. So, Paul, I'd love for you to share a little bit more about what Amy you did share, what you think that um that term is. So it's like, how will you continue how how how did you come to this term of lead that? I'd love for you to share the story. And I think I don't know if you've had this trademark, but you should.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

I didn't entirely make it up, though. I'm not uh I'm not averse as a writer to uh making up phrases uh now and again. I actually read the term lead dad uh in a piece in the Atlantic probably gosh, 10 years ago. Wow. And it was written by the husband of Emery Slaughter, and Emory Slaughter had been a Deputary Secretary of State uh under Hillary Clinton, and her husband uh was a professor, is a professor at at Princeton University. And he wrote about how he had this role, and he, I think I I'll give him credit for coining it, the lead dad with their sons, and he was able to work his teaching as a history professor, I believe, you teach his classes and teaching around so he could be there and be present for his sons, but he never really felt fully accepted. And and I identified with that uh immediately, and and I emailed him, and sadly he never emailed me back. Um, but maybe he's too busy with his kids and his family and his career. But I always remember that. And when I was thinking about, you know, during COVID, thinking about the need for a resource for fathers, because there really there weren't any positive resources, you know, lots of stuff for moms, all the stuff for parents, really for moms, uh, and the stuff for dads assumed that dads had done something wrong. Uh horrible divorce, they drank too much, you know, any number of bad things, which is important that they had this social service support, but it wasn't what I was looking for. And that that that phrase lead dad uh came back to me because I thought, you know, what's the alternative? You know, and the alternative is negative. The alternative is, you know, a father or a man who's who's a devoted dad or a devoted husband is Mr. Mom, or he's a house husband, or his buddies will say, you know, oh, are you retired now? Um I I talked to the husband of a pretty famous, you know, LPGA uh professional golfer, and he said that, you know, some of the guys would call him, you know, Mr. So-and-so by by her last name. And it was all, you know, guys joke with each other all the time, but it was all pejorative and it wasn't positive. So I thought I remember this term lead dad, and I thought this is super positive. It's super progressive. You're you're you're leading. Now, it's also one of those phrases, Damon, as you picked up on it, which causes you to scratch your head. You're like, what the hell does this really mean? Like what is this? And there's something powerful in that because it causes you to pause. And, you know, we we know that of the 25 million men in the United States who are lead dads, that's a third of all fathers, only about 2 million of that 25 million are what people would would call stay-at-home dads. We we call them lead dads who devote all their time to their family. But the other 23 million are in the workforce in some capacity. And so having this phrase lead dad, we found uh to be very empowering. And, you know, it's apologies for the long-winded answer, but I remember like one of the first podcasts we did was with a guy who came on our board. His name is Najee Good. And Najee played uh professional football for the Philadelphia Eagles and won a Super Bowl with Eagles defeating the New England Patriots, and he he sacked Tom Brady, you know, the most famous quarterback in the NFL. Sacked Tom Brady, wins it, and he he has full custody of his two daughters. And so he and I would joke that you know on Sunday he's he's sacking the quarterback with the best hair anybody has ever seen in the NFL. And on Monday, he's doing the hair and braids of his of his two daughters. And he really loved the phrase. He he got me introduced to a bunch of his retired NFL uh buddies, and they love the phrase. Of course, the irony, Damon, if people really knew me, the irony is that I know absolutely nothing about football. So all of these guys actually like talking to me because I was never gonna say, hey, remember that time in you know 2019 when you did X, Y, and Z? But they really embraced it. And and it shows that it's important for a term like this to be both proactive and positive, but also still retain a quality of masculinity so that men feel like we are still being men, but we're being men in a much more uh positive, productive way.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yeah. Um thanks for sharing that. And I think it it highlights so much. One of the questions that comes out of that for me is that uh I know you've done extensive research. I'm curious what are how has the numbers changed pre-COVID, during COVID, and even after COVID? Like, is it more than two to three mil are stay at home? Um, is that increasing? Um, are you seeing an uptick? I'm sure by your work, but if I was to go Google search and look at the searches for this sort of thing, like has there been an uptick in searches? I don't know if you have any data around that.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Yeah, I mean, uh I don't want to see a political statement, but we drew a lot of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and from the U.S. Census, and that was really rock solid, uh amazing data. And now it's a little bit, they're not collecting the same amount that they used to. We also used, you know, Pew. Pew uh triangulated a lot of this research. But the one thing that we saw, you know, four or five years ago was that what was driving growth in the number of lead dads was first-time fathers in their late 20s and early 30s who wanted to be more in partnership with their spouses and wanted to be in more partnership as fathers. And that, you know, there is research out there that that shows there's a woman named Leah Ruppener who uh is usually in Australia, but she's at Vanderbilt on a visiting professorship, and she talks about, you know, fathers are doing more each and every generation than the generation before. But we finally reached an inflection point where instead of comparing yourself to your own father, who probably did less, my my father certainly did a lot less, uh, instead of comparing yourself or comparing yourself to your friends who do very little, we've reached this inflection point where men, particularly men who are you know embracing this title lead dad, um, they're starting to compare themselves with their spouses. And this is a positive thing. This isn't a negative thing. This is actually to see, like, okay, am I, you know, carrying that same mental load is a term you know, popularized by Eve Rodsky. Am I carrying that same mental load as my spouse? Are we sharing that mental load equally? And really in doing that, I would call it like a benign comparison with your spouse. It it it sort of lends itself to sort of greater engagement in the home and then hopefully greater engagement in the workplace where you can talk to other working moms or other caregivers about your role as a lead dad. But that's something that's really only come about in the past couple of years. Has it been driven by COVID and the changes to how we work? 100% it has. But unfortunately, the data isn't as reliable today as it was five years ago.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

I guess as you're saying that the a personal story is, I think a couple weeks ago, um, I'm I'm on paternity leave right now. My child's three and a half months. Mom went back to work, and so you know, I've just part of it enjoying the time I love to read, you know, hang out. Um, I'm halfway through that. I think it was 2 a.m. in the morning, you know, my wife's nursing. Um, she's just really tired that day. I just come in and she turns over and she says, Hey, can you, you know, pick her up and give her a bottle? I just did not hear this at all. And then I think 30 minutes later, she gets up because sometimes we'll let the child like fussle and just like hopefully she'll shoo then go back to sleep. Because she was like, Um, I did not hear 30 minutes later. She gets up, takes a child, walks around the house, you know, do what she needs to do. And then I'm like, Why are you mad at me? I'm just like 2 a.m. in the morning, not getting it right. Um, she's she goes to work in the morning, comes back home for lunch, and she's like, I am so mad at you. I'm like, huh? Like, did I miss something? And so we have this big talk, and she's like, Listen, first of all, we we both got to the point where like I just didn't hear you. So that was the first thing. But then it it started unraveling so much where she was like, Listen, I'm nursing mom, I'm working. I don't need to have to tell you things. I needed to start taking more initiative. And it's it's how we've sort of built a relationship over the last three years where um I can say like she grew up in a household where both mom and dad's there. I grew up my dad wasn't there, so we're kind of co-creating our, like you were saying, our relationship together and and the roles per se. Um, I'm 35, she's a year younger than me. So we are in that age group where it's like we're not necessarily comparing ourselves to parents, but it's to each other of like what's needed. And there's so many different things. I don't think we're either of us are better or worse at anything virtually. You know what I mean by that is it's not like she's better at laundry than I am, or I'm better at cooking than I am. It's it's sort of 50-50. So it's really just like whoever feels the need to do it in that moment, do it. And that was like you hearing you say that for for me personally, they brought that up where it's it's a comparison, not just of our friends or anything, it's more of like, hey, we're in this unit together. How might we co-create something that works uniquely for us? So that, like you mentioned, like one person doesn't feel like, oh my God, they're continuously um carrying that mental load. Because I can imagine you will see it like it will continue throughout life, where if one person is always scheduling or always, you know, doing those, those, you know, always remembering when the doctor's appointment is, that can become burdensome in the future.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Well, uh, David, I have to say this. Um if you made it three and a half months without screwing up, I'm in awe of you because uh that in a that's you know, all-star level. Um, yeah, you're right though, but I I think a lot of it comes down to, you know, we're I'm a huge proponent of basic things that have a big impact. And so this is not, you know, reinventing the wheel, this is not creating the iPod, this is basic things that have a big impact. And calendaring is so important, like having that that shared calendar, and you talk about who's gonna cook dinner, who's gonna organize this. Well, I mean, the where everything falls apart as your kids get older, as life gets more complex, when people are not on paternity and maternity leave, when everything gets more complex is when a plan gets changed. I think as parents, as working parents, we can plan for pretty much anything. You can't uh not the unexpected, but you can plan for pretty much anything. But we have a lot of trouble changing our plans. So if you were to devise a system whereby whoever happens to come home that night is gonna cook dinner, I'm not a great uh prognosticator here, damn it, but I think that's gonna lead to frustration. It's more like, okay, how about I cook dinner on uh, you know, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, uh, you cook it on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and on Sunday, we order it. And then people know what their task is. And then if you have to move it within it, it's fine. And so just as I say, like you said, you know, I nobody wants to be the scheduler forever. And I might push back at that and say, like, if you happen to be the best scheduler in your family, and you happen to be the best communicator and the best organizer, then you should own that task. You know, we you and I were talking earlier this week. My wife, and this is such a stereotypical thing that people always get beaten up for, but it just happens to work for us. Like, my wife actually likes to buy all the the presents. Like, we celebrate Christmas, she likes doing that. It's not that I couldn't do that, it's that it gives her great joy. And so there's so many memes on social media about, oh my goodness, the dad is surprised, all this. Well, that's actually how it works, but it works, it's we haven't fallen into that. It wasn't like I just said, Oh, I'm not gonna do that. Uh I'm a no, she actually likes doing that. So why would I micromanage and try to muscle in and say, Well, I should do that too. And so it's really about finding those tasks that you're naturally good at, or I guess in some ways you naturally don't mind. I mean, uh, you know, I don't think anybody dreams one day of taking out the recycling, but if you find a task that you naturally don't mind, and then you own it, and then you have all that that then there's that gray area in between. Like, okay, here are these things here. How are we gonna solve that? Maybe that's something we do together as a family. Maybe it's something like, okay, you own that task, I own this lousy task, and and we'll go from there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

One thing as we're thinking about it is you've often mentioned in previous interviews and on your website about this paper test. Um, I'd I'd love to hear a little bit more about that if you can share, folks, what it is. And the the thing that's interesting for me is like obviously I have another month and a half left, but like you mentioned, it's when you go back to work, when it's like, okay, now I can be way more flexible now. I might spend 30 minutes for the day, hop on an interview, but you know, the the other 24 hours of the day, I'm flexible with the baby. That's not necessarily the case. I'm curious how like do you advise people taking that every six months? But like, yeah, I would love to hear number one, what that paper test is, and then like how often are people taking it and any suggestions around that.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

I I would love it if people took it every couple of months because it'd be uh super productive. I'll back up and say the paper test is essentially a very simple method to either avoid resentment building up within a relationship or to break down that resentment that has always built up. As I say, like when you meet somebody, uh you really have to like that person and love that person to get married. Then you stay married to them for a little while, you you really love that person a lot, uh, you've got a good partnership, and then you say, okay, I think we're gonna have children now. And then once you have children, maybe you have another child, a third child. But what happens with resentment in a relationship is, you know, nobody marries somebody who does nothing. Nobody marries somebody who's just kind of lazy laying about. But the the number of tasks and the number of responsibilities grow, I don't want to say they grow exponentially, but they certainly grow geometrically as our lives get more complex, as our careers get better, as we have more responsibility at work, as we have additional children. Uh, you know, parental leave is remarkable. But as I say, like you could give the somebody a year off, and it's not like a year and a day, you know, parenting gets easier. So what the paper test has is it allows people to have a check-in in a non-confrontational way. And that's the most important, but the non-confrontational way because what too often happens is somebody says, Jesus, I cannot believe that we don't have dinner on Tuesday night. Damon, Tuesday is your night. Okay, I guess we're ordering. We're ordering pizza. We've already ordered four times this week. Well, that's resentment building up. The way you avoid that with the paper test is I say, find a Saturday afternoon, find a Sunday when everything is going well. If you're a tea person, have a glass of tea. If you're a wine person, have a glass of wine, and sit down. And you just simply take two pieces of paper and on one side, uh, husband and wife for this example, husband wrote writes down everything he thinks that he does at home. Wife, and then he writes down everything that he thinks his wife does at home. And vice versa. Wife writes down everything she knows she does at home, and then everything she thinks her husband does at home. And the one thing I guarantee every single time is that those two lists will never match. They'll never be the same list. And it's in that conflict, in looking at those two non-matching columns of what people are presuming the other person does, and that's where growth starts to happen. And that's where resentment starts to be reduced. Because you're gonna say, unless, you know, again, unless you married a sociopath, most people are gonna say, wait a second, uh, I didn't know you did all this stuff. I thought, you know, I thought I was doing all of this. And then there'll be a moment of friction, which is why wine may be better than than tea, but whatever. Uh there may be a moment, but in that moment of friction, okay, how do we reset this? How do we solve this? And I love the idea of every six months, every 12 months to do this because that way a a lot of resentment doesn't build up. But too often when we've used this with couples at the company dads, it's people who are you know four, five, six, seven years into it, and then it takes a lot more to sort of unwind some of those things. But I mean it's important. I mean, resentment doesn't age well, and you don't want to go through your your your partnership, your marriage, your your career resenting somebody. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

I I like that. And it's the idea of resentment, but then you know, the another emotion that's coming up for me is like the stigma. Um, we're gonna transition a little bit, but I know you've spoken about it as I I felt it a little bit too, not just uh even just the idea of taking time off was like something's I don't know, like something feels weird here. And I I wanna, you know, I was telling someone else, like, this is the reason we did it, right? Like this is the reason why we work so hard to provide for our family. So why do we feel weird putting the family first? I'd be curious your thoughts around like how have you seen the stigma like dissipated or even gotten worse over the years, and like how are men starting to think about like, is there penalty for involved dad? And like what might that look like? Um you know, in 2026, I almost forgot my years.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

No, I mean, there's research on a penalty, and and as I always I always caveat this by saying, every working mom in the world will say, What are you talking about, Sullivan? There's something called the motherhood penalty that's well documented. And I say, Yes, but two things can be true at the same time. Uh Jamie Ladge, a professor at Boston College, did work pre-pandemic on what happened to men who put their hands up to be what we call lead dads, what anybody else would call, just a super involved father, and they were seen as insufficiently committed to the job, and they were no, they were penalized. And this happens to moms. You know, where's the progress coming? The progress is coming from those leaders who have achieved a level of success where their their roles are protected and they want to um set the right example. How do you set the right example? You do not set the right example by saying stuff like, you know what, take all the time off you want or whatever you want. Because too often that's followed by something like, it's wonderful that you can take that time. I mean, because when I was in your role, I never took time off. Or do you have any idea how much I missed? I mean, you guys are so lucky these days that you I never got any of this. But I got here. I'm I'm in this role. Um, or you have a manager who, you know, has a child and then is is back to work, you know, three days later. Um, the best managers and the ones who set the tone that is sort of you know intellectually honest and consistent at companies are the ones who are okay with parenting out loud and putting any responsibilities that they have in their calendar. Now, nobody wants to say, hey, nobody wants to read in their manager's calendar, you know, going for a colonoscopy at uh 6 a.m. will be cleansing the night, but nobody needs that level of detail. But what they do need is some level of detail beyond the banal OOO, some level of detail that says, you know, picking up Sally early from school, taking Bobby to swim practice, uh, leaving early for uh anniversary dinner. Simple stuff like that that reinforces what the company is probably saying in its HR materials. And what they're probably saying is that we believe in family, we want to have uh want people to bring their best selves to work, we want to create a holistic environment. All of that, all of those talking points ring hollow if you don't have managers who reinforce it. And now the flip side of this is what happens is that you know, when you have managers who who you could have the world's greatest, you know, parental leave policy, but if you have managers who who never take it, if you have managers who don't have uh a way to help people, you know, uh offboard and and and uh re-on board later on, that's going to be problematic. But so much of what needs to be done isn't a around spending five, ten, twenty million dollars on revamping the company's HR policy. It's more about spending far less than that on revamping the messaging around the policies that are already in place. And that's what really uh encourages you know younger employees to feel like, okay, I can take that leave. And I do feel that my company. Company is here for me. And my company does understand that if I leave early and take an extra two hours to do something on this day, I'm gonna make it up because I'm a highly incentivized, high performing, you know, worker and this job means something to me and they trust me.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Oh, there's so much there to pull on. One of the things that comes up for me is that, yeah, I mentioned I'm 35, and I'm not sure if I was 25 how comfortable I'd feel taking the time off. And like you mentioned, this idea of like, I'm a manager now. And so once you've you're in this position, you feel a little bit more secure. Um, you know, you you've done some stuff, you've built up a resume, so you feel like you can take time off versus like how might you know what would that have looked like 10 years ago when I was just starting out? And do we stigmatize younger folks? And it could it be one of the reasons why we we're seeing that you maybe young people aren't having as many kids. I'm not sure. Let's just wrapping our head around that. I also like just simple, that simple tidbit. And I've I've had great managers that have done it, and it's it's as simple as kid drop-off or you know, kids dentists, um, especially now that if you're working, like I work at startups. So let's say we have a three-day in office, you know, like those other two days you're not in office, you can still put that on your calendar and be flexible as well. I'm curious, like, what are some other tidbits? Um, I I mentioned, you know, the remote, like flexible PTO. Like, are there anything else that you've seen, just um what we call uh low lived but high impact, like as I said, not 20 million dollars spent to revamp this thing.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Yeah, I mean that's one thing that could, well, two things that come to mind. But you know, when you say this, it's so interesting to me because it's not like people weren't leaving early to take their kids somewhere. It wasn't like people weren't dropping their kids off at school before the pandemic, they just weren't talking about it. And so then you had, instead of having a super focused worker, you had somebody who is distracted and answering their phone or trying to answer an email while they're in the midst of something. And you know, all the research just shows that although, you know, every American thinks they're uh an above-average driver, uh, most Americans also think that they're amazing at multitasking. And both of them are not true. Like people are not very good at multitasking, people are good at parallel tasking. And so when you can create uh an environment where you complete one thing before you start the other, it it's just better for our you know psychological makeup, it's better for productivity. And one of the things we advocate on that, and and it's been adopted by some pretty high-performing uh companies, and and companies that I wouldn't necessarily say are it's not like the Sierra Club that's out there to save the world. These are you know for-profit-driven companies. And that's something called a care shift. And a care shift is essentially where you, in in agreement with your manager, this isn't something where you go rogue, but you sort of designate a certain number of hours per day when you're gonna work synchronously, where anybody can reach you. So let's just say it's uh for argument's sake, uh 9.30 to 3.30. Now, that doesn't mean you're only gonna work six hours a day. That means those are gonna be the times when you're working synchronously. So anybody can reach you, you can have meetings, you can do whatever you you need to do, and you're gonna continue working either before that or after that. And you may continue working straight on on certain days. And and in those times, you're gonna do all the asynchronous work that you don't need to catch up on emails, any proposals, you're gonna do all the stuff that you don't need, you know, human interaction. And the pushback I get is, well, you know, how can we do that? How could we manage people on this? And I said, Well, do you only have uh, you know, one office? Like, no. Yeah, uh we have uh five offices in the United States and and and and three offices, you know, we have an office in London and in Tokyo and in Sydney. I was like, okay, well, you know, is everybody in the office all the time so you can reach them? And they they kind of look at me like no. I was like, right, you just have to give a little bit of thought to realize that if you're already managing people in different offices, in different time zones, in different countries, then you can figure out a way to make this work. And why do you want to make this work? If you're the if you're the company, if you're the CEO, if you're a manager, why do you want to make this work? Do you want to do it because you're a good person? Not necessarily. You want to do it because you want those workers to be as focused as they can possibly be during those synchronous times. And you don't want them to leave. If you have, you know, the top 30% of a company, and no matter how good or bad the job market is, the top 30% always has uh the ability to go someplace else and get another job that pays them as much or more and will recognize their need for flexibility. And so you don't want to lose those people. But at the same time, like everybody talks about top performers, you could have somebody in the 70th percentile who's not really terribly good at his or her job, but everything can't be replaced by AI. And that person is doing a necessary function, and so you want that person doing the necessary function to be able to give his or her, you know, full focus to it. So all of these things that we talk about are really around saving companies money through through retention, through, through keeping those, those top employees engaged and focused.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

There is, um, I have to talk about like that that bot that bottom line, it it is, you know, um, we uh I don't know if I had ever shared with you. I used to be a professional athlete back in the day. And I, you know, you often learn very quickly. And it's one of the things I brought in my my life right now is that you can't, it's very hard to separate life from work. And in fact, like what's happening, you know, in life affects your work way more than work affects your life in a weird way. I I know you shared your story about getting the call from the pediatrician um and having to pick that up um while you were doing an interview. And I often tell folks that if you don't create the space for folks in in, you know, yes, you have to create the space so when they show up, they're focused as much as possible. But you have to also check in to make sure like things are going on at home because I can assure you, if your child is sick, it's very hard for you to focus while you're at work. Um, so creating the space for that. And and that loyalty goes such a long way. And so when founders or or CEOs start to think along this way, um, that's when you truly become like care centric. Um I I I do have a question for you that may be hard or maybe putting it on the spot, but I am curious around um would you say being a lead dad is preferable um than the ulterior?

SPEAKER_00 27:49

For me, yeah. But I mean we we we have lead dads, and and you can't have one thing without having its opposite. And the opposite is event dads. And event dads are you know fairly checked out. They they've left all of the you know household management to a partner or or if they have resources to to paid paid help, and they sort of glide in and out uh for a game or for a graduation. And I'm not saying that that, you know, look, people make choices, and we know that lead dads are in the minority, we're only about a third of fathers, and people make other choices. But I will say this, and there's been research on this from, you know, I think it was a hospice nurse who wrote a book a couple years ago. Uh, no one on their deathbed has ever said, you know, I just wish I had more time to create a PowerPoint. I mean, before AI, I was the greatest PowerPoint creator the world has ever seen. I mean, that thing just sung. Nobody ever has said that. People at the end of they they have regressed. Like, boy, you know, I wish I'd been able to be more present. I wish I'd been able to do this. And it's interesting, uh, there's a guy who's been a real supporter of what we're doing who was an event dad when his kids were growing up. He was became a partner at Goldman Sachs. And you don't become a partner at Goldman Sachs by, you know, not being in the office all the time, not being reached all the time. It's it's not a company. If if you want to have you know family balance, Goldman Sachs is probably not the company I'd recommend uh seeking employment from. But he's a retired partner now and he has a son and a daughter, and he is very interested in this concept for his daughter because she is quite successful. She has a corporate job. His son is doing something else, but his daughter has a corporate job and she's doing so well. And he wants to see her fulfill her full potential to succeed. But at some point she she wants expressed interest in having children, and he wants this concept of lead dad, which is really a concept of partnership to be present so that she doesn't man marry somebody who's an event dad and all of this falls on her. And so here's a guy who really was, you know, the the definition of an event dad when his kids were were young, on the train, flying, traveling, but he's kind of seen the light and he wants something different for his children because he's seen you know what he's missed out on and how with a bit more partnership he still would have done very well uh in in his career, but he could have had a lot more time with his kids when they were when they're at home and they were growing up.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

How how is he making that transition? Or how have you seen other dads move from event to lead dad? Or even if it's not fully they haven't fully transformed it. What are steps that they're trying to make to make that transition?

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Well, you know, I'm I'm a pretty generous charitable person, but but sometimes I have to tell guys like you're just not cutting it. Like you you may think you're doing this, but it's it's not working, buddy. Like I'm not one to like check IDs at the door and make sure you really are a bona fide lead dad. But there's some people who like this is what I did, this is what it worked, this is how it worked, and and they're intransigent. They're they're not gonna they're not gonna budge. But there are a lot of them when I express this concept to them, it's kind of tinged with regret. They they they sort of think through their head, and you're like, wow, I really wasn't able to do this, but maybe there's some things I was able to do, and they really think it through. Because look, being a lead dad and trying to still have a great career and being a great partner, this is not for the faint of heart. This is not, it can be exhausting at times, but the way we are wired, we don't remember every single day of our lives. We'll remember going on a great family vacation, we'll remember our graduation from college, or when you were a professional athlete, I'm sure you have these moments that that still are in your brain. They're not, it's not every single day. You don't remember every practice, you don't remember every game. Same thing with parenting. The more you're there, the the more you increase the likelihood that you're gonna have these moments that you remember. And so an example for me is, you know, I really work a care shift. You know, most days I am working synchronously from 9 a.m. to usually 2 or 2:30. Now I get up early, send a couple emails, and after everybody's gone to bed, at least during the week, from from nine to 11 or so, I'm I'm doing more work. But that has led me to, you know, many days being able to not just pick a daughter up at school, but to take a daughter to whatever her activity is. And that I'll I will tell you, and it is true, that is the time when you get your kids to talk. Well, I have three daughters. When we're all around, we we try to eat dinner together. We probably manage five nights a week, we're eating dinner together as a family. And that's too important. But it's not like you can't put somebody on the spot and say, hey, okay, it's your turn now. What was the best and worst thing that happened in your day? It's like, well, this and this. It's when you're in the car and they're thinking and there's nothing else to do. We were very strict on not having phones uh in use while we're driving them around. And that's when they'll start to tell you something. Now, do they tell you something every single time you drive them to their activity? No, not at all. But those times that they do, it's it's gold. And you know, if we want to raise great children, you know, the one thing we should all remember is that because it's what we've done as humans, people really don't listen to what we say. They may listen, but they really watch what we're doing. So if our actions and our words match up, that's powerful. If we say do this and then we do the exact opposite, particularly as our kids get uh older, become teenagers. I say teenagers are hypocrisy-seeking missiles. So if they see any you know difference there, they'll call us out. And so they're really watching how we how we live our lives and how we you know make things work so that they can make their own decisions when they go off to college and and later become adults.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

I love that. As we wrap up, I'm thinking it's 2026. Uh, let's say I'm a company and I'm like, I'm seeing this trend. I we have more dads in our our company right now, and we're starting to think about how might we implement certain things? How like what are some steps we can take? I know you've done some amazing stuff in terms of like opening the conversation with a company. Um, I'd love to hear if uh yeah, I'm the CEO of a company and I'm trying to like get ahead of this trend. Like, how would you advise me?

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Yeah, I I mean we talk it's it's some combination of of behavioral economics and human-centered design. I think don't assume that however you got to wherever you are as a manager, particularly if you're a manager in your 40s, 50s, or 60s, or is how other people are going to get there. And so the first thing I say is start asking people, start really, really pulling people and asking them open-ended questions. And one of the things that I always advocate for, and this is talking, I mean, this is talking my own book here because this is what I do, I make money. But, you know, if ever most companies have some sort of parenting uh employee resource group, or they have uh a working moms or a women's alliance group, use those groups to call people in. You know, the most successful, the companies that have been the happiest with what we've done with the company of dads are the ones who've listened to my gentle advice to sort of bring more people into that. Don't just, you know, if it's a parenting group, have it, you know, have as many other ERGs, if it's a big company, co-sponsor that event and have people come in. Because what typically happens is people get siloed. They get siloed in whatever, you know, support group their company has for them. And too often parenting ERGs are the domain of working moms. And working moms are sitting there talking about, you know, working mom issues, which is fine. That's great. Well, wonderful. But if what you want to do is move the ball down the field and advance a conversation, you want to get those lead dads in there. And you want lead dads and working moms to be together because suddenly you're gonna have a more robust conversation. And those people are some people in that room are gonna say, wow, you know, I never knew Damon, you were you were this involved in what you're doing. It's like, hey, Paul, I I didn't, I I looked at you, Paul, with you know, with your Navy quarter zip on, and I thought, there's no way this guy is a uh a lead dad. You know, what does he do? But once you start breaking down that that conversation, suddenly those working moms know that they have allies in those lead dads. And over time, those managers are gonna realize, like, okay, this isn't an issue just for one part of my workforce. This is really an issue for a much larger part of my workforce. And how do we design things? And this is the human-centered design. How do we design things so that people want to stay here and then want to work at a high level? And then the next layer to that is almost all the things that we're doing around parents, around working parents, around working moms and lead dads, almost all of those things that we're doing and advocating can be translated to caregivers because some people may say, well, my kids are in college or I never had kids or I don't have that responsibility. But every single one of us, whether we want to or not, will be forced into a caregiving role at some point in our careers. And how can companies be prepared to support that person during those weeks, those months, you know, whatever. And so again, this is if you want to build that company that is gonna be resilient and that company that's gonna, you know, live through the next downturn, which has to happen at some point, you want to have these super engagement plays. So it's really starting with something like that and asking people the questions and then inviting them in to some of the groups that you already have created at the company to have that more robust conversation.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Man, that really um hits me because like what I'm hearing from that is like it's almost a gateway. Um, if when you encourage to have this conversation, normalize some of these things. There's so many other groups that just if you've built this muscle of holding the space, having the conversation, that this can permeate to all the different groups. And like you're mentioning, what we truly do need is more resilience right now. I I often say we're in a resilience epidemic what people don't talk about. And so if you can build that, your company can, you know, last a little bit longer than the average because you would have really cared for your folks.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

I'll tell you this one last story, and it's it's it's a story I've told several times in the past, but it's about this guy who's a chief marketing officer at a financial services firm, and he was based on the West Coast. The center power of the firm is on the east coast, and he really wanted to take his son to school every day. Now, his son went to school at, you know, eight o'clock in the morning. That would not have been a problem if he was on the East Coast, because everybody else would have been starting work about the same time. But on the West Coast, by 10 o'clock on the East Coast, most people are cruising into their day. And so he put it, he was a partner though. He's a CMO, he's a partner of the firm, nobody's gonna fire him. He put it on his calendar that this is what he's gonna do. And when people kept calling him, he ignored their calls. And he at first he would say, This is what I've been, and then when they text him, he ignored their text and he'd say, I will be there, I will be a hundred percent present for you, except for this 45-minute window of my day. And he was doing that for himself. He wasn't doing that because he thought he was gonna be a paragon of parental pride and virtue. He was doing it simply for himself. But the knock-on effect is all of these people whose jobs could have been in jeopardy had they not conformed to what the company wanted, they started reaching out to him. It was moms, it was dads, other people, and he became this mentor to all these people. And suddenly the company, which is a very old school, old line, you know, New York financial services firm, starts like, oh, okay, these this is what our employees want. This is what they need. And they started changing their policies. And if we go, you know, 40 years ago, nobody had 401k plans. Four 40 years ago, health insurance didn't include mental health benefits. Now you wouldn't join a company that didn't have mental health benefits with your regular health insurance, nor you just table stakes that you expect them to have some sort of you know equity compensation or 401k plan. That and and so that's where we are here with these conversations around parents and getting a more voice. We're at the beginning of it, but I I predict in 10, 20 years, it's just gonna be the norm. And you wouldn't go to a firm that didn't didn't allow robust parental leave and and flexibility.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Well, I'm grateful for folks like him. I'm grateful for folks like you, Paul, who've started this conversation. Um I I think we've already come a long way. I think I think about myself in the last 10 years, how I've thought about this, and I can't imagine the next five years how quickly these will accelerate. Paul, thanks again. Um, I'd love for you to share where can folks connect with you. I know you have some exciting projects coming up. I don't know if you want to share a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

Yeah, Damon, I appreciate that. They can they can find me at the company of dads.com as our website. Sign up for our newsletter. The Dad comes out uh once a week on Sunday mornings, and uh in twenty twenty seven, look out for a book on all that we've been doing uh around fathers and family. So thank you, Damon. I really appreciate it. Awesome, thanks.