Leadership at Home

You can lead teams, run operations, and carry responsibility all day—but if you’re not leading well at home, it eventually catches up.

In this episode, we take a hard look at what leadership really means inside your own walls.

Because leadership at home isn’t about control—it’s about influence.

As kids grow into adults, the dynamic has to shift. What used to work—rules, structure, authority—has an expiration date. And if you don’t adapt, you risk losing connection with the people who matter most.

We talk about:

•  The transition from control to influence 
•  Leading adult children without pushing them away 
•  Building respect instead of demanding it 
•  Creating trust through consistency, not perfection 
•  Having hard conversations without damaging the relationship 

This isn’t about being a perfect parent—it’s about being a present, intentional leader your family wants to stay connected to.

Because at the end of the day, leadership isn’t proven by rank or title…
 it’s revealed at home.

OperationNextChapter@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Learning to guide them and learning to be there, still be there more of a mentorship role rather than a parent role for them. You know, again, I have two boys, so I am mentoring them as a father, I am mentoring them as a man on how to navigate stuff. I'm no longer telling them what to do. I'm simply mentoring them and be in there to walk alongside them, even when they make mistakes.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Welcome to operate the next chapter. We're Marcus Cole, retired Air Force First Sergeant, and this season is about leadership without the US. Because eventually the rent comes off, the structure changes, and no one is giving you orders anymore. So who are you when no one is telling you who to be? This season is about reclaiming your standards, your discipline, and your role as a leader at home, at work, and in your own life. The next chapter isn't as science. It's built. Let's get to work. I've been uh great last couple weeks in aviation, and I follow aviation just because it interests me a lot, and we both come from an aviation background on the maintenance side. But I'm thinking about the families of not just those who are in the fight and over in the Middle East and all the several bases that are producing aircraft sorties, and but especially the ones most recently, the strike eagle that was shot down, and the A-10 that was shot down. I thought this just kind of was a good segue into our episode about leadership at home and family, and that's what I've been thinking about when I've been seeing this on the news. What's your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah, that you're exactly right, man. We grew up in aviation, so you know, obviously it catches our attention and we understand or have an understanding of you know what it takes to put an airplane in the air and bring it back to the ground safely. And so, you know, you talk about the the folks deployed and the families that are affected in that. And right here at home, we had an incident as well, you know, at LaGuardia with the airplane aircraft running into a fire truck, and obviously there was lives lost, but not just the lives lost, but all of the people that are affected uh throughout the airplane, throughout the fire truck, the ground crew, their families, ATC, and their families, right? You know, it's not just the two losses and their families, it's everybody involved. And I think about it, Jenny and I think about that from the perspective I mean, Dylan's about to be a pilot, our son's about to be a pilot, and you know, he's in that. And I fly for all the time for a job, so you just never know, right? And how does that stuff not just affect us, but affect our family members?

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yeah. It's uh it's part of life, and we never know when it's our time. I can't tell you how much I think about the families that are going through everything every day. There's something we're everybody's dealing with something, right? And so circle back to what we want to talk about today is leading our families, not just with little kids, but you and I. We have adult kids, I have grandkids. So, how do we lead from home and the influence that we have on our spouse and our kids and my grandkids? But we don't really talk about leading yourself and your family.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

You hit it, leading yourself when we are on duty or we were at work or we're you're in that environment where you are potentially in a leadership position. And I say leadership position, that doesn't mean you have to be the top, right? We've all seen leaders from within the group. The common factor there is leading yourself, leading yourself so that you can lead others. We pour our lives into work and we pour our lives into that, we pour our lives sometimes into coaching or outside of work and everything, outside of the house. Are we taking the same effort? Are we making the same effort to lead our families? Are we making the same effort to be there for our families? Uh, because just like out in the work environment, community environment, people are struggling and people need leadership, the same holds true within our house. And do you spend the same amount of time and use the same amount of effort when you're just in your house taking care of your families?

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Yeah, are we consistent leading our families and ourselves like we are probably in our career or your job, whatever you do? You're leading somebody or something, whether you have the job title or not. So who are you on the random Tuesday night? Who are you on Saturdays and Sundays? Are you that same leader, or do you let your foot off the gas and hope everything is just gonna work out?

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yeah. And if you let your foot off the gas, I would ask why. And and I'm asking that because I've been guilty of it. I'm asking those questions, you know, kind of poking a little bit, because I and I think we've all been guilty of it, right? Because sometimes it can get exhausting, it can get tiring to be on point all the time. And sometimes, you know, sometimes we need to let our foot off the gas, but are we letting our foot off the gas when we're in the family environment only, and you're keeping your foot on the gas when you're out, you know, outside the house. And and again, there that would go back to my question: why is that? Why why is that the time that you feel like you can relax?

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Well, I would bet that you're we're tired, right? And I think back to when we were in the Air Force in any leadership position, but especially as a first sergeant, you come home from the day, and I remember telling Tiff, like, I just need like 15-20 minutes. You know, because they want to tell us about their day or something that's going on, and your brain's already fried. I just need a few minutes to decompress and get my thoughts together. Like, I can't handle any more info right now, but just give me a minute and then I'll be fine. But I don't think I was thinking about leading my family at that time either. I was probably more concerned with what was going on at work and everything I had to do tomorrow, the next day, as opposed to leading my family for that night, you know, or the rest of the week. I don't I didn't have that in my mentality.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

No, I I can assure you that I did not, right? I was always uh I was always on for my airmen. I was always on for the Air Force, and and sadly, at the expense of my family at times, at the expense of my family a lot of times, coming to that realization was difficult. Coming to that realization didn't happen overnight. You know, it's taking intention living with an intentionality and living with a different purpose and really working to connect. Like I worked so hard to connect with my airmen and and my brothers and sisters in arms, but I didn't work that hard to connect with my family at times. Now I'm a hundred percent the opposite, right? I would rather connect with my family and and lead my family than to lead people in the job that I'm in, even though it's required both sides, right? And but when I quote unquote relax and when I quote unquote throttle back, it's gonna be on the work side now. It's not gonna be at the expense of my family.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Yeah, it probably comes with a little bit of wisdom and the experiences that we've had that led us to understand how important that is now after the uniform, after the rank. We're in a different season of life. This is a great time for our listeners to do a little check-in with themselves. Like, can you relate to what we're saying? I'm guessing you can. And unfortunately, I think a lot of families got not left in the dust, but maybe they were secondary to their child's career, or maybe the importance wasn't there, and now they're starting to see it is important, and we need to lead our families, and most importantly, lead ourselves to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

We have to build that capacity, right? And you said wisdom. I don't know if you're referring to the fact that I'm I got gray hairs and I'm old, but it is, right? It's life lessons, it's things that we've learned along the way, it's it's failures that we've had along the way that we've taken the time to step back and actually pay attention to now. Because for a long time, if you're in any career and you're working your way up the ladder and you're responsible for X amount of dollars and cents and X amount of people at work, there's no time to take your foot off the gas and and really sit back and learn. I would encourage you to set some of that time into your schedule. Your job, more importantly, your family will benefit. Most importantly, you will benefit from taking that step back and throttling back. And again, pushing through it, you know, everybody's like, look what he can do, or look what she can do. It's just so out there, so much in front, and just you know, got it all together. I know there were people that said that about me, and I was a mess. You know, I was wearing a mask that that, yeah, I looked good, I looked shiny, I didn't look pretty, but I looked shiny and I was good and I was out in front. But I was hiding a lot of that stuff, and I was hiding a lot of that stuff because I thought that's what I was supposed to do.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Yeah, we were really good at that. We were really good at putting on the face when we needed to and separate our personal life from our professional life and be able to lead away from home, but then at home, we kind of didn't want to do all any of that. We just wanted to come home, eat, go to sleep, and go back into the next day. But our families need us, like it or not, and what we do influences them. Our families don't care what we have going on at work, they don't care what our title is, they don't care what our rank is, what our responsibility there is. They only care about what our responsibility is at home. And when it's lacking, it's it's evident. And we're talking male or female, we're not just talking about men, we're not talking about just service members, but anybody leading their home. Because sometimes it is the woman, right? Sometimes it's the man, it just depends. But they need us when we're home and when we're not. And that's the part that I probably realize much later in life than I wanted to.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Right. We need to be the leader whether we're on the clock at work or off the clock at home. You mentioned, you know, titles and everything that the family doesn't care. The only thing that, you know, my kids cared about it was the title of dad. You know, the only title that my that Jenny cared about was husband. I let those two titles falter sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

We both did.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

And and so now we, you know, as we step back, you said a little wiser, a little later in life, you know, reclaiming that, reconnecting, re reinvigorating ourselves so that we can be more involved with and more of a leader in our own homes. Uh it's a difficult, it's a bitter pill to swallow, but it's something that I know that that we both have been working on, and and I'm not gonna say I'm not there, right? I haven't I'm I haven't made it, I haven't achieved the goal, but I'm definitely working towards that goal.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

And I don't know that we'll ever get there. Right. We're constantly working on it, right? Just like fitness and finances, like, there's no end, it's just a lifestyle change, really. Both you and I, our kids, were in their teens when we retired. So they were getting to that point of graduating high school and about to become adults on their own. And I'd imagine a lot of our listeners that are about to retire or are retired, probably had the same sort of family scenario where their kids are older, or if not already out of the house, when they're moving on to the next chapter in their life, which I want to talk about leading our adult kids as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Nobody talks about that, right? You know, and it's funny, you know, I've had this conversation with Jenny, but I've also had it with family members of that are in the same, you know, my brother and sister-in-law, we're all in the same boat, if you will, of leading those adult children. That's a whole nother ball game. Arguably, that's a much harder ball game to be playing in.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Yeah, because we went from control, quote unquote, you know, not because we we said so, but we're trying to influence you in making correct decisions. That way, when you get to our age in life, you don't make the same mistakes we made. And so that control ends. You had your chance from zero to eighteen years old after that, now it's on them. Are you doing things to influence them in the positive way? Or are you still trying to control them as adults? And guess what? The second doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

And arguably the second does nothing but push them further away. Exactly. You know, when I remember we have two boys, right? And I know the knucklehead that I was when I was, you know, growing up, and you know, you get later in the, you know, once I was 16, I I knew everything and I could do everything. And I know with my boys, you know, that was that time where I had to stop trying to have that control and start having that guidance mindset because I know that there were a lot of times in my life at that point in time when I was in my late teens, if you will, when as much as I was trying to be controlled by my parents, is only half of how much I was a rebelling from what they were saying. And I was gonna do it my way. And while, yeah, I wasn't 18 and everything else, that was when I I remembered back to that, you know, raising kids. I was like, you know what, we gotta start backing off. We gotta stop stop doing all the things for them. And you never want your kids to fail, but I absolutely did want my kids to fail when they were in that environment so that we were still there and still in the same household with them. Now flip flip it to you know, them turning 18 and they're adults and they can, you know, make the decision. I told both my boys, good, you're you're adult now. Just remember everything, every consequence is big boy prison. You know, you qualify now, but learning to guide them and learning to be there, still be there more of a mentorship role rather than a parent role for them. You know, again, I have two boys, so I am mentoring them as a father, I am mentoring them as a man on how to navigate stuff. I'm no longer telling them what to do, I'm simply mentoring them and being there to walk alongside them, even when they made mistakes.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Yeah, you nailed it, the the mentorship and advising role over the authority role. Right? So instead of raising them, we're now trying to relate to them. And hopefully they come to us with questions and wanting and needing advice and us just not throwing it at them. Like if there's one thing that I dislike is unsolicited advice. You laugh, and we both know who those people are, right? And we don't want to be that with our kids. They don't agree and didn't agree with everything we did or do now, and likewise, we don't agree or support everything they do, but we have to, right? There's a difference between leading them from afar and leading them with a little bit of love and compassion and realize, you know what, they're gonna make mistakes, that's alright. But I will we will not tell them what to do. We will get in conversation with them about certain subjects, but I'm never gonna throw advice and be like, you should do this without them bringing to our attention or asking, or you know, just you can kind of see when they're hinting towards I'm not sure what to do. And I think we talked about this in another episode was if I was in your shoes, this is what I would do. Instead of saying, you should do this, there's a difference.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Or yes, if I was in your shoes, these are the things that I would be looking at. These are the things that I might look to for potential answers or for potential direction. You hit it, I laughed, unsolicited advice. I know how much I enjoy that, so I'm not, you know, I'm going to fight. Now, does that mean I'm always on it? No. But I'm going to fight real hard to give that unsolicited advice because oftentimes that means the person's going to do the exact opposite. You know, we are only called to love our children. That's it. You know, when they're adults, they have the right or they have the opportunity to make the decisions for themselves. All the things that may they may have thought that mom and dad did wrong, now they can make the opposite decision. And they can learn from those decisions if it's not the right decision for them.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Yeah, and that's a sign of respect from us to them by understanding that they may not go with your advice. That's okay. Let them do their thing. And if it's a misstep, oh well. And if it's the right thing, cool. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe we didn't get the whole story, or maybe we weren't thinking along the same lines that they were. That's alright.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

And if it's a misstep, don't stand there and say, I told you so. Right? Because all you're doing them is condemning them for the decision they made that they thought was right, and now you're gonna make them question other things in life. You know, the I told you so can't come out of your mouth. Be there, pick them up, dust them off, be there to support. Let them come to you and say, you know what, this is where I think I went wrong, and this is where I, you know, went off course. And and it's happened with me with both of my boys, you know, you might have been right. I don't even acknowledge that, right? That because that's not what it's all about. I'm only there to love and support them.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Yeah, I may have been right. I may have been wrong. Right. But we don't get to control their decisions anymore after 18, but we can shape how they think about stuff, and that is being a listener, like you said, loving them unconditionally and just supporting them, letting them walk through life just like we did at a young age, and we made mistakes, and we didn't listen to our parents. But I know my parents love me no matter what it was. We gotta repay that favor to our kids, and I think now we probably have a better relationship with our kids as adults. I think it's a little well, you said it's a little harder, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:07

I think it's harder.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Okay. I think it's easier. Because really, all we gotta do is love them. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

And the reason I say it's harder is because we have to take that step back.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

True.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

We have to pull back and just sit and have that 30,000 foot view and watch instead of being at a thousand foot, you know, with a control stick in our hand making those choices.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

Yeah, I'm with you. So it was hard at first. Yes. Now it's easy because we've established that and we don't overstep our bounds. Right. And that's the discussion that we have with mutual friends when they tell us about issues with their adult children, like, y'all gotta pull back. Yeah, you are not the decision maker anymore. Like, you had your chance, now you gotta pull back. Just support them and love them. That's it. They're gonna make good decisions sometime, but the more you try to force it, you mentioned it, it just creates that more separation.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Yeah, you create a barrier and then they're never gonna come to you. If you continue to control and you continue to, I told you so, and and you know, thump them in the chest, so to speak, guess what they're not going to do? They're not going to come to you, even when the when ca chaos sets in.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Or respect you.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Yeah. Yeah. That's all gone.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

And you know, think about that. When you're when we were in the military, I didn't try and control everything that everybody in the squadron did, right? I controlled what I did, and I allowed them to make the decisions and flourish or fail in those decisions. Why don't we do that with our family? Why don't we do that with our kids?

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Yeah, it's like too close, right? That blood relationship is too close to home, so it's easier to do it with our kids at work. At the time, because they were about the age where they could have been our kids. And we wanted to see them flourish just like we wanted to see our kids flourish. But I think it's like any family interpersonal issues, the closer you are, the harder it is, right? And you could see it from a thousand miles away, but the answer is really simple. Take that step back. Respect comes both directions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Yeah. As my kids are you know, raising my boys, you know, I took parenting very seriously. Sometimes I was absent, but I still took parenting very seriously and raising my kids. Now I get to be my boy's friends. You know, now we're honey buddies.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

That was the easy part, I guess I was referring to earlier.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Yeah. So yeah, throttling back and and just watching watching the train wreck happen at times. Um it's like, you know what, it's not my not my lane anymore. However, the benefit of that is throttling back and watching them succeed. Watching them put in all of that time and effort that you put into parenting, watching them succeed and and flourish is so rewarding. It takes that throttling back and watching the train wreck takes that edge off a little bit when they, you know, when you can watch both sides and just and sit back and smile. Jenny and I talk about it quite a bit. We just how how do we get here where where the boys are making the decisions that they should be making for them? Not for us, not because of us, but they should be making for themselves. And just sitting back and watching and and celebrating their victories with them.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

Yeah, listening to them celebrate their victories and flourish and also coming to you when they actually need advice without it being forced or you throwing your opinion just because you think you can fix this. That's the best part about now with our kids our mid to late 20s. We're past that tough point where we had to let go. Now it's the point where we have fantastic relationships. Like they want to come spend time with us at our house, they want to be involved in our lives just like we want to be involved in theirs. That's the healthy adult child relationship that we were looking for, and it breaks my heart when we hear stories of estranged kids and parent relationships as adults. I mean, to this day, you know, even our parents, our aunts and uncles, grandma and grandpas that haven't seen their kids in years. And I put that on the parent. It is our duty as a parent to be I I hate I say it all the time, the bigger person, right? But it really is. It's not our kids, no matter how old they are, it's our job to create that closeness. It's our job to create the comfortability as parents to our adult children.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

I will always fight, and I fight, you know, people can use different connotations of the word and different interpretation, but I will always fight to have a relationship with my boys. Because I right now at this point in my life, I fall on the other side of that. And I agree with you 100%, right? If if I don't get along with if I don't like something that's happening that the boys are doing, and I don't like something, they're both married now, I don't get along with their wives, or you know, there's a riff between us. I'm gonna put every ounce of that aside. I'm gonna put every ounce of that aside and and you know, to use the bigger person, if you will. I'm gonna swallow my pride and eat every ounce of of crow or anything else that I need to do in order to have that relationship with the with them. And not just them, to build a relationship with whatever's going on in their life, too. You know, that's my job, that's my 100% commitment to my my kids because I respect them, I respect their decisions, even if I don't just agree with their decisions, I respect the decisions they're making, I respect what they're doing, and uh I'm going to just love them.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

Yeah, and they trust you because of that.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Yeah, and another piece I'll add of that. You know, we we talk about, you know, your kids coming back. I've had instances where I've gone to my boys as sounding boards, hey, this is going on, this is what's happening with this. What's your thoughts? What's your thoughts on this? We have that relationship and that go back and forth now, which again, they're my friends. They're my sons, and I will always be their dad, and I will always be there for them. But they're my friends.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Yeah, respect that relationship. Oh, show them the way to lead a good marriage like you and Jenny have, Tiff and I have. We're the example, right? In good times and in bad. How we treat each other at home and in front of people, how we handle stress and how we handle the wrenches that life throws us. Like, be the example. We were the example when they were little and they were living in the house, but I think it's even more important now, because now they're making their own decisions and they're probably making them based on what we do as parents. Maybe not 100% of the time, but maybe in the back of their mind they're like, hmm, what my mom and dad do. And that's a great feeling to have too. Or better yet, they call and say, Hey, what would you do? I'd still do that with my dad. It was just something, oh, I know what it was. We're having the house repainted next week. And we had just put gutters on a year ago or two years ago, and I was wondering, like, dang, should I have them paint the gutters? Dad, what's your thoughts on this? And he gave me a perspective that I hadn't thought about. You know, like the paint adherence and what about the warranty? I'm like, good point. So it's just little things like that that even as um 45-year-old, I'm asking my dad, just little things. That's what I want our kids to do with us.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Right. So are you painting together?

SPEAKER_02 28:31

No.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

But that that's that's it, right? We as we focused on all of the challenges of life and all of the challenges at work, you know, growing up and maturing and becoming wiser and learning lessons, especially the lessons that I failed at, learning, being open to course correcting and and finding a new path. I I sometimes excelled at it at work and I failed at it at home. And now because of that, and thankfully Jenny, you know, Jenny stayed and and everything else through those times of me putting her second, if you will. Um, so I'm very blessed in that. But I've learned and I've I see what I course corrected. I see what I where I was wanting to, where I want to be. And the importance now has shifted to leading my family. The importance now, it was always there, but it wasn't a hundred per I wasn't a hundred percent in. But now that that's it, you know, and I I now get to reap the benefits. I get to reap the easy part, if you will, of the adult children because I have learned to just throttle back. And there are times that I want to just dive in because I see the train wreck about to happen, and I know that I can make that course correction. It's not my place.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

That's the true leadership.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Yeah, I was about to say that's the leadership piece now.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

And also that you have led yourself to grow and become even wiser by letting go without checking out. Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

That's a big that's a big one right there.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

That's really what it comes down to. Yeah. We gotta let go of the reins, but not check out just because we're not making decisions for them anymore.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

Yeah. Yeah, that there again, that's leadership. Allowing people to do their thing, allowing people to make the decision, and then be in there to stand by them on that decision, good or bad, and help them to learn from that.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Yeah. Leading at home is about evolving. We can't keep leading the way we were 25 years ago now. Our kids are older, we're older, we just have to evolve with the time and what's changed since then. And if we're not doing that, then we're really not leading ourselves. You're stuck. And we cannot be stuck in life. If you are, that's when things are hard. You're not evolving, you're not moving forward, you're trying to stay the same person you were in a different situation, and it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Square peg round hole. The other thing of that, if you're stuck, change. If you're stuck, if you're in a situation that you feel like you can't win and you keep keep running into the same problem and you keep running into the same obstacle, change. It's can be difficult, but not changing is just as or more difficult.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

Amen to that.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Right? Hard work. Life is hard work, it doesn't have to be hard. It just takes work, it takes being intentional, it takes discipline, it takes a willingness to change, it takes a willingness to move forward and evolve. And that is all on you. Attitude and effort, you've heard it a hundred times. Your attitude, your effort, you can make the change as difficult as it may seem.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

100% agree. I want to close out with if you lead your family well, you don't just raise your kids, you build future leaders who still call you when it matters. And that's what we have with our kids and our spouses. We got over the difficult part of letting go. Now we're into the easier part of just being there when they need us. Right, wrong, and indifferent. We're there. And that might be a struggle for some of our listeners is letting go without checking out. That's deep, brother. That's deep. That's pretty deep for a Saturday morning. As always, bro, appreciate the conversation. Looking forward to our next episode. We're gonna have a guest. And uh really looking forward to the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

How are you, brother? Always good. Hey, thanks for listening. If this episode challenged you, good. Leadership without the uniform isn't loud, it's daily, it's quiet, it's built, and it's small decisions. No one else needs it. This is your reminder to reclaim it. Reclaim your standards, reclaim your discipline, reclaim your responsibilities at home, at work, and in your own life. No one is coming to assign your next ministry. The next chapter is built by the person you choose to be tomorrow morning or the next.