What Four Weeks With My Grandson Taught Me About Leadership, Life, and Love

I just spent four weeks looking after our grandson. It's been one of the most exhausting, joyful, infuriating, and transformative experiences I've had in a long while.

Here are the big lessons I'm taking with me:

- Patience can be stretched. My tolerance grew farther than I ever imagined.
- Creativity is daily survival. From inventing new games to making up songs, my creativity meter kept rising by the hour.
- Negotiation works best when it's clear. Two choices. Simple. Fair. Effective.
- Respect for parents has multiplied. Especially for working parents who balance it all with love and stamina.
- Caring for a toddler is physically taxing. No board meeting ever left me this tired.
- Toilet training is leadership school. Every CEO should go through it. It builds patience, resilience, and a sense of humor.
- Testosterone is powerful - and frustrating. Watching a little boy's emotions swing showed me the raw roots of what we carry into adulthood.
- Children are relentless learners. Their curiosity is unstoppable if you stick with them.
- Style, taste, individuality - I'm in awe of our grandson's natural flair.
- See them as they are. Strip away your ambitions and preconceptions, and simply love them.
- Dance and sing more. I haven't done this much since I was 10-and it's liberating.
- Answering "why" 50 times a day is humbling. It forces clarity and simplicity of thought.
- Time is the secret ingredient. As grandparents, we can create a true symbiosis if we focus fully.
- Children mirror our inner state. Anxiety, stress, over-direction - they reflect it back instantly.
- Boundaries matter. Setting and honoring them is fundamental to growth.
- It is a privilege. To care for a child is to hold the future in your hands, with all its joy, frustration, exhaustion, and possibility.

These weeks have shown me leadership isn't only found in boardrooms and strategy sessions. It lives in the nursery, at the park, during the fiftieth "why?" of the day. It's in the ability to listen, to adapt, to love unconditionally, and to find joy even when you're exhausted.

If every leader spent a few weeks in the company of a toddler, our organisations and our world might look very different.