Fixing it with your father - Steve Core

Man Up / Man Down

This episode was recorded back in February, the day before David and his family visited David’s dad. Sadly it was the last time David’s wife and children saw him.

However, on that day, which was the last opportunity for David to have a coherent conversation with his Dad, following some suggestions from Steve, David got to know a few things about his father’s childhood, which helped strengthen their bond. In short, David feels that he didn’t have any unresolved issues, despite a complicated relationship with his Dad. So David will always be grateful for recording this episode at (in hindsight) such a critical time.

But enough about David - let’s learn more about Steve. Steve spent his 20’s and 30’s working flat out as a Marketing Manager in three big organisations. Aged 40 he “fixed it” with his father (who had put him in a children’s home at the age of 13, following the wishes of Steve’s stepmother) and this transformed his life.

He followed his heart and set up his own company as a leadership coach. Since then he has worked with over 20,000 people – most of them men, in more than 100 organisations in 20 different countries. He has given Ted Talks on Understanding Men and the relationship between Fathers and Sons.

More importantly for him, he has radically improved his relationships with his wife, his children and himself.

His TED talk brought tears to both David’s and Volker’s eyes. We read out a part of a chapter of Steve Buddulhph’s book Manhood, You and your Father. It’s showcases the truth on how important our relationships with our dads are. Particularly the relationship of middle aged men with their parents who are now in their 70ies and up to their 90ies. Generations that found it almost impossible to talk about their emotions and feelings. Their life was about survival.

And we never learnt from our fathers how to be a father. Steve, like many people his age, worked hard, had a corporate career and tried to be a good ‘bread winner’. At weekends he went out with his mates and got drunk, but they never spoke about anything important. Their conversations never had any depths.

Steve subsequently saw a therapist who helped him to deal with his childhood. His mum died when he was 8, and he was put in a home at the age of 13. When he started working, he was hardly around for school plays or spending time with the kids, but on holidays when he could really focus on them. And when his father in law died, he was putting work commitments over his family commitments.

Volker had a similar experience, and believes a lot of those attitudes come from us doing what generations before us believed in: hard work and providing for the family without considerations of feelings or what would be right, e.g. putting family commitments over work commitments. However, other families show more feelings, and some countries show more emotions too. Steve thinks that countries which index high for happiness usually have higher emotional connections between generations.

Following his therapy Steve went and saw his father, reconciling things with him, understanding how he grew up and what made him the way he was when he was younger. This led him to be able to forgive his father. Since then he has had a nourishing and fantastic relationship with his father. Without him fixing it, he couldn’t have opened his own business. He had bad relationships with his work colleagues which all disappeared after he fixed it with his father.

Steve and Volker, both from a leadership coaching perspective, come across the situation quite a bit in the workplace that men have problems with (male) work colleagues, and this is often related to their relationship with their father. Particularly if the relationship is with a superior, authoritative person. And we need more leaders in the workplace.

If you want to find out more, please connect with Steve on LinkedIn or visit his website www.corebusiness.nl

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