How becoming a father made me a better leader

No father should feel that leaving work to care for his child somehow makes him less ambitious, reliable, or committed to his career. Good workplaces should make room for both, writes Paul Hetherington.

I became a father at 19.

At that age, most of my friends weren’t thinking about nappies, school drop-offs, or the responsibility of raising a child. They were living a very different version of young adulthood. I wouldn’t change becoming a dad for anything, but there were times when it felt isolating.

Before fatherhood, work was largely about me: building a career, earning money, and thinking about what I wanted to achieve. Becoming a father changed the way I thought about work almost overnight.

Suddenly, my decisions around work were no longer just about ambition. They were about providing for my family, being present for my child, and thinking about the example I wanted to set.

That tension between career and family is something millions of fathers continue to navigate. And while workplaces have changed significantly since I became a dad, I’m not convinced our definition of professional commitment has changed enough.

For too long, we have equated commitment with availability: who stays the latest, responds fastest, travels whenever required, or is always contactable. For fathers who want to play an active role at home, that can create an unnecessary choice between being seen as a committed employee and being a committed dad.

Good workplaces shouldn’t force fathers to make this choice.

Today, alongside my role with The Fathering Project, I am an elected member of local government and hold several volunteer roles. Life is very busy, and I certainly haven’t discovered a perfect formula for balancing all these demands.

What fatherhood has taught me, though, is to make conscious choices about where my time goes.

One of the most useful principles I have learned is to be present wherever I am. When I’m with my family, I try not to be physically at home while mentally still sitting in a boardroom or working through my inbox. When I’m at work, my team and organisation deserve my full attention too.

This sounds simple, but in an era of smartphones, hybrid work and 24-hour connectivity, it isn’t.

While technology has made work more flexible, it’s also made it easier for work to follow us everywhere. For fathers trying to build meaningful careers while remaining involved in their children’s lives, defining boundaries is increasingly important.

My practical advice is straightforward: put the important things in the diary. Protect family time where you can. Communicate openly about your responsibilities. And don’t wait until everything is falling apart before asking for help.

Whether it is at home, at work or in the broader community, having people around you who you can rely on, talk to and share experiences with makes an enormous difference.

The goal isn’t perfect balance – this doesn’t really exist. Some weeks work will demand more. At other times, your family will need you more. What matters is that neither your work nor your family is always getting whatever time you have left.

The greatest lesson fatherhood has taught me is that presence matters more than perfection.

There’s no manual that gives parents all the answers. You make mistakes, and you get the balance wrong. You learn to listen, adjust and keep showing up. The same lessons apply at work.

Fatherhood has taught me patience and perspective. It has also made me more conscious that every person who comes to work has a life beyond it. Employees are parents, partners, sons and daughters, carers, coaches, volunteers and members of their communities.

Recognising that people have responsibilities outside work doesn’t mean expecting less of them. It means understanding them as humans.

As leaders, we should be asking ourselves what kind of behaviour our organisations actually reward. It is easy to say we support family life. It is harder to examine whether the person who leaves at 4pm for their child’s school event is regarded as ambitious as the person who stays until 7pm. How a workplace responds to that 4pm departure tells you a lot more about its culture than what is written in its parental leave policy.

My hope is that businesses move far beyond thinking a father-friendly workplace is simply one with a parental leave policy.

A company can offer generous leave and flexibility on paper, but it means little if it maintains a culture that discourages men from using them.

If a father worries that taking parental leave will affect his next promotion, hesitates to say he needs to care for a sick child, or feels compelled to prove his commitment by being constantly available, the policy has not solved the underlying problem.

We need to normalise fathers as active caregivers.

That means leaders openly supporting men who take parental leave, use flexible working arrangements, attend school events or set reasonable boundaries around work. It also means senior men modelling those behaviours themselves.

This is not about fathers wanting to be less committed to their careers. People can be deeply committed to their work and deeply committed to their families.

I joined The Fathering Project partly because I remember what it was like becoming a dad without a network of other fathers around me. Community matters. Fathers benefit enormously from being able to connect, learn and talk honestly about the challenges of raising children. Workplaces are part of that community too.

For business leaders, there is an opportunity to rethink what a high-performing workplace looks like. The person who is always in the office isn’t necessarily the person making the greatest contribution.

Becoming a father at 19 taught me that career success and being a good dad do not have to be an either/or proposition.

More than three decades later, my hope is that workplaces make it easier for the next generation of fathers. No father should feel that leaving work to care for his child somehow makes him less ambitious, reliable or committed to his career.

Good workplaces should make room for both.

Paul Hetherington is the acting chief executive of The Fathering Project.

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