Kurt Uhlir on Raising Servant Leaders: 7 Practical Habits That Start at Home

We all want to raise good kids. Kids who work hard, treat people well, and grow up to be the kind of adults other people actually want to be around. But if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably noticed that telling your kids to “be a leader” doesn’t come with an instruction manual. (If it did, I’m pretty sure I lost mine somewhere between the laundry pile and the soccer carpool.)

That’s why the idea of servant leadership at home is so interesting.

Kurt Uhlir is a full-time Chief Marketing Officer and one of the most sought-after growth executives for venture capital, private equity, and family office-backed companies. He has led marketing and growth teams across more than eleven industries and six continents, is part of more than 60 funding rounds and exits, and continually makes the lists of top CMOs in the world. Peers and event hosts often call him “The King of Scaling Companies.” But Kurt has increasingly been pulled into speaking for family and faith-based organizations about how the same principles that build great companies also build great families. He is widely considered the leading voice on servant leadership today, and his “Business Case for Servant Leadership” has been downloaded more than 200,000 times.

In podcast interviews, Kurt often jokes that while he may have some guidance for the companies he works with, he is learning every single day as a dad of young kids himself. (Every parent can relate to that.)

Here are seven practical ideas from his recent talks that any parent can use to start raising kids who know how to serve, follow well, and eventually lead with character. Ready? Let’s go.

1. Put Down the Laptop and Pick Up a Rake

Here’s something most of us probably don’t think about: when your kids see you on your laptop or phone, what do they think you’re doing?

Kurt Uhlir says the answer is almost never “working.” As he shared on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, kids between the ages of about five and seventeen interpret what they see through what they know. And what they know is that screens are for games, social media, and talking to friends. It doesn’t matter what your actual job is. You could be a general counsel, a chief financial officer, or a software engineer. Your kids assume you’re doing the same thing they do on screens.

Kurt’s practical advice? If someone else is cutting your lawn, fire them. Get out there and sweat alongside your kids. It’s not necessarily fun (trust me, I get it), but it is a deliberate choice to meet your kids where they are and show them what work actually looks like. If your job lives on a device, your kids may never actually see you work a day in your life, no matter how many hours you put in.

2. Create Shoulder-to-Shoulder Time

Kurt Uhlir talks a lot about “shoulder-to-shoulder” time, and it’s different from the way most of us think about quality time with our kids.

The idea is simple: instead of sitting across from your kids and talking at them, find activities where you’re working or serving side by side. Yard work, cooking a meal for a neighbor, building something in the garage, and volunteering together at church. The conversation that happens while you’re both doing something with your hands is different from the conversation that happens when you sit a kid down for a talk. (Any parent of a teenager knows that one.)

His family has a mountain property, and his kids help clear drainage ditches on their gravel driveway. His six-year-old knows how to use a pickaxe. Not because they can’t hire someone, but because that kind of shared physical work is where kids actually learn what perseverance looks like.

Here’s the part that gets interesting as kids grow. The idea is that parents should gradually hand over the planning. Let your kids pick the service project. Let them figure out who to invite, what supplies they need, and how to pull it off. Your role shifts from leading the activity to supporting their leadership of it. That’s where servant leadership at home starts to look like the real thing.

3. Teach Followership Before Leadership

This one might sound backward, but stick with me.

Most parenting advice tells us to raise leaders. Kurt Uhlir says we’re skipping a step. Great leaders learn to follow well first. Kids who never practice being a good follower become adults who can’t take direction, can’t collaborate, and can’t support someone else’s plan when the situation calls for it.

And here’s the part that makes it personal for parents: if you hold a leadership role at work or own a small business, your kids need to see you being a good follower too. Not just running the meeting or making the decisions, but deferring to someone else’s plan, supporting someone else’s vision, and showing up for something without being in charge. For families of faith, this is a familiar principle. 

Kurt Uhlir volunteers with Trail Life USA Troop GA-4100 in part so he can serve side by side with his son and let him see what following well looks like. He isn’t the troop leader. He shows up and does what’s asked. His son gets to watch his dad take direction from someone else and do it willingly.

4. Practice Curiosity Before Correction

When something is off with your kid, what’s your first instinct? For most of us, it’s correction. “Why didn’t you do your homework?” “Why are you being so rude?” Kurt Uhlir says there’s a better first move: curiosity.

In his keynotes, he teaches leaders to approach a struggling team member with “something has shifted; what’s going on?” instead of jumping straight to consequences. The same move works at home. When your child’s grades drop, their attitude changes, or they pull away, try “I’ve noticed something seems different. Can you help me understand what’s going on?” before “you’re in trouble for this.”

He puts it bluntly: empathy is a tool, not the goal. What matters more is getting really good at healthy conflict and being curious. Ask your kids how they were thinking about a situation. Ask what they would do differently. You’ll learn more, and your kids will learn that the people responsible for them actually want to understand them, not just manage them.

It sounds simple, but it takes practice. (Especially at 7 AM when someone just spilled cereal all over the floor for the third time this week. Ask me how I know.)

5. Model Hard Decisions Out Loud

Kids learn how to make decisions by watching how the adults around them make decisions. But most of the time, parents make the hard calls behind closed doors. Kurt Uhlir says that as kids get older, letting them into the process is one of the most valuable things you can do.

This doesn’t mean burdening a seven-year-old with the family budget. It means, at the right age, walking your kids through a decision you and your spouse have made recently and asking them what they would have done in the same situation. Let them see that the answer wasn’t obvious. Let them see that you and your spouse didn’t agree at first and had to work through it.

Before a busy season, whether that’s a new job, a move, the holidays, or a big ministry commitment, sit down together and talk about what “winning at home” looks like during that stretch. And when your kids are old enough, let them in on that conversation too. They’ll learn that good decisions take thought, that tradeoffs are real, and that the grown-ups in their lives don’t just wing it. (Even if sometimes it feels like we do.)

6. Let Them See Your Faith in Your Actions

Kurt Uhlir tells a story from early in his career that stuck with him. He had a boss during a season of intense company growth who made a decision with his wife to restructure his schedule so he could be home every evening. The boss caught an early train, was home for dinner and bedtime, and then got back online late at night to finish his work. It wasn’t until years later, after the man’s wife unexpectedly passed away, that Kurt learned faith was what drove that decision.

The point: he saw it in the man’s actions long before he knew the reason behind them.

Kids work the same way. They need to see you doing it when it costs you something. Giving up a Saturday to help a neighbor move. Choosing the slower, harder path because it’s the right one.

As he has said in interviews, “Other people are going to pick up who you are and what you believe from your actions.” Your kids are the most attentive audience you’ll ever have.

7. Don’t Give Your Family Your Leftovers

This is one of Kurt Uhlir’s signature lines, and it’s the thread that ties everything else together: whatever quality of presence, energy, and intentionality your work gets, your family should get equal or better.

A simple planning framework can help. Ask yourself: What does your family need in the next zero to twelve months? Twelve to thirty-six months? Beyond that? Most of us only think about what’s right in front of us. Stretching the view out forces you to make different choices about where your time and energy go today.

The bottom line is pretty straightforward. Your kids don’t need a perfect parent. They need one who is actually there, doing the work alongside them, and not running on fumes by the time they walk through the door.

Start With One

You don’t have to overhaul your entire family routine by next Tuesday. Pick one of these habits that feels doable and try it this week. Fire the lawn service. Ask a curious question instead of jumping to correction. Let your kids plan the next volunteer project. Just one.