How a conversation with my absent father taught me about leadership and healthy confrontation

The author travels to Ghana to talk to his father about why he left. By turning a confrontation into a conversation, he learned how to build a healthy team culture.

Many years after my parents’ divorce, my dad remarried. He left the States for an amazing job opportunity and went on to live in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Finland with his new wife and kids. Meanwhile, my mom, my stepbrother, and I struggled with a brief period of being unhoused and living on welfare.

I often wondered what I had done to cause my father not to fight for me. I also worked very hard to make sure this didn’t happen with other people in my life.