The VP attributed her success in training new sales people to being patient and encouraging, drawing on the pedagogical skills she learned from her father. Although she no longer trains others, she ensures that these values are emphasized in the sales training and coaching that occurs within her department.

The most obvious early influence is that of one's parents. Executives can learn much about themselves and how they function at work by more fully understanding how and why they are like and unlike their parents.

Exploring parental messages regarding authority, rules and structure; the expression of emotion; success and failure; conflict; and power can be quite illustrative in helping people appreciate how they manage these issues at work. It takes insight into the link between parental messages and current executive behavior to bring about behavioral change.

Patterns of response to crises are initially formed by our childhood experiences. Significant crises or adversity such as personal loss, chronic illness or a physical setback can affect development and coping mechanisms both positively and negatively. The ways in which an individual deals with a crisis can be highly revealing of his or her character.

Exploring early failures or childhood setbacks can shed light on one's drive toward excelling on the job. Throughout his professional life, a retail executive had been described as a high-potential underachiever. Bosses would continually tell him that his contributions to the company, as well as his potential for promotion, would be much greater if he just tried harder. During consultation, the executive recalled that he was exceptionally athletic as a youth. Through high school, his athletic coaches encouraged him to pursue professional baseball. Upon graduation from high school, he signed a contract and was sent to a major league farm club. To his dismay, he learned he was only an adequate baseball player and would never make it to the major leagues.

Since this experience, he lacked the self-confidence necessary to push himself to his fullest capacities. He also failed to trust others in their judgment of his abilities. Upon making the connection between his disappointment as a youth and his self-limiting behaviors on the job, he was able to get out of his comfort zone, as well as put more trust in the judgment of others.

Family hardships, such as a lack of economic security, also can have a great impact on executive behavior. An accounting manager, despite exceedingly long hours and extraordinarily hard work, receives only average performance appraisals. He expends large amounts of energy chasing items of small financial impact. Although he intellectually understands the concept of leverage, he cannot emotionally allow items of minor financial consequence to go unchecked. In this case, making the link between his parents' financial struggles and his "saver" mentality is key to his avoiding becoming bogged down with minor fiscal issues.

Insight into sibling relationships can illuminate one's expectations of peers. An examination of why relationships with certain siblings are highly satisfying and why relationships with others are not can also be a revealing exercise. Such an analysis might sharpen an executive's understanding of why certain work relationships are more productive than others.

One client executive grew up in a family with several siblings from the same mother, but different fathers. He was the only sibling who performed well in high school and went on to college. He felt guilty for excelling beyond his siblings and never shared his professional successes with his family. In the workplace, the same dynamic played out. He was clearly more skilled than his peer group, yet he resisted any opportunity to stand out and contribute at a level commensurate with his skills. However, once he realized the connection between how he related to his siblings and how he functioned within his peer group at work, he was able to contribute at a significantly higher level and accept the recognition he deserved.

One's birth order is also worthy of exploration and can shape how we relate to others at work. Often, the oldest child is responsible for protecting and teaching younger siblings. These early experiences can shape how we relate to others at work. The president of a subsidiary of a manufacturing company was under increasing pressure from the CEO of the parent company for not developing a successor. He was as perplexed as the CEO as to why he was failing in this regard. With outside consultation, he began to see the connection. He was the oldest of six children in a home where both parents worked in the family business. He became primarily responsible for the care of his younger siblings, an accomplishment of which he was very proud. He came to understand that he was treating his potential successors very similarly to his younger siblings. He was more interested in protecting them than in testing their suitability to succeed him.

Executives considering early influences in their working lives, should also reflect on the impact of favorite teachers, coaches and other role models.

A vice president of investor relations was a particularly competitive individual. She saw the stock price of her company as the ultimate criterion of her and her organization's success. Her approach to work was to win at any cost. She was often expedient and always stretched the rules in order to "win." Upon reflection, she realized the philosophies of her high school soccer coach had a large influence on her. The rules of the game were to be pushed against and avoided rather than strictly followed. The linkage between her approach to work and her experiences with this coach were strong.

Keeping in mind such influences from various points in one's life is an interesting and instructive exercise for executives who wish to deepen their self-understanding.

Analyzing childhood experiences and how they relate to one's work life can lead to rich insights. As the examples show, the effort can be very worthwhile. To conduct such an analysis, an executive can employ one or more of the following vehicles:

(a) Self-reflection

Use a period of uninterrupted time for reflection about family, friends and related childhood experiences. It is important to be as patient and uncensored as possible when engaging in such self-reflection. Try to draw connections between feedback about yourself later in life and these childhood experiences.

(b) Interviews with early influences

Question parents, siblings and others who are familiar with the particulars of your upbringing. Exercises such as this can be highly instructive in terms of understanding and clarifying these early influences. With this rich understanding, you can make the necessary connections between these experiences and your behavior as an executive. You can also observe behavior patterns of parents and siblings to learn about your own behavior.

(c) Discussions with a corporate psychologist

Corporate psychologists, by virtue of their education and experiences in other settings, are skilled at helping executives conduct such analyses. When the consulting psychologist is familiar with the work behavior of the executive, he or she can help the executive probe and make the revealing links between early childhood experiences and on-the-job behavior patterns. He or she can also help construct a plan for self-development.

Our ties to the past can be strong. Understanding the origins of our behavior at work is very useful, and often essential, to becoming a more effective and successful executive. By recognizing the links between what we experienced as children and how we function in the professional world, we can arrive at a better understanding of ourselves and build more satisfying, productive work lives.

A version of this article first appeared in Executive Insights, a quarterly publication from RHR International,. Electronic copies can be found at wwwrhrinternational.com or by contacting RHR International at 630.766.7007 or insiderhVrhrinternational.com. Reprinted with permission.

Allen , L. Parchem is chairman, president and CEO of RHR International, a group of management psychologists.