How motherhood boosted rather than blocked my career: 7 lessons that make working mothers make great leaders
The data are clear, “women are less likely to be hired into manager-level jobs, and they are far less likely to be promoted into them”. Further, pregnancy and maternity discrimination is real and, “women’s earning’s drop significantly after having a child”. Many well-educated women pull back or altogether away from their careers after having children, and working mothers often struggle with the lion’s share of the mental load of parenting. Data, however, have not always captured well the successes many aspiring working mothers have achieved when those women have support both at home and at the office. When a model of balanced support is in place, working mothers benefit from the equity they deserve to enable them to lead teams and organizations, set and execute strategy, and grow financial profit.
I transitioned to the managerial and leadership ranks at the same time I became a mother. I received a manager-level promotion six months after returning from maternity leave for my first child and an additional leadership role one week before giving birth to my second child. The overlap of these experiences helped me discover that my experience as a parent, which included problem-solving, balancing time and energy, patience, service, humility, resilience, goal-setting, collaboration, and long and short term thinking, actually help me in my career and have propelled me to new accomplishments as a leader.
My reflections from these experiences resulted in the below practical lessons.
Lesson #1 — Know what you want and advocate for it
Days after returning from my first maternity leave, a new client was frequently scheduling last-minute meetings for 5pm and 6pm, with no clear end time. I had a hungry 3 month-old at home that I needed to feed. I knew so strongly that breastfeeding was important to me. I had to speak up, be more bullish, and set clear parameters of when I could and couldn’t attend meetings, while still remaining flexible and delivering my work. Establishing clear boundaries actually increased my productivity and commitment rather than decreasing it, now focusing me on results rather than face time or hours spent.
Lesson #2 — It’s a marathon, not a sprint
The demands of having children are constant and as children develop, their needs become more diverse and complex. I used to spend hours researching and stressing exactly how much sleep or milk my son needed. Ready to cry if a fraction of an ounce spilled; I would ignore the big picture that he was growing fine. I had to learn to roll with the punches, enjoy life, remind myself breastfeeding was temporary, and think bigger picture to pace myself. This has helped me immensely in my leadership role where there is no shortage of surprises, changing demands, and new issues arising everyday.
Lesson #3 — Set big goals for and plan ahead to make them a reality
If I had known how hard it was going to be with a consultant’s schedule to achieve my goal to breastfeed my children for a full year, maybe I wouldn’t have done it. But I was so committed, I developed new ways to cope with stress, emotion, and physical, frequently distracting, pain. It was the first time in my life I felt truly challenged to complete a big goal. Setting this challenging goal, declaring it to others, and asking for support and reassurance along the way, however, enabled me to overcome obstacles to achieve that goal which gave immense personal and professional satisfaction.
Lesson #4 — Focus on solutions
The skill to lead calmly and focus toward solutions is an immensely valuable leadership skill. When the breastfeeding room at my client’s office was double-booked or too far away, my frustration often led to unnecessary stress that clouded my ability to problem solve. Remaining focused on solutions, however, enabled me to buy a camping blow-up seat to support me sitting on the floor of the client’s “backup breastfeeding room” (i.e., a bathroom). It’s still entirely wrong to be in that scenario, but later when it came time to pump in a hot IT server room, in an airplane bathroom, or in my car, I had resolved that my seemingly unglamorous solutions was what was going to enable me to meet both my children’s and my clients’ needs.
Lesson #5 –Serve others and don’t always rely on external gratification
While incredibly worth it, for me, having children is so much more work than I had imagined. When work is hard, it’s nice to receive some gratification for that work. For me, external gratification now comes from the experience of guiding my children to grow into resilient, empathetic, and independent human beings. Likewise, at work, when I moved from an individual contributor to a manager, and later to a recognized leader, the show of appreciation (although equally meaningful) was different and less frequent. I do still love a pat on the back every now and then, but now I get great satisfaction from being the one who gives the recognition and proverbial pat on the back to my team members.
Lesson #6 — Realize your level of control over choices you make and what to prioritize (or not)
Like almost every American, I’ve experienced what “busy” looks like, and wore it like a badge of honor. Now I need to be much more realistic and planful about what needs to get done. If I don’t prioritize myself, life demands will decide for me. I realize the value of each limited hour of the day (and the trade-offs in prioritizing one thing over another). As a leader, I need to make countless decisions each day of which email to respond to first, which team member to stay late to check up on, what can be put off until tomorrow or altogether, and which client to invest extra time on.
Lesson #7 — Be thoughtful about where to exert your energy
As “web-thinkers”, women are better able to exert their energy in multiple places at once. An amazing skill, but sometimes we can take on too much and use up all our energy. When I was coming home stressed and exhausted from work and impatient with my spouse and our kids, it yielded exhausting interactions at home. I wasted energy sweating the small stuff, things I couldn’t control, or trying to get something exact, when close enough would have been fine. I love details (like, really love them). But, as I move up in my career, I have learned I cannot get involved in all of the details if I am going to manage both my time and my energy. Thus, acknowledging my innate “web-thinking” ability in balance with the emotional and mental demands of leadership, enable me to be more thoughtful about how to strategically direct my energy.
These lessons are very personal to me and relevant to my situation. But I encourage other working mothers to find these or other lessons from their own experience. The social pressures are still very real — 37% of Americans still think it’s bad that working mothers of young children work outside the home. And social pressures feed self-imposed pressures such as “mom guilt” which can hold us back.
However, evidence suggests working mothers are the most productive workers, and that, across 24 countries studied, both sons and daughters benefit from having a working mother. I am fortunate to have a true life and parenting partner at home and to work for a company that prioritizes growing leaders and supporting personal lives, that prioritizes outcomes and impact over a time clock.
If more managers and leaders across companies believed more in the powerful skills working mothers build, they could recognize the business benefit in proactively supporting, growing, and retaining them, particularly in the early years of working motherhood. And if working mothers heard more positive messages of their potential as leaders, they could thrive in their multiple identities as leaders and mothers, in support of, rather than at the expense of each other, and the invisible glass ceiling can get some more much needed cracks.
Amy Marshall is the Practice Area Lead for the Organizational Effectiveness practice at Slalom Consulting’s New York office (a full service business and technology consulting firm) and is passionate about growing, influencing, and supporting leadership to drive positive change in ever-changing organizations. As a working mom of 2 young children, focused on both career and family, she is passionate about supporting working moms to live their full potential, by reaching for and realizing their own personal vision at work and in life.
