Is your life out of balance? Does your work life feel like it does not fit? But how to get it right?
Start by defining your priorities. Yes, you do have to make a choice. Coach Anna Meller created a fantastic tool to made a fantastic tool to help you The Work Life Balance Workbook
I was delighted to be invited to the Working Mothers Lunch by the SocGen’s family network. I headed a panel discussing tips and solutions to the top 3 issues for working mothers: juggling time, confidence and partner support. Juggling time turned out to be the top issue for almost every working mother and in the discussion that followed issues and advice were shared openly.
What really struck me was how flexible many jobs seemed to be. There were women working at 80%, coming in at 9.30, working 4 days a week, leaving at 3pm, and leaving early and making up time from home later in the evening. Clearly this is all possible in SocGen. Still, it is not possible in every job, it is harder at more senior levels and it also requires intelligent management by the individual to get a manager to agree.
So, yes, on the surface it seems there is a lot of flexibility, but it does come with it’s own issues that working mothers have to sort, often with little support, training or role-models. These are some of the issues that came up in our discussion:
It was clear during the panel input and the discussion that it really helps to share, and learn from each other. It helps to know you are not the only one but also gives you the courage and motivation to help you carve your own path. I would love to share some of the best tips and insights that I heard:
Participants left reflective, energised and motivated. Knowing that it isn’t easy, and it’s sometimes a steep learning curve, but it’s worth it. The event was very well organised, and participants felt it was excellent and they would love to see more similar events.
The family network and women’s network at SocGen are very active, and always have well-attended, lively events. They find that it works to:
Author: Inge Woudstra, Working Women’s Expert and Director of Mum & Career
There has been a lot of talk about Sheryl Sandberg’s new book ‘Lean in: Women, Work and the Will to Lead’. In the book the CEO of Facebook (and mother of 2) explains what’s holding women back. One of her key lessons is one I advocate all the time too…but what has that got to do with chocolate? Find out from Jenny Garrett.
The term capsule wardrobe is often talked about in magazines but is rarely explained in depth. In this article, Joanna Gaudoin from Inside Out aims to unlock the mystery and show how it can work for you as a working mother.
I often get asked if a capsule wardrobe is really possible. The answer is definitely yes and it is really worth knowing how to create one. It is a great way to save time in terms of selecting what to wear and shopping, a necessity being a Mum with a career. However, it does require a little prior knowledge and some discipline…
So first to explain. A capsule wardrobe is one that is built around a specific set of colours so that there are many different combinations of clothing that go together. It means an escape from the 4 different colour tops that each only go with black trousers scenario…
The starting point is knowing which colour tones best flatter your natural features – hair, skin and eyes. This is important as these are the colour tones that make you look healthy, decrease any signs of ageing and mean you look your best. From the range of colour tones that suit you, you should begin by selecting a neutral colour that you like. Neutrals being black, navy, beige, camel, brown, grey.
You can then select an ‘accent’ colour (I call these ‘exciting’ colours – reds, pinks, yellows, greens) from the range of tones that suit you. Remember select the ‘exciting’ colour with what is in the shops in mind.
Now a capsule wardrobe doesn’t grow overnight, unless you have a sizeable budget. To make the most of what you already have, consider your current wardrobe and if you already have items in a neutral and an ‘exciting’ colour that suit you that you like, then start by building on those.
Beginning with one neutral and one ‘exciting’ colour does mean that for a while you may be in the same colours often, but because you’ll have different combinations of items you can achieve many different looks.
Shop for a range of items in both the neutral and exciting tone that you can put together – plain and patterned. So think of basics such as simple tops, jumpers, skirts, trousers as well as signature pieces such as jackets and coats. Often these items can be appropriate for different occasions depending on what they are worn with and how.
Take a dress for example:
Cardigans and jumpers are good items for being worn casually at the weekend with jeans or jeggings, or with a dress or skirt for a smarter occasion.
Importantly, don’t forget accessories! Belts, scarves and jewellery are all great ways to change an outfit without spending a lot of money. If you want to go for fashionable items then these can be bought pretty cheaply. They are unlikely to be the best quality, but for a few weeks wear to differentiate an outfit, they are worth considering.
Think of buying elasticised belts that could adapt to being worn in different places on your body and learn a few basic ways to tie scarves to change the look you can achieve with them.
So a reminder of the steps to creating a capsule wardrobe:
The great thing is, once you have started your capsule wardrobe, the benefits start:
Author: Joanna Gaudoin is an image expert with experience of working with women in the corporate and professional services sector. She lives in South West London and works in London and Surrey. Find out more about her company Inside Out and how she can help you know which colour tones, shapes and cuts suit you to build your capsule wardrobe.
Image courtesy of Mel Wilde Photography
If XMAS is getting on top of you, go through the following list, consider every single tip to be helpful and find a way of applying it. If you struggle with any of them, please let me know.
Throw perfectionism out of the window: when it is good enough it is good enough.Hopefully this list will give you plenty of ideas and inspiration to ‘crack’ the holiday season and have a wonderful time, during preparation and during XMAS itself.
Author: Dr. Mariette Janssen. Mariette is a life coach and counsellor at stress free coaching. She invites you to send her any queries. Mariette might just be the go to person if you are interested in getting on top of X-mas stress or other stress in other areas of your life?mariette@stressfreecoaching.co.uk, Mob 07967 717 131
Find out from Aparajita Ajit how she does it – She is Vice President and Head Banking & Capital Markets UK and Europe at MphasiS, an HP company based in Bank, London. She works flexibly and has a three-year-old son and lives in New Malden, Surrey. She volunteers for the Mayor’s Mentor Programme.
Judith Zerdin, journalist, went to find out how she manages it, and when, if ever she ever gets to see her son.
Part of my job involves looking at new client acquisitions, and that does mean a fair bit of travelling. I was in France last week, next week I’m in Edinburgh, after that I’m in Luxembourg.
I could have a week when I have to visit two or three countries, but I tend to make them day trips rather than staying over. I’ll catch the first flight out in the morning and the last flight back at night.
My boss is based in New York and my team is scattered between the UK and Europe, but we do have a few members in India too. We have to speak at a time that works for everybody, so we’ll often get on to a team call at about 9pm. Once my son’s in bed I’ll go back to work.
I try to avoid working weekends if I can, unless there’s a major bid or some urgent time-consuming project.
I get up at about 5.30 – quite often I have to make early morning calls then to my Indian colleagues.
My son wakes up between 6.30 and 7am and then we’re getting ready and out of the house by 8am.
I drop him off at his day care and then I catch the train to Waterloo and then the tube to Bank. I’m in the office by 9am.
I use my commute to catch up on a lot of my business reading; keeping abreast of what’s going on in the markets. I check my phone, but I try to avoid doing emails as I deal with a lot of confidential information.
I don’t usually take a lunch break; I’ll just grab a salad or sandwich and have it at my desk, and then I leave at 4.30 to pick my son up from day-care.
I like to spend 2-3 quality hours with him before he goes to bed, after which my husband and I will have dinner and then I’ll catch up on work I’ve missed from the two hours not being in the office, and make any conference calls to the US or Canada.
I have a cook who comes once a week and the rest of the week my husband and I share the cooking. I also have a cleaner once a week.
It’s about juggling it all, but the good news is, as long as the work gets done and I put in the hours, my company doesn’t clock-watch. It helps that it’s a trust-filled atmosphere.
Weekends for sure – on Saturday nights my husband and I catch up with friends either at our place or go out for dinner, or go to the theatre. I go to a zumba class on Saturday mornings and Wednesday nights and I also go to the gym on Mondays after my son’s in bed and my husband’s home from work. I’ll fit my work around it.
My husband and I try to take off at least one Friday every three months to get some “us” time, too. Then we might go and see a film, or just chill out.
Each week we’ll share our schedules for the next week or couple of weeks so we can plan our diaries. We make sure, as best we can, that if I have to travel somewhere he will pick our son up, and he can work a bit from home.
My husband and I share responsibilities equally and he is extremely supportive and understanding. I do pick-up more often because my husband works for an Investment Bank and it does make it quite difficult to leave as early as me. However on days that I travel, he plans his schedule accordingly.
It depends on how you define ‘tough’! For example, my son had chickenpox not that long ago. We had all our annual leave planned already and I only had three or four days to spare, but I decided to work from home, and my husband took some days off.
His company also offers an emergency nanny service, so we got one for the last three or four days.
I think drawing on any flexibility your employer gives you is very important. It’s all about having a very understanding employer, and an extremely helpful and reliable husband. We don’t have our parents in this country so we can’t rely on them.
When things get tough I just have to deal with it – it’s a bit of a trade-off. When it comes to childcare it’s just really important that we’re planned and organised.
I grew up in India and I didn’t have everything just given to me; I had to work hard for it. Moreover, my parents were role models and I learnt a lot from them.
I’ve got two Master degrees and I was studying while looking after a baby and working full time, but I invested in all of that and started to see the results of my efforts and I realised the sky’s the limit. I believed that all the way through it.
Many of my friends are highly educated, while some of them decide to stop working out of choice, many of them feel they have to give up their career once they have a family. A lot of the time we presume that’s how it has to be, but I think you need to talk about your aspirations with your family.
Look for other options: working flexibly/part-time/job sharing, and be a bit shameless with the resources made available to you at work.
For many people childcare is very expensive – you should work out how many days you can afford it and see what options are available for the other days.
There are days when I really wish I could just put my feet up and go to the Bahamas! On the other hand, we do make the most of our holidays, and I love spa days – I’d be lying if I said not. But I’m very happy as a mother, wife and professional woman. I’m very pleased with the life I have.
The most-repeated comment I hear from new business start ups “There are so many things to do!”. And it is so true – standing back and taking an objective look, the list is daunting:
Ø On Your Marks! – research market, do feasibility forecasts (am I likely to make money?), identify market, make business plan, identify how much capital is required and raise it (as cheaply as possible!),
Ø Get Set! – decide branding and get design work done, website creation, create marketing materials, identify suppliers, negotiate terms, open bank account, prepare detailed marketing plan, contact advertisers, financial budgets
Ø GO! – Sell, network, advertise, build brand awareness, keep on top of accounting and VAT, reforecasts……
STOP NOW! This list is endless and overwhelming. And it is dangerous. Why? Because if our expectations of ourselves are that by becoming a business owner we also become, apparently over-night, a marketeer cum salesperson cum financial controller cum graphic-designer cum copy writer, then we set ourselves up to fail.
It is your job to run the business which means your days will be spent in a combination of generating sales, marketing your business and supplying the product/service. (The time dedicated to each of these activities will depend on the nature of your specific business and how much you can delegate to someone else.)
You cannot and should not try to do everything. Your focus must always be on business-building. If you spend a day doing book-keeping, who is making sales? (Your competitors, that’s who.)
Go ahead and make that “To Do” list, then work your way through it, delegating tasks where possible. Be realistic. Outsource recurring tasks that would divert your focus if you were to take them on (book-keeping is a good example). If you need an expert for a task (e.g. marketing logo design), ask friends for recommendations and hire one.
Outsourcing is a facility that makes expertise available to you as and when you require it. Invest in another person’s expertise and experience and save yourself the learning curve that means wasted time and money. Remember, while the outsourced expert completes a task far more quickly, accurately and completely than you could, you are out generating the long-term sales contacts that your business relies on, and which will ultimately more than pay for the cost of your outsourcing.
So many things to do? There certainly are. But not all by you.
Author: Dara McGovern from JumpStart for Business. Dara is an experienced chartered accountant and ex-Finance Director of a large multi-national. She now runs her own Business Finance consultancy, DM Solutions, around her busy family life. DM Solutions is part of the JumpStart4Business strategic alliance which came into being to support business start-ups, providing easy access for new business owners to a range of relevant expertise and experience. dara@jumpstart4business.com
JumpStart4Business runs regular, informative workshops, supporting and encouraging new entrepreneurs, see www.jumpstart4business.com for news on the next event
Talking about being a working mum at the BBC ‘Women at the top’ programme triggered senior manager Paula Leach to think about female leadership and motherhood. This is what she learned about being a working mum in her own words.
Being a working mum for me the key challenges have come down to Time. I’m nearly 7 years into my parenting journey, with 2 beautiful daughters and a worklife balance many would envy, combining my part time senior management role with being an involved and present parent to my girls. So what’s the problem? Haven’t I ‘got it all’? Haven’t I ‘got the best of both worlds’? Well, it’s an interesting question, and one I have a bit of a constant wrestle with myself.
In a quest to try to work out why I feel like this, I recently tentatively took part in the filming of a BBC documentary which was examining the reasons why so few women are represented at the senior levels of management in business. Scary as it was to put myself ‘out there’ and actively join the debate, I wanted to share my perspectives, experience and optimism and learn as much as I could on the way.
The process of being filmed and trying to work out in my head what was my overriding perspective on the subject of combining motherhood and career, was all a bit of a new step in a new journey for me. Of course I was only going to be featured on the programme for 3 minutes or so, and I was happy with the footage (although I just find watching myself very uncomfortable …. Surely I don’t really look or sound like that??!!). However, the finished programme was one thing, the journey that asking these questions has started to send me on, is something else.
So …. Back to Time. I have always known, ever since I returned to work after my first daughter was about 1 year old, that it was about time. There are only so many hours in a day, and I was already madly busy with all my work commitments before I then had to fit in my new job as Mum. I’m super organised though, so went about the process of creating a jigsaw of childcare, greater efficiency, working different times of the day to make up for dashing out of the office early to get to a nursery pick up etc. We all do it- it’s how it works. And over that period where I have continued to make this jigsaw of activity squeeze into my 24 hours, I, like many other women I know (and probably countless more I don’t know), have felt various new emotions about my working and home life such as guilt, low-confidence and questioning what other people were thinking of me, feeling not quite as reliable as I always had been (or the risk that I wasn’t that reliable) amongst other things. A wise friend once told me, it takes 5 years to come to terms with the situation of this balance and feel at peace with it rather than trying to be everything you were at work before.
So, I am a reflector, and this has all got me reflecting a lot about Time. I actually know for a fact, that I am equally if not more capable at delivering in my chosen profession than I was 7 years ago. And I feel optimistic about those contributions. I simply am not in a position to work the same days and hours, or work between “9 – 5” in the accepted business tradition. Interestingly, where I have felt a dip in confidence or worried about my reliability or felt guilty …. Pretty much all of this is rooted in Time – or lack of it!
Coupled with that realisation, I was interested to explore whether this perceived issue of time was external or internal to myself. Generally, there is some expectation from others, but on the whole, my reflection leads me to conclude that most of the pressure I feel regarding time is actually pressure I am putting on myself.
Light bulb moment! (I had this a couple of years ago). Just forget about worrying about the time -what I can’t fit in that I used to, how to be like everyone else (or as I perceive everyone else) – and get on with the excellent outputs and contributions that I make, focusing on my energy and quality and creativity. Let go of that guilt and that lower confidence and see what happens – I would soon work out whether this was mostly me putting that pressure on, or whether it truly was real. Result: Yep – mostly me!
So, my feeling is really this: As a professional woman, I have certain expectations of myself which I literally could not replicate once time got squeezed. I wasn’t prepared to make the sacrifices so many women did a generation ago with regard to seeing their family grow up … surely they had no choice, but because they did that, it has paved the way for women and mums like me to have a choice and take on the mantle of the next challenge with confidence and energy! That challenge being the challenge of demonstrating that Time is Not the issue … having personal confidence, and the confidence of others, in output, creativity, leadership, quality – these are the things business should be really interested in and I for one plan to demonstrate that it doesn’t always need to matter that you are seen to be doing the 9 – 5.
Having confidence to do it my way will hopefully open the eyes of business that mums and business can work and can thrive, with a little open-mindedness on both sides to being flexible and focusing on the output. By having the confidence to be doing, delivering and succeeding, we can perhaps grow and open up the opportunities to work flexibly, be involved with our families at the times that we need to be during the 24 hours we have, and still achieve what we need to at work (and beyond!). I don’t see working flexibly as simply a temporary accommodation to ‘help’ me – I see it as a win-win for me and the business. I achieve everything that is required of my role and beyond. I cost less than a full-time resource. I am committed to making that work and being the most efficient that I can be. The biggest barrier I believe I truly have faced is actually my own personal perceptions and expectations limiting myself, so I am taking deep breaths and not apologising for working a different schedule – I am embracing it and demonstrating it’s value! And at the same time I am very present in my children’s lives and fully engaged in their school life and activities which is important for me.
Obviously I appreciate that I am fortunate to work with an enlightened employer where the foundational elements of flexible working and empowerment mean I can take responsibility for my own schedule and working my way to achieve success. Technology is such an enabler here to allow us to move forwards – so we don’t waste the talent that is out there with so many people who have chosen Motherhood. My mantra moving forwards … it is ‘Mum AND career’ not ‘Mum OR Career’!
And what about me ‘having it all’ already? …. Yep that’s all fine and maybe a perception could be that I do, but I have ambition to progress in my career, learn more, take on interesting challenges and add greater value – and I plan to do that still with only 24 hours in the day!
I have learnt so much about myself, and others, over the last few years having become a parent. Perhaps I may continue to progress my career because I have children, and not in spite of it.
Author: Paula Leach, She has 2 beautiful daughters aged 6 and 3 and works 3 1/2 days per week in a senior leadership role as Learning & Development Manager at a large Multi-National automotive organisation. Since having her daughters, she juggles her career with her family and is constantly striving towards achieving a balance which means she can be present and involved in her children’s lives, schooling etc, in addition to not only ‘holding down’ her role, but continuing to develop, grow and contribute professionally. As part of this journey, she recently took part in the filming of the BBC2 documentary ‘Hilary Devey’s Women at the Top’.
Are your finances in order?
21 e-lessons by chartered accountant Liz Lugt
How to:
Check out this support package from Parental Choice!
10% discount for Mum & Career followers