susie almaneih: executive moms show you 7 ways they manage career and family
TRANSCRIPT
E X E C U T I V E M O M S S H O W Y O U 7 WAY S
T H E Y M A N A G E C A R E E R A N D
FA M I LYC R E AT E D B Y S U S I E A L M A N E I H
• There is no question that in our busy world, it is challenging to find time, resources and willingness to engage deeply with our families and our professions.
• Despite all the headway women have made, the traditional mom role often seems at odds with a high level career.
• However, women who have made it all the way to the top discover that there is more space up there.
• Raising a family and running a company have some obvious and not-so-obvious parallels.
• Surprisingly, these women have the flexibility to raise large families successfully so it is worth examining the way that career-oriented women have organized their time and developed their parenting philosophy.
C H O O S E Y O U R O W N
C L O C K
• You make your own schedule and that doesn’t have to correspond with everyone else’s.
• So some moms took calls or meetings from 5am-7 with international partners so they could enjoy breakfast with their kids.
• Some bosses also schedule in a “flex” day so that anything unforeseen can get pushed to that space and if not then it’s room for some spontaneity with family.
# 1
V E N T U R E O U T O F T H E C U B I C L E
• With so many people working remotely, there are actually whole ventures like Power to Fly built on a mom-centric need for women to work from home, work part –time, or work on a contract basis.
• Collaboration is an important component and these moms utilize the latest technology to maintain ongoing communication with their team.
# 2
C O N C E N T R AT E ; F O R G E T M U LT I -
TA S K I N G
• Short, steady bursts of uninterrupted concentration on the task at hand seemed to be the key for most exec moms.
• They were highly productive, mindful and philosophically elastic when it came to prioritizing, setting goals and meeting them.
# 3
K N O W H O W T O D E L E G AT E
• When you are running a company, you hopefully have a team of experts around you to attend to secondary tasks.
• This can come in the form of a personal chef, an au pair, a grocery delivery service or a cleaning service.
# 4
C O M M U N I C AT E W I T H T H E
C O M M U N I T Y
• Networking goes hand in hand with running a company, so for many of these women, applying their communication skills to their community is natural.
• Hooking up with local families is a big contributor to your family’s happiness.
• So planning a weekly activity at alternate households is automated and exponentially helps out each family.
# 5
E V E RY O N E H E L P S
• The big kids help the little kids and the grown ups supervise, (see Delegating).
• A common theme among these working moms was fostering early independence and group effort.
# 6
E N J O Y I T !
• This is the part we are most likely to forget– the reflective part that makes all our activities worth doing.
• Tuning our awareness to what is in front of us, whether it is our children or our board meeting is the key to meaningful experience.
• For both moms and the people around them.
# 7
• When it comes to parenting, these moms are pretty hands-off in regard to social growth.
• They advise letting kids work out their own power dynamic and try to foster independence and interdependence at an early age.
• In communicating with their children, they emphasize problem-solving and active listening.
• These are invaluable tools at the board meeting too.
• Women are making the workforce stronger all over the world, and a more self-governing approach to work is part of the exec mom program.
• Because it is women at the top who are implementing these new policies, many of these big companies are very attractive to women.
• Women are both natural leaders and collaborators, since those skills originate with family.
• These attributes are innate in the sense that we’ve always been doing it.