Feeling like you’ve fallen behind your peers?

This post inspired by the conversation I had with journalist Samantha Downes on episode 104 of COMEBACK COACH about ambition and drive as a working mother. Her husband dialled down his career and was primary carer when their children were young. She’s now 53 and recentky returned to employment at a national newspaper after years of freelancing. This is my script from my outro to the episode

I want to pick up on what Sam said about career drive and questioning whether it’s possible to turn it off. Full disclosure: I don’t think trying to turn ambition off is necessary when you become a parent or even desirable, and I’ll come onto adaptive tactics for harnessing career drive in a minute.

What I’ve noticed through twenty years of coaching women at challenging points in their career is that we come in and out of bloom in our professional lives. Sometimes we’ll have a run of months or years where things are building, we’re being satisfyingly stretched, we’re feeling successful, our achievements are noticed and rewarded and it feels good.

In my mind I think of this as being like a beautiful, strongly perfumed peony in full flower. If the flower analogy feels twee or a bit naff forgive me. But you get the point: it’s a wonderful sight to gaze upon BUT a flower doesn’t bloom all year.

Now thinking specifically about working motherhood, I think we have to have an emotional detachment around the blooming of our colleagues’ careers because they’re likely to be operating in a totally different climate to us. And this climate – that allows them to bloom – is made up of all the resources your colleagues have access to, which you might not have. Being in the same organisation or the same team does not equate to being in the same climate.

And it’s absolutely key to recognise the likely difference in resources because then you stop beating yourself up about what you’re achieving and not achieving in comparison with others.

By resources I mean having things such as:

• Family nearby who actively want and do care for your children.
• Plenty of disposable income.
• A boss who trusts you and gives you autonomy.
• A boss who feeds your self-confidence and is interested in developing you.
• Really good personal health and a healthy family.
• A partner or spouse who proactively takes the lead on domestic responsibilities.
• A strong community around you, which might be religious or something else.

And then internal resources such as:

• High self-regard.
• High self-confidence.
• A growth mindset.
• Great visualisation skills.
• And a hopeful approach to life.

Imagine a mother who has access to this whole list when her daughter is 18 months old. Chances are she’s blooming in her career.  Then fast forward ten years and she’s got two children – one in Y7 and one in Y5 and she’s got hardly any of the resources on that list. I doubt she’ll be in bloom but she might still have a lot of ambition and drive to go places in her career. She just can’t take it as fast or as wholeheartedly as she wants to because she doesn’t have those enabling factors. You get the idea.

If you listened to episode 100 about raising your career through the primary school years you might recall Amanda Newman, a mum of four from Accenture at the top of the episode saying “I believe if you’ve got a glimmer of ambition, like you want to go for the promotion, you should keep progressing towards it and then if you decide you don’t want it when you get it, that’s fine. But don’t squash your ambition because you think you might not be able to do it or be able to juggle it.”

Long time listeners will know that this podcast is part of the Comeback Community employee experience – a top rated coaching programme that we deliver in organisations such as Arcadis, Lombard Odier and Lily’s Kitchen. It’s designed to keep employees feeling confident, connected and cared for when they take extended leave from work so they re-adjust and return to their pre-leave performance more quickly than without coaching.

When I talk to HR Directors, Heads of Learning & Development and other coaching commissioners I recommend coaching is made available before employees go on planned leave particularly if it’s maternity leave. That’s based on a combination of what I’ve seen to be beneficial over the last 20 years and research on how women’s careers are affected by becoming a mother. Take for instance the work of Danna Greenberg and colleagues who’ve explored identity and the transition to motherhood. In the Abstract of their 2016 paper they write: “When women are able to successfully navigate this identity transition and establish a strong vision of their future self as a working mother, they are more likely to stay engaged and committed to their professions and be more satisfied at work and at home.”

The takeout for employers who want to retain and enable the progression of women when they become mothers is that they must help them form a strong positive vision of themselves as a working mother. This means a combination of coaching with an external, independent executive coach or coaching psychologist and an organisational culture that recognises the demands on mothers outside of work and makes it as easy as possible to combine being a professional and a parent.

Organisations where mothers are likely to be thriving are places where:

• Men are taking Shared Parental Leave
• Flexible working is widely adopted by both men and women
• Leaders talk about their caring responsibilities
• Line managers are empathetic, trusting and open-minded
• Time out for having a child isn’t penalised and where
• Managers and mentors want to help high potential people with caring responsibilities to keep progressing – and take positive action to make it so.

How to harness your ambition when you don’t have the resources to drive your career forward

To finish, here are my five action points on how to harness your ambition as a working mother when you’re lacking the resources that make it much, much easier to be in bloom in your career:

1. Get clear on what you want. Write it down. Visualise it. Make a vision board of what being in bloom looks like. I’ve included a link to an episode of a podcast with Maya Raichoora, author of “Visualise – Think, Feel, Perform like the Top 1%”
2. Identify which resources are lacking in your life that would make it easier to be in bloom. Think about what would make the biggest difference to you if you got it. Is it upping the practical input of your partner or spouse? Is it your self-confidence? Is it a boss who trusts you and wants to help you?
3. Work out what it would take to get those resources. It might take a while to get them and that’s OK. Working towards any sort of positive, desired change – in this case getting the resources that allow you to live out your ambitions – is something that can give us a sense of progress, and that in itself is important.
4. Notice your progress. Write it down, talk about it with someone who loves you, who wants the best for you. Paying attention to what’s going well and the progress you ARE making is even more important when things feel difficult or dark. According to Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, the authors of the Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, the best days at work are characterised by a sense of making progress.
5. Remember that we come in and out of bloom in our careers and the blooming is dependent on the resources we have available to us. I think this is a soothing thought to hang onto when we begin to compare ourselves to others and feel we’re lacking or jealous that they’re able to motor in their careers when we feel that we’re stalling. We never never really know the full extent of another person’s life and whilst you might see them blooming professionally they might not see themselves that way – or perhaps they do but they feel it’s come at a cost to other parts of their life. You might even have a chat with the person or people you’re feeling a frisson of envy about. You might get a new perspective or discover some secret ingredient in their life that you can get hold of too. And if you do, come and tell me.

 

I hope you’ve found my reflections useful and that listening to Samantha’s story has helped you in some way. If you’ve got something from this episode please would you press the follow or subscribe button on the app you’re listening on.

Thank you.

And if you’ve got comments, questions or want to be in touch about coaching you can find me on Instagram @comebackcommuk or e-mail jc@talentkeepers.co.uk.