The Balancing Act
It was 6 months into my first maternity leave and I was drowning. I felt so far from myself and lacking in identity. It struck me that my day to day gave me no opportunities for attainment, achievement; anyone who has had a baby will tell you that you’re just winging it. And every best laid plan can be blown to smithereens by an ill-timed poonami or ruined nap. Don’t get me wrong, I adored my son, am grateful for the time we spent together and to this day I delight in his achievements. But they weren’t mine and frankly, nothing was mine, least of all my own body. I needed more.
So I sat down with my then boss and said I wanted to come back early. But I didn’t want to come all the way back right away. I didn’t want to go from no days to five days. We worked out a plan using keep in touch days and accrued holiday that allowed me to build up slowly, to balance the needs of my baby with the requirements of my job (local head of business development in a Private Bank).
It sort of worked, in the short term. Over the course of a couple of months I managed back to 90%, which is where I wanted to stay. And that’s where the problems started. The rigid policies of a large business defined someone as either on maternity leave or not. And that period of my life was over, so I was expected to just bounce right back to normal despite this huge other pressure and responsibility that wasn’t getting easier or going away and had in fact changed me forever.
There were a great many people telling me they knew what it was like but most were not the primary care giver. With the best will in the world, if the nanny was ill or the baby ate a mushroom out the zoo sandpit (true story) they weren’t the ones rushing out of work to solve the problems, they had wives and partners for that. I had no role model who was doing it all. No one I could look to who was balancing what I was in the way that I wanted; a big job and a baby.
Fast forward a year or so and I had left the bank and formed a start up with a business associate. Someone I trusted and who shared my values. Doing something that filled me with passion and energy.
The next year can be summarised as ‘start-up in a pandemic with a newborn’! I fell pregnant during lock down (yes yes, a lock down baby) but pushed ahead with building the business and went back to work when my second baby was 8 weeks old. And this is where it gets interesting. I didn’t have to be one thing or the other. No binary choices this time round. I could be present with my baby but also push forward at work. I had complete flexibility to work when it suited me, to balance my life in a way that only I would know how. It was liberating, exhilarating even, to feel like I was achieving on all sides of my life and wasn’t letting anyone down. I won clients then went home to breast feed. Appointments for things like jabs and weigh ins sat alongside consultancy engagements in my work diary. A couple of times I even took the baby to meetings with associates who were dying for a cuddle. I can tell you those meetings were the highlight of their week!
So when it came to running a business and hiring a team here’s what I have carried forward from my experience:
I talk to anyone who wants to hear it about how I balance all my responsibilities. I am visible and honest about the strains and stresses, how hard it can be to be everything to your little people and balance your career too. The more role models we see in industry the better.
I book my diary around what I need, which includes attending events and travelling but when it works for me. I am forthright with clients about when I am and am not available for face to face meetings. I’ve never lost a client on service so don’t be afraid of saying no to a particular meeting time. Just set expectations at the outset.
We have a culture of trust, I trust my partners and my team to do their jobs. We’ve all agreed objectives and priorities, beyond that I support my team to achieve in whatever way suits them. The outcome? Motivated, engaged and passionate employees whose productivity could never be called into question.
In reality not everyone will have a supportive boss or company policy, not every job can be done remotely and not everyone will want to work flexibly or part time. But the more we can bust the paradigm that present=productive and push businesses to embrace diversity in its fullest sense, the more we will ensure we don’t lose talented, motivated and valuable employees from the workplace simply because they couldn’t find a way to balance all their responsibilities.