The Mother of All Leadership Challenges
March 12, 2021 | Lisa Marie Main
Recently, I was facilitating a client video conference on Zoom. The speaker, a young woman charged with leading an organizational initiative, began to outline her project update. As she did, serious and focused on the audience, her toddler, dressed in blue pajamas with brown curly hair, climbed a wooden cabinet in the background. I gasped, anticipating a fall and loud wailing.
The client turned, saw the toddler, grabbed her, and returned to the call with the little girl plopped on her lap. “Now,” she said, “Where was I?”
Welcome to the Shifting Workplace
Welcome to the workplace created by COVID-19, where the line between work and home has blurred or disappeared altogether. This new workplace is challenging assumptions about the parent-worker identity.
The pandemic workplace has demanded a different kind of playbook, one that does not differentiate between work and life, or personal and professional, but integrates and leverages both. It has been unknown territory for many leaders but oh-so-familiar for Wendy and me since we abandoned the security of our full-time jobs to become entrepreneurs twenty-five years ago.
Our Story
The year was 1995. We were single moms with toddlers in tow when we abandoned the security of our full-time jobs to become entrepreneurs and launch RETREATS, Inc., an adventure-based leadership and team development company. We had twin goals: to make a significant difference in the world by working with leaders and teams who would do the same and to raise our children so that they, too, would create meaningful lives for themselves.
Like the client on the Zoom call, in those early days, we juggled conference calls from kitchen tables with kids underfoot. We begged favors from friends and neighbors when meetings ran over and kids needed school rides. We learned how to read financial spreadsheets in between helping with math homework assignments.
Facing the Unknown
As women leaders then, we often faced the unknown. We were clumsy. We sometimes didn’t do it right (and we often didn’t know what “right” was). But over time, we learned to embrace the unknown for the possibilities it triggered and the sixth sense we acquired for what to do and when to do it, even if we couldn’t name it.
We were coaching before it ever became a profession. We focused not on problems but on the possibilities that were emerging from them, using Appreciative Inquiry. We showed leaders how to “see” the hidden patterns and dynamics that govern an organization using Organizational Systemic Constellations. And because we are outdoor enthusiasts, we continued to facilitate team building using white-water rafting, ropes courses, sailing adventures, and more.
Our intentions and intuitions guided us, and often, we were graced with openings that hinted that we were on the right path, including early on.
The Right Path Emerges
It was a multi-day adventure retreat for an all-male team of Campbell Soup executives. After a day of orienteering through the forest to find parts to build rafts for crossing a large lake, we were to meet for dinner. Because I was breast-feeding at the time, I had brought my daughter with me and hired a babysitter for the day. When evening came, I had no choice but to bring my daughter to dinner, despite my concerns about appearing unprofessional.
Imagine my surprise when this team of high-level leaders embraced not only my daughter, but also me as a leader and mother, and as a parent like themselves. We were connected by our shared humanity and a wall disappeared. Some pulled photos from wallets (this was before cell phones) to proudly show me their kids. We reached a new level of connection and transparency.
Over the years, RETREATS Inc. evolved into Continuum, a growing global consulting firm, and it all began with two moms and a mission.
Long-term Opportunities
And now, as the long-term impacts of the pandemic emerge, organizations everywhere are having to find the right balance of policies and practices for families and businesses to flourish, whether in on-site, hybrid or remote configurations. If women continue to bear the greater burden of job loss, lack of advancement opportunities and lower pay because they are also mothers, the economy and our families will continue to suffer. We can connect across our shared humanity and the knowledge that a nation’s children are its greatest joy and future, and its women are an asset to be fully valued.
We’re going to keep talking about this, way past Women’s History Month. Tune in for our next Connexions Conversation on the challenge of workplace options for families dealing with the uncertainties of a viable post-pandemic future—it’s the mother of all challenges.
Lisa Marie Main, co-founder and partner for Continuum Consulting Services, is an accomplished leader, trainer, consultant, executive coach and facilitator of interactions that lead to alignment and results-based action for business and organizational leaders around the world.