Tag Archive for: work-life balance

Rachel Goldin Jinich: Head of Specialty Real Estate Finance, Wells Fargo Commercial Real Estate

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Rachel Goldin Jinich“Run towards the fire.  Go to where there is growth and where you can make an impact,” says Rachel Goldin Jinich.  “To me that’s always the recipe for success.”

Jinich exemplifies the drive to seize opportunities and master her craft amidst challenges. She reflects on how her authentic leadership style, commitment to growth, and dedication to supporting diverse talent and fostering a collaborative culture have defined her career.

Running Towards the Fire

From the beginning of her career, Jinich ran towards opportunity.  Pivoting from an undergraduate degree in political science and Spanish literature, Jinich studied finance in graduate school, finding a passion for commercial real estate.  Jumping at the chance to get experience on the lending side of real estate, Jinich joined the Wells Fargo commercial real estate team in 2006 in Boston, where only two years later she quickly learned how to weather a volatile market in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.  Reaching out to her mentor and asking to join a new group dedicated to handling distressed debt workouts, Jinich gained valuable experience and established long-lasting connections throughout the firm.

“There is no better time than during a crisis to truly master your craft and discover what you still need to learn. I had the privilege of working with incredibly talented individuals, many of whom are still with Wells Fargo today and with whom I continue to collaborate frequently.”

Always looking for growth opportunities and embracing challenges, Jinich continued to broaden her skillset in commercial real estate, working across various groups including Real Estate Merchant Banking, Special Situations, Hospitality Finance, and Specialty Capital, where she started a specialized lending group for data centers.  Her breadth of experience and proven track record positioned Jinich to seamlessly assume the leadership role of her predecessor, becoming the head of Specialty Real Estate Finance (SREF) last year, with responsibility overseeing lodging and leisure, data centers, healthcare real estate, and manufactured housing.

“I am thrilled to lead this talented team focused on some of the most exciting sectors across real estate.”

Leading with a Growth Mindset

Jinich’s approach to seeking growth opportunities not only propels her career advancement, but also defines her leadership style.  She notes that being open to learning from others and drawing on their expertise is an important element of how she shows up as a leader.

“It’s having a healthy dose of humility and a growth mindset in order to learn from the people around you.  Put your ego aside, be a willing student and ask questions.”

Jinich also emphasizes authenticity as key to effective leadership, particularly as it engenders trust and respect from the team.

“Being candid resonates with people because they know whatever it is, they can trust that you will be transparent and direct.”

Jinich appreciates the authentic leadership style of her own manager, Kara McShane, head of Commercial Real Estate, and hopes to emulate that with her team.

“I believe people will respond positively to you if they see that you genuinely care about them, are invested in their success, and the team’s success.”

Finding Support in the Wells Fargo Culture

Jinich attributes Wells Fargo’s culture as a big contributor to her ability to lead authentically, including feeling comfortable sharing when she does not have all the answers.  She finds the thread of being humble and willing to ask clarifying questions woven throughout the organization’s leadership.

“What I truly appreciate about our culture is that even our most senior leaders can participate in calls and ask fundamental questions about the deal, the client, or the underwriting process without hesitation.”

She continues, “When I look at people who I respect and admire and see their ability to admit they don’t have the answers, and to learn and draw on the experience of others – that is the secret sauce.”

Jinich also highlights the emphasis on a team mentality as a particularly supportive aspect of the Wells Fargo culture.

“People understand that you win together.  When someone new joins, people invest the time in educating and helping them because in the end we are all just trying to get the best outcomes for our clients while supporting the team.”

As a leader, Jinich hopes to continue facilitating an atmosphere of collaboration, as she feels it is a unique and important element of Wells Fargo’s culture.

Creating a Team Culture that Elevates

Jinich is thoughtful about the culture she wants to create for her team, and how she aims to model that in her leadership style.  As a leader in a business that traditionally has fewer women in leadership roles, she is dedicated to supporting diverse talent.

“I’ve had a lot of support throughout my career to continue to advance and I want to make sure that everyone in my organization feels like they have a shot to get the big job, to win the big deal, and to be successful. Representation matters and Wells has incredible women in leadership positions and in the talent pipeline”

She continues, “I want to make sure that there are many women behind me who have that same opportunity and that we’re creating career paths.”

For Jinich, elevating others involves providing the constructive feedback they need to improve and advance emphasizing, “it’s making sure that same level of feedback is available to all of our employees.”  She aims to foster a culture that encourages ongoing dialogue by addressing actionable feedback promptly rather than waiting for mid-year reviews.

“Although it can at times be uncomfortable, people are receptive and crave that input. I want that feedback, too. I don’t expect it to be a one-way communication.  I want to create a culture where people feel comfortable speaking up.”

Setting Boundaries for Success

Navigating a fulfilling career and motherhood, Jinich understands that balancing time and energy between one’s personal and professional life is challenging.  She acknowledges, “sometimes it’s going well and you feel like you’re nailing it on every level and then there are days where you feel like you’re failing at everything.”  She continues, “I’ve had to learn to say no to things that aren’t important in my personal and professional life, so I can say yes to what truly matters.”

As a leader, she aims to create a culture that emphasizes setting boundaries, encouraging her team to take the time they need or ask for resources to avoid burnout.  She wants to be sure that balance is available, promoted, and supported for everybody.

Jinich finds balance outside of work by embracing the outdoors, whether she’s cycling with her kids or volunteering on the board of a nonprofit summer camp. She believes that being in nature and staying active are essential for self-care, enabling her to better support others.

“Whether it’s your son’s baseball game or a Pilates class, wherever you are in life, and whatever you have going on at home, setting boundaries is important.  It’s the key to a sustainable career.”

By Jessica Robaire

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OP-Ed: 3 Ways Leaders Can Advocate for Workplace Flexibility

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Lauren Winans Workplace Flexibility Over the past year, businesses in virtually every industry around the world have undergone dramatic shifts, while the remote workplace has redefined workplace flexibility. Like it or not, the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked the most rapid transformation of workplace dynamics in recent memory, not the least of which has been the shift regarding the traditional employer-employee dynamic.

Increased trends in technological automation and innovations have forced us as professional leaders to rethink most of our internal strategies. From the processes we use to hire and retain talented employees, to the ways we interact with them on the clock, and even down to the resources we provide them to excel in their performance, one thing has been made clear: the pandemic has left its impact not only on society as a whole, but also on the individual as an employee.

As employees have begun to advocate for their wants and needs within the workplace, it is our duty as leaders to provide them with the environment and tools they need to feel appreciated and valued. The best way to do this is to advocate for greater flexibility within your business and its culture. By advocating for the flexibility and greater overall wellbeing of your employees, they will feel more supported. This support, in turn, boosts the confidence of your employees, allowing them to feel more deeply valued in their own abilities, both within and outside of the workplace.

Here are three ways you, as a leader, can become an advocate for the flexibility of your workplace’s culture and its employees.

1. Embrace the New Hybrid Work Model

Some employers are reluctant to change and are resistant to new ways of working for them and their employees alike. They may think that methods which worked well for the past several decades prior to the pandemic can continue to work just as well more than a year later. Employers may have a fear of the unknown or a desire to focus on other priorities for their business. Ultimately, it all comes down to an organization’s leaders–if leaders can acknowledge that the dynamic between them and their employees has shifted, and changes are required, half the battle is already won. When that acknowledgement is avoided, true change becomes impossible.

Many employers are permanently implementing remote work and hybrid working arrangements, providing bonuses for employees who worked extra hours during the pandemic, conducting compensation studies to ensure their pay rates are competitive, and adding benefits like additional therapy visits, meditation, and mindfulness training. Some employers are also adding more paid holidays to their workplace calendar, encouraging vacation day use, or bringing in freelancers, contractors, and consultants to help with complex projects and increased workloads.

Implementing a hybrid work environment can benefit employers in many ways, not the least of which is the reduction in size of their real estate footprint, which lowers operating expenses. For instance, implementing a hybrid work model shows employees that flexibility in their workplace environment is a priority for their leaders, allowing those leaders to retain talented employees for longer periods of time. This hybrid environment allows talented employees to juggle their priorities (such as caring for children or aging parents) while remaining employed without the fear of having to choose between their personal priorities or their career.

2. Revisit (and Revamp) Your Hiring and Retention Strategy

The number one thing employers can do is to ensure workplace flexibility is to have a clearly defined talent strategy; one that includes an aspirational vision or mission that leaders and HR can use as a guidepost. That guidepost is then used to update, change, or create practices and rewards that are aligned to the aspirational vision of a company’s leadership, which should be well-known throughout the organization. It should be communicated clearly and often, praised when demonstrated, and discussed regularly in large company-wide meetings and small team meetings alike. Great, talented employees need to know what they are working for, what they are working toward, and that their efforts are recognized, appreciated, and rewarded.

The recent hiring crisis our nation is facing exemplifies this point. Our current shortage of workers is impacting the ability of HR teams to focus on enhancing their people strategy, resulting in higher turnover rates that lead to a larger amount of open positions that are hard to fill. It’s a vicious cycle that has led many organizations to bring in HR consultants who can help employers and their teams tackle greater workloads in a shorter period of time. However, many HR professionals themselves are completely burned out after everything the pandemic threw at them. Some are shifting career paths, moving on to companies that provide them with more support, or leaving the workforce entirely.

If business leaders and employers are able to successfully adapt to new ways of working, and thinking about work such as implementing a hybrid work environment, this allows them to increase the size of their talent pool–particularly for positions that are difficult to fill. Hybrid work models likewise allows for greater inclusion, making it possible for companies to employ those with disabilities that keep them from a traditional onsite office setting. By increasing the size of their talent pool, employers make it easier on themselves to recruit for positions that would otherwise be hard to fill.

3. Consciously Provide Employees Opportunities to Thrive

The events of the past year have made it clear that employees crave support from employers to help them better balance their lives. Employees want to work for strong leaders, want to contribute to something bigger than themselves, to take care of their families, and to maintain their health and wellbeing. All of these needs require flexibility on behalf of the employer, and while employers are not expected to meet all of an employee’s personal needs, making conscious choices to provide employees every opportunity to thrive is what helps retain great employees.

By focusing your company’s internal people strategy to create a more flexible workplace environment and culture, your organization can focus more on how to foster the wellbeing of its employees. Companies that are more focused on the wellbeing of their employees will find it easier to attract and retain talent, combat burnout, and increase productivity. When employees feel supported, they’re more confident in their abilities at work. It’s no wonder that employees are looking for employers who have been or are ready to embrace this dynamic.

Written by Lauren Winans, CEO – Next Level Benefits

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OP-Ed: 9 Ways Working Moms Can Successfully Work From Home with Their Children Present

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working momsWith the pandemic (hopefully) coming to an end and corporations getting back to business as usual, many U.S. workers (including working moms) aren’t quite sure they want to head back to the office in person, at least not full-time. Instead, some experts predict a Great Resignation is on the horizon, with many U.S. employees indicating they’d rather quit their jobs than go back to in-person office life as they knew it pre-COVID-19.

If you’re a working parent considering making your home your new permanent workplace, you’re bound to have some moments when your work and home life intersect. While it’s ideal to have your kids in child care or to have someone present and watching your kids while you work, sick days and school holidays will likely mean you’ll need to simultaneously juggle caring for your kids and caring for your work obligations at least some of the time this coming year. Here’s how to handle working from home with your kids present long or short term.

1.     Set Expectations. First, set expectations with your kids about the day’s activities and what you are doing and why. Ask them for what you need and explain the boundaries.

2.     Distract Wisely. Give them age-appropriate distractions; it can be helpful to only allow screen time at these moments to keep their attention longer. Have a reward system in place to reinforce good behavior.

3.     Plan Ahead. Try to set up calls on days or times your kids aren’t there or during normal nap times. Perhaps arrange for grandma or grandpa to stop by right before your call and read a favorite book to your child. Or ensure your calls are with another understanding parent if your kids are present. If you expect your kids to interrupt you, proactively let the person on the phone know in advance that it may happen, and explain the situation and how you’ll handle it.

Concentrate on your highest priority work to-dos and those that require the most intense level of attention first. Start your day before your children wake up. This valuable time will be free of interruptions and will have your full attention. If you only have time to work on a few things, make sure they’re the ones you really care about or that really need to get done.

4.     Get Active Early. Depending on your schedule, play with your kids early in the day. Kids hate waiting, especially for our attention. Instead of making them more and more frustrated as you make just 1 more conference call, give them the attention they need at the start of the day and get them moving with fresh air and exercise, if possible, early on. Take a walk outside with your kids first thing in the morning when you wake up. When you finally do need to sit down and hammer out a few tasks, they won’t be so antsy, and you’ll be able to fully concentrate.

5.     Think Outside the Box. Consider an alternative schedule, especially if you have a partner who is also working from home. Mom may take the 6:00 am to 2:00 pm shift with the kids, then “go to work” in her home office, and dad works 2:00 to 8:00 pm. Or divide up the day. Think about working in 2-hour shifts, switching off with your partner or another caregiver.

6.     Consider Your Space. Designate areas of your home for specific tasks, and create visual cues that let your kids know you’re off-limits while you’re in those spaces. Your garage, the basement, a bedroom — these can all serve as work areas. When you physically separate from your kids and take yourself out of their line of vision, you’re less distracted, and your kids are less confused about your accessibility. As the saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind.” A red stop sign or a cutout of a hand on your office door is a clear indicator even to young children that work is in session and reinforces that you’re not available at the moment.

7.     Create Structure. Set your kids up for success during important meetings by creating structure. For preschool and elementary children, set up interesting activity centers in their playroom with model clay, craft paper and markers, or books they can interact with while you’re away for a short time. For older children, make a list of 10 activities they can do when they feel bored and put it on the refrigerator as a reminder for the times you’re off-limits. Use times you’re completely off-limits to have them dedicate effort to traditional schoolwork or online learning.

8.   Feed the Beast. Plan ahead for food needs. Cut up fruits and vegetables in advance and put them into containers labeled “Meeting Snacks.” Make mini quesadillas with protein and veggies, cut them into triangles, and set them out right before your meeting starts. For older kids, set out ingredients for sandwiches or salad before you head into a session with a client or coworker so it’s easy for them to put together a snack while you’re away.

9.     Be Honest. Be transparent with your business partners about the fact your kids are in the home with you. The more honest we are about how our home and work lives intersect, the more we normalize that experience for others, and, ultimately, push employers toward considering our whole-person needs as they create policies and culture.

Above all, give yourself grace. Accept that when you’re trying to do two jobs simultaneously, you’re bound to sometimes be less than perfect at both of them. Take breaks with and without your kids. Definitely don’t add even more to your proverbial plate — the errands, the vacuuming, that toothpaste you still need to buy — it can all wait. And, remember, if you eventually find yourself longing for a little more separation between your work and home life, that’s okay, too.

Whitney Casares, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.A.P., is the author of The Working Mom Blueprint: Winning at Parenting Without Losing Yourself. She is the Founder and CEO of Modern Mommy Doc and host of The Modern Mommy Doc Podcast.

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OP-Ed: Why Female Leaders Experience More Burnout and What to Do About It

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Jessica ThiefelsWhile COVID took a toll on all of us, women in the workplace are feeling the burnout effects at higher rates than their male counterparts. Data from a 2020 McKinsey poll found that:

  • 53 percent of women reported feeling job-related stress, compared to 46 percent of men
  • 37 percent of women felt exhaustion, compared to 31 percent of men
  • 32 percent of women felt burnout, compared to 28 percent of men

The disparity is even more obvious at the senior level. For example, 54 percent of senior-level female leaders felt exhausted compared to just 41 percent for men, and 39 percent experienced burnout with only 29 percent of male leaders reporting the same.

To counteract widespread burnout as a female leader, it’s important to understand the root causes of your work-related stress and find actionable ways to avoid it. Here are some strategies you can use as a female leader in the workplace fighting burnout during COVID and otherwise.

Understand the Relationship Between Mental Health and Burnout

Burnout is due to chronic stress, fatigue, cynicism, and lack of accomplishment, according to a study from Frontiers in Psychology. What’s more, the research indicates that burnout often shares commonalities with depression and anxiety.

With stress at the root of burnout, it’s vital that you not only be aware of how stress levels can impact your mental health but your physical health as well. You may not notice the stress if you’re used to it, but you might notice these physical stress indicators:

  • Tense muscles
  • Blood pressure increase
  • Increase in heart rate
  • Hyperventilating
  • Off-balanced digestion

In “How to Free Yourself From Stress”, HealthMarkets explains that the real trouble starts when this stress becomes chronic. They explain, “The constant physiological response wears us down, affecting several major biological systems. Our stores of energy drain. Our bodies produce fewer infection-fighting T-cells, so our immune systems become weak, making it easy for illnesses and diseases to push their way into our lives.”

Fight burnout: Use an app like Symple to track your daily mental and physical health. It’s easy to ignore stress when it’s become the norm for you. This small step will force you to focus on your overall health each day, which can point you to burnout before it becomes a problem.

Fight Back Against Social Media Fatigue

Female leaders are expected to write sharp industry articles on LinkedIn and promote themselves as the face of a brand on Twitter. Not to mention, it’s often a component of our personal lives. Yet, excess social media consumption can also lead to burnout.

The problem is that too much social media exposure is dangerous to mental health, especially for female leaders. Recent research has found that social media fatigue is a legitimate condition that can lead to anxiety and exhaustion.

As a modern successful woman, you’re constantly taking in the highlight reel of your peers and colleagues. To make it even worse, instances of “mom-shaming” for working mothers are on the rise since the start of COVID-19.

Fight burnout: How often do you mindless scroll on social media? Probably more than you think. Set social media boundaries so you can still show up where you need to, but walk away when you don’t. For example, you set a rule that you can’t look at social media until 10 am and then you put it away for the night after dinner. If you can’t stop yourself, let your phone do the work with an app like Offtime.

Untangle the Excessive Demands on Female Leaders

Based on the same McKinsey data, COVID-19 workplace shifts caused unequal challenges for female leaders, especially when compared to men. The pressures of household responsibilities, fear of suffering job performance, and lack of flexibility/work-life balance forced many women to scale down their careers or leave their job. One in three working mothers faced this decision due to limited childcare options.

It’s even tougher is when you’re the solitary female in your position. The report explains, “Senior-level women are also nearly twice as likely as women overall to be ‘Onlys’—the only or one of the only women in the room at work.” This circumstance sets the stage for microaggressions, criticisms, dismissals, and high-performance stakes, all of which contribute to female leaders experiencing burnout 1.5 times more than male leaders.

If you add childcare into the equation (working mothers currently spend 15 more hours on domestic labor per week than men), it becomes an impossible situation.

This is when it becomes important for organizations to play a role in helping women mitigate their burnout.

How Organizations Can Help Female Leaders Combat Burnout

You’re likely not the only woman dealing with this burnout in your organization—and in some cases, it takes the organization to make changes for you to be able to better manage the stresses put on women in the workplace.

Consider using these strategies to recognize and counteract burnout for women company-wide:

  • Promote mental health awareness: Ensure transparency surrounding mental health benefits, I.E. therapy and other available resources. If your benefits plan is lacking, Eric Freedman, founder and CEO of eSkill, suggests circumventing financial barriers by exploring options such as telehealth counseling sessions or access to mobile wellness subscriptions. Companies can also provide mental health support with group meditation classes. Organizations including Nike, Google, and Sony have built this into their company culture.
  • Support working mothers: Assist working mothers in finding solutions for childcare or allow for more flexible hours for those who also home-school their children due to COVID. Don’t just to send an email or memo, but make changes that help women make these changes in their workday. What’s more, female leaders can lead by example by setting boundaries, like being offline at certain times, so their direct reports know that it’s acceptable to do the same. Check out this Fast Company piece, which highlights how other companies provide for the “patchwork of childcare needs” of their employees.
  • Get real: It’s important that company leaders don’t just talk about these things, but they take real action. This will look different for each organization, starting with getting serious about allowing for greater flexible schedules, getting realistic about workloads and where support is needed, updating paid leave policies, and even discussing whether female leaders’ pay is equivalent to the work they’re doing.
Female Leaders: Support Yourself and Others

Whether you manage women in leadership positions, shape your HR policies or workplace culture, or are a female executive, you’re likely experiencing burnout in some way. The first step to solving this issue is understanding where the root causes are and then taking real action to provide solutions. It’s time to put sustainable policies and processes into place so female leaders can do their job without an impossible burden on their shoulders.

Jessica Thiefels is the author of 10 Questions That Answer Life’s Biggest Questions, podcast host of Mindset Reset Radio, CEO of Jessica Thiefels Consulting and founder of the Femxcutive Personal Brand Coaching Program. She’s been writing for more than 10 years and has been featured in top publications including Forbes and Entrepreneur. She also contributes to Fast Company, The Ladders, and more. Follow her on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Remote Working Hacks: From And For Executive Moms

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When interviewing female executives for her first book, Pulitzer-winning career columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Joann Lublin, became intrigued by the strong representation of executive moms.

“I was surprised to observe that more than 80 percent of the women, irrespective of where they had landed in their jobs, had kids,” she recalls. “And when I looked at those who had become public company CEOs, the percentage was even higher.”

With a career focus on leadership and executive women, Lublin interviewed 86 prominent executive mothers for her recent book, Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Navigate Work and Life, to gain insight into juggling both managerial roles and families.

We spoke with her to glean insightful hacks from successful executives for managing the remote workplace, as it exists in 2021.

Not the Remote Office We Anticipated

While remote work is part of the solution towards gender equality, forced remote working in the COVID-19 context has been a curveball of mixed gendered impacts.

“I don’t think any working mother in America expected that the multiple roles that we were already playing—the first shift, the second shift, and what I call “the third shift,” the mental load—would all be exacerbated by the fact that now the kids would be stuck at home,” says Lublin, “and because we have gendered role expectations, mom would be seen as the primary teacher, caregiver, parent and all of the above.”

Lublin points out that mothers with children under 12 were nearly three times as likely as fathers to have left their jobs between February and August of 2020. As of November, research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis reported that when it came to parents with children under five, “while nearly all fathers returned to the labor force, mothers regained virtually none of their lost ground”.

“The solutions have to be both personal and societal. On one hand, women have to stand up and insist that parenting is not a solo art. To the extent there are two parents in the home and they’re both working, this has to be a co-parenting arrangement,” says Lublin. “By the same token, they need to speak up and make their needs known to their employers, who in turn not only must trust their employees to get the work done while showing maximum flexibility, but also need to be checking in frequently with their employees.”

Here are six hacks for managing the 2021 remote working office:

 

Set Your Availability

Whether company or individual-driven, Lublin observes the trend and importance of setting hours when you are unreachable.

One Gen-X executive, who has been working remote for years, agreed 7-11 am as her protected hours with her company, reserved for her yoga, exercise and morning routine with her children.

This executive also began scheduling outside interruptions to her day (eg. home maintenance) only during the fringe hours when she would normally be on her commute.

Coordinate Your Co-Parenting

One executive and her husband were each starting their own companies, now both at home with their four and six year old children.

“They initially winged it. It all happened pretty suddenly and you think, we’ll just sort of take one day at a time,” says Lublin. “That was not working.”

The solution the two former Nike executives turned entrepreneurs found for successful co-parenting was to create a  spreadsheet each Sunday night, where they blocked off work engagements and agreed three-hour shifts of rotating parenting responsibilities for the week. While they also learned to allow for flexibility within a plan, this helped them to both dedicate time to family and their work endeavors.

Another way to manage the overall household, says Lublin, is to involve older children. One executive rewarded her teenage daughter for supporting her six year old in doing her schoolwork from home.

Embrace “Work-Life Sway”

Lublin addressed the elusive idea that is “work-life balance” in a chapter called “Manager Moms are not Acrobats” in her first book, Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.

“That quote came from an executive who strongly believed that this idea of work-life balance was an impossible ideal,” recalls Lublin, “that we could no more achieve work-life balance than we could stand on one leg for that wonderful yoga pose for 24/7.”

Early in her recent research, she came across work-life sway, an approach which encourages ebb and flow between life and work, immersing in whichever you are in right now.

“The idea of work-life sway is that when we have to be a 110% in the moment for work, we will give our all and then some,” says Lublin. “But if life invades or intrudes, if the water heater overflows or the toddler comes running and dumps the contents of her diaper on your lap, you won’t get flustered or totally fall apart or give yourself a guilt trip. You will sway to being present in the other part of your life. The whole concept here is to go with the flow.”

She cites an executive who left her office immediately when she received a video from her nanny of her daughter taking her first steps, and was then home in time to witness the second and third steps.

Release The Guilt

Lublin notes that Melanie Healy, now a Board Member, Investor and Strategic Advisor to many organizations, not only inspired the chapter title mentioned above, but also encouraged her to focus on ditching working mother guilt as “a complete and fruitless waste of our energy.”

If you sit down to eat dinner at 7pm with your children because the day was full until then, as an example, then celebrate that you’re sitting together for dinner rather than guilt yourself about the time.

Unlike many boomer moms, Healy did not hide the personal importance of her work, and instead involved her children in work decisions. She would share with them why a work trip was important to her as much as why their school and extracurricular events were important to her.

Another executive mother with young kids gave her children the power to invoke family time in the evening on demand.

Take Self-Care Time

“The book points out is that self-care is not selfish care,” says Lublin. “If we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re going to burn out.”

From taking two hours to herself on a Sunday when the other parent has the kids to taking a sabbatical, executives found time for personal regeneration to prove essential, even when they resisted doing it.

After a sabbatical, one executive mother decided no longer to be CEO of her company, and instead became Chief Visionary Officer to reduce the amount of operational work she was involved in.

Leverage Job-Share or Reduced Schedule

Turning to personal experience, the first time she proposed a four-day work week with a 20% cut in pay and benefits at WSJ, Lublin was declined.

At that point, she had one child under four years old and was just back from maternity leave with her second. But later that year, WSJ published a front-page story about moms returning to work after maternity leave only to throw in the towel. Norman Pearlstine, Managing Editor at the time, reached out to her.

“I could really relate to that,” she told him. “You know, I’ve got two kids under four. I’m working full-time and I’m dying. I really can’t do it. It’s just too much.”

He invited her to re-propose her reduced schedule and not only did she receive the four-day week work, she also kept full pay and benefits—with the condition she could not work on Friday at all or the deal was off.

Not only did the reduced hours not diminish her productivity, as her bosses had trusted, but she was promoted to management a few years in. Her reduced schedule helped her effectiveness and set a newsroom precedent that allowed other women to job-share.

Lublin advocates that women consider job-sharing as a strategy for advancing in management.

Recognize that Parenting Builds Your Leadership

Lublin feels that parents learn delegation, multitasking and other skills that help them become better leaders. “I think women in particular are able to hone certain skills that make them more effective bosses,” she observes, “particularly, they learn the importance of being an empathetic listener.”

She reflects that being a highly successful reporter did not prepare her to be a successful boss, but parenting was complementary and did help.

“Having children before I moved into management taught me how important and how good it is to be a great mentor,” Lublin concludes. “To be a good human being is to give back and pay it forward.”

By Aimee Hansen

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The Importance of Not Losing Yourself – in Work or Motherhood

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Working mother
Attending the needs of our children and responding to the demands of work may leave us with a sense of stripping us apart – especially when there can seem to be so many demands of both, often times appearing to be in conflict.

In the effort to manage and give your energy to both, you may begin to wonder where time and energy for you are in the middle of all of it.

How do you give your best to your career and motherhood and not lose yourself in the process?

You don’t have to lose yourself nor make sacrifices in your career or parenting to have fulfillment and enjoyment of all elements of your life.

If you have a sense that you are losing touch with yourself amongst the roles of parent and worker, there are some simple steps you can take to function a little differently and have greater success (and enjoyment) in your commitment to your kids, your career, and have a strong and healthy connection with yourself.

One important element to accomplishing this is choosing to be more present in your life. Contrary to what you might believe, being present is not about excluding one element or one part of your life in order to focus on another. It is being willing to be engaged with what is in front of you, while not dimming your awareness of everything else. You don’t have to put aside your role as a mother to do well at work, and you don’t have to forget your career skills and abilities in your parenting, and you do not have to exclude your own needs to successfully raise kids or have a career.

Here are three simple ways to invite more moments of presence and avoid losing you as you navigate the challenges of work and motherhood.

Start every day being present with you

One simple yet effective method to begin being more present with yourself is to consciously and regularly give you your undivided attention throughout the day.

This could begin by waking 15 minutes earlier each morning. In that time, give yourself some attention: “check in” with yourself. Take a moment to look in the mirror have a moment of gratitude for you (no judgment or criticism!). Use those minutes to have some fun. Play with what you are going to wear that day, read something that really inspires you, write something in a journal, or take some time to set some personal targets. Whatever you do, the point is to take that time to be with you first instead of rushing into the day’s activities. Use those moments to relax and be fully present with you and see the changes it starts to create in your day.

Choose some fun and lightness in moments throughout the day

When you have activities where you are on your own, where does your mind go? When you visit the gym, go to the supermarket, or drive, why not use those moments to do something for you, in your favour? Instead of repeatedly running through a to-do list, playing a movie of complaints or resentments, or fixating on things that have gone wrong, use those minutes to your advantage. Listen to music you like, take time to breathe and clear your head. Have fun with yourself. Tell yourself a joke or find something to laugh about. Even amid the most boring activity, what could you choose or put your attention on that would create some fun and lightness for you?

Be present with whatever comes your way

When you catch our mind wandering off-task, you may assume the remedy is to push those thoughts aside in attempt to narrow your focus. Rather than focus, be present with what is in front of you. The difference with being present is you can be there for the task at hand, but, unlike focus, you do not have to cut away anything else in your mind not related to that activity. It actually takes a lot more energy to exclude and focus than to be present and allow.

For example, if your child is coming to your mind while at work, allow it to be there. Allow the feelings you have for your child to be there, too. When you allow all of it to be there as part of you and your day, there is no need to put any energy or attention toward trying to avoid it.

What if the different areas of your life could contribute to each other and making you whole instead of split apart?

Losing yourself occurs when you believe you have to exclude any other part of you in the roles you play. By allowing yourself to bring all of you to work and motherhood, choosing to be more present with you in the moments of daily life, and by including your personal in the picture of your day, you will begin to have a greater sense of yourself in all elements of life, and you may find that you have a lot more energy and resourcefulness available to you than ever before.

Norma Forastiere is a business mentor, natural therapist and a self-proclaimed seeker, Norma began practicing mediation at an early age and then went on to study metaphysics and several energy healing and natural therapy modalities. A native Portuguese speaker with a proficiency in English and Spanish, Norma offers workshops and consultations for those willing to explore greater possibilities in life, communication and business. Follow Norma.

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Forget Work-Life Balance – Try Work-Life Harmony Instead

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Guest contributed by Rae Steinbach

More than ever, the importance of finding and maintaining a healthy work-life balance is being talked about.

However, at times the somewhat elusive goal of perfect equilibrium between our work and personal lives can seem to be unobtainable, especially in a world where we are constantly connected and always available via various forms of technology.

This availability and connection can obscure the line between work and play. Are you working when you check your emails over a morning coffee before making your way to the office? Is attending to personal needs during work hours your prerogative?

These days, delineating where work ends and your personal life begins is even more difficult. However, you can also leverage the transforming expectations and more easily integrate work with life, and vice-versa. Instead of being concerned with how taking a midday break to go to a workout class will affect your performance appraisal, be more comfortable in embracing how this is important in maintaining work-life harmony and stay later at work that day if necessary.

Explore What Harmony Looks Like

According to some experts, achieving a balance between work and the rest of your life has little to do with an equal distribution of your time. Rather, it is about prioritizing achievement and enjoyment each day. Instead of treating your job as a strictly metered necessity to pay for the other elements of your existence, try aiming for harmony. This means working more when needed to achieve business goals, and switching focus and energy to yourself and family when necessary.

Many of us are already taking this tactic to reduce stress and get more out of each day. A recent survey by Randstad found that around half of us deal with personal matters during work hours and work responsibilities in our personal time. Furthermore, more businesses are happy for their workers to do this, as long as the work gets done.

By allowing for the fluidity of life, we are able to find a more harmonious flow to our day that is also a benefit to the company. For example, prioritizing a morning exercise class can keep our minds sharper in the office, and attending to emails in the evening once our house is quiet ensures we are ready for the next day’s priorities.

The Ideal Life

Thanks to social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it’s easy to think that almost everyone you know is living the dream. The truth is, most of us present our best side to the world and the less attractive parts of our existence are glossed over or completely left out.

While many of us curate the content we expose about our lives, research has found that more than 75% of people on social media lie about their lives. It is helpful to keep in mind that the carefully curated images and updates from others’ lives leads to negative self-comparison, and the extent of social media interaction can undermine our meaningful, real-life experiences.

To avoid the negative impact of aiming for perfect balance in our lives and competing with misleading social media updates, it is important to focus on the important things: creating harmony between our work and personal lives, making time for fun, achieving our goals, and acknowledging that the rhythm of our lives has little to do with the lives you are viewing through the filtered lens of social media.

Don’t get hung-up on a perfect work-life balance. Instead, dance to your own tune of work-life harmony. Integrating the two creates a healthier coexistence that will let you thrive more easily in both aspects of your life.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Work-Life Integration…. Mixing Business and Pleasure Successfully

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By Chutisa BowmanProfessional-networking-advice featured

Why are some women executives able to mix business and pleasure more successfully than others? They do it because they are able to achieve better integration between work and the rest of their life. They function with the awareness that work and personal life are not competing priorities but complementary ones. In essence, they never lose sight of the fact that their personal lives have an impact on the way they approach their work.

Whether you have already reached the C-suite or are still working towards it, your ability to mix business and pleasure successfully is essential for personal effectiveness, peace of mind and success. Work-life integration is apparently a better choice, cognitively, than trying to balance between the two, according to research published in the journal Human Relations and the Harvard Business Review.

While the C-suite requires commitment, mixing business and pleasure should not be impossible. This is not about work life balance. It is about creating a life style that gives you whatever it is that you need in your professional and personal life. It’s about finding the combination of work and play, business and pleasure that works for you.  According to the Medical Daily, keeping work and life separate is not best for wellbeing and performance. The most successful executives are those who have an ability to achieve professional success without always having to sacrifice the things that matter in their personal lives.

So how do you know you have what it takes to mix business and pleasure successfully and achieve work-life integration? A good place to start is to acknowledge that work and personal life are not competing priorities but complementary ones. You must stop being fixated on balance. Instead, put your energy towards integrating what makes your heart sing, what’s fun for you and what you love to do, into your daily life.

Here are three things you can do to develop this ability:

Assess your current position. Looking at yourself as you really are and your life as it is now, is the first step in restructuring your life. To truly integrate work and life successfully, it is crucial to become aware of where you are functioning from, that is creating the life you currently have. The moment you take the initiative to become aware of your points of view, habits and behaviours, you are on the path to having true work-life integration.

So, first ask yourself these questions –

  • “Do you feel physically exhausted, mentally stagnant or find yourself without close relationships?”
  • “Do you react to everything, including things people say and to conditions outside your control?”
  • “Does everything become an emergency in your life?”
  • “Does your life feel chaotic, messy, topsy-turvy and has taken on an erratic flow?”
  • “Would you call yourself a workaholic?”

If you answer yes to any of these questions, your life and your work are probably out of conscious integration.

Clarify what is important and what will work for you. Do you know what you want to create as your life? What do you really want to create as your future? What are your priorities (business, work and personal)? It is super-essential to be clear about your personal interests and concerns—to identify where work falls in the spectrum of your overall priorities in life.

To mix business and pleasure successfully you must cut through the charade about priorities. Begin by making your work priorities crystal clear, and define them in terms of possibilities, priorities and in terms of outputs. Simultaneously, set the important priorities, concerns, and demands outside the office that require time and energy. The target is to have a clarity about both the business and your individual priorities and then to construct a plan for fulfilling all of them.

To know what will work for you, you need to take into consideration that life is constantly changing. The right mix for you today may not be the right mix for you tomorrow or next week or next month. Over time your priorities change. The one way to know you have an integrated work-life is the feeling of accomplishment, fun and happiness you enjoy every day.

Make a conscious choice and commit yourself to embrace work-life integration. To make a conscious choice to create a meaningful existence where enjoyment exists amongst all areas of your life, you have to make a demand of yourself: “No matter what it takes, no matter what it looks like, I am going down this path.” Be willing to be vulnerable and to stay open to the new, the unfamiliar, and the unknown.

Be open to all possibility and be willing to look at what you can do that will generate different possibilities. Choose to be ever aware and mindful, ready to shift strategy and tactics as the situation requires. Having this awareness will prioritize the activities necessary for success. Priorities make it easier to say no to distracting initiatives.

Chutisa Bowman is a Pragmatic Futurist, author and curator of Generative Woman Blog. She is best-known for her work in strategic awareness, benevolent capitalism, prosperity consciousness, Right Riches for You and conscious benevolent leadership. Right Riches for You is a speciality program of Access Consciousness.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily thhose of theglasshammer.com

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The Long Hours Game

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woman working late long hours featuredBy Aimee Hansen

The 24/7 hour work week marches on and on. The get up and go and keep on going. The long hours game. We all do it from time to time.

How can you have a healthy, sustainable lifestyle and build your career?

The action-packed day of the executive continues to be a glorified image of leadership, and arguably one that is dangerously unsustainable and at best questionable in effectiveness. At theglasshammer, we’ve covered how the 24/7 work week is not only disastrous for gender equality on a whole, but also diminishes your personal leadership effectiveness and your health.

The Atlantic has noted the tendency of elite, wealthy American men to be “the workaholics of the world,” but just because long hours are the status quo doesn’t mean it’s the key to successful business or career development.

It’s a rising argument in the context of today’s information age workplace, in which we tend to be knowledge workers conceiving of and implementing ideas, that a five hour work day would be a business hack for more productivity and profitability.

So what’s with the persistence – and over-valuation – of long hours in the corporate world?

A Man’s (Ego) Game

According to Professor Joan C. Williams in HBR, the long hours fascination is underpinned by an elitist male value system based on class, status and morality. As sociologist Michèle Lamont states, ambition and a strong work ethic are “doubly sacred – as signals of both moral and socioeconomic purity.” Along these lines, commitment is “‘singular’ devotion to work,” where it must be the central focus of one’s existence.

Within this elitist moral construct, “being consumed” by one’s work is both a status symbol and moral badge. As Williams writes, “‘being slammed’ is a socially acceptable way of saying “I am important.” Whereas fifty years ago, the elite working class showed their status by displaying their abundant time for leisure, today it’s about displaying your extreme schedule.

Research has found that the long hour craze is also yet another masculine test of endurance and perceived heroism. When it comes to what’s really behind the persistence and glorification of putting in the midnight oil, Williams writes: “It’s not productivity. It’s not innovation. It’s identity.”

So what does this ego-driven identity booster do for business, really?

Productivity or Priorities?

Across a 9.4 hour work day, we often only do 2-3 hours of real work, while working excessive hours hurts our productivity. After 50 hours, our productivity decreases and it plummets at 55 hours, with studies showing no discernible effect between working 56 hours and 70 when it comes to creating results.

As David Bolchover writes in an FT thought leadership piece, a decade long McKinsey study found that when senior executives were experiencing a ‘state of flow’, they were five times more productive than during other work hours. Senior level leaders felt especially more productive when they achieved flow.

Flow is akin to being able to immerse, focus, and apply your core abilities to a given goal or challenge, but most people only feel they are in that space 10% to 50% (at the very high and rare end) of the time. Sleep deficit or screen fatigue is not conducive to having an immersive focus. Bolchover writes, “Clearly, there is an inverse relationship to exploit: more focus for fewer hours.”

In fact, an over-abundance of time and resources can actually be a downfall for business. “When you spend too much time on an activity, just as when you have too large a budget, your priorities can become murky. You risk losing the precision and focus that come from having limited resources,” writes Chairman of JetBlue Airways, Joel Peterson. Peterson argues it’s not the hours we have, but the clarity of priorities we set, that drives productivity.

Worse for Women

While there are many studies showing how overworking adversely impacts health on a myriad of measurements for everyone, a recent study involving 7,500 people over 32 years from Ohio State University found that working long hours is far worse for women’s health than men’s.

Within the study, “fifty-six percent of the people studied worked 41 to 50 hours a week, 28 percent worked 30 to 40 hours per week and 16 percent worked more than 51 hours per week.”

Working 60 hours or more per week on average for three decades was found to triple the risk of diabetes, cancer, heart trouble, and arthritis for women. Risk increased after 40 hours, and became heightened after 50 hours, for women, but not for men.

The researchers hypothesized that this was reflective of the multiple roles women juggle and disproportionate pressure at home. In fact, when men worked moderately longer hours (41 to 50 hours), they had lower risk of heart disease, lung disease, and depression than men who worked under 40 hours, at least when it comes to early onset disease.

However you feel about the results, it’s yet more proof that chronically playing the long hours game is no path towards gender equality or thriving personally. “Being consumed” – even when it comes from a place of intrinsic motivation – often ends in burning out.

The Smart Hours Game

If not by playing the long hours game, how can you strategically use your time to build your leadership qualities?

What you could do, rather than work endless hours, is model a leadership strategy of carving out prioritized, focused time. Here’s a tip based on top leaders such as Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey: spend an hour or day (or five hours a week) in some way engaging in active learning – whether reading, listening, experiencing, experimenting or reflecting.

The long hours game is too often misguided. It’s time we moved from the long hours game to the smart hours game. To do this, we need companies to get “it” and according to Inc., it’s the difference of valuing improvement (not just productivity and not just presenteeism) that will set you apart as a leader.

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Coping with hidden disabilities and conditions on the job: an invisible struggle

stressed_business-womanIn the United States, about 10% of Americans have an invisible disability – a medical condition with physical symptoms that might not be apparent to a casual observer. In fact, as many as 96% of people with chronic medical conditions do not outwardly appear to be disabled. While those with some invisible conditions may be protected from discrimination at work by the Americans with Disabilities Act, whether or not they actually receive that protection sometimes turns, unfairly, on others’ perceptions of the presence of impairment.

Read more

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