Many women worry that taking even a short break from their career to have children, will have a damaging effect on their employability. Endless articles discussing, ‘baby brain’ and the embarrassment of turning up to executive meetings covered in baby poop certainly don’t help and perhaps reinforce an undercurrent of negativity surrounding motherhood in conjunction with a fulfilling work-life.
However, on the flip side, many women find that the lessons learned from taking care of a demanding human-being can really enhance and enrich their working life. Louise Major, Marketing Director and founder of eco-business, Castaway Cottage, found her career taking off after having children. Here she shares her top five insights as to how to make the most of your experiences of motherhood to boost your career.
- At the top of the list, she says, is having a positive mindset, specifically, achieving your goals and realising nothing is out of your reach. After having children and battling with their tantrums; rare but terrifying accidents; potty-training and impossible schedules and realising that you have not only managed to keep them alive but are giving them a pretty good life, then nothing in a work capacity seems as hard. Louise found that she had simply lost any fear she had of trying something new. She found that projects that had seemed impossibly daunting pre-kids became an achievable reality and set up new companies after returning to work after having each of her children. She advises women who return to the workplace to embrace this positive outlook as it not only helps them to realise their own goals but can have a beneficial effect on co-workers and the organisation itself.
- Leadership Qualities: Having children demands that you step up to the mark and become the parent; children need boundaries and an adult to set them to make them feel secure. Louise says this is a skill that cannot be underestimated in the workplace. She went from being part of a creative team in a design agency to co-founding her own creative agency and strongly attributes her newfound leadership skills to her experience as a parent. As a parent you set the boundaries and constantly negotiate issues between siblings. Once you are back in the workplace, you can really use this skillset to your best advantage when leading a team, negotiating contracts, or dealing with staff disputes.
- Creativity – Motherhood demands creativity and we’re not just talking about being good with cardboard and sticky-backed plastic. Keeping children happy in all sort of situations means that parents have to be creative when looking for solutions. This is an important aspect of any job and it is often parents who return to work after having children who can look at problems from a different angle to find a solution. Louise believes this can really give them an edge over younger counter parts. When Louise founded her creative agency, Igloo after having her son, she found that she was far more able to find creative solutions for her clients and this gave her an edge in retaining business. Her experiences out of the office meant that she didn’t just follow the usual routes but had a far greater wealth of knowledge to draw upon and urges mothers to recognise this as an extremely important tool.
- Time management – juggling different projects is also a tough aspect of any job but remains probably one of the most important skills for any job. Louise says that in interviews, mothers have an advantage when they are asked the predictable question as to whether they have good time management as they have such good examples to draw upon. If you can manage your children’s busy and often conflicting schedules of hobbies, homework, kit requirements whilst keeping everyone fed and watered, you are an extremely capable human being. Louise stresses that women returning to work should recognise just how much they have honed their project management skills whilst raising children. The level of detail you have to remember whilst raising children is invaluable when pleasing clients – it’s often the unasked-for extras that make their experience better and ensure they retain your services.
- Taking into consideration the future generation and factoring this into your outlook – Lastly but perhaps most importantly Louise says that children challenge your status quo in more ways than one. When setting up the eco-conscious company she co-founded with her son, she said that her whole ethos was one of ‘how will this affect future generations?’. Without that shift in focus, Castaway Cottage would not have been born. Whatever your industry, motherhood is something that focusses your efforts on the needs and interests of the youth of today in terms of carbon footprint and job prospects for future generations, because if what you are working on doesn’t benefit them, then what are you doing it for?
