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In today’s podcast I am interviewing Amy Beacom, author of the book The Parental Leave Playbook, which helps expecting parents take control of their transition into parenthood. Amy and her co-author break down the 3 phases and 10 stages every new parent goes through when taking parental leave and exactly how to navigate the transition with confidence and ease. In this interview we touch on the internal journey a woman goes through when they become a mom and the importance of creating a plan for the internal transition (as well as the external). We discuss how successful planning starts the moment you decide to expand your family and some practical tips for creating boundaries and feeling confident once you return to work.
Topics in this episode:
The importance of defining the new person you become after you become a parent
What it takes to bring order to the chaotic experience of maternity leaves and beyond
Breaking down the phases of parental leave and how to navigate each phase powerfully
Seizing opportunity in the midst of parental leave, even though it feels chaotic
The importance of making values-based decisions for your parental leave and beyond
Understanding and defining how work enriches your life and life enriches your work
Show Notes:
For more information about The Parental Leave Playbook - https://cplleadership.com/book
Are you considering a coach to walk you through the transition of becoming a working mom? Schedule a free call with me to discuss the 3 steps to becoming a clear and confident working mom.
Don’t forget to leave a rating and review to help spread this resource to other working moms!
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Transcript
Rebecca: Amy, thank you for joining me here today on the podcast.
Amy: It is my pleasure back. I'm very excited to be here.
Rebecca : Absolutely. So, I have Amy here that has come to the podcast because she and her co-author have written a book that I think is really important for this moment in our cultural life, ultimately; and it's a pivotal moment for working moms. And the book that they wrote is called The Parental Leave Playbook. And it's about basically creating a really good plan for your parental leave.
I wanted to bring Amy on to chat a bit about what where this book came from some of the big concepts in it, and really, hopefully give a good overview of what is going to create a really impactful and restful - ultimately - parental leave. So, thanks again for being here, Amy, I really appreciate it. You do have a co-author, of course, too. And she was going to be here today and unfortunately, due to having to quarantine with kids, that was not possible. But of course, we are all just rolling with the punches. So, we are hoping that Sue feels better. And her family, of course is safe and healthy. So, let's start out a little bit Amy talking about where this book came from? How long have you and Sue been working together? Where did this idea stem from? Let's just start there.
Amy: Oh, gosh. So really, the book started with the birth of my son 15 years ago. That's - that was my first child. So, I at the time - I was working on my doctorate in Organizational Psychology. I was doing focused work and had just created the first curriculum at my university in coaching - in executive coaching. And was working in New York as a consultant - very ambitious, I thought I knew everything kind of, of my life. And then I have my child was like, 'Oh, I really don't know much.'
Rebecca: Don't we all? We all just get to that moment. Nope. I really don't know. And I'm sure 15 years later, you still kind of tell yourself a lot right now.
Amy: Exactly. I still feel the same way. But what was really powerful about that time is a lot of stars aligned with my transition to motherhood. And the way that I recovered from the shock of the experience, which was very hard, for me was a very hard experience. I think in particular because I did think that I knew a lot about it. I had spent years focusing on work-life balance and consulting to companies around women's leadership and economic advancement and work-life balance. I literally would take executives and teach them about how to do that well. And so having my experience be so unexpected, and I struggled with postpartum depression - that veered into postpartum psychosis at times - it was just like, 'whoa, what - this was not what I expected.' So, the way that I came up from that was, I literally was sitting in the nursing chair with my son one night and having a really hard struggle around it.
And I kept crying and saying, 'What can I do so no woman ever feels the way that I do right now.'
And at the time, I was solely focused on mothers. The idea that came into my head as a voice, I've literally felt like right next to me saying you have to create a field of - at the time maternity leave coaching. I knew what that meant. And miraculously, it was, it just all became clear. And I changed the focus of my doctoral research and began to create this field. So that has now evolved into parental leave coaching, parental leave support, awareness in our country around the importance of this time is a transitional time within personal lives and in our professional lives. But 15 years ago, that wasn't part of the conversation. So, I've been working on that for that long. So, the book started then, in many ways. And it was only - ironically - during the pandemic, that I had time to write it.
Rebecca: Wow, interesting. Yeah. Very sort of ironic. Yes.
Amy: So, I'm also the founder and the CEO of the Center for parental leave leadership, which is the company that came out of this vision 15 years ago, began the company eight years ago, and we are the only consultancy in the country - full service consultancy - that focuses exclusively on parental leave, so everything from policy to practice, to coaching, tools and resources, etc. So, what I found that was happening is, as the culture in our country was, is slowly shifting towards offering support within policy, and within slowly. It's happening yes, and we could talk plenty about that. But the new parents were reaching out themselves.
And I should mention, CPLL, my goal there was, when I began it to go in through companies. I knew that it was going to be a long time before we would have a federal policy or anything that would help around that. And I did not want the message to continue to be that this was a new parent's problem to fix on their own. And so, a systemic problem going in through the companies was my solution. And so, what happened was, while focusing on that, we just kept getting more and more parents saying, 'Well, what can I do? My company isn't helping yet, I need to be able to handle this'. It's just an overwhelming tsunami of support that's needed. So, the goal of the book is really to put a coach in the hands of every single person in this country, so that they have that individual personal support through this time, through a proven evidence-based heart centered framework that we know works.
Rebecca: So good, there's a couple of things that really stood out to me. And you know, it goes back originally to your story, because it is a life shift that cannot be understood, almost until you get there. And yet, a good portion of your book is talking about preparing for it because there isn't a whole lot of information out there, resources out there, that are going to help you prepare.
And then of course, when you get there, you could throw it all out the window - doesn't really matter how much you prepared - because there's so much that happens inside of you that you cannot anticipate until you get there. And yet, the framework that you give in this book is both kind of making an external plan as best you can, and, going inside of you and trying to figure out what's the internal plan, and how to navigate this. And so, there's such a beauty between those two things in the midst of this book.
Amy: Thank you. A huge goal. I am a huge believer in plans, but not necessarily for the plan itself, more for the experience they give yourself and the time you give yourself to think through your wants and needs and values while you're creating it and then throw it out the window then.
Rebecca: So many moms, I'm sure that you hear this all the time. I hear it all the time as a working mom coach, that nobody talks about what the experience is like, of going through the transition of becoming a parent and then going back to work in a way that people can resonate with. It feels like a very silent conversation on some level.
And even for myself, I realized as we're talking about this, I've never shared on the podcast, some of my own maternity leave experiences which I equally had a very traumatic first experience with my daughter. I had a birth, that was nothing like what I had planned it to be. And I ended up going through postpartum depression - kind of undiagnosed - but I didn't realize that until I had my second.
And then I went, 'Whoa, I was really in a bad place in my first one, this one is so different.' And I didn't realize any of that because I didn't have any framework to understand it. And everybody's experience is really different - that it is on some level hard to tell you exactly what it's going to be like, you're not going to really know - and you can only do so much to prepare.
Amy: I've got chills on my body because that is just such an accurate example of what so many people deal with. And, you know, in the absence of a village, or even our family nearby, no one has that person to hold the mirror up for them. And that's really what a R.E.T.A.I.N. parental leave coach can do. One of the many things they do - we also do monthly screenings for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, and we have a partner organization, Postpartum Support International, which we resource through, and they are fantastic.
So, if anyone's listening, and that's part of your experience, reach out and reach out to them. They have incredible help. That feeling of silence - this is something I think about all the time - because we do hear, 'why didn't anyone tell me?' And when you get into it at the level that I am, you see that there is a lot out there, but you don't know what you don't know. So, you almost don't even have the language to understand it. And as soon as someone hears, 'oh, you're not going to know what it's like until it happens to you,' they shut off a little.
Rebecca: They shut down, 'Oh, well, if I don't know, if I can't know, then why even think about it.'
Amy: Exactly. And what I believe - what I've learned over 15 years, and hundreds and hundreds of people doing this, and companies is - there are very clear, replicable parts of this process that happen to everyone. And that's what we put into the 10 Touchpoints. That's what we're calling the 10 Touchpoints over the three phases of preparing, the during and the returning, but within that the way they happen is individualized.
But as soon as you can get that bigger picture roadmap and say, 'Oh, I'm doing this now. And I'm going to do it my way. And I'm going to think about how to do it my way.' And then 'oh, that next ones coming.' It just takes some of that nebulous anxiety, or, cloudy road, away to make the path to yourself during this time and to this new person, you're becoming, an easier, more beautiful path.
Rebecca: Yeah, and I love that phrase, new person, you're becoming because for sure, that is what is happening. And I think that's a big part of what is missing, as people do talk about and plan for maternity leaves, or paternity leaves or paternal leaves, generally speaking; they make all of these external plans for how long you going to be gone, and when you can come back, and who's going to take over, some of that - if you have a company that is good enough to even go that far and plan that with you, which not all of them are.
But at best, if you have that, then there is this moment that happens after you birth this amazing little human into the world. And you say 'wow'. This addition into your family and you go 'wow', now what, what now? What do I want? What's most important to me? What do I even want to work? Do I not want to work - is this, what's going on?
And there's this immense amount of internal drama, ultimately, this identity crisis, as I like to call it with my clients that happens that truly you are becoming someone new in this process. And the idea of trying to get back into the person you were before, or the life that you were before, the rhythms that you had before, there really isn't going back.
There's 'new' going forward.
It's now just a decision on who you want to be and how you want to shape your life in this future, instead of trying to ever get back to somewhere that basically just no longer exists.
Amy: One of the reasons I'm so attracted to this time frame - as a beautiful moment of transformation - is it's so chaotic. And I think we think about chaos as this hugely negative, disruptive force. But what people don't often realize is that with chaos comes opportunity. And so, you have when old habits and old beliefs and old identities are thrown out the window., you can consciously shape who and what you are into those future parts of you...
Rebecca: As long as you bring them to consciousness.
Amy: What I'm talking about here is nearly impossible to do in our culture on your own. We are not set up to succeed in that area. We are made to be too busy, too under resourced, too poor - all of the things.
My hope and vision is that everyone has the support to be able to do that.
When you have a coach - even if it's in the form of a book at this point - that holds that time with you and that reflection of yourself back to you, then you can see it differently and start to own it and make it to use your self-efficacy towards your betterment, to your meaning.
Rebecca: There was a line I wrote down in the book, it said, 'your emotional journey to parenthood won't follow any script, you get to write your own.' I think that just really struck me because this idea that there is - Type A people want the plan and they want the script, and they want to know, and we want to anticipate. I mean, not even just Type A, that's a human behavior, we all desire to know what's coming ahead that would keep us nice and safe and secure.
And it feels comforting to know what's ahead.
And yet, it's not. And then when we allow ourselves to just say, 'this is a journey', and you're going to have days that are ... I remember days on the phone, I remember when I was pregnant at work, completely in shambles and bawling on the phone talking to my husband about, who knows what it was like, it was probably nothing ultimately, but the emotional roller coaster was way stronger than I ever would have imagined. And then after she came along, there was this whole other level of emotion that I could never have guessed, and it really was a journey.
And there was no way that I was writing my script as it came along. And it was all okay. I think that was the big message I needed to hear at that time, that I didn't have a book or a coach or anyone telling me that it was all okay, no matter what script I write moving forward, ultimately.
Amy: Yeah, I love that that spoke to you, because the one of the biggest challenges I've faced in all these years is creating a language that people can have around this that actually reflects the experience. And so, when I started, there was no such thing as it being a transition. It was parental leave, you went away - it wasn't parental leave maternity leave - you went away, you didn't talk about it came back. There was nothing in that. Just as a historical point for the listeners now, as recently as that time, you did not hear the word transition.
I was the first person to call it - that's not fair to say - I'm sure there were women writing about motherhood as a transition. There was no one talking about parental leave, and that timeframe and your work and your home life as a transition. And so, I think as soon as we can say, parental leave is not this time you're away from work and that's it. That's how people talk about and think about parental leave right now.
And it's not that - it is a transitional timeframe and a professional life cycle, a personal life and what we do with that at home, and at work, becomes the transition. And as soon as someone gets that, as soon as they understand what transition is, and that it's not change. Change is instant, transition is reflective. It takes time. It happens over time. Then the pressure's off, you're not immediately supposed to get it all right. It's like, 'oh, I'm in this normal part of this right now. I'm in the middle.' Amy says, 'it's the messy middle' This is the neutral zone, this is that crazy part I was supposed to be - no wonder I feel this way.
And then on the return, there are certain things that happen there, as you adjust to that new normal as you were talking about it a minute ago, that new piece.
So having that kind of framework, it just eases everything.
It takes away all of the ambiguity.
Rebecca: Reading this book, I think, opened me up to think about the parental leave a bit differently, even in my own brain. Because for sure, I think most of us do, in fact, just consider it this time that you leave work, and then you return to work. And it's basically that - but really, you start in this book, basically, you know, at the time that you're starting to think about expanding your family.
You're not even necessarily pregnant or you're not in the adoption process. You're not even whatever, you're just thinking about it. And that really is the beginning because that's the beginning of when questions like 'What am I going to do in my career if that happens?' Or 'what kind of mom do I really want to be' or 'what kind of parent do I really want to be, what's most important to me', and that starts to shape your decision to expand your family or not expand your family. And based on how well your company is set up to talk about some of these things are how - quote 'family friendly' - I really hate that term because it's a really awful term, or just how open these conversations are with your companies that really shapes a lot for people whether they can really openly talk about and create a good transition for themselves or not.
And there is - you said this in the beginning, and I kind of want to highlight that - there's no question that systemically there are a lot of things that need to happen to make parental leaves happen easier, to make them longer, to advocate for families, and so forth. So systemically on a governmental level, there's a lot of things that needs to happen.
What I also have seen, though, is clients that I would say have the most open, authentic, family-friendly, (if we want to say that , there is no other term that I know of, at this moment) kind of companies that say, 'take the time', they have very generous amounts of paid time off, and they want you to be at your kids soccer games, and they want you to do all these things.
And yet, they are still working 60 hours a week, because they haven't shifted what's going on internally. And it's not that the company is giving them lots of leeway, and saying, basically, do what you want, we're here to support you in that. But individually, they haven't shifted themselves into what it means to move from being, essentially, singularly focused on themselves in their career to now adding in a family and making that equally, if not more important in their life. And that individual journey is a huge part of it.
I like to say, our government needs to do a lot of things, but we as individuals also have to take a lot of ownership over our own transitions and who we want to be and what we really want in our life.
And it doesn't really matter how much people want to help us through that if we don't take some time to go through the process.
Amy: And I think what you're talking about, and highlighting is that we've conflated a lot of things in this country into this singular term of parental leave, or paid leave. When people think about this, that's right where their minds go. And so, when people, usually when they hear parental leave, from me, they think I'm talking about paid leave, and then they think we already have paid leave, because we have FMLA, which FMLA is not paid leave, it's unpaid job protection. But before you become a parent and go through these things, that's not something you usually know.
And when you talk about policy, that's those systemic issues. There's policy and there's culture change that are happening at the systemic level, but at the individual level, you need to match that. You need to do it. It's such a tricky line to walk because our world wants quick fixes, and they want easy steps to follow. And so, I'm balancing the practical of the policy pieces and do this action plan, and this is how you make an announcement, and these are your exercise and values-based thinking or whatever, it's some of the things that we put in there, along with constant encouragement to do the work yourself.
Because as you point out, these things aren't going to happen to a systemic level nearly fast enough for whoever is reading this, if they're having it becoming a parent right then. It won't happen for you; it will happen for the next folks.
But what can be so magical about it is if you set yourself up well during your transition, you're going to learn how to do that for your entire next phase of your life.
You do something that - I can't remember - I think it was one of your podcasts separating your accomplishments from your...
Rebecca: ...your accomplished value from your human value.
Amy: Yes, that's so tied up in this idea. And so parental leave, people are instantly going to their accomplished value versus their human value. And when I'm coming in and saying is in a company, it's worthless to only be looking at your new parents to their accomplished value, if you're not looking at them to their human value and seeing how that can increase during this time frame as well. - you're short sighted.
Rebecca: There’s so many - we can probably just focus this entire podcast if we wanted to on the cultural shifts, the systemic shifts that need to happen and the benefits that working parents bring to the workforce. I mean, there is a lot of research that has been done over a lot of these things.
Amy: Can I put a plug in, though for the policy level? Because I don't want to sit in that space, but right now we're in this historic moment, when the Build Back Better Act has paid leave in it. it is the first time that we would have a federal paid leave policy. It is a completely bipartisan - 84, I think it's 84 to 86% across the aisle - believe and want paid leave. Because it's not just parental leave, it's paid leave for you to care for yourself or a loved one. So, it's through birth through an elder, a parent, thru chemo - those kinds of things where people right now either work for a company who offers that paid or they don’t; and they suffer because they don't have that. It should be part of our social safety net. So, if that's something you care about, you can go to https://paidleaveforall.org/ and write a letter to your state's representatives to just say 'please, please support this - pass this - pass paid leave.'
Rebecca: I love that. I'm all for plugging it. There's no question about it.
Amy: Yeah, thank you. And you're in California, so you're the first state that have paid leave. But we only have nine states plus DC that have paid leave in the US, which means, right around 20% of people in the US have access to even one day of paid leave. So anyway, that's a general policy piece.
But it's an important foundational piece, because if the policy isn't clear, the practice can't build from it.
Rebecca: I love that. Can we just take a pause for a second, because you wrote this during the pandemic, and we are in an unprecedented time of people leaving workplaces, because they can't figure out another way to manage their family life, in the midst of a pandemic. And it put a spotlight, I think, for so many people, for companies, for individuals, for our government, to see we have a problem here is so much bigger than anyone ever really imagined. And we need to figure out how to fix it from multiple levels. I'm just curious from your vantage point, what you have seen in the midst of the pandemic, and people trying to manage their life and their life as a family and maybe for some people parental leaves, in the midst of this time, for sure.
Amy: Oh, yeah, many, many people. Well, it's been fascinating, of course. Went into this two years ago, it's like, 'okay, maybe everybody's going to wake up now.' Maybe our companies are going to see this moment and realize this is impossible. I've lost some of that hope. But what has been really incredible is the unveiling of the human experience of being a working parent in this country, and how that has now moved to the forefront of what companies are paying attention to. I mean, when you lose 4 million employees in September, because school starts in September; and another 4.6, in November of last year, million, you have to start paying attention.
So, when the caregiving needs become completely untenable and incompatible with our work structures, this is what we have. And I want to be careful when I wrote this during a pandemic, because I said to my publisher, I can't do this by myself, there's no way in hell I can do this by myself. So, I'm bringing in my dear colleague, Sue, who I've worked with for six years. And she and I are going to do this together. And that's how I can do this. And I'm going to bring in my cousin, who is going to sit with my kids and be their school navigator downstairs while I write this during the day, I was able to do that, because I'm privileged to do that.
And I have this opportunity to, so I don't want anyone to be like, well, I didn't write a book when I was ... don't use my experience to beat yourself up. And it was difficult, it was extremely difficult to do. From my vantage point, what I've seen is devastating for so many people on an individual level. And for others, it's been really empowering, because they've left their job, and they've found places that are better for them. They've become entrepreneurs, they feel more control over their life, or they've taken a job in a place that values them. There's been real movement that way.
Rebecca: I just saw a post by a friend that lives in my neighborhood. And she said, 'It's been a year today since I was let go from my job. I still love not working, is this a problem?' What's going on? For sure, it opened up opportunities for some to take their life in a completely different direction that they wouldn't have otherwise taken, which is beautiful. And it opened up some to a devastating set of circumstances that might have been the most challenging thing and continue to be some of the most challenging places and moments in anyone's life.
Amy: And I hesitate to say this, but for me, what has been so powerful about that is the macro level is mirroring what I see people experience on the micro level during parental leave. It's that complete chaos, and you have opportunity within it. Some of its devastating and some of it's powerful, positively powerful. So I think all of the parents who have been through a transition, who have experienced what it's like to have to throw plans that you thought you were going to do out the window and pivot and think of something new and be flexible - they're in better positions - If they've done that work and thought of it that way. That's maybe a little bit too optimistic. It's been tricky.
On the flip side, the companies are making changes.
Rebecca: More so than we've ever seen before. That's for sure. I mean, at least the conversation is happening in companies in a way that it has never happened before, and that is the beginning of a big shift.
Amy: I was asked on an interview for an article this morning. Are you seeing more companies do parental leave because we're not getting it at the federal level - 100 percent. We have more companies in the last two years than we had in the last 10 before that. What I often forget -because I've been doing this for so long - is, it is like a hierarchy of needs.
Each new parent or manager who's going through this time frame - if they don't have those base pieces making a really strong foundation, if they don't understand where their pay is coming from, if they don't know when forms need to be filled out, if they don't understand if their bonus structure is staying the same or they're going to get fired or they're protected from being fired - if they don't know that basic stuff, you can't get to the other stuff.
So, I really encourage anyone to get the book - that is in the beginning, that's part of the action planning and the research piece - is action-planning is the third A, the first is announcement, and then the second, importantly, is assess. And that's an assessment of your situation we call the 6X system situation yourself, your strategies, your supports, your internal and external sabotages, and then your suggestions are your feedback loop to your organization, your people around you. And that is in place before you leap into planning. Third one is action planning that's very conscious and purposeful - know what you got going on and working for and against you.
We have a great tool - It's called the Parental Leave Transition Assessment. It's the only evidence-based assessment tool that exists, and it's hugely powerful. So, if this is something that you're in this time frame, going through that process alone will help lead you into your action planning and a really values based way that will allow you to set up your plan in ways that support your organization and you.
Rebecca: When you say values-based way, what do you mean by that?
Amy: Well, for me, the genius of this time, this special gift of this time, is the reconnection with your purpose in the world and yourself. And so having a chance to explore what that is for you individually and considering what your values are and how you want to embed them in your work and your home life as you become a parent and a working parent is living a values-based life.
Rebecca: Basically, are you living the life that you want to be living? You're not living on default because you happen to be on this path and so forth, but it's very conscious. It's very intentional. You've thought about it, you're choosing it, you're actively choosing it,
Amy: You're actively choosing it in ways that align with your...
Rebecca: Feel good with you, right? I feel right internally, right?
Amy: And that is not to disregard people who have jobs for the money. Tara Mohr, who is a wonderful coach and author of a book called Playing Big talks about it this way that I could be butchering, quoting her.
Rebecca: Everybody should read that book. It's a great book.
Amy: Yes, everyone should read that book, she says, 'I've never met a calling that also asked to be the thing that pays your bills.' And I just found that so interesting because we've actually, in our culture turned that on its head and we think, how can I make money out of my calling? I just thought it was a really interesting perspective of like, I can find those things that bring me value and that fulfill that sense of calling and purpose in my life. They don't have to be tied to my work.
Rebecca: No, they don't have to be.
Amy: They don't have to be. But as much as you can, if that is something you desire, having a values-based interaction with your work is healthy. And I think to answer your question a little more specifically, we have exercises in there so you can go through - here’s two hundred values, which one of these do you want? How do you build that into your day to day? If, for example, family connection is a value of yours and that takes the form, it's really important to you that you have dinner together as a family and you've spent the time to figure out that that's important to you.
How do you structure that into your action plan, so you are leaving work. And you also do some work around time and leaving work. I think you have a podcast around that, that everyone should listen to, because it's very difficult to stick to your commitments you've made to yourself and to your family.
Rebecca: Yeah, there's no question about it. It is towards the beginning of the book that you have them go through that values-based work, if I remember; but you touch again on it in the third phase, which would be like when you return to work because it can all change. Your kid comes along and it all changes, on some level it can at least, and it did for me. I mean, 100 percent was all in to coming back to work and being the career driven person that I was.
And I would still call myself career-driven and ambitious at this time, though, it looks different than it did before, but I came back, and I wasn't ready. The leaving my daughter at daycare pull was devastating to me, and I was very confused on what I wanted. So, if I would have done that assessment before, I know it would have looked very different than afterwards. Of course, there would have been some crossover, but it's an important time afterwards, after you've had some time to settle into whatever, however many kids there are that are there to start saying, 'Now what, now what is most important to me?
And so often we go through life and don't ask that. We go through life and our brains are wired to do what's comfortable, to do the same thing every single day, to live in a routine, to live in a pattern. And when we want to live a values-based life, we want to live in a place of consciousness, of everything being more on the forefront, being a conscious decision and so forth. And so, I love that there is a lot of that, that is really important to you as well.
Amy: You reminded me of a client I had recently who in the preparing for leave stage when we were working together, she was going through this, and she had put adventure as her - one of her main values was adventure. And she was really thinking, 'How can I build this in? What can I do?' And after her child came, she said to me - two things happened.
She said, 'Every day is an adventure. I had to shift how I think of adventure. It isn't going out and climbing a pyramid or something.' But so, she shifted it, and she also felt herself beginning to grieve an old value that didn't feel like it was at the forefront of her ability. And what I saw her do is shift out of the grieving into gratitude that she had that perspective that adventure was a value, and then she began to build it into her day to day.
So, they were doing little things like she started making Indian food. She never made Indian food in her life. She's like, I'm going adventuring, traveling through the food for this first year.
There's a way you can start to - if it's at the forefront of your mind.
Rebecca: When I work with my clients, we talk a lot about values too in the beginning of our time, and we try to define them in such a way that doesn't put so much restraint on it; in order to live out this value, it has to look like this. It has to be me traveling the world, that sort of thing. And versus saying, let's talk about like the heart of what adventure really means and what's important about it to you.
So that at the heart of it, we can - if it's about a perspective shift, for example, if adventure is really about a perspective shift or opening yourself up to new perspectives, now we could talk about what does that look like with a tiny human with you?
Amy: You need your R.E.T.A.I.N. parental leave coach because this is exactly what we need to get certified, which, by the way, we're opening it to the public in February. For the first time, we will be training coaches, and internal HR folks.
Rebecca: As we're kind of coming to kind of the latter end here of this podcast of this interview. I love this so much. I do want to Touch on one thing, since this is a podcast called Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms.
So, the balance piece of this, I think, is really important.
And I was looking through some of the last phase and you talk a bit about work-life balance, you even talk about that term. I've talked about that term a lot. I use the word balance because it's the easiest term to use out there. It's the most known. But as you point out in the book, it's also the most confusing term. You ask 10 different people, you're going to get 10 different definitions, ultimately of what that means. So, it's an important word to be defining.
Amy: When we often try and shift people away from us - this idea of balance and obviously you're, you know, a lot about this because you're Talking about it, you know, it's in the title of your podcast. But understanding what balance is and how shifting to an understanding of boundaries and boundary management styles can be really, really useful.
So, as you start to understand there's time boundaries, there's physical and behavioral boundaries, there's mental boundaries, and then there's different levels of boundaries. Is it soft? Is it hard? Is it flexible? That type of thinking you can start to know where you need to have a hard boundary, know where there's something more permeable that should be put in play.
And then there's some exercises in here about establishing healthy boundaries and then managing your boundaries at work. What I think one of the best things to do is to enlist boundary guards - is the way we talk about it; and that's just sort of like an accountability partner. I had one client, who’s boss, she said she had to leave at work at 5:00 and to not hit the commute and get too late. She started to push it back a little further. 5:15 5:30. Pretty soon, she's, you know, five forty-five. And he comes out on that as she's getting to that point. And he's like, 'Didn’t she say you need to leave at 5:00?' And she was like, ‘Yeah, I did.' And the next day he came out at 5:00 with all of his stuff packed up and said, 'Okay, I'm ready to go' in front of the whole team. 'Time to go. You said it was five,' and he did that for three weeks. He didn't just do it once. And I just think of him all the time as an example of a manager who really got it, he needs to set the tone and shift that culture in his organization so that anyone who needed to leave at a certain time didn't feel that they couldn't. And he did it, and it was beautiful.
Rebecca: So, coming to a section that you entitled Work-Life Enrichment, it's page 161 in the book, and that was a term I haven't really heard before. Work-life conflict is what you describe a bit in the book, and I love that you used a couple of different ways to describe it. You talked about a Venn diagram where there's kind of the center section where it all kind of comes together in some way. You talked about it like as bobbing balloons kind of just bouncing up against each other ever so slightly.
But ultimately, the view that we have as a culture when we really think about work-life 'something', whatever it is, is that it's here's work and here's life and they are in conflict to one another. They are not together in any way.
And particularly in this day and age as digital as we are, we do not punch in and punch out anymore in the way that our culture used to think about work. And for sure, there is this work-life integration. You called it work-life enrichment, where these things kind of come together if you want them to come together. Ultimately, if you don't, then that's okay, too.
But particularly for I know a lot of the women that listen to this podcast, know I use the word ambitious to describe them because they're very career driven, so likely there is going to be a lot of work involved in their life and it's going to cross over into family for so many people.
Amy: What I just invite everyone to do is think about those places where you feel that boundaries start to come up, and ask yourself, 'is this how I feel about it?' Or is this something I've been told to feel about it? Is there a place here where I enjoy my being able to surf through my work emails when I'm sitting on the couch watching Netflix? Or is that something I feel compelled to do because I have to get all this done. In those places where it works for you, keep them; in those places that don't, don't.
And the idea of work-life enrichment is that there are pieces in both spheres of your life, at work and at home, if we're talking about those two as separate spheres, that enrich each other. There are things at work you do every day that you learned how to do that you can bring into your working parenthood and vice versa, and they can be as simple as scheduling things.
Rebecca: There was a story that you talked about. You talked about the Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg. And how you quoted her, 'My success in law school, I have no doubt was due in large measure to Baby Jane, my daughter. Each part of my life provided respite from the other, and it gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law lacked.'
I love this idea that she made it as far as she could ever go in her career. I mean, so few people ever make it to a Supreme Court Justice. And here she is saying that one of the things that made her so successful is that she had a daughter in the middle of it.
Amy: Exactly. I think what people don't realize is parenthood is your superpower at work. It's your thing. It's your magic that other people don't have.
Rebecca: If you decide to look at it that way, if you decide to not see it as two opposing sides of you, but as one integrated person, you are only one human being - that if you see it that way, it is a superpower and it is something that can catapult you wherever you want to go and you ultimately are the leader of it. If you believe that being a working parent is a superpower and that you bring something unique to your team, to your workplace, to what you do, to your field, whatever - if you believe that, then other people around you are going to believe it too, because that is what you put out into the world.
It's the energy. It's what drives you.
If you think that they're in conflict and you live in this place of conflict, then other people experience that too. And more conflict is created around you because of it. You know, there's the Law of Attraction on some level, or whatever you want to call it out there. But it's whatever energy you do really put out into the world is what you get back to you; and you ultimately are in control of that. And I love that this book touches a bit on that.
Amy: I want to just tie it into your relationship with your manager as well. Because we're talking about it on the big level that - that enrichment is there and how you approach, but that goes down to your colleagues and your manager. If you're having those conversations as an opposing force, that's very different from going in and being like, 'I am so excited about this.' I get this whole entirely new learning experience. I can't wait to see what it allows me to bring back into my work. This is how I'm setting it up. This is what I'm thinking. I want to stay in communication with you around it.
That's a very different conversation. than 'I'm going out on leave. I'll be gone these days; I expect my paycheck to not be disrupted and I will be back on this day. See you then.' Those are very different. And if you are a person who wants an evolving relationship within your work and within your work roles, you get to choose which one you want to be.
Rebecca: Yeah, I love it. There was, I'm sure, a couple of exercises. There's a lot of great exercises in here. Good reflection questions and so forth. And one that I encourage a lot of my clients, I really push them to think about, is how they're a better employee or they're better at their job because - or since - they became a parent. Really show your brain what enhanced, and how your workplace benefits from it. That's another great question to ask yourself.
Amy: My background is in leadership, and so I come at this that all of these leadership lessons of parenthood are, that's why this is important. This is leadership lessons for yourself as a growing and developing human leadership lessons for you at work. So, I start the book with talking about leadership and then at the end of each chapter, I try and tie people back to that, by pointing out what are the leadership lessons of this day. Here's some that you can think about - I'm sure you have many more you could add from your own experience, but here's a few.
Rebecca: I love it. Well, obviously you could tell I enjoyed the book. There's so much rich material in here. I mean, it's very robust. It's very thorough. You could take some pieces of it, you can skip ahead, you could take other pieces of it. It's such an amazing resource out there for parents and anyone that is thinking about becoming a parent in any way, shape or form. I love it.
Amy: Thank you.
Rebecca: Thank you for putting - for birthing this for us Amy - It's amazing.
Amy: Thank you. You want to hear a crazy stat? It's the only - only - book if you type parental leave into Amazon, it's the only book on parental leave with an evidence-based framework for all parents. There's many, not many, but there's some wonderful ones that are for moms or moms returning from work or, different things. But this is the first time, and I just think that speaks volumes to how overlooked this topic is. That is one of the, if not, the most important time frames in any person's career. It's makes me crazy.
Rebecca: And I appreciate you keeping me very inclusive in this and correcting me because I think that's really important, and I need to do the work to continue to be inclusive as I talk about it as well. It isn't just maternity leaves, and it's not just people birthing children. There's such a wide range of what a family looks like. And more than ever, this is a time that we need to be inclusive of all. So, thank you for that and thank you for writing a book that was like that.
Amy: Oh, thank you. That was a challenge because I - you worry you're going to make everybody mad - with my values, too.
Rebecca: I love it. Well, thank you again, Amy. And of course, I will link to an Amazon link to go buy this book. I highly recommend it.
Amy: We have a web page on our website on there that you can find out more about it, too.
Rebecca: Perfect. I will link to all of that and working moms out there. Let's get to it.
I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you're looking to create a life where your career and your home life never feel at odds; where you're working less but achieving at the same level a life without regret where you know, you are doing exactly what you want to be doing, then join the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Collective. This is a group of ambitious working moms who believe that work-life balance is possible for them and are committed to creating it. The program includes 30 short videos and workbooks that teach you how to create the building blocks of a balanced life, as well as weekly group coaching and in-depth support within a private working moms’ community. Oh, and did I mention that when you join the community, you get lifetime access? That means you have access to coaching and material to help support your balanced life in every season. You can find out more information and sign up for the collective on my website at www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/collective.
