E X E C U T I V E M O M S S H O W Y O U 7 WAY S

T H E Y M A N A G E C A R E E R A N D

FA M I LYC R E AT E D B Y S U S I E A L M A N E I H

• There is no question that in our busy world, it is challenging to find time, resources and willingness to engage deeply with our families and our professions.

• Despite all the headway women have made, the traditional mom role often seems at odds with a high level career.

• However, women who have made it all the way to the top discover that there is more space up there.

• Raising a family and running a company have some obvious and not-so-obvious parallels.

• Surprisingly, these women have the flexibility to raise large families successfully so it is worth examining the way that career-oriented women have organized their time and developed their parenting philosophy.

C H O O S E Y O U R O W N

C L O C K

• You make your own schedule and that doesn’t have to correspond with everyone else’s.

• So some moms took calls or meetings from 5am-7 with international partners so they could enjoy breakfast with their kids.

• Some bosses also schedule in a “flex” day so that anything unforeseen can get pushed to that space and if not then it’s room for some spontaneity with family.

# 1

V E N T U R E O U T O F T H E C U B I C L E

• With so many people working remotely, there are actually whole ventures like Power to Fly built on a mom-centric need for women to work from home, work part –time, or work on a contract basis.

• Collaboration is an important component and these moms utilize the latest technology to maintain ongoing communication with their team.

# 2

C O N C E N T R AT E ; F O R G E T M U LT I -

TA S K I N G

• Short, steady bursts of uninterrupted concentration on the task at hand seemed to be the key for most exec moms.

• They were highly productive, mindful and philosophically elastic when it came to prioritizing, setting goals and meeting them.

# 3

K N O W H O W T O D E L E G AT E

• When you are running a company, you hopefully have a team of experts around you to attend to secondary tasks.

• This can come in the form of a personal chef, an au pair, a grocery delivery service or a cleaning service.

# 4

C O M M U N I C AT E W I T H T H E

C O M M U N I T Y

• Networking goes hand in hand with running a company, so for many of these women, applying their communication skills to their community is natural.

• Hooking up with local families is a big contributor to your family’s happiness.

• So planning a weekly activity at alternate households is automated and exponentially helps out each family.

# 5

E V E RY O N E H E L P S

• The big kids help the little kids and the grown ups supervise, (see Delegating).

• A common theme among these working moms was fostering early independence and group effort.

# 6

E N J O Y I T !

• This is the part we are most likely to forget– the reflective part that makes all our activities worth doing.

• Tuning our awareness to what is in front of us, whether it is our children or our board meeting is the key to meaningful experience.

• For both moms and the people around them.

# 7

• When it comes to parenting, these moms are pretty hands-off in regard to social growth.

• They advise letting kids work out their own power dynamic and try to foster independence and interdependence at an early age.

• In communicating with their children, they emphasize problem-solving and active listening.

• These are invaluable tools at the board meeting too.

• Women are making the workforce stronger all over the world, and a more self-governing approach to work is part of the exec mom program.

• Because it is women at the top who are implementing these new policies, many of these big companies are very attractive to women.

• Women are both natural leaders and collaborators, since those skills originate with family.

• These attributes are innate in the sense that we’ve always been doing it.

• And now, thanks to these women’s strides, we are starting to see how family, community and business can be more intrinsically and philosophically linked into a healthy and prosperous circle.