Balancing family and career is a serious juggle.
Every day across Australia women make it work. They’re building great businesses and satisfying leadership careers while raising children at home.
They might be time-poor and exhausted but (often with help) they’re finding their own way for making it through the week and, hopefully, finding some time for themselves at the end of it all.
Over the last few weeks on Women’s Agenda, we’ve been publishing edited extracts from Gillian Fox’s Women of Influence, in which she interviews 12 women on their leadership careers.
Given it’s Mother’s Day this weekend, we wanted to highlight a number of points some of these women made about balancing big leadership careers with motherhood.
Below Jane Huxley, Janine Allis, Marina Go, Dr Simone Ryan, Tracey Fellows and Debra Hazelton share what they’ve learnt.
Stop apologising and get over the guilt
JANE HUXLEY, Managing Director Australia and New Zealand, Pandora Internet Radio
“A couple of years ago, when the kids were a little bit younger, I remember waking up one day and thinking, ‘I am sick of feeling bad about everything. I’m sick of feeling bad about being a crap mother. I’m sick [of feeling like] being a bad boss … I’m sick of feeling guilty about everything.’ I decided I was just going to STOP feeling bad. I was going to stop apologising for the things that I’m not very good at. I can almost name the day. It was like this great finger from the sky that said, “Stop feeling bad about yourself.” I just forgave myself for being a little bit shit at everything. That was liberating. I am happy now with 80%. It’s the new 100%.”
Create boundaries and make your own decisions
TRACEY FELLOWS, CEO of realestate.com.au
“On any given week, I hope I’m a good mother, a good wife and a good CEO. I’m not all 3 every day. Some weeks I’m definitely a better CEO than I am a mother, and the reverse is also true.
I try and create boundaries. If I have a heavy workload, I’ll get up early. My son doesn’t wake up at five, so I can do a chunk before he gets up, versus working late when he wants to see me. On weekends I try very much not to do emails. My son would rarely see me checking the phone. If he does he’ll say, “No, Mum, it’s my time,” and I’ll say, “You’re right, Jake.”
I love my job. I love the energy I get from it, so I made that decision. If it means that there are some things at the school that I can’t do, there’s no point in torturing myself. I made this decision.”
Life is a pendulum, accept the help you need
JANINE ALLIS, Founder, Boost Juice Bars
“I’ve managed [balancing] poorly! When I started Boost, I had Riley, my third child, who was 7-months old. He was still on the breast. For me, it was setting myself up to succeed. I worked from home for the first two years. My mum has been an enormous help. She couldn’t think of anything better than coming to my house every day and looking after my kids, and I couldn’t think of anything better than her coming to my house and looking after my kids. I was very, very lucky.
Life is a pendulum. Often, I get it out of whack. Often, I’m travelling all the time; I’m barely seeing the kids and hating myself for it. Other times, I’m spending too much there and the business is suffering. It’s constantly trying to get that balance. I remember one time I was completely out of balance with the kids and I said, “Right, what can I do?”
I read the whole Harry Potter series to them at night. I thought, “Okay, this is going to be my time with them.” Hopefully that’s embedded in their brains: “You did all this wrong…but at least you did that.”
I look at my kids now and they’re 24, 18 and 17. Then I’ve got my midlife crisis: she’s 7. They are great kids. It’s a happy household. Right or wrong, for me it’s been a good journey.”
Know your priorities, be open about having kids
MARINA GO, General Manager Hearst Bauer Media and Chair of Wests Tigers Rugby League Club
“The most important thing that I have done is prioritise my children. I’ve never steered away from the fact that I have them. I’d urge women who are mothers to never, ever try and pretend that they’re not mothers in the workplace. It just doesn’t work and no one is happy. If you work in an environment where you have to do that, then it’s clearly not the right place for you. You don’t want to make things worse for yourself than they need to be.
I’ve been very honest and open with my managers. I’ve been very clear about time. It’s been important for me to have dinner with my children as often as I can. My youngest is about to finish high school. It’s still important we have dinner with him, but not every night. It doesn’t matter if I have a lot of events on. My boys are fantastic. One is 21 and the other is 18; they are relatively self-
sufficient, so I’m lucky. But I still want to see them. I love spending time with them and they love spending time with me. They know they’re the most important thing in my life and that’s very important. If they feel secure and happy and they’re doing well as people, it enables me to feel less guilty about spending time on my career. They’re very secure young men and I feel very proud of the people they’ve become.”
Take the time you need
DR SIMONE RYAN, Fellow of the Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Specialist Occupational and Environmental Physician and CEO and Founder, One Life, Live It
“Five years ago, our business wasn’t the business it is today. I had gone bust and was making a comeback. It was tough. I purposefully fell pregnant during that time; I met my husband. We were older. We needed to start thinking about children from a medical and health viewpoint. I fell pregnant intentionally and Max was born in the comeback. I went back to work the day after Max was born.
That is not the way that anyone should do it in my view. From a medical, mental, health, wellbeing viewpoint, you must put the tools down. There are so many changes going on in your body that is not conducive to working at that point. I had a big tender we were applying for and I was on a comeback after going under.
I had a couple of people working for me part-time, but they weren’t tender writers, so I sat in our hospital and wrote the tender, which we won. It still holds a piece of my heart today. I went back to work on day 6. Max came in his capsule and we went back to doing face-to-face health checks.
The day I became a mum, I became a Nazi with priorities. My son turned 5 yesterday and that brought back so many memories. I put up a Facebook post today: ‘This kid turned 5. I have 4 university degrees and I’m a fellow of the College of Medicine in this country, but this kid blows my mind.’ I mean that.
If he ever said to me, “I don’t want you to go to Melbourne every second week,” I would need to think about that very clearly and talk to him about what’s going on. That would be a very serious conversation with a bright 5-year-old. If it meant he was suffering, I wouldn’t go. I flat out wouldn’t go. I would make other adjustments. He means that much to me.”
Find your support system
DEBRA HAZELTON, General Manager, Mizuho Financial Group – Tokyo, board member of the Australia/Japan Foundation
“My husband is very supportive. He’s very independent, very self-aware.
It’s very lucky to have a partner like that. My taste in men before him was actually abysmal. I went through a couple of years after breaking up at one stage and deciding never to have a boyfriend again. I did do a lot of thinking about what a real partnership looked like … but I was really lucky with him.
Our son, he’s lovely. He’s an exceptionally clever kid, all these wonderful things he does and he’s very generous and very non-material. He’s doing really well.
I did make a decision not to have a second child when I was running the dealing room here in Tokyo for CBA. Probably that was the right decision for me.”
Women’s Agenda readers can download an exclusive preview of Woman of Influence ahead of the official launch of the book on May 17, 2016. To download your exclusive preview, simply visit here.