Surviving or Thriving While Remote? A Personal Audit For Working Parents
It’s May and we’re still in a no-end-in-sight, no-clue-when-school-reopens, quarantined COVID19 world. Most working parents will tell you that they’ve adjusted to this “new normal.”
There’s no question that working parents are surviving at home, but are they thriving?
After countless hours of one-on-one coaching with my clients and delivering my Thriving While Remote workshop, I’ve heard the same struggles articulated week after week, organization after organization, working parent after working parent. Some days are easier than others, and a few “others” in a row can be crushing.
While I don’t have a magic elixir (pro tip: coffee helps), here is an audit of five questions you can ask yourself to identify where in your remote working parent life you can turn the dial from just surviving to thriving:
What can you take off your calendar? One of the most pervasive issues I’m seeing is that meeting overload has reached a fever pitch for working parents: in our abbreviated workdays, many of the working parents I speak with are spending most of their “on the clock” time on conference calls and zoom meetings. By the time their work shift ends and their childcare duties resume, they have an overflowing inbox and a frankly unattainable pile of to-do’s.
This is forcing actual “work time” to late nights and early mornings. A dear friend of mine recently confided in me that she’s waking up at 4:30am to get it all done. As I told her: that is just not sustainable. Take a look at your calendar and see where you can replace “check the box” activities with meaningful work time: do you really have to be on every single call or can you start reclaiming work time? To that end...
What can you delegate and who can you deputize? As you evaluate your calendar, also evaluate opportunities to deputize a high-potential performer on your team or delegate tasks to direct reports (or other colleagues). Let’s get clear on something really important: deputizing and delegating is a sign of leadership, not failure. For many working parents it’s just impossible to get the exact same work done they were doing 2 months ago in the exact same ways.
At a recent workshop I received some pushback from a working mom who felt like there was more pressure to perform in her role than ever. I’ll share with you what I shared with her: only you can determine what you can handle but, if performance is what counts, is it better to do 70% of your typical work at 100% of your typical performance standard or do 100% of it at 70%?
Moreover, consider how deputizing or delegating--especially to high-potential direct reports or more junior colleagues--can provide them with increased visibility or stretch opportunities. Remember, it’s essential to return the favor by:
Making sure your asks are reasonable and well-communicated (set them up for success!)
Acknowledging that this is extra work for them
Thanking them by finding opportunities to recognize their contributions in a meaningful way
Are you judging yourself in a COVID19 world by pre-COVID19 standards? After asking this question to countless clients and workshop participants, I should really rephrase this to “where are you judging yourself...”
One of the things I’m hearing from parents of younger children is a communal parent guilt around one thing: as the amount of time they’re around their kids has increased, many feel that their quality of time with their kids has decreased. I’ll give you an example from my own life where I’ve had to recalibrate my standards: I used to have a mantra that when I was with my kids, I was with my kids. That’s because in a pre-COVID19 world I only got about 1.5-2 hours a day with them. Scaling this standard across a 12-hour day with them just doesn’t work anymore, so I had to create new metrics for the “when and how” I was able to show up for them. That meant giving myself grace on a few things and setting up some really important boundaries between my work, personal, and family life.
The same goes for re-examining what the gold standard is in our work lives right now. Let me be clear: this isn’t about scaling back-- in fact, I’ve had clients who have gotten promotions and new jobs during this time--it’s about recalibrating. A new world order calls for a new perspective. Embracing that recalibration instead of trying to do everything the same way you did it 2 months ago can be the difference between surviving and thriving.
How are you taking care of yourself? In March and April, when people asked me what I was most concerned about for working parents my answer, without a moment’s hesitation, was: burnout. At best, COVID19 is a short-to-medium term event, at worst it's a medium-to-long-term event. What concerned me most was a talk track I was hearing from parents is that they just “didn’t have time” for self care. Flash forward six weeks (or more) and many working parents are predictably burned out—a sentiment poignantly captured by my friend, Lori Mihalich-Levin, in her recent article, I’m Tired In A Way Sleep Can’t Fix.
Lori isn’t alone but it’s not too late to refuel. According to Harvard Business School research, just a 30-60 second “micro moment” of self care can have a profound impact on both your fulfillment and your job performance. As you think about how self care can move the dial from surviving to thriving, check out my recent article on six tips for effective self care in a COVID19 world. Lori’s article has great tips too.
Do you have a game plan? I asked a working mom this question last week and she laughed out loud. Her laughter quickly turned to tears. Many of us have spent years architecting not just a game plan, but a life plan that allows us to live the work and family lives we want to lead. In that moment she wasn’t just mourning the loss of her old life, she was mourning the loss of her agency. Reclaiming some of that agency can make all the difference in thriving vs. surviving. That’s why for my Thriving While Remote workshop I’ve developed a weekly game plan document you can use to get clear about your priorities and how you’re going to actionalize them. Here are the 4 steps:
Get clear about segmenting what’s going on in your life from a professional, personal, and family/relationships perspective.
Identify what the critical needs are in each category this coming week.
Then get aspirational and identify a goal in each of these categories.
Lastly, to make sure you can execute against the critical needs and achieve your goals, commit to what you’re going to say “yes” to and say “no” to in each category.
Rinse and repeat: as you make a new game plan every weekend, consider looking back on the week that just passed. Consider what went well (or not so well), and what you want to replicate or change in the week ahead.
As we approach Mother's Day I’ll share a story with you about a senior executive I used to work for. A fellow mother, one morning I walked into her office for a 9AM meeting. With wet hair she looked up from her desk, with her coat still on and a giant coffee in her hands, and said to me, “Randi, every morning is a [flipping] miracle.”
That has never been truer, so please don’t let this audit be one more place where you beat yourself up on things you “should” be doing better. Let this audit be a place for you to celebrate the miracles of getting through each day and a place to identify precise places where you can make room for a few more miracles. Now that is truly thriving.
Randi Braun is a coach, consultant, speaker, and the Founder of Something Major. Get in touch with Randi via email or social (below). Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.
