Last year, I was delivering one of our most popular workshops for one of our Swiss corporate clients, and I took the time to review the workshop evaluation feedback on my train journey home.  One attendee shared that she would have liked to have spent time looking at: How to advance your career whilst working part time. It’s a topic we often cover in our workshops but it didn't come up for this particular group of women - at least until they filled out the feedback forms at the end.

For some reason, her question has stayed with me since and I felt inspired to write a blog post about it.

As I started to apply our own experience as well as the wide amount of research that exists on  on this topic, I quickly realised that you can’t answer it from an employee only perspective - ie. How do I advance?

I also felt the need to answer it from an employer and governance perspective. To not only help the individual understand the broader aspects at play but also help...

Juggling work and family life is often exhausting and for many working parents, it is hard to find the extra time or energy to do much else. However, it is widely recognised that a regular sporting activity boosts your resilience and reduces stress.

As a busy mum of 2, striving to reach my professional aspirations and keep my family happy, I used to think that sport would be a selfish indulgence and one that would eat into the time that I had away for work and family.  

However after biting the bullet and signing up to my local gym, I soon realised that an hour’s fitness training twice a week boosted my performance at work and made me more effective at home. It also helped to reduce the tensions and worries that I was dealing with on a daily basis. My tiredness diminished as I started to sleep better and, of course, my self -confidence started to rise.

Researchers at « Harvard Business Review» surveyed a population of working adults to gather input regarding...

First of all, congratulations!

For each parent, this is such a personal journey that there is no script to follow. Instead here are some tips to help you be mindful of and embrace the changes.

As the Professional woman:

You hopefully agreed boundaries before your maternity break and they are being adhered to. It may be that you have changed your mind and you want more or less contact – let people know so that you maximise this time. It is worth considering which colleagues are key influencers and always keep abreast of the political landscape – a coffee/lunch with them can quickly bring you up to speed with developments at work. 

• Remember that this can be a great opportunity to develop new skills and learn about topics you never have enough time for in a typical working week. There is an adundance of interesting articles, discussions, forums etc you can access or explore an on-line course as a possibility. Please be mindful that this may be unlikely in the early...

Accompanying the transition to parenthood requires a change in assumptions, beliefs, behaviour and motivations on the part of the parents concerned.

For a woman, it is probably one of the most challenging and exciting transitions; amplified by a great deal of mental and physical changes and unknowns, with associated fears; especially with the 1st child.

Fathers however, are often overlooked during this transition period; despite their conflicting desires to spend more time with family, whilst upholding professional aspirations. So this blog addresses how Fathers can better balance parenthood and professional work.

I remember when my first daughter was several months old, my Mother commented about my husband:

“John is good. He is often home to do the bath and bedtime routine and is a very hands-on Dad.” 

My Mother’s comments highlighted the changes just between our generation; her perception that John was “good” and our perception that John...

Often, as working parents, our focus is exclusively on completing the to-do list in the most efficient way, that our default is to sit down at the desk and work like a Trojan, without stopping or even daring to accept a lunch invitation because you have an absolute deadline – child care pick up at 17:30. It’s not a deadline that can be moved by even an hour or too, not one to be negotiated – you have to meet it.

Our work sees us supporting working parents of young children, often in their thirties and early forties, that the timing is not right to even consider leadership roles or promotion – the common line we hear is “the children are too young and I cannot give the time the organisation needs”.

Such assumptions can be challenged if your organisation is an advocate for having strong leaders who also ‘walk the talk’, effectively making time work and their personal life.

This belief that it’s not possible to have both,...

Is this known as “having it all”? Can you even have a career and family without the burden of guilt, overwhelm and fatigue? There isn’t a text book standard response to this. Why? Because everyone’s definition of “having it all” is unique and it’s based on your own exclusive value system and aspirations.

Step 1: Self-awareness

The first step therefore when considering how to navigate career and family is to have a very good understanding of what is important to you, as a parent and as a professional.

As a parent – if someone asked your child 10 years from now to describe you as a Mum or Dad over the last 10 years, what do you want them to say? Who inspires you as a role model as a parent and why? What do you want to copy from your own parents? What do you not want to copy from your own parents? If you take time to consider these questions over a short period, coming back to them several times, you will soon have a sound awareness of...

Ask any new parent and most will admit that attempting to achieve healthy work-life balance is increasingly challenging.

The fact is there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything you did before having a child, and yet for some reason you try to do more. The new parent transition period can often feel hard whilst you adjust your expectations of what is possible and manageable.

The period between having a child and returning to work is a great time to stop and re-assess your priorities. Unless you have an army of nannies, chefs ad cleaners, if you try to continue your previous lifestyle alongside new priorities and responsibilities, you’re on a fast track to hitting burn out and disappointment.

Similarly if you neglect to make the necessary changes to prioritise what is important to you now, it will only result in more stress.

This blog article is my attempt at busting some popular misconceptions with the aim of helping newbie parents find some more useful...