Momference: A Meeting of the Moms

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• Job Sharing
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• Running your own company

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“Professional women have made tremendous strides in terms of drawing on our strengths, abilities, and confidence in the workplace in recent years, but it’s clear that we have a long way to go before we are using our female power with self-assurance and ease,” says Kathy Caprino, MA, personal and professional coach, psychotherapist, and researcher of midlife professional women in transition.

Based on her national research study Women Overcoming Crisis: Finding New Meaning in Life and Work and work with hundreds of professional women each year, Caprino is finding that even high-level, high-achieving professional women report battling insecurity and discomfort in using their voices to speak up and say “no” or “yes” when necessary. Many professional women do not serve as their own advocate, nor do they experience being supported or mentored by other colleagues in the workplace.  Professional women also reveal a reluctance to embrace new opportunities that may lead to greater advancement and leadership, particularly if the change in responsibility or focus takes them out of their comfort zone.

Clearly, there is a palpable power differential experienced by women in the workplace, and the leadership styles of men and women remain widely divergent, contributing to gaps in understanding, acceptance, and trust. In the end, Caprino’s research participants report experiencing less than a rock-solid sense of empowerment and strength in their work lives.  These gaps that professional women experience in their own empowerment can lead to personal and professional crisis, and a deep desire to transition away from the current professional track and identity to a brand new one.

How can women gain in empowerment, and avoid professional crises altogether?  Caprino has found the following approaches, suggested by her research participants who have successfully reinvented their lives, work, and professional identities, to be very effective:

• Remember, you are a many-faceted individual. Your life is a mosaic. Your current job does not define who you are in this world. Let go of what isn’t working.  Over-identification with any role in your life can lead to emotional difficulty and limitation. You are more than your current job or professional identity. If you don’t like who you are at work or what you are focusing on, you need to either find ways to change your style or behavior to your liking, or find new work or workplace that allows you to be and to express who you truly are.
• Stretch and grow at all times..say “yes” to new opportunities that excite you (even if they make you nervous)  Again, you are more than you think you are. You have a wider array of skills, strengths and capabilities than you are aware of at the moment. If you are offered an opportunity that allows you to stretch in a new area, and this area feels exciting to you, then go for it! The expansion you’ll experience will allow new preferences and strengths to emerge. Be committed to continually expanding your knowledge and skill base. Move away from your perfectionism and needing to be an expert. Be a beginner again, and don’t shy away from trying new things.
• Don’t let your ego lead you around by the nose. Ego-based decisions are those that lead you to actions that simply inflate your ego and your sense of outward domination, power, control, and recognition. Often these ego-based decisions point you in a direction that is not in line with what you are truly passionate about. Integrate your ego with your intuition, your higher thinking skills, and your understanding of what you value and appreciate. Make decisions that reflect who are and wish to be in life.
• Get out of denial when things aren’t working  Staying in the dark about what makes you unhappy only prolongs your suffering, and postpones the action that eventually must be taken. Get hip to what isn’t working in your life and work, and begin to create a meaningful action plan for addressing what needs to be changed, added, redirected, or released.
• Receive outside support; elicit new, unbiased and expansive perspectives  How do you identify clearly what has to change and how to change it? Get some unbiased help, which can come in many forms including an outside mentor, coach, career counselor if needed, or someone who has done what you wish to do who can provide beneficial guidance. Helpful support is neutral, not biased, and aims to help you on you path (not someone else’s) by providing fresh insights and perspectives on how you can draw on your vast potential to achieve what you desire.
• Know your passions and talents, and find work that emphasizes them  So many professionals (women and men alike) haven’t taken the time to understand what they are passionate about in life — what endeavors give them joy and positive energy. This is an essential step to take to avoid professional crisis. Discover and identify specifically what stimulates you, know what you are uniquely talented at and excited about, and move toward these endeavors. Find new ways to bring them forth in your personal and professional life wherever possible.
• Decide what your life outside of work needs to encompass  In order to achieve essential work/life balance, you must know what balance means to you. What do you need and want to have in your life outside of work, to feel that you are living the life you desire? Get as clear as possible about what your personal life needs to express and embody. Once you know, than your priorities will become clearer, which in turn allows you greater conscious control over how you manage your work life.
• Develop short- and long-term goals for all areas of your life. Act on these, and review your progress,
  continually.  If you haven’t already, it’s time to sit down with a pad and outline both short- and long-term goals for all key areas of your life and work that reflect who you are at your core, and what you wish your life to mean and contribute going forward. Make your goals concrete, specific, behavioral and measurable, and don’t limit yourself only to what you think is possible. Develop goals that reflect your true potential, and what you dream you can do. Once you commit these goals to paper, break them down into bite-sized, doable mini-steps, and begin to take action. Revisit your steps and your goals regularly.
• Know your value. Don’t underestimate yourself and be your own advocate. Believe in yourself and your potential.
  According to many of the professional women studied, men seem to be more skilled overall in perceiving their own value and taking advantageous action based on an unwavering estimation of their current and potential contribution. Women are in a somewhat earlier stage of development in their ability to embrace and express their worth in the workplace and at home.
• Be authentic to yourself. Take positive action and use your voice in empowered ways, always. Don’t be afraid to put yourself forward.  Trying to be someone else in the workplace simply doesn’t work. Do and say what is authentic and appropriate for you. Develop an integrated style that embodies your values around leadership, authority, power, delegating, executing, relating, and communicating – a style that allows you to express who you are and what is important to you.
  The more you do this, the more it will become apparent if and when you need to make a change in your professional life.

Employing these strategies will not only help you avoid professional crisis altogether, but also bring you forward on your path of professional and personal fulfillment, strength, and confidence for a lifetime.
For more information on the Women Overcoming Professional Crisis: Finding New Meaning in Life and Work national research study or Caprino’s Life and Career Path Assessments and coaching programs, please visit
www.kathycaprino.com

About the Author:
Kathy Caprino, MA is a personal and professional coach, psychotherapist, author, and speaker on successfully navigating through major professional and personal transition, and making the most of our lives. She has co-founded Living in Harmony-The Center for Emotional Health (www.livinginharmonycenter.com) in Westport, CT, and also specializes in Empathic Parenting coaching that fosters empowerment and self-reliance in children and families. Ms. Caprino is conducting a national research study on Women Overcoming Professional Crisis: Finding New Meaning in Life and Work, co-sponsored by The Esteemed Woman Foundation.

For more information about personal, professional, or relationship coaching, or programs for corporate professionals, please contact:
Email: kathy@kathycaprino.com
Web: http://www.kathycaprino.com

We lose a lot when we accept society’s pressure to box off parts of ourselves depending on the time of day and whether we’re wearing our business suit or our sweat suit.  Sometimes, that pressure to compartmentalize means we tend to forget that what we learn in one part of our life can provide valuable insights into other parts of life.  Here are a few of the things I’ve learned over the last 15 years of blending motherhood and business management:

• Taking a Deep Breath Helps.  Time-out works.  When my kids were very young and time-outs were frequent, I learned that I probably needed the time-out even more than they did so that I could regain perspective and think about my BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement, as they say in the office).  Was the issue worth the effort?  Had I overlooked something from the other person’s perspective?  Being hungry, tired or wet  can make a person cranky.  Fix what’s causing the grouchiness, and the surface problem may take care of itself.
• I found that the same skills worked at the office.  Once when two staffers were arguing about a fairly trivial issue, I refused to make the decision.  Instead, I told them to go back to their offices, write up the justification for their separate proposals, and not come back to me until they had a workable solution.  Stunned, one man asked if I had just put him in time out.  “Yes,” I replied, “and don’t make me take away dessert!”  Abashed, the two quarreling co-workers went back to their desks, thought through their differing proposals and came back with a workable solution.  (And in the meantime, I diffused the general tension in the office, bought myself time to think about the differing approaches, and made a few phone calls to check out what was really going on.)
• Discoveries don’t happen on schedule.  Creativity and true insight is less likely to happen when you’re grinding away than when you take a walk, stare out the window, or switch scenery.  Fidgeting during homework is part of thinking.  Why expect it to work differently just because you’re in a suit at a desk?  Give yourself permission to walk around the building, stare out the window at the squirrels, listen to a relaxing song or do a 10-minute meditation.  You can be working when it doesn’t look like work.  (And you can be spinning your wheels when you look productive.)
• Fairness counts.  No, the world isn’t fair—but you can make your corner of it as even-handed as possible.  And with a teenager, a pre-teen and an elementary schooler, I know that fair isn’t always the same as equal and equal isn’t always fair.  Having said that, the trust that comes with knowing you will get a square deal goes a long way.  Whether you’re in the office or on the playground, it’s not nice to play favorites, ignore the rules, cheat to win, or switch rules in the middle of the game.
• People learn from watching you.  My children have learned that teachers grade papers at night, TV commercials are written by someone, and books start out as a big stack of loose papers.  Their trips to my office—and later, up the stairs to my home office when I started my company—taught a lot about how business and finance work.  At the same time, co-workers in the corpborate environment learned that having children doesn’t mean a woman loses the ability to think, work or meet deadlines.  Motherhood meant that I challenged any entrenched inefficiency or thoughtless imposition that got in the way of getting the maximum amount of work done before daycare closed.  That made for a more productive workplace and lightened a few stereotypes along the way.
• Simple can be profound.  I’ve found encouragement and insights in some of the simplest children’s books, proving that wisdom is often where we least expect it.  I remember reading “Oh the Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss to my daughter one time when I was making a job change, and being struck by the wisdom of his advice about being in a “waiting place.”  “Yertle the Turtle” should be required business management reading in these post-Enron days, as a reminder that there is no king (or CEO) on the top of the stack without the hard work of the least recognized person (or turtle) at the bottom, holding everything up.  Mom was right.  Stick by your friends.  Don’t let bullies talk you into doing something you know you shouldn’t do.  Walk proud when you’re different.  And always, always, believe in yourself.

About the Author:
Gail Z. Martin owns DreamSpinner Communications and helps companies in the U.S. and Canada tell the Real Story of their business through exceptional writing and marketing. Gail has an MBA in marketing and over 20 years of corporate and non-profit experience at senior executive levels. She leads webinars and teleseminars for organizations and professional associations on marketing topics, and she is the author of The Summoner and The Blood King novels in the Chronicles of the Necromancer fantasy adventure series.

Sign up for a FREE email mini course, FREE marketing conference call and a FREE teleseminar on Telling Your Real Story. Find out more about Gail’s books at http://www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com.  Contact Gail at gail@dreamspinnercommunications.com to start telling the Real Story of your business.

A mom has a million things to do and countless unrealistic expectations. There’s work and career, meals to cook, laundry to do, and noses to be wiped… and oh, your husband needs your attention too! It’s no wonder that your needs fall to the bottom of the list.

Well this is your chance to walk past the unfolded laundry and focus on a little MOM time. Our experts can help turn your dreams into reality and completely transform your home, health, family, and career.

The Momference is the first ever global expert resource created especially for busy Moms - and it’s convenient! Momference puts you in a “virtual meeting room” with thousands of like-minded women from all over the country… all without the hassles of travel or getting a babysitter!

     1. Find topics you’re most interested in from expert speakers. 
     2. Get expert information you can use today!
     3. Participate. Share your thoughts… get your questions answered.

Does it sound easy?  Too easy?  The Momference Team hopes so because that means we have completed our mission!  Join us today.