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    Ringmaster: Work, Life, and Keeping It All Together
    Ringmaster: Work, Life, and Keeping It All Together
    Ringmaster: Work, Life, and Keeping It All Together
    Ebook157 pages2 hours

    Ringmaster: Work, Life, and Keeping It All Together

    By Jennifer Folsom

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    About this ebook

    Contrary to popular belief, there is no work-life balance. If you are working and you have children, your life is a three-ring circus. But you can be the Ringmaster, deciding what goes into each of your three rings: work, life, and you. You decide when and where the spotlight shines.

    In Ringmaster, author Jennifer Folsom explores the real work-family conflict—a long-term problem in which the inputs and outputs change more frequently than most of us would like to admit. You will likely be working for a very long time, and you’ll probably be parenting for the rest of your life. What you need is a framework for evaluating the daily—and sometimes hourly—decisions and trade-offs between your personal and professional lives.

    This guide for working parents demonstrates that together, by lifting each other up, sharing strategies, and building our villages, we can successfully grow our careers and our families.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu Publishing Services
    Release dateJan 4, 2020
    ISBN9781684714315
    Ringmaster: Work, Life, and Keeping It All Together

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      Book preview

      Ringmaster - Jennifer Folsom

      shines.

      RING 1: WORK

      The first ring in your three-ring circus is work. As a new working parent, your priorities may shift drastically. You won’t be able to wait to leave until your boss leaves because your kids will need to be picked up, and if you don’t make daycare pickup by 6:00 p.m., the provider will call Child Protective Services and charge you a ten-dollar-per-minute late fee.

      As a working parent, you may care more about a telecommuting benefit than a prestigious title. You may choose to pass on a plum, promotion-worthy assignment because it requires 80 percent travel. Ultimately, once the little bosses enter the picture, your work view will be fundamentally different.

      But what I’ve come to realize is that—in some form or fashion—you will continue to work for a very long time. And turns out, you will parent for the rest of your life. While most of the books on the working mom’s survival guide bookshelf will focus on those first few years, you’re going to need a framework for managing your work and life for a very long time.

      As you likely transition from caring for young children to caring for aging parents or, God bless, are doing both at the same time, your view of work will shift throughout your career. As your life changes, so must your work.

      Working when you have children is a circus, and there is no mythical balance. But by leveraging specific career strategies, you can achieve some level of professional satisfaction and still get dinner on the table. In this section, I will walk you through each part of the job life cycle—from defining your new dream job through rocking the job you have—all in the context of working parenthood.

      CHAPTER 1

      DEFINING THE (WORK) RELATIONSHIP (DTWR)

      Defining your priorities is the first step in finding any kind of sanity in your circus. While the twentysomethings spend their lunch hour gossiping about new relationships and whether they’ve had a DTR (define the relationship) or talked with the guy or gal they met on Bumble, as a working parent, you need to have a DTR with your work. You can’t find a dream job—or something approximating it—without knowing specifically what you want.

      As a partner in a flexible-role-focused staffing firm, I frequently met parents who would say, I don’t care what I do; I just need to be at the bus stop at 4:00 p.m. I get it. At many points in your life, being able to work around your children’s schedule is important. But that’s not a helpful answer, mostly because it’s not true. You won’t do just anything: you won’t work for any price or in any location. In order for people to help you find your dream job, you first need to know what that is.

      Whether it’s a job-seeking parent with whom I’m working or a friend or colleague seeking advice, the most helpful thing I can hear is specifics of what he or she wants in a job. For example, I once worked with a candidate who knew exactly what she wanted and needed. She came to me and said, I am open to any marketing, writing, communications, project management, or executive admin position in the, Northern Virginia area—Arlington, Falls Church, Alexandria. My ultimate goal is to find a permanent role working twenty to twenty-five hours per week, virtually or on-site, three to four days a week, between the hours of 9:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. My salary range is forty to fifty dollars per hour, negotiable. This target was so specific that we were able to find her the right role within a couple of weeks, and nine years later, she is still going strong there. This experience led me to create the work-life triangle as a way to help job seekers define their work relationship.

      WORK-LIFE TRIANGLE

      When it comes to work, getting the fit right is the most important thing for long-term satisfaction and success. And as a parent, your job-seeking time is limited. Once you know what you’re looking for, you can tailor your job search accordingly and you can tell people more specifically what you’re looking for so that they can help you.

      44352.png

      If parenting has taught you anything, I hope it’s that everything is a phase, nothing is permanent, and things can and will change.

      44360.png

      The first thing you need to do is to define your own ideal work-life triangle. In a perfect world, where would you be working? What would you be doing? What would your schedule be like? How many hours per week would you be working? And what would be fair compensation for that work? Job seekers often believe there is a straight tradeoff between flexibility and compensation, but the reality is that the tradeoffs are much more nuanced for working parents.

      44139.png

      As you can see from the graphic, there isn’t a straight tradeoff between schedule flexibility and dollars earned. Instead, the triangle has three sides: compensation, flexibility, and role. Take that dream-world scenario, when the stars align and you are working for an incredible boss, bringing home a respectable paycheck for doing work you love, and still being able to meet the bus in the afternoon. Put that into this graphic. That’s right. Get out that pencil, and put it on the paper.

      Next, circle the side of the triangle that’s most important to you right now. Acknowledging that it will likely change, what is the most important priority in today’s job search? That’s where you will start your focus, and focusing will help you to evaluate the interdependencies of these factors. For many parents, it is flexibility. We will walk through some case studies of how different job-seeking parents have leveraged this model to start their searches.

      But back here on Earth, we know the ideal situation rarely exists. And even if it did, like most things in life, it is subject to change. You could get that dream job with a ten-minute commute, but a new manager could take away your telecommuting day. Or the company could be sold. Or you might need to send your child to a new school across town.

      If parenting has taught you anything, I hope it’s that everything is a phase, nothing is permanent, and things can and will change. Best-laid plans and all. So instead of focusing only on the most ideal situation, you must determine acceptable ranges for each and acknowledge the interdependence of these factors. And there are infinite combinations!

      ROLE

      Let’s start with the role. What is it you want to be doing? Is it what you are currently doing? A promotion? What you were doing before you left the workforce for caregiving? I know it sounds basic, but you need to answer this question: What job do I want? Depending on your compensation and flexibility requirements, you may need to adjust your target role. For example, if you were a project coordinator before maternity leave but compensation is a higher priority than the role, you probably need to look for more traditional project manager jobs. In chapter 2, we will focus on how to close this type of gap. List those target roles on your triangle.

      FLEXIBILITY

      There are more definitions of flexibility than there are Cheerios under the car seat in your minivan. It means something different to everyone. It may mean working from home one day per week, or it could be a 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. schedule. It may mean you just need to work from home occasionally around snow days or doctor’s appointments. While few organizations have truly gone to a results-only work environment (ROWE), many have embraced flexibility as the standard. Think about what flexibility arrangements you need right now, including your must-haves and nice-to-haves, and jot down some notes on your triangle. One great resource for the various types of flexibility options many organizations offer is Werk.co.

      COMPENSATION

      Compensation seems pretty straightforward. You probably have some minimum number you need to make to meet your family’s budget requirements. Have you done your research on fair compensation using tools like Glassdoor.com and Payscale.com? You will likely have a range here, particularly when you factor in benefits and look at the big picture of total compensation.

      The mistake most people make when thinking about compensation is making the assumption that more flexibility in a particular role means less money. It shouldn’t, by the way. If you’re knocking it out of the park, why would it matter if you work from home on Tuesdays? But in some organizations it does, and more flexibility means you are on a lower-earning track. We have a long way to go on the stigma around flexibility. You can appreciate and be grateful for your flexibility, but don’t apologize for it. This is a theme you will see repeated here often. The one exception here is that if you are working less than full time, you should reasonably expect a proportionate compensation decrease. That’s just math.

      44352.png

      You can appreciate and be grateful for your flexibility, but don’t apologize for it.

      44360.png

      CASE STUDIES

      Everyone’s work-life triangle will look a little bit different. My own triangle has probably changed a half dozen times since I became a mom seventeen years ago! But seeing how others approached this exercise may help you evaluate your own interdependencies of compensation, role, and flexibility. Let’s take a look to see how job seekers I have worked with in the past have used the work-life triangle.

      Casey: Flexibility Priority

      When I first met Casey, mother of two daughters, she was returning to work after a five-year hiatus from the land of the W-2, where she had last worked as a marketing manager. Casey was juggling a daycare pickup and a school bus drop and wanted—needed—to be able to walk out of the office every day at 4:00 p.m. She also needed to work close to home; her pickup requirements didn’t allow for a long commute. Because of her priority on flexibility, Casey accepted a lower role as a marketing coordinator because she valued her schedule more than the role or the compensation.

      On the surface, this looks like Casey traded dollars for flexibility. But really, Casey prioritized location (for a shorter commute) in a role with less responsibility because of caregiving logistics. By taking a step back in terms of role, Casey gave up late nights at the office so that she could spend that time with her girls instead. This isn’t a failure or a misstep; Casey was intentional. She realized that this was just one phase over a long career arc, and it was the right move for her and her family at that time.

      Andy: Compensation Priority

      Andy came to me, soon after his divorce was final, for help in his job search. His single-income status meant that compensation was his biggest priority. More than the role he was performing or the flexibility in his schedule, Andy needed to provide for his family. His post-settlement agreement meant that Andy had several days a week with no caregiving responsibilities. On those days, he was able to pile up late-night hours and go on business trips while focusing on metrics to drive up his bonus. Andy targeted promotion-level roles with the highest earning potential, with the hope that after absolutely killing it for a year he might earn some of the flexibility he desired.

      Parents sometimes feel bad about prioritizing compensation over flexibility. Modern society sends us a lot of mixed signals about what we should be doing in our careers and lives, and it is easy to feel working parent guilt. But remember: providing for your family is every bit as important as being at every strings recital. There is no shame in your working parent

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