Getting back to business after years of child care is tricky!

While we @MyCollective focus on new parents returning to their careers right after parental leave, there are also many women who leave their jobs for a prolonged time to take care of their family. We talk to Dr. Patricia Widmer about how they can come back. 

Patricia is the Vice Director at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and has set up University programmes specifically for this – including the „Women Back to Business” programme and the „Career Relaunch“ conference.

She has found that finding the way back to a career-path is linked to three things, not all of which are within our control, but some of which very much are:

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 our social circle (including our family)

👩🏼‍💻 our workplace environment

👧🏻 ourselves! Our sense of what we can do, and what we expect from ourselves. 

In this podcast, she has lots of excellent advice on how we can impact those three circles, as she calls them. Ways in which we can manage expectations at home, at work – and our own. 

As a mother of two teenagers, she also has some valuable experience of her own to share 💕

Speaker: Dr. Patricia Widmer, Vice Director University of St. Gallen

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Dr. Patricia Widmer

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

During a stay in Shanghai Dr. Bettina Al-Sadik Lowinski, Master Certified coach, decided to do a PhD on how woman rise to the top. The result of her ongoing research – spanning 110 interviews in five countries – is her latest book, “Women in Top Management.”

In today’s podcast she shares some of her findings – all fascinating, and many surprising. 80% of the executives that she spoke to in China, Japan, Germany, Russia and France were mothers, which she didn’t expect. „In my coaching younger women in Germany hesitate to make a career with kids. What holds them back often is this „raven mother“ stigma.” she says. “ In Germany due to our socialization we hear, well that’s not possible, or it’s really difficult. In my global research I have found many women in senior functions who master their career with children. They organize support, they free themselves from expectations and they have defined their professional targets well!” 🙌🏽

But she also found that – at least among the current crop of top managers who are now in their late 40s and 50s – fluid working models are still very rare. That makes it all more important for those of us now coming back from parental leave to blaze a new trail, and to pioneer new and innovative working models at our companies – so that they become the norm in the next generation. “The near future will tell us which newer work models will support mothers but also fathers best,” says Bettina.

Which brings us back to the power of #rolemodels. Bettina found that in countries where there are a lot of women in middle to upper management, the whole work culture has changed as a result – in China, work dinners happen earlier, so that people can go home earlier. Women are powerful role models in their own families as well – women who were raised by working mothers have their role model from early childhood on. It is important that each woman finds her own paths and once decided, they should not feel guilty.

Speaker: Dr. Bettina Al-Sadik Lowinski – Author, Speaker, International Executive Coach (MCC), Founder of global Women Career Lab

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Bettina Al-Sadik-Lowinski

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

Digital Me – a new identity in times of digitalisation with Dominique Leikauf

What do people find when they google you? And how can we make sure that they find what we want them to find? 

Shaping your digital presence is easier than many people think, says author and entrepreneur Dominique Leikauf, and you don’t need a social media team to do it. It’s about defining who we are and what we stand for – asking ourselves questions that will help shape our jobs, contacts and quality of life – not just online, but offline too 🌻

Start by asking yourself: 

⭐︎ Who am I and what do I do? Think outside the box here: if you are a creative, a parent and someone fun, you can own all of those things 🤟🏽

⭐︎ out of all the topics that I’ve been working on or engaged with, which have been most rewarding and important to me?  

⭐︎ which issues would I like to work on more? 

⭐︎ which topics do other people most associate me with – correctly or incorrectly? How can I change that perception so that it better fits who I am? 

⭐︎ who is your target group? 

And then

📝 make sure that your bios, descriptions and online interests match who you are, and include topics that you want to focus on;

👩‍👩‍👦‍👦 add the people in your target group and people whose interests match yours to your network;

💌 share, post, ❤️ the things that interest you and reflect your worldview. 

The rest will happen organically!

Let us know if you have any tips of your own to share ❤️

Speaker:  Dominique Leikauf, Diversity & Culture lead at DKB Service / Contributing author, Zukunftsrepublik

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Dominique Leikauf

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL: own your career during your parental leave 

We may think that the decisions we take in our relationships about care work and careers are private – but in reality they are always shaped by cultural, political and sociological contexts, says renowned sociologist Prof. Jutta Allmendinger.

Does this mean that we are helplessly trapped within the gender bias that’s inherent in our culture? No. „Our society still has this implicit idea that a child belongs to the mother,” says Prof. Allmendinger. „But children develop wonderfully, regardless of whether you spend 50% of your time in the labour market, or 80%, or full-time. What matters is quality time with your children, so that they can feel your love. This is the important thing.”

So if both is important to you: a family with children and a successful career, then you should tune in to this week’s podcast with Prof. Allmendinger. 📝 She will speak about her 4-point plan on how to combine family and career.

And she will explain, why there actually is such a thing as taking parental leave that’s too short, with negative effects on the labour market.

Speaker: Prof. Dr. h.c. Jutta Allmendinger, Ph.D., President of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: ©WZB/David Ausserhofer

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #genderbias #unconsciousbias #parentalleave #femalecareers #carework #relationshipgoals #getinspiredpodcast #ImpulseSessions #womenchangemakers #womenleaders #parenthood

BE THE CHANGE: How to make the world better, starting at home

Have you ever had childcare plans fall through and you had to take your child to work? 

How did people react? Did you feel judged for not having your life under control? Or were you congratulated on your excellent multitasking? 

Your response may depend on whether you’re male or female, says Micha Fritz. The activist and social entrepreneur had exactly that happen to him when his wife went on her first overseas work trip after giving birth, and he ended up having to give a speech while he was literally holding the baby. „Afterwards all the people came to me and were like, “Ey, so super, so avant-garde,” he says. „And I just asked two people, “Would you have said the same thing to my wife, or would she just have been really badly organised?” And their faces just fell, because they realised.”

Micha has made a career of driving change, making the world better, being a positive role model. But since he became a father, he also sees the changes that need to happen at home. It started with a parenting workshop that his wife set up just for the two of them when they were first juggling parenthood and care work – complete with „the flipchart, and the brainstorming, the prototyping and the presentation.” 🤓

He explains it beautifully in today’s podcast, but in case you want to try this at home, here’s an overview of what they did: 

📝 Together, brainstorm a list of every task you can think of linked to child- and home-care.

🗓 Organise the list into daily, weekly, monthly, annual tasks.

⏱ Work out roughly how much time is spent on each task, in total, in an average month / year.

👫 Split that time between the people actually doing those tasks.

👩‍❤️‍👨 Add up the totals and if the balance is completely off, make it fairer! (Tip – it helps to take each other’s individual strengths into account when redistributing tasks)

„We realised that my wife was doing about 750 or 760 hours, and I was doing about 200,” says Micha. So they fixed that.

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #culturalchange #genderimbalance #genderbalance #dads #carework #activism #changestartsathome #changemakers #diversity #parentalleave #getinspiredpodcast #parenthood

Speaker: Micha Fritz, Founder and CEO of Viva Con Aqua (amongst others!) 

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Micha Fritz

Graphic & Production: MyCollective