By: Robert Waring
For women who want to lean back a bit from their careers in order to focus on their families, their situations may in some ways seem more difficult since the publication of Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In. Now that there is “a sort of” manual for how career driven women are supposed to conduct their careers, those who are not earnestly following those guidelines may be assumed not to be serious about their climb up the corporate ladder. The problem also may seem worse because Ms. Sandberg’s manual has been criticized as mostly useful to those women whose goal is to become senior executive, if not CEO, before they procreate.
If you view yourself as “ratcheter” – one who wants to dial it down to less than full time work for certain important family periods and keep your career focus full on the rest of the time – you may wonder how you can actually make that work. Don’t despair, Ms. Sandberg’s strategy provides some helpful tools to help you.
Her first useful precept is to ask, “What could you do if you were not afraid?” This question is easy to ponder in the abstract, but to actually execute some of your ideas you may actually have to lose most of your fear. There are self-help books for this and programs utilizing coaching or athletic challenges such as zip lining, rock climbing or white water rafting, to name just a few. Another Sandbergian precept, choosing a supportive life partner, may also be key to conquering fear, especially if that partner earns enough income to keep your family afloat if your worst fears are realized and you are fired, or in British parlance, made redundant.
Her third precept, finding sponsors, can be crucial to helping you create an opportunity for reduced hours. As Richard Throne put it, “Mentoring is talking with you about you; sponsorship is talking about you to others.” If you are brave enough and have cultivated a good set of in company sponsors, you’ll want to enlist their support in convincing your managers that you are such a valuable employee that losing you would be bad for the business. Most important here is to set accurate expectations about what performance you will deliver while ratcheted down and when you will return to full time. Not only is delivering on what you promise important to your career in this situation, but it is essential to maintain your credibility if you might ever need to ratchet down again. Failing to deliver also does a huge disservice to others who might need to dial back their own work schedules.
Lastly, if you are able to do part time, don’t dial back your enthusiasm for your career and your company. Follow a fourth precept: sit at the table and raise your hand in meetings. Much of the data on workplace flexibility policies shows that they breed loyalty. Demonstrate your appreciation.
Guest post by Robert Waring:
Robert Waring is the author of Upside Down: The Paradoxes of Gender in the Twenty-first Century. His essays on workplace flexibility have been featured in The New York Times. His other writing has covered the First Amendment, the privacy of mental health information, and how films portray law, lawyers and the legal system. He has worked in a wide range companies from small to large, both foreign and domestic, including Citibank and IBM. He also founded a small business with a dozen employees. As an attorney he has practiced employment law, worked with California’s judiciary and legislature crafting hundreds of laws, and has been court-appointed counsel for thousands of children in foster care. Follow him on Twitter @upsidedownbook and at www.upsidedownbook.net.
