MOTHERS IN THE BUSINESS WORLD

OONCE YOU HAVE a child, succeeding at work becomes a different matter. Whereas before, you had lots of time and energy, these are in short supply after the little ones arrive. The time you have for your career development needs to be spent carefully and ruthlessly. Here are some ideas and strategies that have worked for me.

Role Models

Seeing women who are mothers in senior roles is a great motivator and can show women who aspire that they can continue to grow their careers. Look through your company website to identify these women, and if possible, ask for a mentor and list these women as your favourites.

Leadership Training

Leadership can be taught. We can all learn skills that will benefit our careers, but we must invest the time to develop ourselves.

When I was younger, I saw men and women promoted and weren’t sure what they had done to achieve this. It seemed that this success came from nowhere. After attending a leadership course for women, I learnt some excellent skills and learnt to do the same. I learnt how to influence different situations, and when a restructuring came along got promoted.

Understanding You

This first step of understanding yourself is essential because you must develop a leadership style that suits you. Adopting one that you think will work but is not ‘you’ will be exhausting and unsuccessful over the long term. Women must lead in a way which is authentic to themselves. Sometimes senior women become more aggressive and act like men, which is damaging to the women themselves. Women need to develop leadership styles which suit their personalities.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

You will progress much faster if you understand this and can communicate it to others who can help you. Of course, people want to help, but you do need to let them. This is all part of understanding yourself, so spend the time to work it out.

Networking

Often women have excellent networks and contacts. If you work out where you want to go and share this with your manager and contacts in related areas, then in my experience, people are very ready to help. If you are attending an event, look through the contact list before arriving and determine who could help you. If you research them through Linkedin and find a common interest, this is a good conversation starter.

Project Management

Companies organise themselves in different ways. If you have a choice to work in one which uses PM or agile to organise tasks, jump at it. By allocating work in this way, women can contribute visibly, and their contribution is seen more quickly.

Decision Making

When important decisions are made, the time to influence that decision is in the many weeks before the meeting. First, seek out and talk to the relevant people and point out the value of your stance and how it can benefit them. Then, work out the alliances and influence them. When restructuring occurs, people often feel despondent. Restructures usually change vertical businesses into horizontal structures or vice versa. When this happens, it creates new roles. In this situation, you need to see where your strengths lie and where they would fit in the new structure, then approach the new director of the newly created section early.

Experienced Collegues

When I started befriending senior staff, I was surprised to realise something. Just by virtue of knowing me, the senior staff member would assume I was good at my job and ready for promotion. Luckily for them, I was good at my job, but I could have been terrible! Nevertheless, it meant I was at the forefront of their thoughts when opportunities arose. Good luck! THE-INTL

IIN DENMARK, MAY is the month when motherhood is celebrated. This year, Mothering Sunday is on 14 May. A lot of cards, flowers, and lunches will mark the occasion.

WHY IS IT SO CELEBRATED?

Mothers are fêted so much, as they are the initial lifeline for a child. The maternal connection is intense, with nine months of pregnancy, childbirth, and, for some, breastfeeding. And this is only the beginning of the relationship!

One version of the family unit includes a mother and a partner. However, in a changing landscape, there are a variety of family units, and there is not always a partner. This often leads to a discussion about its impact on a child.

CAN A CHILD BE RAISED SUCCESSFULLY BY A SINGLE PARENT?

The demands on a parent are enormous and endless. There are many aspects to handle, such as child rearing, family wellbeing, education, socialisation, work, and household chores, to mention only a few.

It is a challenge, for sure. This piece focuses on single mothers, as they form the majority of cases. There are approximately 112,000 single mothers in Denmark. Single-mother families comprise 29 percent of households, while single-father families only constitute 16 percent of households. Research shows that a child with a mother with little formal education and a lack of appreciation for the need to capitalise on the formative years up to five years old does disadvantage a child. A child enters kindergarten with lower cognitive skills and then faces more ground to catch up, which is not always possible.

If a mother is working several jobs or hours, as women are typically in lowerpaid jobs, and her child needs to be supervised by others, there is not always the time or energy to create learning activities after a long day. However, this does not mean that a mother is not invested, just challenged by economic factors.

Where there is acute economic hardship, a mother focuses on survival; there is no space for anything more. In this situation, the odds of a child having a positive upbringing are limited.

The reality of such a situation is that a child comes to school malnourished and