Navigating Careers While Expecting

0:08 hi everyone welcome to another episode of the skip podcast I'm your host Nel singal today's episode is actually what I'm calling a pcast yes I made that up and perhaps it's repeated by someone else but you know I'm going to take credit for it pcast is a short form versions of my podcast and in this case what I found was I was doing a zoom call with someone who's in my network and she was asking me about an upcoming

0:35 maternity leave and you know she and I been talking a couple of times over the past year about how to navigate a job search she'd had a role at a company where she wasn't really excited about the direction of where they were going felt like she'd been there for enough time that she wanted to start a search but was trying to balance that with Family Planning and you know these episodes this pcast is just a clip from

0:57 the conversation we had and it's an illust ation of a framework that I've published in a past episode when it comes to burnout I talk a little bit about how to navigate maternity leave and my advice is look you can have it all but not at the same time that sometimes you have to sequence what you're trying to achieve careers are long and in some ways the perhaps framework that's maybe made you the professional you've had in the past

1:26 doesn't apply as you add new constraints or new opportunities in this case she's starting a family and she can't operate in the same decisioning framework she had when that wasn't actually part of the equation but those are hard conversations and sometimes these Concepts need an illustration so I sought permission from her to actually take the conversation we had which I record in Zoom for training purposes regenerate her side because she wanted to maintain some confidentiality so

1:53 you'll hear a sort of a fake voice really saying the same things that she said to me in the zoom call and then I'm ultimately releasing the audio of what I presented to her in that conversation so hopefully you'll like the episode it'll be good illustration of a past framewor obviously love to get feedback from you but why don't we move to the conversation I'm pregnant with my first kid and I've been feeling stuck in a job

2:16 that frankly I'm not loving I've held off on job hunting because of fertility treatments and now the pregnancy so I feel a bit trapped but anyway something interesting happened my company analytics AI is going through a massive reorganization my manager offered me a spot on the new leadership team he gave me two choices either keep a spot open for when I come back from maternity leave or put my name on it now but only if I commit to coming back for at least

2:41 a year it's a bigger role as a senior director overseeing more than $50 million in ARR and look I was pretty sure I wasn't coming back but now I'm not so sure what do you think about all of this I I think this was kind of a no-brainer that you want to sort of take this one and ask for your name to be attached to it I I only see upside the only downside that we could create is if

3:08 you absolutely hate the role that you've been suggested to return to having said that what you're suggesting is it it's potentially a senior director in scope it is a role that might be more interesting than per role that you have or at least equally interesting yes I don't have to be trying to understand work life home and build credibility with a new organization I have a lot of that context already my boss is someone

3:39 that trusts me and you know if a role comes along and I start actively or passively looking I'm able to sort of compare it nicely with what I have today I'm just going to settle into this new role and see how it goes and then wait until the summer and then I can start cautiously looking yeah you're right and it is a better role but it's not going to be an easy role it's kind of a

4:03 wartime situation with a lot of strategy changes I need to implement one thing that bugs me about the current company is that it's just not growing in terms of dollars it's more of a firefighting situation I mean I think that the question that you should ask yourself is sort of what are we trying to maximize and there's like three or four things we can maximize we can maximize the ability to have time to search for a new job we

4:27 can maximize the flexibility to come back in as peaceful of a way as possible you can maximize home life you can maximize the search for the next job the speed in which we find the next job we can maximize the career potential as it exists today you can maximize the stories that you have or learnings you have as you go through the next roles

4:58 these things are not all going to being in harmony to one another my suggestion is that look careers are very very very long so the thing that you want to maximize In This Moment especially if we're having this conversation in five years is you're going to say look promotion this month next month the ability to sort of get this project three versus project four you know this of this amount versus none of it really mattered what really mattered at this

5:29 moment is for me to be able to do one thing well at a time and so my suggestion is do pregnancy well that is a okay thing to do settle into post pregnancy in a career additive position there is no doubt what you're describing as you noted is career additive there is ways to maximize that Cote on promotion C note on playing with maybe the portfolio but what I would say is that maybe we

6:00 don't necessarily maximize career in the current role but we certainly see a better career option and so when you come to me and you say hey I'm pregnant going to be on leave with which I have generous policy and I'll come back to a better role than I have today I'm like we're very much in the green then what we have perhaps delayed is we've delayed our ability to start an Nest our job search that's mostly a factor of

6:33 pregnancy that's not a factor of the quote unquote commitment that you've made though there is some likeness there but I think the pregnancy will almost Force the same timeline as the note I'm making than what the commitment means and I'm trying to come back in a more settled position than I am trying to like improve the speed of promotion because I think that that's yet another stress that frankly is just not worth it what I really like is the fact that

7:03 you're able to have a good conversation with your manager your manager very open with you about your choices that's going to play well if you need more time you need more flexibility if work tends to be difficult if the role you know tends to be complicated or filled with politics you're going to want a manager who's got your back and then if you decide to start a new job you're going to want as much space to do a great job in the

7:28 first six to 12 months I don't think the Market's going away I don't think the current role you're describing is weaker these are the two things that I would say could change our opinion but those are actually the opposite and so I'm very confident this is the right right Council here I've just been so anxious about moving forward for over a year now with all this AI stuff happening there are tons of startups out there so I

7:55 guess my question is like am I playing it too safe by staying Maybe should just quit and look for something while I'm not working yeah and I think that the way you should rationalize it is I think you should state that you know it is true you are playing it safer than you could but I think the rationale for that and I think this is a very key Point sometimes we play it safe but then the

8:16 question is are you not taking the biggest job at the best company that you could and then the question is if that is not happening why is that the articulation of the answer here is not timidness nor inability to manage a search it is a direct consequence of decisioning on your health and your family in the next set of years you're going to say that was a correct decision you are not going

8:46 to say I wish I had traded off my health and my family to a better company but that is the implication of you feeling anxious your anxiety is heavily connected to to saying that you're trading off your career because of your health you are never going to regret that you've been given quite a gift a safe re-entry and you've been given the gift of a family because you're in a company that allowed you to actually

9:17 invest in that the good news is when you are ready to reemerge and restack your prioritization the market will not only support you but will likely look at you as a senior director and in the market who was working in AI in Enterprise it it's only going to be a richual market for you to so like from my perspective it's all roses but mentally I have a lot of empathy for the note and this is the

9:42 first time in your life that you've actually priortize something that's different and you manage your career quite effectively this is the correct calculus that's the reason why I'm pushing the way I you're absolutely right I guess I'm just reacting to a different way of making decisions I've always put my career first and now I'm being asked to prioritize something else to be honest like it feels weird and that's okay because what's gotten you here is different from what's getting

10:09 you to the next stage and my note is that this is temporal it's okay because careers are long and this is the right investment you can imagine a scenario which is much more complicated and much more murky I can imagine a scenario as we described which is the go forward plan is maybe more concerning let's say say they gave you a package full out come back with nothing and that seems scary and now we're having a much more

10:36 like do I take the step away or make a commitment to something I know I don't want to do just for the purposes of safety and now I'm in a real trade-off situation thankfully we're not here it's okay to sort of look at this a little bit more longer term so I think the question is going to be once you come back you'll have a lot better sense of how much energy you want to put in what

10:56 type of ambiguity you want to go solve Etc the very nice thing about what we do is that there's always a list that's why I think that since you have this positive it's almost a no-brainer thank you so much this is super helpful I think I've been so focused on not missing out on career opportunities that I almost missed the opportunity right in front of me to grow into a new role while also growing my family hopefully

11:19 this advice resonated with you if you're navigating a work life situation or an upcoming leave or perhaps maternity and you don't think that this advice quite applies you have a particular twist that would be helpful for me to weigh in on I want to hear from you we can kind of Workshop this together and maybe present this on a future pcast as well as you know I want to update my Frameworks make sure it's always applying to as many

11:43 people as possible thanks for listening to the skip if today's episode resonated with you please consider leaving a review or sharing it with the people you know who want more out of their career you can always subscribe my podcast on Apple Spotify YouTube or wherever you currently listen you can also follow me on my newsletter at substack and if you have questions or comments you know email me at Nel skip. Community or leave a comment send me a note on LinkedIn

12:06 Twitter threads I try to answer each one directly as always I'm Nel and this has been the skip