Making the most of the summer

With Wimbledon and the World Cup behind us, you'll probably be thinking about the long summer ahead and how to fill all those weeks until school starts again. You're unlikely to be thinking much about how you can get yourself back to work, at least until the summer is over. However, the summer can provide you with time to step away from your usual routine, to think and reflect and to implement some changes at home, all of which will lay strong foundations for your return to work. At the same time do take time to relax and recharge so that you are refreshed and full of energy when autumn comes around.

Here are some ideas of helpful and simple activities you can do during the summer:

• Create a network chart

Even if you aren't ready to start networking, it is never too early to start creating your network chart. Divide your chart into three distinct categories on which you list everyone you can think of from different phases of your life: people from your past (your school and university classmates as well as former employers, colleagues and employees); your present (fellow parents and people you meet through voluntary work, hobbies or neighbourhood); and future (networks and groups you have yet to join). This is the kind of activity you can do all summer long, adding names as you think of them. Even if you start the summer thinking that you don't have a network, you'll be surprised how your chart grows.

• Get clearer about what will fulfill you and what you might do next

Whether you have too many choices or too few, a useful way to think about what to do next is to think back to a work role (or part of a role) that you found fulfilling and reflect on what made it so. Our recent post describes a process for uncovering more about what gives you fulfillment.  As these factors are related to your deep values, they will continue to be of great importance to you in the future. By working out what's important to you, you'll gain motivation to search for your next role. And you can identify clues about what you want to do next: there might be elements of a previous role that you can craft into a new one or an idea for a business or a desire to retrain in an area which interests you.

• Practise your story 

If you are going away somewhere and meeting new people that you are unlikely to see again, this provides a low risk way to practice telling your story. You can test out an answer to the dreaded question of ‘what do you do?’, refine it and get used to saying it. Telling your story might even lead to a networking opening, as I discovered when telling my story to the father of a family with whom my family had shared a hot, dusty and uncomfortable beach buggy ride.  He turned out to be a partner in a big four accounting firm and after the holiday introduced me to his head of HR, a great addition to my network.

• Prepare your family

The summer is a great time to make changes to the family routines and responsibilities away from the hectic schedule of the school year.  If you're hoping to go back to work, you'll need to prepare your family for the changes that will be required of them.  For younger children, this might be a new kind of after school care or route to school.  For older children, you might want them to start taking responsibility for organising their sports kit, making their own packed lunches or doing laundry.  You'll know best what adjustments you will need your family to make, to support your return to work, and the more preparation they have the easier it will be.  Read our posts on combating guilt feelings if these get in the way of making the changes that will help you. 

Have a good summer, rest and recharge.  We'll also be taking time to relax and recharge and will be back in a month's time.

Posted by Katerina

How to identify work you will find fulfilling

As Julianne highlighted last week, when we think about returning to work we can focus too much on family-friendly work rather than work that will be fulfilling. In our effort to find work that will fit with the rest of our lives and commitments, we can miss this fantastic opportunity to identify what we will find sustaining and will give us a sense of purpose for the years ahead. It can be very easy, as a career break mum, to fill the days with voluntary roles, hobbies, seeing friends and caring for others.  I know - I've done it! These activities can make you feel useful and valued and busy but will they sustain you in the longer term?

The hidden bonus of being on a career break is that it allows the time and opportunity to do some thinking about what gives you meaning and what is really important to you. This is great preparation for your return to work, when you are ready, as it helps you to get a clearer idea on the direction you want to take. If you're not sure of your future path, and would like to investigate the type of work you find fulfilling and purposeful, this is a process you can follow:

1. Take yourself away to a quiet place where you will not be distracted by tasks or people and are able to think for an hour or so.
2. Think back over your working life and focus on one or two times when you felt a sense of personal fulfillment. Make a note of what you were doing, who else was around you, your location, your emotions and any other details you remember.
3. Think about what it was that gave you a sense of fulfillment. This is about more than simply feeling successful, although that might be a component.  To get to what's underneath feeling successful, ask yourself what you felt successful in and what this meant to you. For example, were you solving an impossible problem, helping others & making a difference, being recognised as an expert, ...? 
4. Think about what you were doing and what was going on around you in these times of fulfillment. For example, were you:
1. Working alone or part of a team
2. Part of a large organisation or striking out on your own
3. Working with data, working with things/products or dealing with people (or a mixture of these) 
4. Thinking through ideas and theories or carrying out practical actions with concrete results
5. Developing/influencing others and/or developing yourself?

You might find it useful to talk this through with a trusted friend to help you to reflect on what was most important to you in these situations. Through asking yourself these questions, you will gain more clarity about what success at work means to you and the nature of the work and the surroundings you need in order to feel most fulfilled. In this way, you will start to form a clearer sense of your own purpose which can guide your search for a new worthwhile role.  What better way to spend an hour or so this Summer?

Posted by Katerina

Family-friendly rather than fulfilling work?

Why do our imaginations desert us when we're considering our job options after a long career break? There are 949 job occupations listed in the O*Net database, yet there's only one that is mentioned consistently in the career conversations I have with returning women: Teacher.

Some of you may be inspired by the day-to-day reality of creating lesson plans and motivating a class of schoolchildren. But from my experience, you're in the small minority. For most women thinking about teaching, the strongest appeal is the long holidays and a belief that it will 'fit with the family'. 

Are you asking yourself the wrong question?

This isn't the moment to go into the realities of teaching (which can be far from family-friendly as there is almost no flexibility about where and when you work). The point is that you may be starting with the wrong question. Rather than "What job is family friendly?", ask yourself "What job will I find fulfilling and energising?", then work out how you can make it family-friendly. Going back to work after a break is a wonderful opportunity to pause and consider what you really want to do: what motivates you, what do you most enjoy doing, what do you have a real pull towards? Do you need to retrain or can you create a role in your old field or something similar that fits with your family life.

Why is this important?

Working will inevitably make your life more complicated; the trade-off of work for family time needs to feel worthwhile. As I've mentioned before, research shows that satisfying work can make for a happier home life and give you more energy as a parent. If standing up in front of a class of 30 children day in day out brings you out in a cold sweat rather than brings a smile to your face, then you're likely to feel drained and exhausted as a teacher and the long holidays will never compensate. This is not the route to work-family balance. And the same 'Will it be energising for me?" test applies to any other positions you are considering.

Is it this a realistic strategy?

Our experience working with returners and the success stories on our blog demonstrate that flexibility can be found in a huge variety of sectors and roles. If you're clear what you want,what you can contribute and the working pattern that will best suit you, then you are far more likely to find and/or negotiate a fulfilling role that gives you the balance you are looking for. 

Is it time to consider a few of the other 948 occupations?

Posted by Julianne