Me, Not Ambitious?

On Monday evening I attended an event to celebrate the publishing of a Harvard Business Review article called, "The Battle for Female Talent in Emerging Markets." The gist of the article is that in countries where multinationals are looking to grow their businesses (Brazil, Russia, India and China), they need women to do the work, but there are a multitude of factors blocking women from maintaining mid-level manager jobs.

The factors standing in women's way are elder care, safety, and travel issues. Childcare is either inexpensive or easily accessible, so is actually not as much of an obstacle. What stood out to me was the enormous differences between American women and women from these counties in answering the question, "Am I ambitious?" According to the study, women in BRIC countries feel ambitious at rates of 60% to 90%. In the US, the number is closer to 35%. So, what is going on? Have American women become fundamentally lazy?

I'd like to offer another perspective because I actually feel very ambitious. My sense is that women in these countries are ambitious for private and public sector jobs outside the home. And, because home life is still woven with centuries of tradition (often grandparents will take care of the children, which ensures continuity of cultural norms), the women are not as worried. In the US, women have gone a long way towards parity in the work world. What is suffering however, and what needs much of our ambition and attention, is our quality of life, our daily culture and civilization. In the US we are seeing unprecedented levels of obesity, high levels of anti-depressant use, childhood diseases like ADD, and the list goes on.

So, could it be that women who are deciding it's just not worth it to give all of our work energy to the office are actually very ambitious for fixing an ailing society? I know that personally I feel like lots of people can replace me at my old job. My greatest ambitions at this point are twofold. The first is to raise resourceful, productive, socially conscious and happy adults. The second is to focus on helping individuals, and eventually corporations, to develop sustainable rhythms for life and work. My mom and dad immigrated from France and Luxembourg, respectively, and enjoyed very nice economic and professional success in the US. But to my mind that success came at a cost. The daily rituals of French life in the food, the connections and the intimacy, were watered down to the point where they really missed it. Now spend more than four months a year in Europe.

I get it. I miss it too. And I believe that its these missing rituals that are creating so much disequilibrium in the US. So, let's not call us not ambitious...we have a lot of work to do!

New Ways To Work

In the last few weeks I have had renewed energy around the bigger picture for my business. I want to help companies and individuals find real solutions to sustained happiness and productivity. One big piece of the puzzle is around asking companies to talk to their employees and find out how to bring more humanity to the work place. The other piece involves helping people take better care of themselves and work better. To that end, I recently came across a coach whose perspective I find so interesting, Tony Schwartz and the Energy Project. In one Huffington Post blog, he talked about the benefits of stopping for lunch. Having worked for a company that did stop for lunch, I can tell you that I am a believer. We were so engaged and productive that we were growing at twice the industry average. A case of individuals and policy coming together beautifully.

A Coach for Gen X and beyond

For the last two years I have been focused on single women in mid-career who are frustrated at work, and longing for a family. I now see something much bigger. It's not that this group is not important. I was in that group, and I know from personal experience how important it is to shake things up. When I say something bigger I mean this:

In the last 50 years, our society has undergone massive change. Where once finishing college (for men), finding a good job, marrying and moving back to the town you grew up in was the formula for moving into adulthood, things have changed. We've had civil rights, feminism, geographic movement, globalization and technology, and divorce and layoffs on a mass scale. In short, our very foundations have been irreparably shaken.

At the same time, academia, Corporate America and the Baby Boomer generation have been slow to respond. The corporate hierarchy that was developed by Henry Ford and depression and war era executives has barely evolved. The vision of marriage as the answer to one's personal life is a firm as ever. As such, we are expected to do well in school, get the best job we can, eventually marry, and just be happy. And herein lies the rub...

So how do we evolve? My feeling is that by looking inward we find two things. One is our personal values, the ideals that drive us. The second is an organic rhythm that all humans share. The rhythm relies on recognizing our need for support and acknowledgement, being open to healthy communication that lets us honor ourselves and others, and pacing ourselves in a way that is sustainable.

I believe that coaching is a powerful tool towards this evolution. One at a time, we can find ways to make small changes that allow us to evolve the system without endangering its basic functioning. One at a time, we can come to a bigger collective happiness.

In Friday's New York Times Patricia Cohen had an article about delayed adulthood. It talks about how turning 21 no longer qualifies as a transition to adulthood. Traditionally, the model was that a person would turn 21, finish their studies, get a job, and marry within a few years. Now, people continue to study, and pursue long term professional goals so that marrying and family has become a lifestyle choice rather than a rite of passage.

The passage that stood out to me was this:

The stretched-out walk to independence is rooted in social and economic shifts that started in the 1970s, including a change from a manufacturing to a service-based economy that sent many more people to college, and the women’s movement, which opened up educational and professional opportunities.

I love this important shift in the rhetoric of career versus marriage. A few years ago, and even now, I read so often that women had chosen career over family. But I believe that for my generation, that was not quite right. My sense is that we did what was expected of us. Feminists were so enthused about the possibility of working that they consciously and unconsciously pushed their daughters to pursue professional achievement. No one was thinking what impact this might have on family. When I was 35 and longed for a family, I remember thinking, "When did I choose to put career first? I just did what I was told. I never thought I'd be here worrying that I might never have a family." (Note the following comment from the subject of the article: “That probably did have an influence,” she added, since her mother always encouraged her to get an education and have a career.) So what is the lesson here? I always say, change is good...particularly the massive changes of the last 50 years. But, we now have to work to rebalance the change and pull a new, more effective equilibrium from the fallout.

No doubt many saw last Sunday's NYT article about technology and multi-tasking. On the blog were many comments questioning whether the distractions of technology were in fact making us less efficient. We are a society geared toward production, so it is logical that people's main concern would be the risk to our thinking from multi-tasking.

From a different perspective, two things strike me about this article:

First, the photos show a couple at the breakfast table ignoring each other and talks at length about vacations ruined because of a husband's obsession with technology. So the question is, what is never pausing doing to our relationships? Can we really give one another the kind of support and acknowledgement that we need to grow and thrive when we are listening with one ear and checking email with the other?

Second, why do we all insist on doing everything at once? Many working mothers say, "You can have it all, just not at the same time." Well, whether it's balancing work and family life, getting the next promotion, developing a solid relationship, or traveling the world, focus is such a gift. When we limit ourselves to a few things at a time and avoid spreading ourselves too thin, each experience can be so much fuller and richer. Being present is a wonderful gift to the self.

The New Normal

In the two years that I have been coaching, there are three areas that I have been drawn to. The first, helping women optimize their careers. Finding what they are most passionate about, negotiating salary and title, managing office politics, or developing their own businesses. The second has been helping women find a relationship. I love strategizing about this and helping them overcome the fears and obstacles associated with the process. And the third, largely because of my recent experience, is around maternity leave and the obvious disconnect between the totally inadequate support in Corporate America and the reality that half of the workforce is now women. But for all this time, these topics have seemed so unrelated.

Very recently, however, it has fallen into place. In the last 50 years, there has been massive change in the US, both socially and economically. We saw feminism, civil rights, divorce on a mass scale, layoffs on a mass scale, globalization, geographic mobility, and technology and these movements, while overwhelmingly positive, have destabilized our expectations and ways of doing things. Women have been working alongside men, in the current iteration, for 30+ years. It is time for a merit-based system that finally recognizes womens' management styles and respects our softer negotiating skills. In relationships, people need to stop beating themselves up for struggling to find someone and learn how feminism has shifted how we court. I got this idea from Getting To I Do by Patricia Allen who may seem conservative, but has some very interesting perspectives. And finally, with working mothers now squarely entrenched in work, companies need to see the cost of having them leave in frustration when they could be valued long-term employees.

To me it's no accident that in the last presidential election, both democrats and republicans were talking about the need for a new reality. Our corporate systems were developed by depression and war-era children, and later by baby boomers. The formula was that you worked hard, postponed gratification, and enjoyed a beautiful retirement with your spouse. The problem is that today's middle management and up and comers lived through seeing marriage and lifetime employment go out the window. They don't trust these institutions and are not willing to postpone gratification indefinitely. The massive social, economic and geographic changes have left us with a perfect storm of life challenges, often without the support network of family and friends who understand. We are learning more and more that this new reality does respond favorably to a new kind of support. Life Coaching helps individuals regain control in a sea of uncertainty and pressure, and provides the tools and support to begin living a fulfilling and balanced life, on their terms.