Laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, doctor and dentist
appointments can be a full time job! Layer in birthday parties, extracurricular
activities like dance, gymnastics and church and you officially have and you
have taken on a side job too. Being the
mother of a nearly 2 ½ year old, high energy, very advanced toddler makes for a
full life and never a dull moment.
Before there was Tallis and her wonderful father Alfonso,
there was just me: Gina. I was fully
dedicated to my career. As an operations
and process improvement professional with more than a decade of experience
managing complex customer interactions and providing high touch consumer
affairs for multiple Fortune 500 companies, I already had a hectic and very
full life. No stranger to 12 -16 hour
days on a regular basis, I built my life around my very successful career.
Then along came Tallis!
Everything changed for me at the age of 35. There was this wonderful,
beautiful,
fully dependent baby girl, and those first 6 weeks were
awesome! 100% dedicated to the care and
loving of my unexpected blessing, I was on cloud 9! When Tallis was 7 weeks
old, I picked up my briefcase and laptop and headed back into the office,
something I had done day in and day out for more than 10 years, yet now
something was different. For the first six months I struggled to reengage in my
career. Although fulfilling all of my responsibilities
and performing equal to my colleagues, my heart was no longer in it. I spent months soul-searching and asking myself
“Why?” It seemed surreal to me; my career had always brought me so much joy,
but now it was just a job, a 9-5, a pay check.
Realizing that I was experiencing a transition, I set out to
alter my mindset and find a work-life balance that worked for me and my family.
Partnering with Tallis’s father, President and Founder of Alfonso Todd &
Associates and Prolifick Media, I threw every spare moment into his
business. My role is supporting event
planning, coordination, and web design, overseeing the technical aspects of his
complicated media business. I do all of
this while still managing a high-stress, highly visible career and a family
life. Working alongside Alfonso every
night, partnering and delivering for our clients was uniquely empowering for me
and rewarding for the business; Alfonso Todd & Associates and Prolifick
Media were growing and requiring more and more attention. Having spent my
entire career working with Fortune 500 companies, catering to and delivering
for the small business owner was rewarding in a way that I never had
imagined. Over time, my creative juices,
my fire and passion for my career re-ignited and before I even realized it my
career was on fire again.
This created another transition; now finding myself with two
full-time jobs, a rambunctious 2 year old and a home life to manage, I was at a
crossroads. Something had to change, change
being the key word because I was determined to not sacrifice the quality and
quantity of work I supplied. In this
transition I realized something that became imperative to my ongoing success: I
was not ever going to be, nor am I required to be Superwoman. It is okay to ask for help, set expectations
and still deliver quality product on time.
Newly empowered to fail at being Superwoman, I became a
better communicator. It’s okay to shift
priorities. It’s okay to rely on your partner or spouse, colleagues and
friends. There are days that your child
can’t be your number one priority in the traditional sense of the phrase and
that is OKAY. That’s what your
partner/spouse and family is for. It’s
okay to let your child be his/her father’s number one priority for a day while
you manage through a crisis at work. This was the toughest transition of all
for me: communicating with Alfonso, my colleagues and peers at work; being able
to set expectations and boundaries that differentiated my personal and
professional lives. Success in doing
this ultimately relied on the following key elements:
·
Setting expectations that you are walking out
the door at 5pm regardless of what’s happening on set days per week.
o
Alfonso and I keep a schedule of Monday and
Wednesday he picks up Tallis and on Tuesday and Thursday I pick up Tallis with
alternating Fridays. Both Alfonso and I
do have the flexibility in our schedules to rely on each other if that has to
change. However, generally speaking
everyone knows I am walking out at 5pm on Tuesday and Thursday and can be
reached via mobile phone after that.
·
Making yourself available fully after hours is
imperative.
o
If you have to walk out the door at a set time,
you don’t have the luxury of drawing a hard line of “don’t call after 6PM.” I make myself available all hours and on
weekends. (I have been known to schedule meetings on a weekend myself). I have found that generally peers,
colleagues, subordinates and even superiors are respectful of my time unless something
is truly urgent.
·
Managing your value quotient.
o
Having learned that you are only as good as your
last success, I end each day evaluating the value I have brought to my
organization and preparing to create additional value the next day. Having for
years been caught up in “tasks” which are a necessary evil, I have transitioned
to daily management of my value quotient to the organizations I support, including
my family.
Managing 2 careers, a family, relationships and life in
general can be a daunting task; each day priorities
shift. Each new challenge creates energy and passion
for what I do. You can find your work-life
balance too: start with handing in your Superwoman cape;, you don’t need it. What you do need are boundaries, flexibility
and a daily value quotient evaluation.
Gina is a results-oriented business professional with over 14 years in the marketing, customer service, consumer affairs, sales and pharmaceutical industries working with Fortune 100 and 500 companies. Learn more about her on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/ginablevins/ and visit www.epicenterus.com
