How parenting improved my professional soft skills

In June this year, my (first) son was born, and my motherhood journey has begun.

No matter what people around you may have described it, parenting is a unique experience that will surely overcome all expectations you had. More joyful and yet more challenging, for sure.

I encourage myself to be a better person and more efficient every day, which is hard work if you imagine that, now, the needs of another human being always come first.

As I prepare my return to work, I realize that throughout these months, many personal changes have occurred that allowed me to adapt to my new life as a mother and caretaker.

Parenting helped me polish some soft skills and introduced me to new competencies. Check out the list and let me know if, as a parent, you recognize yourself.

Tackling a newborn’s requests is a full-time job. One may predict a specific timeframe, yet no baby comes with an exact timetable for his naps, diapers change, feeding or cuddling moments.

The level of attention required by a baby is high, urgent and significant. Everything else becomes secondary. I can’t tell you how many times I need to turn on and off the iron while taking care of clothes, or how many days I took to plan and write down this whole article! Interruptions are unpredictable and occur several times a day.

I developed a technique to have things done — what I call the progressive effect. This method requires one to master the art of prioritization, breaking down an initiative by milestones, and a lot of patience!

Consider taking care of yourself to go out. If this activity would take 1 hour in the past, I’m sorry to inform you that times have changed. In order to attend the baby necessities, I first prioritize my actions. If I only had 5 minutes to get ready, what would I do first? Getting dressed and looking decent should suffice. That would be my first milestone. The second one, if I have a few more minutes or can return to the task, later on, would be to put some makeup. Then, restyle the hairdo and maybe rethink the accessories… and so on. You see, once you guarantee that the big picture is set up, you can return to refine it and pay attention to details.

I apply the same method to my work. If a deadline is tight, first I guarantee that the deliverable is done and stable. We can always come back later to polish, but the backbone of the work is there and ready to be presented if needed.

The idea is that the prime tasks can’t be neglected, as it would jeopardize your performance as well as the rest of the activities.

The other way around is also plausible. Maybe you don’t have the time or mindset to dig into a complex, time-consuming activity at the moment? Perhaps that is fine, and you don’t need to lose your temper.

Consider taking the chance to check on your to-do list what smaller assignments you can solve with the amount of time (and mental availability) you have. In fact, once you immediately solve those granular tasks, you clear your road to tackle bigger rocks. Make lemonade out of those lemons — I mean, make the best of the time you have in hand.

Life is easier when we trust that the items we need to perform a specific task are conveniently clean and kept on their expected place.

This sentence may seem like a simple truth, but makes all sense when we have a dirty crying baby in the middle of the night and need a safe area with diapers and wipes at hand… A change of clothes nearby is also very welcome!

If I used to be very tidy before, becoming a mom made me a stowage queen, much like Marie Kondo. I find it very useful for myself and other caretakers and provides this sense of feeling in control — you know, always be prepared for any need.

Tidiness at work is also a matter of respect to other colleagues. Files and deliverables need to be shared, updated, re-used by many team members. Therefore it makes sense that our working ecosystem is always organized, well documented and available. It’s a matter of professional honour.

Working moms (and eventually dads) are easy to distinguish at a startup because they’re the ones who won’t do a break to relax and play. Their work is done on schedule so they can leave at 5 pm sharp. So you got the picture, right?

Being responsible for another human being compresses our time and heart. Parents need to be freed up once their duties are accomplished, so they can pick up the kids and go home to resume a lot of housekeeping and caring activities.

Parents do more during their working period because they’re focused and motivated. They need to give attention and love to another area of their life, and they have the rush to do it effectively at a precise timeframe.

Efficiency is also a skill developed because we need to carry a young human with us all around, be faster while doing things and investing as few resources as needed. Moving things or ourselves can turn into a small project that is better solved with some planning and thinking first.

Handling the numerous, small challenges that motherhood puts in my way every day takes a lot of thinking outside the box… Especially when one solution is never the right one for many days in a row!

Our creative nature and spontaneity expand as kids grow up. Their needs become more complex, gain words and sometimes shoutings. The art of negotiation then comes into place.

If you have already been introduced to Mindfulness key principles, you will try to listen and comprehend what is the need behind the child’s request to, therefore, work on a remedy that sounds good for both parts.

If you master the art of negotiation with a kid, I believe that any negotiation at work will seem like a piece of cake.

After becoming a mother, I started looking at other parents with a different filter. With less criticism for sure, with more heart and openness.

When we are assured that everyone does their very possible best in every situation, we become accountable for showing respect and offering our help.

As a professional, this thought inspires me to be more conscious when providing a critique, more open to hearing different approaches and solutions, more permeable to err and failure, more available to offer a helping hand as well as to reach out for help when needed.

Becoming a parent is a time of growth and transformation. Those who imagine that the parental leave resembles a long holiday couldn’t be farther from the truth. Indeed, this is a unique period that allows parents to adjust to their new life and routines while getting to know all about the marvellous newborn. Along the way, new competencies are acquired, skills are mastered, and senses are sharpened in a way that takes us, as professionals, to the next level.

Share your own experience or thoughts about what you’ve learned as a parent or caretaker, that made you a better professional. I’d love to hear more about it.

Related posts:

If you meet my parents you will not be able to guess that they have a complex relationship with me. They are extremely functional as a couple and have always been so. They’ve been together since…

What do I mean by invest in yourself? I mean that you should take the time — and spend the money — necessary to do things that will make you a better or smarter person, more creative, more well-read…

Combine was introduced as a new framework by Apple at WWDC 2019. The framework provides a declarative Swift API for processing values over time. It is widely used by developers to unify and simplify…