The Promotion

I remember the day in 2007 I decided that I wouldn’t go for the promotion.  I was 8+ years into a career with Thomson Reuters and had been waiting for 2 years for this position to open up, preparing myself mentally to take over the Regional Manager role.  I had won several President’s Trip awards, the highest award achievable for an Academic Account Manager and I was ready for a new challenge. And I was 6 months pregnant.

What would it mean to take on TWO new jobs at the same time? I had no idea, really. “Mother” was a job that I felt totally unprepared for, even at 35.  I actually felt more confident in my ability to be a good regional manager, taking on the responsibility of 8 account managers, than I did for taking on the responsibility for this one tiny new human. There were rules for managing those 8 people- at least the job description was pretty clear.  But this new human?  She didn’t come with a manual OR rules for successful job achievement. And this new human wasn’t planning to shower me with accolades and financial rewards, I was fairly certain.  Even the ingestion of 15 parenting books and 5 or 6 parenting blogs a day couldn’t give me a clear indication of what being MOTHER was really going to feel like for ME.

I agonized. I cried. I talked. And talked and talked.  And cried some more. (I was in my third trimester, after all). I just wasn’t sure I’d be successful at taking on both of these new jobs at the same time. I knew that the regional manager role would require quite a bit of travel, quite a lot of hours on the computer and phone, and a lot of extraverted energy. I knew that pre-baby, I could have immersed myself into the role and I would have KILLED it. But post-baby?  Amidst sleepless nights, breast feeding, baby puke and rocking, I just wasn’t so sure. Actually I was sure. I couldn’t do both.

I was raised to believe that I could do anything I wanted when I grew up. A marine biologist, psychologist, psychoneuroimmunologist (we made this one up at the time, but apparently it has since become an actual thing.) President. Whatever I wanted. And my mother’s generation fought for the right for me to be able to have this option while at the same time being allowed to embrace femininity and have a family. HAVE IT ALL. 

And then I ran smack into my own limitations. Mid-life crisis at 35.

Fortunately I realized these limitations before I made the mistake of trying to take on both roles. I stepped away from competing for the regional manager position because I recognized that I simply did not have the energy to operate effectively in both roles. Sure I could have tried. I could have muddled through and hired a nanny and a housecleaner, and not seen my baby for weeks at a time. I could have turned away from that tiny new human’s need for me.  But for that role- as MOM- I truly was the only person who could do that job.  There were many others who could do the job of Regional Manager, and my teammates would do just fine with any other manager.  But that tiny little girl needed ME. So that is the promotion I took. 

I still grieve a little over the loss of my professional advancement opportunity at Thomson, even 7 years later. I ended up leaving the company altogether 9 months later because I wanted to give my all to this new job for a few years.  I delivered another tiny new human 19 months later and then learned that the job description had again been changed on me- Mom to two is entirely different than Mom of one.  And it still changes, almost daily. The benefits of this job are less concrete, I get paid in hugs and smiles, lost teeth and inches grown.  And the management is often mercurial and arbitrary.  But the role of MOM is the one that I will value most when I’m at the end of my life.  At the end of the day, that’s what is most important to me.

Choosing to Lead

Good leadership. 

Thoughtful, visionary, compassionate, supportive, self-aware, trustworthy. 

These are some of the words that participants in our first Mindful Leadership program tossed out when asked for qualities they see in excellent leaders they've known.  But it took some time for everyone to dig in and find the right labels. Good leadership is something we can feel- in the heart and gut, but maybe we don't often stop to identify the actual qualities that generate these good feelings. 

It was much easier to apply negative labels. Arrogant, self-centered, demeaning, disrespectful, jerk, ego, insensitive, unaware, untrustworthy... This list was longer, more accessible and generated a lot of energy in the room as everyone's emotions became stirred with memories of upset and injustice.

Interestingly, when we stopped to examine the traits that we, as leaders, aspire to achieve, and those that we wish for in our own leaders, we noticed that mindfulness underlies them all.  Leaders who slow down to pay attention, who listen fully, who can see the big picture- all demonstrate mindfulness of the present moment. Whether they recognize this label as the foundation of their skill is questionable, but most certainly we, as those being led, we can feel it. 

Looking back at the other list, we noticed that underlying every single negative label was fear. And fear-driven behavior is most often mindless, because we are rarely aware of the fear, nor do we like to acknowledge that it is in control. Our habitual reactivity runs the show when we're being driven by fear- fear of failure, fear of looking bad, fear of making a bad decision. I'm reminded of "Otto" the autopilot in Wall-E, the Disney movie (a recent fan favorite in my house). Given its instructions 700 years ago by some terrified humans driven by fear, "Otto" insisted on continuing to follow that ancient protocol, even though contradicting evidence was right in front of it.  A massive struggle commenced when the Captain of the ship, himself a creature of habit, realized that he had a choice to respond differently because he was human. He chose to Live. 

This activity in our workshop confirmed to me that mindfulness training is increasingly important- in our leadership development programs and in development programs everywhere. At the root of human choice is awareness.  We do have the choice to live and lead according to that "good" list.  But we can't choose if we don't see that there are options. 

Living Mindfully, Leading Mindfully - a course through the UCSD Rady School of Management's Center for Executive Education - will be offered again in the Fall of 2014.