How Do We Make The Courageous Leadership Of This Moment Stick?

In between the sounds of sirens and Cuomo briefings as background music, over the past few weeks, I’ve been present to some of the most inspiring and powerful virtual coaching sessions of my practice to date.

The leaders I’m supporting are:

 Providing their teams with safe spaces to truly talk about their fears and what is possible right now.

Breaking from the corporate layoff scripts to offer compassion and empathy in difficult conversations.

Modeling vulnerability to share how feeling emotions can equal strength. 

Stepping up to deliver on new products and business functions to meet the changing needs of their customers and the world.

Giving up on the perfectionism that has haunted them throughout their careers in exchange for direct communication and swift action. 

I am in awe of them. They are throwing out the rules of who they thought they should be, and they are standing firm in their own skin to lead as humans first. 

And yet, I have a lingering fear that as we begin to come out of this, leadership gains will be met with cultural amnesia. That there will be a gravitational pull bringing us back to what we know to be the rules and how it has always been. 

In order to combat this worry, for myself, for my clients and for all the inspiring leaders I’m reading about who seemingly came out of nowhere—I’m relentlessly returning to this question: 

How do we make it stick?

It happens each minute we notice how it feels to show up as courageous, imperfect humans.

 When we’re doing what we can to save lives. Being the support our people need. Providing space to cry and to laugh. Taking the lead without asking for permission. Offering to do the talk or the webinar before we know what we’re going to say.

It’s in remembering these moments. How they feel in your body. Writing about them. Talking about them with your people and inspiring them to become aware of what feels different now. How every moment feels like we must do what needs to be done. Continually asking ourselves, why would we do anything but? It’s a practice of remembering what’s at stake. Right now, lives are on the line. It’s a chance to wake up and realize it was always that way.

Finding The Time and Space To Be Sad

The first week of “sheltering in place” I went straight into doing mode. I spent the whole weekend organizing everyone’s rooms so there was space to do work, games to play, art supplies to rediscover and books to read—independently. The intensity of the nesting instinct brought me back to my non-stop preparation, laundry and product-sourcing during both of my pregnancies.

Once we were organized and our space was rock-solid for homeschooling and remote careers, I moved on to setting up new virtual events, programs and webinars for the working parents I support. I jumped into logistics, marketing and creating new mindset-shifting tools to serve my community. It was fulfilling and meaningful work. I felt like my efforts were making an impact for people. I was able to channel my energy into holding everyone else up in a moment where the world was down.

While I was in my organized bubble of service, the personal stories of sickness and loss continued to close in on me. Neighbors. Friends. Residents of my uncle’s assisted living facility. On a walk to get supplies, I passed by my local hospital and saw one of the mobile morgues I’d read about in the news. The image gutted me and will forever mark the moment my experience of this pandemic shifted.

It is here. I may get it. My people may get very sick. They may die.

For the rest of the day, I wore my emotions outside of my skin. I was raw with sadness for the world. I went to sleep early and when I woke, my husband and older daughter were walking our dog. I was alone with our eight-year-old, Roxanne. I checked the grim news on my phone before leaving my room. I didn’t know how I could face my child armed with all of the feelings coursing through me. But, there was coffee to drink and a kid to feed, so I emerged.

As I was buttering Roxanne’s waffle, I asked Alexa to play a Joni Mitchell song–Chelsea Morning. Rox ate and smiled watching me sing the words I knew. And then she requested her favorite Cat Stevens songs. When she finished breakfast, we sat on the couch, arm in arm, and played every melancholy song we knew. Scarborough Fair, Fire and Rain, The Only Living Boy In New York. We didn’t talk outside of building our sadness playlist, brick by brick. We sat. We listened. We were sad and we let it sink in. Every other song or so, she would kiss my arm and I would return the kiss on her forehead.

She ran to grab a drink of water and when she returned, she looked me in the eyes and whispered, “Thank you.”

“For what?” I asked

“For making me, so I can hang out with you.”

Beyond the overwhelming love and gratitude that washed over me for this child—I realized, she was thanking me for creating the space. And for sharing it with her. We both were in need of a moment to go there, to be there—to stay in it. Without doing or working or preparing. We needed to feel the sadness, the loss, the grief of where we are right now in order to keep going.

How To Help Working Parents Right Now

As a working mother with two school age children (ages 8 and 11), one of the hardest moments of the pandemic experience to date was the announcement on March 15th that NYC schools would be closed through April 20th.

Slow-mo.

Gut punch.

No air.

"I need a beat." I finally strung together while catching my breath and processing my new reality.

Of course, I knew it was the right move for the city, the world and us. And now odds are that it will go longer still. But it was a moment that drove home the gravity of the situation and the extent to which our lives would change. I remind myself that experiencing this shift first-hand only makes me better equipped to serve my clients, and this helps me to keep moving forward–to spread the word on what powerful leadership looks like right now.

In the past two weeks, I have supported working parents who are now juggling:

1. Keeping their families physically safe and healthy

2. Minding their family’s mental health

3. Educating and entertaining the kids

4. Their work/roles/careers/businesses/financial health

It’s a lot. It’s overwhelming. It’s the opposite of business as usual. So leaders, colleagues, partners, clients and friends, here’s how to support working parents right now.

Expect less
This is a tough concept, but take it in. The physical and mental health of the family are the two most important priorities for working parents right now. They can’t do all that they were doing before the pandemic. Nor should they. They will burn out, and this is a marathon—not a sprint.

Go there
Acknowledge how hard this is for them and all they’re doing right now. Give them a space to talk if they want it. Give them a space to fall apart if they need it. Model vulnerability by talking about what’s hard for you right now. Ask where they need support and show up when they call on you.

Practice compassionate scheduling
On a more tactical front, this will be critical in showing you see the struggle for working parents right now. Be ruthless in your decisions of what topics require a meeting and what can be handled via email, slack text or any of the other million communication tools out there. My observation of how scheduling is working for many parents is that meetings are best scheduled between 9 and 12 and 1 and 3. Lunchtime is sacred and after 3–when the official school day ends, there will be many interruptions, so meetings are not ideal. And please, be generous and understanding when working parents can’t jump on to last-minute meetings. They are holding this together with sticks and glue so a last minute request can throw an entire day off-course.

Remember the path toward gender equity
Working with many women in my practice, I can tell you first-hand, the working moms are filling in many of the gaps—and it’s not because the fathers don’t want to help. It’s because their employers expect that they have a partner of the female persuasion who will take it all on so they can continue to forge forward at the same pace and productivity level. If employers want to walk the talk on diversity and inclusion right now, they MUST expect less from parents of all genders. This isn’t a woman problem. It’s a human problem and we must come together as humans and as families to address it.

Make special accommodations for parents of kids under 5 (wherever possible)
I am bowing down to working parents of the smallest kids right now. Children who can’t possibly understand our current situation. Children who require care that is physical, non-stop and depleting—especially when social and outdoor time is limited. Whether it’s opening up the communication more deeply, shifting work around the team, restructuring schedules, accepting babies on laps during zoom calls or simply holding judgment on how people and homes look on video (a shower is not a foregone conclusion these days!)—create a safe space for imperfection, vulnerability and resilience for your people.

It’s clear, this new reality is hard for all of us and it’s hard for us in different ways. Along with my compassion practice, I’m moving forward by being generous when I feel strong and asking for help when I need it. I’ve found in my circle that so far, we’re up and down at different moments of the day—so in those up moments, we can remember to reach out to somebody who may be down. That’s what you can be doing with the working parents on your team and in your life. When you’re up, check in with them. They may be in a good spot and you can have a laugh with them, like I did on the day my girls drew magic marker beards on their faces while I was on calls. And when they’re not up, you’ll be giving them the much-needed acknowledgement that what they’re doing is hard, but it can be done.

While this all feels endless, it is truly temporary.

Compassion as a Practice

Every morning, I wake to a world that’s different than the one I put to bed. And by afternoon, it’s different still. I am swept into a new reality for a few hours. I organize it in my mind and then—without warning–I disregard all that I know for a new set of facts that will have their brief moment of relevance before the cycle continues.

This is life right now: an unrelenting barrage of change, loss and shocking stats about my hometown.

Then there are the moments where:

My eight-year-old practices Tai Chi with her entire class via zoom.

I have a first session with a new client who is crying with gratitude to have support right now.

My dog sleeps against my leg during my quiet writing time.

And I realize, even while my brain is under arrest multiple times a day, I continue to have a lot to be grateful for. I’m doing my best in a world that’s not currently set up for the most basic of human needs.

I know, when I’m at my best, I’m practicing compassion. For myself, for my family and for a world of humans who know as little as I do about how to get through this intact.

My compassion practice right now is:

1.     Doing less.
2.     Expecting less of others and myself.
3.     Hugging my family a lot more than is typical for me.
4.     Releasing judgment of my decisions.
5.     Connecting more with people I love.
6.     Being outdoors (where it is less dense).
7.     Laughing with my closest friends.
8.     Creating a safe space to make mistakes.
9.     Choosing faith that we will be physically, mentally and financially OK.

In New York City, it’s tough to remember that there was a time before COVID-19 impacted my world and me. And yet in early February, I was focused on feeling good and how that was changing my life and my business. So, there was a time. Either there simply isn’t space in my brain to think about it right now or I’m focused on what our world will look like after, whenever that will be. While the expectation of feeling good seems like a long shot right now, compassion feels achievable. It offers a path forward where I can take teeny tiny steps without a focus on any known destination.