Submitted by tkempster on October 5, 2008 - 7:33pm.
Guest post by Ted Kempster
I'm not your typical, divorced, working mother.
My day starts at 5:30 a.m., when I get up and go online to tackle my overnight email and follow-up phone calls. My customers and field teams are global, so there's always something going on at that hour. On the 3.5 days a week that my children are in my care, at 6:00 a.m. I make sure my 14-year-old son is getting up. He needs to be out the door and headed to the bus-stop by 6:50 a.m. He has the typical "distractibility" of a teenager. Sometimes I realize around 6:30 that he's still in the shower and have to pound on the door to "encourage" him to hurry it up. At 6:30 a.m. I wake up my 9-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son. They need to be out the door by 7:30 (if the weather's fine) or I have to drop them off at school by 7:50.
At this point I'm in full "mother" mode ... reminding them about washing, brushing, deodorizing, combing and homework. I make lunches (cheaper than buying), organize snacks for the day (no nuts allowed for my 9-year-old, her classmate is allergic!), make breakfast (okay, usually cereal and juice, but sometimes eggs and biscuits, too) and make sure they're dressed appropriately, both for the weather and for school. It takes teamwork to make this happen successfully, and often I'm more the ringmaster while the children are doing the work.
After getting them on their bicycles or dropping them off, I'm racing to work for a full day of customer service account management. I listen to, empathize with, coordinate for, and advocate for my customers, acting as their liaison with corporate support and management. At 3 p.m. I'm out the door (thanks to flexible scheduling by my management) and on my way home to take care of my children after school. There are activities--scouts, sports, friends and homework. Sometimes these are interrupted for conference-calls. The children have been well-trained to know when I need silence, and to ask whether or not the phone is muted before they speak.
In the evenings I listen to, empathize with, coordinate for, and advocate for my children. One major difference between how I handle my customers and how I handle my children is that I also love them very, very much. I hold them, I read to them, I make sure they are clean and educated and sung-to and played with and tucked into bed ... and most of all, loved.
Bedtime is 8:30 p.m., okay, maybe 9:00 ... alright, sometimes 9:30. Then I'm back online and catching up with email from the afternoon (west coast, Asia-Pac) until 11 p.m. or midnight, sometimes later. At 5:30 a.m., it all starts again.
Thinking of this in terms of my company's Ten Core Values, the transferable lessons of parenting and work are self-evident:
- Focus on their needs, deliver on promises.
- Seize opportunities quickly; get it done now.
- Complete what you say you are going to do; no excuses.
- Treat each other with respect and do the right thing always.
- Think creatively to provide the solution.
- Develop best-of-breed products and services.
- Know how we provide real value to our customers.
- Collaborate smoothly with others, leveraging our diversity.
- Maintain open, honest interaction, build relationships on trust.
- Stay flexible, adapt as circumstances change
The above reads like a summary of any good parenting guide. They are goals and values I try to model for and teach to my children, and they see this in my approach to work as well.
Do I sound like a typical, divorced, working mother? Pretty much so, except that I'm their dad.
Working mothers and working, single, fathers are each presented with their own unique set of challenges and opportunities, but more and more I recognize our common experiences and see that we have a lot to learn from each other.
