HUSBAND/PARTNER
Having a partner from a similar background, pursuing similar careers, having divergent thoughts at work, but aligned at home was immensely helpful. We understood each other’s good days and bad days at work. We made space when one of us was clouded at work and did not complain (or at least not too much!). In my experience, good compatibility at home naturally reflects in your work and transfers the harmony in what each of us does. This truly gave me the wings to soar.
Having an understanding partner or husband, who is willing to give your career due importance, gives you the much-needed momentum. Someone who is willing to share the responsibilities of home and children when you need to travel out at work, is a relief. I have been fortunate in this aspect. Sandeep and I have worked through our relationship with equal importance to each other’s career aspirations. He was the reason that I felt strong enough to stay back in London and do what I really wanted to do at work. I recall, when I was confronted to take this decision I was devastated with chaos and confusion. With family relocating back to India (including the children), I was unsure of whether I could really pursue my career interests as it had some hardship built in for family and self. I was overridden with guilt.
At this time it was my husband who stepped in and helped me regain my composure and confidence. At such a juncture, if I did not have his words of encouragement, I may not have taken a leap of faith irrespective of the role and the rewards. After all, it was the first time I was deciding to stay away from the children and that made me nervous and guilty.
Even now I split time between Mumbai and Delhi for work, spending more time in Mumbai while home is in Delhi. We work together on how we manage our domestic affairs amidst both our work and travel, with support from our parents. There have been many moments where I would have slipped at work, if I did not have his support. There were days when the children were unwell, and that is one thing which still drives me insane with anxiety. Sometimes these moments coincided with important meetings in office and I used to get conflicted as the children’s well-being came before anything else! That’s when his sane advice of keeping calm and his offer of working from home would keep me going. We of course, took turns but the important bit was that we did take turns and it was not simply for me to deal with it as a mother. He took equal responsibility for it. We split our time for making for school PTAs and as a thumb rule share summaries from the PTA so the school affairs are not lost on either of us (Sandeep is more prompt on this than I am!). He has an equally demanding role and some times more stressful than mine, with travels across multiple countries but this extra effort to share responsibilities goes a long way in keeping our family and careers on track.
Sandeep has always understood me and let me pursue my career interests in the way that I would like to. We have had some basic family rules. We are together on all weekends and do not do business travel unless very critical. All birthdays and anniversaries are celebrated together and we would travel back if we are away. These are personal and special moments for us as a family. We are together working out of the city at least one week in a month (one weekend to another) and one of us if not both, has to be there for any school event. Life is not perfect and neither are we! Hence we do not kill ourselves if one of us cannot make it for a school show for a valid reason. Our children have grown up to understand this and appreciate our efforts. They understand that we try and that is what matters!
Sandeep and I usually do not take or talk work at home. Well, I am not always as consistent! We both have intense roles and usually we try our best not to carry that stress to our family. It is not usual for us to seek work-related advice from each other as we do distinct things. Hence, neither of us is aware of each other’s office dynamics nor do we feel that this should intrude on family time.
Husbands/partners are critical for a woman to be able to pursue her career given all the three crossroads of mobility, marriage and maternity, are faced with your spouse. It is the compatibility between the two, mutual respect and appreciation and empathy that gives the woman her self-confidence to rise above social prejudices, norms and the feeling of how she may be neglecting home by being at work. Trust me, none of this would have been possible if Sandeep had not stood behind me like a firm supporter. It has been collaboration in its truest form, without which it would not have been possible for me to pursue my dreams.
It is essential for women and their partners to work in tandem and provide each other with a true partnership.
MEN AND WOMEN COLLABORATING AT WORK
A difficult issue that often crops up but not discussed explicitly is, how much and how closely should women engage with male colleagues at work. Whilst dealing with peers, sub-ordinates and managers, most women have to balance a thin line between not staying aloof yet not getting too close. Staying slightly further away would keep you away from the action that could be really going on among the team members. Many women express their inability to attend social engagements late in the day, evening drinks sessions that could lead to missing out on some critical interactions. These may be critical to be part of the ‘group’ and decision making that is discussed and executed informally rather than formally.
I have often heard from my women friends that they don’t want to go out for drinks or dinner as either they need to be back home on time or that it would be misconstrued. Some women colleagues have talked to me about how they do not feel part of the ‘club’ because they don’t feel comfortable being out with the group late at night. I don’t think we should do that if we feel uncomfortable, however nothing is preventing us from having lunch, coffee or an early evening glass of wine if the informal peer networking is important and needed on the job to build certain connections. For some women, staying away from these social interactions is also due to the fear of their character being misjudged in informal interactions. Many women choose to keep their working relationships with male colleagues very distant at work due to this apprehension. This is tricky and will have to be judged on the basis of the male colleague one is dealing with. However we should not generalise this, else, it has the risk of lacking depth and the kind of proximity you may need at work with various colleagues. Also, it could make it difficult to integrate with the larger group of men in the team, leading to some social isolation. It is important to keep a balance in such interactions by being honest to yourself. The lens people see you with is a reflection of their mindset and not a reflection of your character.
Sometimes I have had feedback from women about the language used in certain places. As a part of the work culture in most organisation, no foul language is acceptable and you have to draw the line on what makes you feel uncomfortable and be diplomatically explicit about it. This could also apply to any demeaning behaviour faced. Drawing a line is important because people do need to understand when you mean business.
If you need to professionally bridge a working relationship and have a common goal, how you behave, what you say, matters to how people see you in these interactions. Men and women working closely can sometimes lead to misperception about relationships. This may be attributed to a great working chemistry and may not be an interaction more than what is required to get the work done. Unfortunately when such working chemistry prevails, I have heard more gossip about women than men. It leads to unhealthy chatter which women can find to be more career limiting than men. In certain situations, I have seen the success of a woman was not credited to her good work but to relationships at work. There is no shortcut to success. Working harder and smarter is core. For all the progress in the social outlook about women at work, I have found this one to be the most regressive trend. These misconstrued optics, bother many career women and keeps them away from engaging constructively and freely at times.
I had a friend who was a seasoned professional in an organisation and her job demanded extensive travel on client work. She seemed to successfully juggle her life with priorities at work and at home with two children. Given that she
was required to work on a few high impact projects with one of her male colleagues, they were expected to work together and accompany each other for client meetings. Obviously they worked on the deals while travelling and that implied spending a lot of time together. They worked well and both of them were thorough professionals who were very achievement-oriented and driven at work. They shared a good working relationship and were a formidable combination for acquiring client deals.
Unfortunately, during the course of these big projects, their extensive interactions at work started to be noticed by many work colleagues in a light that was unrelated to these projects. It gradually started to generate whispers in the corridors and led to unnecessary gossip at work. Their working chemistry started to be perceived as an unprofessional alliance. Since I knew her well, I was also aware that there was nothing beyond the working relationship here. However I saw my friend being gravely impacted by this at a personal level. She felt extremely demoralised and tainted when she picked up these vibes in office. She struggled with how she should respond to it and started to pull herself out of the projects where this male colleague was engaged. This was neither good for her career as it took her away from the important deals, and nor for the organisation as these two formed a good team. For the fear of being further maligned and suffering from acute anxiety about any reprisal at home from her partner, she eventually left the organisation.
Take a moment to reflect on this incident. Who gained and who lost? I think apart from a set of dysfunctional and stereotypical minds that relished in gossip, all others lost what could have been a great opportunity for them. The male colleague/manager lost a great team member, the woman in question relinquished a great role and an opportunity to make it big. Most importantly, the organisation lost a great employee, a great team chemistry and some great business opportunities. Could this have been prevented? Could this relationship have been viewed more objectively? I don’t think there are easy answers and some of these problems relate to a much larger environment and expectations from men and women working together.
Invariably, I have found that women tend to opt out much faster due to the reasons stated in the situation earlier. They feel more vulnerable and are more prone to negative branding in these instances. Some feel that the credit for their success is given to relationships with men who they work with. In certain places, some women have been seen to progress only because of close connectivity with men. Their competence is ignored and this creates a further problem for successful women with self-respect, who would like to be seen as moving forward on the basis of their competence. Women perceive this as a serious reputational damage, and something that has a potential to have long-term negative consequences to their other close relationships at home. However, when I see men in similar situations, my observation has been that they are probably less impacted than women, more so at a personal level. Men clearly do not see many long-term consequences to their personal or professional relationships and seem to keep these two separate. Even if they are a victim of gossip, it may sometimes actually enhance their image at work rather than them being perceived as victims.
These situations are a real dilemma for some women and due to the fear of their interactions being misperceived, tend to withdraw from extensive interactions with men. There are also cultural elements at play here. For instance, certain cultures in Asia or Middle East are more conservative in this aspect, which makes it even tougher for women to engage more with men, at work. There are differing etiquettes about how men and women work together as social interaction norms for women are different depending on geographies.
Unfortunately, these are some grey areas that do not have clear answers and it is essential for male colleagues to be sensitive in such situations. If they are willing to work together to resolve such issues rather than leave their female colleagues to fend off the situation by themselves, it would be a lot easier to put such matters to rest. One does not have any generic advice for this issue apart from sharing that a balance needs to be maintained. Be conscious of the optics around you at workplace. However, don’t let unnecessary gossip bother you as there are instances where your competitors will pull you down even if it gets a bit ugly. Deal with it by raising the bar your performance and keeping the momentum at work. Having allies, friends and mentors around to help you with this situation through their constructive moral support. Be a fighter and be true to yourself. Don’t let any of this ever break you down. Insecure minds sometimes tend to create such problematic situations. Sometimes there are no remedies for envy. Deal with it with dignity and grace by focusing on doing good work in a smart way. Over time people move on to other topics.
CAN MEN HELP?
There is a lot of debate about how women leaders can be groomed, need for more women required in the C-suite to change the balance of power or bring about a cultural change. However, the corporate world still remains male-dominated, regardless of this debate that has been carrying out over two decades, though the focus has become more intense lately. In spite of concerted efforts towards awareness and policies we still see very few women making it to leadership roles and even lesser in the C-suite. Why?
A significant variable that governs women’s ability to reach to the top management is the engagement and support of men. While quite a few corporate men believe that teams with significant numbers of women perform more successfully, fewer recognise the challenges women face. In my experience there are yet some ignorant men who are less likely to comprehend this, due to their socialisation. A few years ago, a sensitisation training had been carried out for a group of seniors in one of organisation that an associate of mine worked with. At the outset, the facilitator asked two key questions that set the tone for sensitivity in the session.
Question one: How many of you have a working wife who is pursuing a professional career like you?
Question two: How many of you have had a working mother who has also pursued her career?
For question one, about four of the forty hands went up in the room and for question two, about two hands shot up. This was quite telling. It struck me that if these men have not had any career women in their life, how will they ever empathise or understand what a career woman goes through? So how do we carry these men on this journey? I have found at work that very often if these men had women team members on maternity leave, after they returned to work, the general assumption made by them was that the new mother may want to take a break or may not want key roles at work. This emanated from how they had seen things at home and maybe experienced a few other women around them. However, in spite of men trying to be helpful by giving returning mothers easier roles to help them (does work for some), they unintentionally created problems for some career women who probably wanted to come back to some serious work or do a key assignment in a flexible way without compromising on delivery. Some of these men needed to be sensitised to the fact that different women/mothers may look for different ways to bring balance in their work life.
My own experience taught me that men are a critical part of the career journey. I was hired by men, mentored largely by men and progressed with their support. They have a critical role to play at home and at work if you want to fulfil your career aspirations. Women have to also play a part in carrying them along. I worked hard and they reciprocated by investing in my career, supported me in building my experiences that enabled learning. Once they saw me working hard and adding value, I was treated like any other employee who was doing well on his/her job. I had access to all the support or choices of any role that I felt equipped to do. The decision or the risk was mine to take. This probably was easier at junior levels because there was enough space between levels, no liabilities or less responsibilities of family on self and a hunger to prove oneself at work. All I was keen to do was grow, learn and do as many meaningful assignments. I think my own inclination to learn, enabled me to explore and contribute better. This helped me add value through varied assignments at work which garnered a lot of sup
port for me from seniors. Even during various maternity crossroads, so long as I was clear about what I wanted, I was able to express it and get it from my male bosses, who were rather surpirsed that I did not want flexibility when I had a baby! What helped me was being clear about what I wanted at work, where I wanted to go in the medium term and having a credible relationship with stakeholders and managers. As women, very often we look for inclusive culture; however, my own belief is that sometimes embracing the organisational drivers helps to be included.
During my journey, I have had eight male bosses and one female boss. I have enjoyed working with all of them with a few moments of stress thrown in (as with all relationships). While I was in India, I worked with a manager who pushed me into a few stretch assignments. I never felt he differentiated between male or female members in the team when it came to being stretched at work! However, I recall once, when I returned after a family situation, he went easy on some urgent work priorities with me. That was a bit odd and I felt either he was not happy with my work or maybe did not feel confident that I could deliver on those goals, So I had to sit down with him over coffee and explain to him my frustration of feeling light at work. He was taken aback as he thought he was helping me by taking some work away from me. I actually needed my work back to keep me away from domestic stress. Sometimes men have to be educated, especially when they too are handling some situations with women for the first time. Help yourself by having straight talks.
Can I Have It All Page 17
