Career Skills I Mastered During My Stint With Motherhood

Motherhood can enhance the career skills we need at the workplace, making it easy to apply that learnt in the playroom to the boardroom.

I am sure if there was one such thing as a ‘Mommy Resume’ it would look more impressive than anything else.

Motherhood practically guarantees to grow and polish skill set. Life lessons learnt during motherhood are all tucked in, it’s just time to bring them on and know how well they impact our lives, our work and world. During the prime years of motherhood all of us wear different hats sometimes of a leader, a coach, a mentor, event coordinator, consultant, confidante, so on and so forth.

Flexibility and adaptability

The day you bring a new being to this world and she is in your arms, you become the most flexible person in the world. You are OK to tweak minutes and hours and days for the convenience of handling the new blessing. Adaptability feels inherited that day.

And aren’t these the basics of when you choose a job or career. Corporates demand that we work effectively in a climate of ambiguity and dynamic priorities, and yes, with motherhood we are sure to have learnt that art.

Motherhood – the procrastination killer

I must admit that the procrastination bug did hit me a while back when everything from picking up dry cleaning to filing taxes was pushed to an indefinite time. Sample this- I used to delay collecting investment proofs and other equally dreaded documents until the last week of submission. I was thriving in chaos and life was beautiful.

But with motherhood in my life, I couldn’t afford to do that. Because with kids around one can never be sure which evening will be spent nursing a sick child or doing last minute homework assignments. Life’s a roller-coaster, and procrastination is no less than a disease. You are no longer responsible just for your own deliverables but also of all others living with you. Doing things when they must be done becomes an integral part of your personality.

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Your day is filled with doing important tasks. Never ending cycles of feeding, cleaning, packing, unpacking, meal planning,reading, sleeping and REPEAT leaves no room for procrastination. Like the clock keeps ticking, you never stop, you never slow down. You are always moving. The longer you wait, the worse it gets.

Technology has definitely played an instrumental role in this transformation. You are able to capture all brainwaves which generally strike at oddest of times. You can now respond to email of brand new customer within minutes. Smart phones are handy and empower us to overcome procrastination.

Decision Making

For some in this world decision making may bring some anxiety and stress, but as mothers we practice this art so often that it becomes a custom. It doesn’t matter if you are a corporate gal or an entrepreneur, your work will certainly demand the ability to think on your feet and taking decisions every now and then. Now that doesn’t scare us anymore.

I can’t even begin to emphasize on the importance of this one both at home and at work. Fortunately for me this was easy, as I could independently almost always take a decision. And then came this blessed phase of motherhood which took this skill many notches higher.

It is tough for me to understand when I see people struggling in the restaurants over finalizing the order. When you are raising children, sometimes, even spending a few minutes on yourself are rare. You want to make the most of it. You definitely don’t want to while away those precious moments thinking about mundane decision points.

Multitasking

Yes, yes, you should be living in the moment, enjoying the present, counting your blessings. You know that no matter what you got to multitask while managing career, raising kids and running the house. There is no escape from that and before you realize, you become a multitasking DIVA.

Taking business calls while driving to school event, writing emails while feeding the little one. It is rather a routine to do endless tasks in one go and actually when I am doing only one task, it feels weird and wrong. If you are a mommy you know what I mean.

Persuasion skills

Oh are we talking about persuasion? We are champions at it. Moms can’t get past a single meal without some persuasion and negotiation.

Also, at playtime, kids often have bright ideas, all of which cannot be accepted, but can certainly be tweaked to suit the situations. Workplaces so often have a similar situation where our colleagues need to be influenced, or helped with to examine an issue from all sides. Mothers really don’t mind sharing a project, and reshaping it to fit everyone’s needs.

Leadership and coaching skills

Motherhood gives us the opportunity to hone our skills to effectively counsel and coach our kids when they sometimes goof up. We understand the needs of a child before we structure a well-accepted system for them and help them be more valuable in whatever they do.

Likewise, these skills can be replicated when we are around our co-workers where we sometimes need to provide feedback, supervise, motivate and collaborate with them for their individual benefit and growth.

Futuristic

Mothers are self-driven creatures who don’t need directives all the time; they have got the art to foresee more than the obvious. Simple things like possible conflict between extra-curricular activities and academic goals that could perhaps crop up later. Our dynamic work environments also demand that we are goal oriented and understand the upcoming challenges too.

All that is said above is not to say that men do not possess these traits but to emphasize the fact that motherhood surely brings versatility to women. Motherhood grooms the professional in us and the gained talent truly helps to handle almost everything when women once again move from playrooms to boardrooms.

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Image source: working mom by Shutterstock.

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