Effective Communication Skills

It is natural to feel elements of guilt from time to time when you are a working mum. You sometimes feel as if you are doing the wrong thing all the time, even when you are doing your best. If you decide to stay home and look after your children, you think that some people are looking down their noses at you, accusing you of not contributing enough. If you decide to go back to work after childbirth, you feel guilty about that option as well and feel that some people are criticising you for not giving enough attention to your children. Surely, you can’t win? You are not alone in feeling this way and rest assured that this kind of torment is quite usual; it might be a good idea for you to consider professional coaching? This kind of specialised online coaching for women can help you realise that all is not lost, that others are in a similar position to you and that you can really look forward with optimism and confidence.

Whether you decide to go back to a career, or to take the bold move of setting up your own business, more power to you! In either way, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your decision and you need to realise this and be at peace. As a working mum, you may need to give yourself a good talking to, to help you realise that you have everything going for you and are doing a marvellous job, providing for yourself and for your family.

You know how you sometimes feel guilty about a situation when you are confused and do not know all the facts? This is a danger here. Come out of the darkness and understand all the facts, reducing your stress level to manageable positions. If you’re well-informed, you know what all the risks and opportunities are and are well placed to take a good, educated view of your position. Taking a concerted action and finding out all the facts will in turn give you internal strength and make you feel much better about your position.

It is important that you have positive people all around you, who will support you. Create distance between you and all those negative people and in fact it would be far better if you lost their contact details! By surrounding yourself with positive people in your support group, you will be able to turn to them with any issues or challenges, getting a lot of confidence from the positive feedback that they will give. This is not to say that you should delegate all the problem-solving to them, quite the opposite. This is definitely a two-way street and by contributing to the value of the group proactively, you’re on the right track. Yet another valuable source of support for you can be found within online coaching.

When you are planning for the big challenge ahead, travel light! Effectively, this means that you should clear out all the baggage around you that represents anything you could consider inappropriate. This might be a good time to clear out your workspace and most especially if you are now working from home, either telecommuting or as your own boss. When your environment is clear all around you, this will make you feel far more productive and you will be ready and focused for your day ahead.

Amanda Alexander is Director of Coaching Mums and a highly acclaimed ICF-accredited coach who delivers professional coaching programmes to working mums who yearn for success, balance and fulfilment. Are you a juggling mom? Download our free eBook for working moms that will give you 5 simple and instant ways to balance your life right now!

It’s never easy taking a career break, but sometimes ‘you’ve just got to do, what you’ve got to do,’ as the saying goes. The decision may be necessary if you have a special event ahead of you, welcoming a newborn into this world. Mum can be very focused indeed when it comes to the significant challenge of raising a child and it is understandable that her main focus may not, for the time being, be on her career, which will be on hiatus. Thankfully, our society is very understanding and mum is very rarely in a financial bind during these all-important days.

Relatively few women actually go through the effort of planning out a career in its entirety, taking into account what they plan to do in their life from a personal perspective and mapping out how they will handle childbirth, all the way through to the transition back to the workplace. It is, after all, very difficult to plan your entire career and personal life in advance, most especially given the financial and economic uncertainties that we have encountered in recent times. Such economic turmoil is enough to throw anyone’s plans off track, but for the mother getting ready to return to work after her break, it can be a particularly stressful time.

Mum needs to be very confident when she returns to work after a career break, for a number of reasons:

First, she should remember that she was hired in the first place due to a combination of skills, ability, education and personality. This is a great combination that most human resources department heads are looking for and are equally aware represents a fairly rare find. While not being overly promotional, she should shrewdly draw attention to these assets.

Second, remember that there is nothing to feel guilty about. Within the society that we live, childbirth is a right that all women can claim and employers build their obligations into the fabric of their business. It is sure to be quite disruptive for any employer, but everybody can take this in stride and deal with it and it’s certainly not a reason for the mum to feel guilty.

Third, don’t forget that you will have picked up some excellent managerial and planning techniques, as you moved through the process of childbirth and family planning. Don’t underestimate these important skills and remember that you will be able to convert them for use within the work environment, as well.

Fourth, remember that, on average, 50% of the workforce is made up of women, a large proportion of whom fully sympathise with your position, as they have been in your position! You will have many a sympathetic ear, when you return.

Lastly, the fact that you now have a family to take care of is a marvellous achievement in its own right. Not only should you be proud of what you have done, but you should consider that, after the rigours of childbirth, anything that they can throw at you in the workplace should be relatively easy to handle.

Don’t worry if you think it’s too much for you, as professional coaching can help you get through it. Within our hectic daily lives, we have access to online coaching as a solution, where professional coaching for women returning from childbirth can really help to overcome any and all problems that lay ahead.

Amanda Alexander, Director of Coaching Mums, helps pressure-cooked, stressed working mums who long for more hours in the day. Through her coaching programmes and online life coaching courses, Amanda shows mums how to create fulfilling and successful lives. For your simple 5 step guide to balance as a working mum, download our free eBook today!