5 Ways Becoming a Mum Made Me Better at Life + Work

0:07Hello my lovelies, welcome back to Motherkind. We are proudly sponsored by Wild Nutrition and I am so happy that you are here. let me tell you, this is exactly where you need to be. If you are a woman with children in the early-ish years and you, like me, are done with the generic bro, we all have the same 24 hours advice, thank you very much. I am done with that. This is a podcast that actually works for your life now. So today we're going to be talking about something that just doesn't get spoken about enough. So I want to do a specific episode on it. And that is that when we become mothers, we develop an unbelievable set of new skills that I think we just don't recognize.

0:58Workplaces don't recognize it. Society definitely doesn't recognize it. And do you know what? I think that we don't recognize it enough either. So I want to make this episode to honor us and to celebrate us and to really get you thinking about the strengths that you have developed. Because honestly, I struggled to identify these incredible new strengths and skills, especially, you know, when you're knackered and you're just on that hamster wheel and you're trying to get through the day. And you might be thinking, Zoe, are you nuts? I have developed no new skills apart from being able to live my life on two hours sleep.

1:31But I promise you, they are there. And because it is my job to reflect on this stuff and speak to thousands of mothers and teach this in businesses i know these skills you would have developed so i want to tell you all about them today okay shall we dive into it i'd like to take this moment to thank our headline sponsor wild nutrition who are offering MotherKind listeners 50 % off for the first three months. When I was pregnant with my first 10 years ago, I asked a few nutritionist friends, what's the best pregnancy supplement? And they all said the same thing, wild nutrition. So I listened and these incredible supplements have kept me feeling great through two pregnancies, starting this podcast, writing a book, a relocation and everything in between for the last decade.

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3:27so what if i told you that motherhood has given you five new superpowers that you can use to achieve whatever you want i mean within reason and i need you to know that these superpowers are so vital because far from motherhood taking things from you okay maybe sleep maybe a bit of stress is actually also giving you a really specific set of new skills. The problem is that no one teaches you how to recognize or use them. So we are going to push back against that rhetoric that says that in motherhood, you lose skills, perhaps you become irrelevant. No, we completely reject all of that. Actually couldn't be further from the truth.

4:13So motherhood builds a different skill set. One that is deeply valuable. It's deeply valuable to you. It's deeply valuable in your workplace and it's deeply valuable to society as well. So when you can learn and name and use these skills consciously, it completely changes the game. Okay. So the truth is motherhood is one of the best leadership courses you could ever take, right? It's just that we've probably never seen it that way. So whether your little ones are or little one is 10 weeks or 10 years. I promise you, you will have developed some, if not all of these skills. The key is just to recognize it.

4:54Take a moment. And I'm going to ask you to do that a few times through this episode. And I want you to realize, oh, yes, I am more organized. Yes, I am more decisive. Yes, I am a better communicator. I do care less about what others think. I am more efficient. And then I want you to build on these skills, which in coaching nerdy terms, you know me is called strength based development. And get this, a study found that those who were aware of their strengths were nine times, nine times more likely to be flourishing versus those who were not. And that is from a study in 2015. So do me a little favor and let's get you thinking about your strengths.

5:37Okay, so the first skill is empathy. Okay, so through your matricence, the becoming of a mother, the area of your brain responsible for empathy and compassion actually gets bigger, which is why you move from thinking about me to we. And fascinating side note, in menopause, the opposite happens, which is actually wild. And this is one of the reasons where you might suddenly find yourself bawling at a charity ad on the TV when before you might have just skipped them. And I think this is another reason why so many incredible purpose-led businesses start when you are in early motherhood, because your field of empathy, of understanding and wanting to help and find solutions to problems, which is all entrepreneurship is, that just grows massively.

6:28And that was my story, right? I grew in so much compassion and empathy for what happens when we become mothers that I started Motherkind. This is such a superpower skill, right? If you're an empathetic leader at work, you're going to get higher performance. This is all studied. You're going to get better engagement and you're a much, much better leader. You can resolve conflict at work more easily. You can build trust more easily. You can tune into and read your colleagues. It is just such a vital skill. All right, that was empathy. Second one is prioritization and decision making. It sounds dull.

7:05It's actually not. I mean, come on, we've all had those moments, right? When we've had to decide in 17 seconds whether something is really an emergency or not, or when both children are running in different directions in the park. Which one do we chase after first? I still don't know the answer to that. You are making hundreds and thousands of really important micro decisions every moment of the day. And this is a super skill, my friends. Many, many of my highest achieving friends and guests on the podcast have said, give me a work challenge any day over trying to wrangle two kids under two to the park and back.

7:42Our ability to make these quick decisions is insane, right? We develop this skill of quicker thinking, decision making and prioritization. And I couldn't find any data on research on this annoyingly. But anecdotally, tell me what you think. I think the intense decisions we have to make at home with our children, which let's be real, sometimes are life or death. I think they make decisions at work easier. Right. So deciding should we say something to John about his tone in that meeting earlier or deciding to delay? a project. It just takes on a different level when before work you've already negotiated a toddler not running full speed towards the bus lane.

8:27Am I right? I think I am. Tell me what you think.

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9:50The third super skill is time management. How many times have you thought since becoming a mother, what the hell did I do with all my time before? I actually think that so many times a day. We become absolute time ninjas, making the most of every minute, doing two things at once, always thinking a step ahead. Now, this isn't all good. And, you know, I chat a lot about how we take on too much and the mental load. But this ability to just get more done does have a good side, right? Which is this ability to manage our time, manage schedules, the juggle, if you will, even though I hate that term. So there are loads of studies that show that part time employees are more efficient than their full time counterparts.

10:36That just makes a lot of sense to me. James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, I'm sure you know of it, sold 25 million copies, says that the easiest way to reduce procrastination and increase your output is to add in a time constraint. OK, well, for a lot of people, that might be difficult. How do I add a time constraint? for us. It's easy. We already have them built into our days, right? We have nursery pickup. We have a certain numbers of hours to work when we have childcare. I work nine to three, four days a week, and I achieve way more before motherhood than when I was full time. Why? Because I have so many constraints.

11:13It forces you to focus on prioritization, on what really matters, and just getting it done because the stakes are higher, right? So if you mess around, procrastinate at work. It's not a night on the sofa or going to the gym that you miss. It's now kind of missing our children's bedtime. And for me, that's really important. So I think this is just an incredibly important thing for us to recognize and validate in ourselves how much our productivity and our efficiency goes up and to really own that and celebrate it because guys out there, you know, in the world of work, just I don't think it's recognized.

11:48So remember this, if you ever feel apologetic for leaving early or for working reduced hours, you are probably more efficient per hour than your full time colleagues. Boom. All right. The fourth one is communication. So I wasn't always the best communicator. I used to be super indirect, kind of that people please energy, like skirting around, tiptoeing around what I really wanted to say. And that is such a clear line for me that motherhood has changed that for me so clearly because if you say to a toddler, oh, hi, would it be possible? Would you mind just popping your shoes on? Not a problem if you don't do it.

12:33If we have that sort of indirect, apologetic communication style, nothing would ever get done with our kids, right? We have to embody, I guess, this sort of really clear, direct leadership style of communication, which is very clearly saying what you want them to do. So shoes on now. And I can see so clearly how I've taken that new skill. It's definitely new for me, being clear, being kind, being a kind of leader in the home. I've taken that into my work. And I think my team probably noticed that as well. It's just particularly over the last few years, how much clearer and more confident and more direct I've got with my communication and with what needs to happen and feedback.

13:15So I think, you know, being a leader with the kids, which is what they need. And Dr. Becky, previous podcast guest, will link the episode. She talks about that loads, how stepping into leadership at home helps us step into leadership at work. All right. So the last super skill is creative problem solving. And wait for it. This is ranked the number one skill required by employers in the World Economics Forum future careers. So this is what we're going to need in the world that is coming down the pipeline. It's already here, isn't it? In the world of AI, it is this creative problem solving. And we do this naturally all day, right?

13:54It's World Book Day. And all I've got is a bin bag and some card. And suddenly you've whipped up some sort of masterpiece. We resolve an argument every seven minutes between our children. Yes, that's proven to be how many times siblings under five argue. I probably don't need to tell you that. And we think on our feet thousands of times a day. And I have think this is the biggest super skill of all. I have so noticed this. If I think about me pre-motherhood and problem solving, I was just way, way, way less decisive. I was way less creative. And I think nearly a decade of motherhood of just thinking on my feet all the time has developed this neural pathway in me, which means I am so much quicker and I'm so much more creative.

14:39Okay, so those are the five super skills that I think we have developed in motherhood. But knowledge only takes you so far, right? I've given you the knowledge. I now want you to take a moment to think about what strengths you've developed. Maybe they're totally different to these, but what's important is that you take a minute, even if it's five minutes, and grab a notepad or just your notes app on your phone and think, what skills have I developed? Because I want you to remember that even though we get given these messages all the time about apologizing, I'm sorry I'm late, I'm sorry I only worked part time, I'm sorry I have to go to the nursery pickup.

15:21The truth is that the constraints that motherhood brings has brought you these new skills, hopefully some of your biggest strengths. You know, we operate in a system that doesn't work for us. That is just the truth of it. There is so much data and evidence. So recognizing your own strengths, owning them, celebrating them is one way that you really get to say F you, right, to this world that isn't very kind to us mothers. So I will leave you with that idea. Please recognize and celebrate your strengths. Talk about them with your colleagues. Talk about them with your boss. Talk about them with your friends.

15:57and let's start believing and owning these strengths that we have developed and as ever if you want more like this hit the subscribe button wherever you are watching or listening to this and I will see you next time

16:15what an incredible episode I hope you loved it too if you've got this far then I am guessing that you did. So make sure that you share it with a friend and subscribe so you never miss an episode. And I will see you next Monday and Thursday for more. See you next time.