It was after yet another email from a big corporate asking me to do a workshop on ‘work-life balance’ for working mums, that I took a moment to question what I was doing. 

I knew for a fact that the word balance didn’t fit here, and increasingly I’d been finding that workshops, ironically, simply weren’t working. The issue with complete ‘balance’ (something that doesn’t exist in most people’s lives, let alone working parents) was easily fixed; we could change the name: work life juggle or navigating working motherhood perhaps. 

However my issue with workshops came from the fact that they often assumed that because everyone in the group was a working parent, they were all facing the same challenges. I could sit and talk about how many parents went to work and loved the escapism; a quiet desk, a hot coffee. Yet then I’d risk isolating the parents who desperately wanted to be at home with their children and hated having to follow their careers. 

Or I could sit and talk about how important it was to spend quality time with your children and always leave work to do every pickup possible,  and risk inducing guilt and shame onto parents who didn’t want to work like this. 

One cold November morning in South West London, I trialled something new. I was appearing as a guest speaker at The Mum Club brunch where 30 mums would be attending. At these events they usually listened to a speaker, got the chance for a question and answer session, then enjoyed the chance to meet other mums and to sit and be human for a while. 

I’d asked if I could do things differently. So I set myself up in a cosy corner of the venue, I put out a sign up sheet at the check in point, and I used my kids alarm clock as a timer in case I got busy and had to monitor how long I was chatting for. The aim was that mums could sign up for a 5-10 minute check in with me. A one to one session which was just for them. I told the organiser that if no one spoke to me, I’d just go and mingle and offer to hold babies. 

It turned out I did need that timer. Almost every mother signed up, they waited their turn, they came to me; some with babes in arms, some shushing a baby in a pram, but all of them with something to say. The demographic of the group meant that there was a heavy focus on return to work and how they’d navigate this, but there were also feelings of lost identity, imposter syndrome, lack of self care and minimal confidence. 

Sometimes it felt like there were all of these all at once, and the overwhelm in articulating them bought tears. Asking mums how they were at the start of the conversation almost entirely resulted in reports of how the baby was sleeping, or whether they were currently teething or pooing. Only a handful of mums replied with any information about themselves. 

To tackle the overwhelm and to optimise the effectiveness of a 5 to 10 minute check in for a mother who could really do with 5 to 10 hours of intensive coaching and listening support, I used the Wheel of Life as a prompt. I’d ask mothers to pinpoint which area of life they wanted to focus on; was it finance, health, careers or relationships. This helped us to get specific - with a background recognition that this was just a part of the bigger picture. 

Holding the space for a mum to reflect on which area they wanted to zoom in on was usually eye opening to them. They realised actually they’d been doing well with workouts and pilates, but their relationship was where things needed work. Or they were happy with their family, friends and overall health, it was their career that they were really concerned about. 

After gaining trust, getting specific and holding space, my next aim was to send each mother away with a micro goal to work on. And yes, it needed to be micro, because life was/is already a lot. For the mums with newborns, these goals included filling up their water bottles before a day or night of breastfeeding. Whereas for the mums struggling with a return to work, it was to balance out the relentless hamster wheel with a 10 minute yoga video either first or last thing each day. 

This is the formula that I quickly took back to the corporate world. An alternative to offer when they asked for a 1 hour talk to their parents and caregivers. The results have been incredible; working with parents on a one to one basis, helping them figure out the key areas where they’re struggling, and setting micro goals to move forwards, one small step at a time.