Globally, women experience barriers to gaining employment, and once employed, they have limited opportunities for decision-making roles. Women with children have the least labour workforce participation compared to men with children, women living alone, or men living alone (ILO, 2022). Even though mothers play a crucial role in bringing up children and engaging in myriad types of work, they often are left with a feeling of not doing enough! The scenario is more promising now as modern organizations proclaim gender diversity supporting all employees in various forms. Specifically, working mothers benefit from technical and soft skills training, mentoring, and returnships to re-enter the workforce after a career break.
Furthermore, catering to working mothers’ caregiving roles, organizations offer flexible work arrangements, daycare facilities, paid maternity leaves, childcare leaves, dedicated rooms for breastfeeding, and customized health plans. These initiatives help organizations foster inclusivity and diversity while achieving business performance through the contribution of these talented and resilient women employees.
Despite these support initiatives for working mothers, their career progress and attaining work-life balance may seem a distant dream! Many of these women may shy away from actively seeking additional help to deal with the challenges believing that seeking more support would undermine their credibility and they would be perceived as inefficient, jeopardizing their career growth.
In this scenario, organizations should consider providing ‘coaching’ as a personalized option to empower working mothers. Coaching is defined as “a human development process that involves structured, focused interaction and the use of appropriate strategies, tools, and techniques to promote desirable and sustainable change for the benefit of the coachee…” (Bachkirova et al., 2010).
Since coaching is a one-on-one developmental interaction, with a coach, working mothers will gain access to a wealth of knowledge and expertise specifically tailored to their individual needs rather than just reading self-help books or undergoing group training programs. These sessions focus on creating a developmental plan considering their needs, personality, values, family situations, and goals.
We believe the focus areas of coaching for working mothers should align with needs based on their stage of motherhood, e.g. a mother re-entering the workforce after a maternity break requires coaching in areas of time management, goal orientation, and reintegration in the office environment. Coaching is specifically beneficial for young mothers, as they experience changes that coincide at the personal, social, and biological levels causing a challenge to maintain a career identity.
Similarly, mothers of teenagers may benefit from career-specific coaching targeting higher achievements in management. Conclusively, common to all these working mothers is the need to make sense of this complex process of change and adaptation. For working mothers following five key areas of coaching can facilitate flourishing in careers rather than merely juggling roles.
Strengthening Self-Efficacy
Coaching can help build a strong sense of self-efficacy in the personal and professional roles of working mothers. In the case of new mothers for example, when they get back to work and start experiencing conflict in work and family goals, they develop a tendency to compensate. Compensation means making up for shortcomings in one role through higher involvement in another role.
While compensating, these mothers may feel guilty about not spending enough time at home and not being fully present at work. If this guilt persists, it can lead to a sense of inadequacy and prevent them from fully aligning the two roles. Coaches explore these negative emotions of guilt and inadequacy and boost their confidence to execute the roles, thus working mothers may feel more resourceful and self-efficacious when they focus on the advantages and strengths of these multiple roles leading to improved performance.
Setting Autonomous Goals
Goal-setting aligning with personal values and aspirations leads to efforts in a focused direction with much greater chances of success. Although many women may find discussions with their seniors at work, spouses, siblings, and friends helpful in clarifying their goals, most of these conversations may be underlined by bias and judgment not allowing deep self-exploration and reflection about their true potential.
When goals are developed to align with a person’s intrinsic motivators (activities valued for the sense of purpose and positive emotions they generate) they are called autonomy-supporting goals. Such goals bring long-term motivation, job satisfaction, and psychological well-being. A coach facilitates the building of self-awareness and therefore, the identification of intrinsic motivators and the setting of autonomous goals. Coaching can further enable systematic planning of sub-goals to reach a main goal and the timeline for this goal achievement.
Specifically, a mother of an adolescent may benefit from career-specific coaching targeting higher achievements in management. Coaching in this case helps in planning career-related goals (promotion) and the sub-goals to achieve them (leadership training, soft skills, training, certifications required) while considering the decreased need to care for an adolescent as compared to the needs of younger children. For such mothers, goal achievement will be less stressful, more systematic, and predictable.
Enhancing Communication Skills
For success, communication skills play an important role. Creating boundaries with coworkers in a way that would not jeopardize one’s credibility is a challenge. Coaching can help working mothers develop and practice the communication skills required to manage teams, set boundaries, and collaborate effectively with their coworkers and family members.
A coach can also guide them in honing verbal and non-verbal communication skills, helping them navigate difficult conversations at the workplace and with family. For example, coaching focuses on assertive communication, wherein mothers of young adolescents could be trained to speak clearly and directly while respecting others, to avoid interpersonal conflicts. In a workplace, assertive communication is required to make their views clear during regular meetings or elucidate their career plans during promotion interviews.
Managing Time
Balancing work deadlines, household chores, children’s activities, and personal commitments can feel like a challenging task. Many working moms need help finding enough hours in the day to accomplish everything on their to-do lists. Boniwell et al., (2014) have studied several methods of time-perspective coaching that improve the time-management behaviors of coachees.
Time management is essential for enhancing work performance. A coach can help working mothers schedule time for exercise, relaxation, and hobbies, and spend quality time with their loved ones. A coach will also help in identifying time-wasting activities, help in prioritizing tasks, and create a schedule that allows for optimal efficiency. For example, coaching can help working mothers of toddlers estimate which activity/task requires how much time and attention. As toddlers are very demanding and following a fixed schedule is very difficult, working mothers must prioritize their daily tasks to strike a balance.
Creating a Support System
Although many organizations now offer flexible arrangements, working mothers may still find it challenging to attain a work-life balance due to work-related, childcare, and family responsibilities. Many working mothers feel like they ‘must do it all on their own!’ The lack of a strong support system from family and their workplaces can make it even more taxing.
Whether it’s managing childcare with the help of family or professional services, sharing household chores with their partner, or outsourcing professional tasks, coaches can help you plan and develop these support systems. A coach using their ability to think holistically can help working mothers see a complete picture of their work situation and equip them to capitalize on the assistance available at work. For example, coaching can facilitate identifying the potential of other team members in the project and delegating appropriate tasks to them, which will help the working mothers focus on demanding aspects of the project.
Conclusion
The personalized, one-on-one nature of coaching can help working mothers identify their priorities, set realistic goals, and create an action plan that aligns with their values and aspirations. Instead of juggling many tasks, they can develop the skills and confidence needed to flourish personally and professionally. We urge organizations to provide coaching and encourage their employees who are working mothers to embrace the support and guidance to discover a newfound sense of balance and fulfilment while charting a path to career success.
