On March 8, 2021 we hosted Mother’s Day with speaker Jacqueline Green, who spoke about how the pandemic is stressing moms out and her tips on how to turn the situation around.
Jacqueline Green has overcome many challenges while parenting her two children, including going to a women’s shelter. She’s written about her experiences in an upcoming book, Strong Enough to Stay; Work it Out or Leave Happy. Jacqueline has been a parenting coach, educator and popular speaker for over 20 years, specializing in helping stressed out professional women who have school aged kids.
How would you describe your leadership style?
My leadership style is transparent. When it is useful, I can be quite direct, and I’m not afraid to share my thoughts and feelings. In 2020, I have disclosed how hard they were when challenges arose. I give credit where it is due when the situation is going well, which is to the team, as our combined input makes any individual achievement possible.
When changes need to be made, I focus on the future; as a team we talk about how to do better next time, rather than assigning blame for how things went this time. I see conflict as an opportunity to grow and have learned to encourage all feedback in order to keep people engaged and vested in what we are doing.
What was your path to leadership like?
In order to become the parent I wanted to be, I had to learn a lot about being a better leader. That included going from being poor at giving and getting feedback to welcoming opportunities to do both. As well, I learned to ask for what I want, and to see the advantages of even tiny contributions, as part of building capacity. Those traits have helped me to create an international parenting company, with moms all over the world who follow us, and volunteer and work for us.
How can we empower mothers as leaders?
We can educate the world about the fact that any outstanding leader puts time and energy into developing their skills. Therefore motherhood deserves a serious investing of time and money on our skills as leaders. Everyone, from our families to the community, benefits when motherhood is recognized as the key, skilled leadership role that it is.
What are the leadership challenges that mothers face?
Mothers face several leadership challenges including:
Too high expectations of themselves and others
A tendency to do way too much themselves
Not investing in themselves as leaders
Not prioritizing their own self care
Why is celebrating mothers as leaders important?
Mothers are key in the raising of the next generation of leaders, followers, community members, etc! What gets celebrated often gets done even better…
The leadership work that parents do, much of which is done by women, has a massive impact on everyone! Parenting is so challenging now that parents need to be even more skilled leaders for their children. Gone are the days where being a self-sacrificing mother makes sense.
Why do mothers still have to take on most of the responsibilities at home while working as a professional?
I highly recommend everyone read the ground-breaking book Drop the Ball by Tiffany Dufu. Gloria Steinem wrote the foreword to it. In the book, it outlines how women can learn to delegate better with their co-parenting partner, including lowering standards, and talking over what needs to be done in the household, and coming up with more fair agreements.
Learning to ask for help before we absolutely need it…
What is the best practical advice you can give a mother to become a leader?
Learn how to be the best leader possible, which includes knowing how to enlist help, build capacity, and ask for help. Don’t treat yourself like the living help, and expect yourself to do everything and figure everything out, with no support!