You can listen to our interview in full on our iTunes podcast here or a direct download for all devices here.
Daisy is a busy mom of 2 and an expert in helping working parents achieve satisfaction and fulfillment in both their careers and their personal life, particularly those in high pressure,very demanding careers. She is a pioneer of publishing parenting articles on the Harvard Business Review and resides with her husband and children in the bustling New York City.
Daisy says:
At the end of the day things like promotions, how well you're paid, what types of opportunities might open up your career in terms of relocating to a new place or opening a new division of the company or anything else that would be really considered exciting and important in your career, it’s going to be about performance as opposed to about any demographic issue or set of responsibilities that you have at home.
When you're thinking about advancement, I encourage people to shelve the considerations of "how do I advocate for this despite the fact that I'm a working parent" or "how do I think of myself versus other candidates for the promotion or for assignments".
One thing that's very powerful for any professional, but particularly for somebody who's managing so many other responsibilities at the office is to rehearse and to always have ready is what I call a key win speech. If you find yourself in the elevator with a senior manager or you're walking down the hall and the CEO of the company passes you and says "how's it going?" or you're suddenly pulled into your boss's office into an important meeting and people start asking questions about a project that you have - always be ready with a feasible and relevant bullet point about how you've been able to add value.
So that might be, when you pass a colleague or superior in the hallway and that person says, “How's it going?”, you say "It's great. I'm really excited. We were just able to deliver the presentation to the client and the meeting went very very well. We have a follow up call to talk about how the project is going to go on Tuesday." It can include whatever is relevant to your profession. In that way, what you're presenting and what you're putting forth in the workplace is your accomplishments and your value add. You're not painting yourself as somebody who has a set of competing responsibilities, but simply you’re somebody who is able to deliver and who's a high performer and valuable to the organization."
You can listen to our interview in full on our iTunes podcast here or a direct download for all devices here.
More on Daisy Dowling
Daisy has 20+ years of experience working with high pressure finance firms including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Blackstone to coach working parents on how to manage work and parenting balance.
HBR articles: