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Head & Heart #34

July 20, 2018 By Clare Leave a Comment

My big baby turned 5 a couple of weeks ago! Ella’s birthday is always a time of much reflection and this year I’ve found myself considering how becoming a mum, and Ella’s mum specifically, has changed the trajectory of my life. Her arrival felt like an asteroid had rammed into me and thrown me from my orbit leaving me lost and spinning out of control. But now, as we traverse further into this new identity and relationship I feel more confident that this path I’m now on is providing me with the lessons and opportunities I’m meant to have. In the lead up to her birthday I also found myself filled with enormous gratitude for all the wonderful people that have come into my life that I probably wouldn’t have connected with otherwise – my mother’s group, working at YWCA Canberra, the She Leads students and facilitators, Lead Mama Lead, my new colleagues at the APSC…

With each birthday it’s interesting to notice how parenting challenges shift from the basic needs around sleeping, eating etc, to deeper ones around raising a decent human being. This post on fitting in vs belonging was one worth reading and will be something I try to remember as Ella gets older and continues to navigate friendships and social structures.

I love love love this idea! If you’re expecting a baby, or know someone who is, why not skip the baby shower and throw a post-partum party instead?

Recent favourite podcast discoveries that I’d recommend include Self-Helpless (3 comedians discuss various self-help topics/books) and Briget Shulte’s Better Life Lab (on the art and science of living a full life). I’m also excited to see that Jamila Rizvi’s new podcast, Future Women, is launching next week. I also really enjoyed this episode of Hidden Brain – The Edge Effect – which includes some fantastic stories about diversity and creativity.

Some people in my network who are doing great things and that I think you should know about….

My friend Zoya Patel‘s debut book, No Country Woman, is coming out next month! I’m so excited to read this and share it. Zoya is one of the smartest, most insightful people I know and her writing about race, feminism and identity always makes me stop and think. She’s doing a number of events over the coming months – including a launch in Canberra on 19 August, and the Melbourne Writers Festival!
Julie Boulton has an excellent weekly newsletter, The Greening Of, about her journey towards more sustainable living. I always learn heaps and I love her honest, engaging, humourous writing style.
Lead Mama Lead founder, Summer Edwards, is running the next intake of the Overcoming Overwhelm course in September. This is an online course for mamas who are struggling with and/or feel like they’d like to get better at dealing with feelings of overwhelm, guilt and exhaustion in their life. It’s a supportive, gentle program (designed to fit in around the lives of busy women). I’m about 2/3 through the pilot program and it’s definitely led to some increased self-awareness around the priorities and values in my life and the habits and practices that help and hinder my wellbeing. (You can also get 25% off if you sign up before 1 August).
A couple of months ago, my friend and former colleague Stefan Kraus from RGB Collective took some wonderful portraits of us (and did incredibly well to capture the easily-distracted and not-always-compliant kids). Getting some more family photos on the wall was one of the things I really wanted to do this year, now I just have to get them printed and framed…. (I’m also thinking about getting one turned into a custom illustrated portrait from Able & Game)

My feet (and pregnant belly) – 3 July 2013

On the topic of photos, Ella uses an old iPhone to listen to podcasts and audiobooks. She’s recently discovered the camera function and has taken (quite enthusiastically) to documenting her life and creating movies! It’s been fun to look through the pictures and videos and get a glimpse of what the world looks like from her perspective. There are lots of selfies and posed pictures of toys and hundreds of walls and windows and floors and ceilings (some quite artistic, some not so much).

I particularly love this one – mainly because exactly 5 years and 12 days earlier I’d taken a very similar shot (in almost the identical spot) as I paced my lounge room in early labour about 10 hours before we met Ella.

The other big news to share since my last H&H update is that I’ve returned to (paid) work following my maternity break. I’m pleased to be facilitating some of the core skills and graduate development training programs at the Australian Public Service Commission, and I’m also doing some freelance facilitation, coaching and training. Helping individuals and groups to learn and change and to see themselves and the world a little differently has been a pretty consistent thread through my work for the past 8 or so years, but facilitation has been a somewhat peripheral part of the various jobs I’ve had. I feel so excited to be diving deeper into this work and to commit to building my own skills, knowledge, experience and practice – it feels like the work I’m meant to be doing. I have some availability for work for the remainder of the year, so if you need some support with running meetings, workshops or training, please get in touch. All the details are over on the Sticky Note Consulting site.

Finally, I’m going to trial sending out Head & Heart updates as a newsletter which may make them easier to follow (for the handful of dear friends that actually read them)! If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. I’ll keep posting them to the blog too!

Head & Heart #29

September 11, 2017 By Clare 2 Comments

On Friday evening I drove into town for my Genius Bar appointment (sadly nothing could be done to revive my Mac, so this is another post from my phone) and I saw the huge, bright moon in the sky. I’m rarely out at night anymore so when I am I try to make an effort to look up. On nights when the moon is full and huge I like to think about who else might be looking up and pondering the same thing. This feeling of connection to people I’ll never know makes me smile. (Just like those night feeds at 2am when you feel some kind of invisible bond to the other unknown women you know are doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.)

One Sky Project by Women Who Draw (Sophie Beer, Brisbane (79) and Rachel Chew, Melbourne (80))

So I was particularly delighted to read about the One Sky project in Austin Kleon’s newsletter this week. Eighty-eight women from around the world all looked up into the sky at exactly the same time and drew/painted whatever they saw. The result is this lovely wholistic capture of what the sky looks like from different perspectives. It’s a great metaphor for how a simple change in position (physically, but also mentally) can provide new perspective and change what we see.

There are so many things I could share this week that have made me stop and think/feel, so it was challenging to just pick 3….

1. How Friends Become Closer

as time goes on, friendships often face more hurdles to intimacy than other close relationships. As people hurtle toward the peak busyness of middle age, friends—who are usually a lower priority than partners, parents, and children—tend to fall by the wayside.

I’ve found myself thinking a lot about friendship lately with the sudden shift in demands on my time that full-time parenting with a new baby brings. In many ways the constant hands-on work means that I have less freedoms to catch up with a friend for a meal or coffee, but in other ways, without the constant intellectual stimulation of work and the interpersonal connections that work brings, I’ve felt a loneliness and longing for connection with friends that has often being hard to satisfy as they deal with their own ‘peak busyness’. This piece has some interesting insights about the contexts and containers that adult friendship exist in, which makes me appreciate the complexity and requisite effort required to sustain these relationships.

2. The Power of Anti-Goals (via Adam Grant’s newsletter, Granted)

…problems are often best solved when they are reversed… it’s often easier to think about what you don’t want than what you do

Our new nanny started today (yay!) and so I’m right in the thick of figuring out what ‘work’ might look like for me over the next 6-12 months. Without a functional computer I was limited in what I could do this morning so spent some time with a pen and paper using this technique to brainstorm what I don’t want my work to look like.

It’s a technique I’ve used before (and have blogged about) particularly in relation to business improvements, but this was the first time I applied it to my own life design.

3. How to fix the person you love (via Emi Kolawole’s newsletter, E is for Everything)

To make us feel loved and valued, our spouse must convey appreciation for the person we currently are. To help us grow, he or she must emphasize the discrepancy between that person and the person we can ideally become, typically by casting a sober, critical eye On our faults.

I feel I’m frequently navigating (often awkwardly and painfully) the tension between playing the role of supporter/empathizer or coach/advisor in my own marriage, so this piece particularly resonated.

Head & Heart #26

August 21, 2017 By Clare Leave a Comment

Three things that have me thinking and feeling this week….

1. The New Work Smarts Report
The Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) have released The New Work Smarts report which forecasts the type of activities and requisite skills/knowledge that will be involved in work in 2030. In 2030, Ella will be 17 and probably embarking on first jobs and navigating the minefield of post-school career/education choices. Of particular interest was the fact that work in the future will be much more self-directed – with less management and training. This is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the future of work and what their job/career may look like in 10-15 years, but I think it’s especially relevant for parents and educators to consider what kind of skills and experiences we should be supporting children to develop.

2. Lessons of Labor: One Woman’s Self-Discovery through Birth and Motherhood

As I work on letting go of the pressure to be self-sufficient, I see that accepting help allows others true entrance into my life, creating the stronger community that I always longed to have.

Being back in the thick of newborn life I’ve found myself doing a lot of reading and thinking about birth and motherhood and reflecting on the ways that these experiences have shaped me. This week I read Lessons of Labor – a fairly short book in which the author, Julia Aziz, uses the stories of her three births (and miscarriage) to distill a number of life lessons. Although the birth stories are the framework for the book, I found it to be more a book about parenting and it reminded me a lot of ‘Buddhism for Parents on the Go‘. There were some particularly timely insights for me about asking for and accepting help, and about accepting rather than resisting some of the daily frustrations and challenges of life with little humans!

3. ‘Kids are gross’: On feminism and agency
Consent, respect, and bodily autonomy are at the core of feminism, but this piece reminded me that even when we’re loudly banging on about these things in our own lives it’s so easy to overlook them in our interactions with children. While I try to be mindful of these values in my parenting, I often find myself underestimating the perceptiveness and capabilities of my 4-year old (and her friends). This post definitely made me want to do better – and to expect the same of the other adults in my kids’ lives.

Head & Heart #24

August 8, 2017 By Clare Leave a Comment

A semi-regular capture of 3 things that have engaged my heart and/or heart…

1. Relationship vs transaction
I was talking with a friend last week about interpersonal interactions being motivated by either a desire to build a relationship or to complete a transaction. So I was surprised to hear these words – relationship and transaction – come up in the recent episode of the Dear Sugars podcast on saying no (with Oprah Winfrey). I believe that when the universe keeps unexpectedly throwing up certain words or phrases in front of you, it’s worth paying attention.

2. Deep work with deep responsibilties
In her email newsletter this week Laura Vanderkam asked can you do ‘deep work’ if you also have deep responsibilities? It captured some of the frustrations I had with Cal Newport’s Deep Work, which I love the idea of but struggle to see how it can be implemented in reality by people with lead parenting (or other primary caregiving) responsibilities – which are most often women. However, I like Laura’s suggestion that perhaps Deep Work can be achieved in smaller blocks or through ‘retreats’.

3. Drop the Ball
I also finished Tiffany Dufu’s Drop The Ball – a book for women about letting go at home. My friend Ruth wrote an excellent review of the book, and if you’re not inclined to spend the time or money to read the book but are still interested in the idea, I recommend listening to Tiffany’s interview on Jonathan Fields’s Good Life Project podcast.

Book Review: Orbiting the Giant Hairball

March 10, 2012 By Clare Leave a Comment

Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first heard one of the stories from this book when listening to Tom Kelley’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders lecture on how to be an innovator for life. I didn’t really know what to expect from the book, but I loved it! The author uses a series of often humorous, short, personal stories to reflect on and illustrate the problems with most organisational cultures and how to avoid losing one’s sanity and individuality when working in one.

My notes from Orbiting the Giant Hairball

[Disclaimer: The notes below are rough, and may be a mixture of direct quotes, paraphrasing, and my own thoughts/ideas/reminders. They’re written here primarily for me (so they may not make much sense out of context, especially for those who haven’t read the book)].

(17) Disruption with purpose.

(33) Orbiting is responsible creativity. Vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond “accepted models, patterns or standards” – all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission. [Read more…]

Don’t wait for your dream job to be advertised, create it!

February 11, 2012 By Clare Leave a Comment

This week at work, a senior manager and I were considering how best to fill a new position (that needs to be filled quite quickly) and whether it should be filled by a successful applicant from a recent generic recruitment round, or whether it was necessary to open the opportunity up to all internal staff first in case an existing staff member was interested in this new role.

This got me thinking (and fuming a little) about how many staff fail to take control of their job options, and instead expect that organisations will serve up potential new roles like they’re at some kind of buffet waiting to peruse the options and make their choice! Now, don’t get me wrong – I support merit selection and transparency in recruitment decisions, but I also believe that staff should be able to (and be expected to) be more proactive about pursuing roles of interest to them without the need for or expectation of formal, organisation-initiated recruitment processes.

I don’t think I’ve seen a staff survey, outcomes from a Divisional planning day, or Divisional ‘action plan’ that doesn’t propose the creation of some sort of job swap/staff mobility program to provide staff who have been in their position for a while and are seeking a change in role, with a facilitated opportunity to move to a different one. That said, for all the proposals I’ve seen, I’m not actually aware of a single program that has actually been successfully rolled out. I find myself frustrated at staff who continually ask for these mobility programs to be created to facilitate their movement. These staff seem to feel stuck and helpless and dependent on the organisation to set out a series of opportunities for them.

People have far more control over their jobs than they believe. If you want to be in a different role in your organisation (regardless of whether or not that role currently exists) you have enormous power to make it happen. How? Really, all you have to do is ask… [Read more…]

Book Review: Why Work Sucks

January 22, 2012 By Clare Leave a Comment

Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: No Schedules, No Meetings, No Joke–the Big Idea That’s Already Transforming the Way We Work by Cali Ressler

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book, but ended up wanting a bit more from it…

The book provides a very compelling argument as to why the current system of work/performance (largely based on time) is broken and the advantages of ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment). But for me, this was really preaching to the converted… I first read about ROWE on Tim Ferris’ blog (I think) and was attracted to the concept right away. I completely agree that work (and associated remuneration and performance measurement) should be based on value created rather than hours spent in an office.

But where I thought the book fell short (and where I personally wanted more) was in relation to helping managers and their staff manage solely on the basis of results. The book (pg 129-130) suggests that ‘ultimately a ROWE is not a test of the employees, it is a test of the manager’ and asks ‘Can they [managers] do their jobs communicating expectations and holding people accountable? Can they develop systems to get the information they need without doing it through drive-bys or fire drills?’. As a new-ish manager seeking to implement a more results-based performance culture in my team (a full ROWE is not something within my control) I would have appreciated some more guidance/ideas/tips on setting, communicating and measuring performance expectations, and providing feedback.

[Read more…]