Leading Mama

Undercover Mom: Getting Eye-to-Eye with Your Kids

All moms are CEOs. Chief Everything Officers, that is. From the moment our kids enter the world, we feel responsible for everything. We worry about whether they eat or sleep enough or too much. We obsess over when they will crawl, walk, and talk. We work to put food on the table, pay for health care, and save for college. We cook, clean, shop and chauffeur.

 

And we keep track of who pooped and when. And what color it was. According to my friend Jen, when you become a mom, you become CEO: Chief Excrement Officer. Let me say that before I had my first child, I thought Jen was being kind of crass. Two kids later, I get it. Totally.

 

Last night’s rebroadcast episode of Undercover Boss featured “Mama Wolf” Kim Schaefer, CEO of Great Wolf Resorts, North America's largest family of indoor waterpark resorts. Schaefer, the first woman to be featured on Undercover Boss, posed as a stay-at-home-mom returning to work. She helped kids make pizzas in the Cub Club, shadowed the safety supervisor in the waterpark, and waited tables in the restaurant.

 

And she cleaned up an AFR (“accidental fecal release”) in one of the pools. Now that’s the kind of dirty work any mom can relate to. It’s gooey. It stinks. You didn’t make the mess. And you have to clean it up.

 

Even my military knowledge did not prepare me to understand THAT acronym. Leading Man and I were laughing out loud when the staff explained what it meant. And Schaefer earned my respect when she cleaned it up without cringing or shuddering in disgust.

 

I’m sure Schaefer learned a great deal from her undercover experience. She seemed to be profoundly affected by the stories of the women and men who work at Great Wolf. If nothing else, she came to more deeply understand the reasons people work, the challenges they face, and the dreams they cherish. She got in touch with her people as people. She internalized their struggles and let them touch her heart.  

 

As a mom, I wish I could go undercover to see what it feels like to be one of my kids. I know I would confront glaring inconsistencies. Why is it okay to eat pancakes but not okay to eat cupcakes for breakfast, anyway?  

 

Obviously, there’s no magic machine that can make me a kid again. I’ll have to get down on my hands and knees and play with my kids instead. When I play with my kids eye-to-eye, I stop thinking about what’s for dinner and whether we’re saving enough for college. I tune in to them as people. And that’s the kind of insight every CEO – and mom – needs.  

 

The Introverted Parent: Leadership Doesn’t Have to Be Loud

Wallflower kids make many parents anxious and upset.

 

We want our kids to make friends, to get along with others, to stand up for themselves. As parents, we feel intense pressure to help them succeed in the social world. They need emotional intelligence, including social awareness and relationship management skills. And they have to be able to cultivate and navigate a real-live social network. Not just online; in person, where it’s scary.

 

Maybe that’s why I can’t stand it when my son clings to my leg and hides from people, as if he is painfully shy and in need of protection. Let me say that 1) he isn’t painfully shy – he does this clingy thingy when he’s making a transition from one situation to another or when he is ridiculously overtired – and 2) I don’t respond to it well.

 

I wouldn’t describe myself as an extrovert. On personality tests of the Five-Factor Model, I score in the middle on the extroversion-introversion scale, but closer to the introverted end of the continuum. I am an ambivert, really. I am extremely comfortable talking in front of very large groups of people, especially when I am sharing what I know. I come to life in front of an audience.

 

I look people right in the eye when we meet, and can make small talk with just about anyone. If you chat me up on an airplane, I’ll be a good conversationalist. But – if I had my choice – I’d rather read a book than go to a social event or get to know a stranger. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy socializing. It’s just that I’d rather think than interact most of the time. Thinking energizes me.

 

My ambivert tendencies influence how I parent my kids. I am comfortable spending time at home and dislike crowded social venues. We go places, but we don’t stay all day. That’s probably just as well because bustling social events can get the kids over-stimulated anyway.

 

We have infrequent play dates. My son wants more. This morning, at 0700, he started asking if his friends are outside. It’s a snow day and he has big plans to play with neighbor kids who are usually gone to school. I have to consciously tune in to that because I get wrapped up in thinking and doing and I forget to reach out. I lose track.

 

If you or your kids have introvert tendencies, take heart. Jennifer Kahnweiler, author of The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength and the IntrovertedLeader blog, highlights strengths introverted leaders (and parents) should apply.

-- They think first and talk later.

-- They focus on depth.

-- They exude calm.

Those sound like a recipe for wise and loving parenting to me.

 

 

 

 

Bearing Bad News

One of the not-so-fun parts of parenting is giving kids bad news. Here's some of my week:

Your fish died because daddy overfed it while we were on vacation. (thanks, hon)

Your Wild Kratts and Dinosaur Train shows were deleted from the DVR when we recorded Tremors, an 1990 cult classic about huge underground snake-like monsters.

You won’t be seeing your cousins anytime soon, since they live in California and we live in New Jersey.

It’s enough to break a mom’s heart. 
I'd rather be eaten by a subterranean snake monster. Really.

 

Fortunately, management experts have lots of tips for how to deliver bad news. I’m not sure how well they’ll work when Carson wants to eat a cupcake for breakfast (again) or a play Medal of Honor (“The bad guys are pretend, mom. They aren’t real guns.”), but these tips are worth trying.

1.       Make eye contact. It shows you are engaged in the conversation and attentive to your child’s expressions. It also means you can’t hide from the truth you are telling.

2.       Don’t let emotions interfere with your message. Share your feelings if you think they will help, but don’t get wrapped up in them. You’re the leader here. Kids shouldn’t have to soothe you. Use a grown-up support system to vent and do it out of earshot of the kids.

3.       Be direct but not snarky. Tone is extremely important. It can communicate compassion, concern, or schadenfreude. Kids should know you are care about their feelings even when you set limits they don’t like. When I get snippy, Carson puts me in time out. Ouch!

4.       Tell it like it is.  Resist the urge to soften bad news by making up stories or using euphemisms. Dead dogs don’t go to live on farms in the country. You wouldn’t want your boss to tell you the company is “expanding its overseas operations” when he really means they outsourced your job to India, would you?

Delivering bad news is one of the most difficult tasks in leadership and parenting. Fortunately, I get a lot of practice.

What's in a Word?

I’ll admit it. 2011 caught me off guard. Despite all the holiday activities – or maybe because of them! – I didn’t have much time to reflect on the past and dream about the future. For the month of December, I felt like I was going in five directions at any one time.

Now the New Year is here. I’m feeling energized, but lacking a sense of direction. Recently I took time to check in on Christina Katz’s blog, because I feel like we’re friends or (at least) kindred spirits. We’ve never met, but Christina’s book, Writer Mama, helped me get started writing for popular magazines. Her blog makes me stop and think even when I’m scrambling to meet deadlines, like I am now. So I surfed on over for some inspiration.

In her most recent post, Christina shares her One Little Word for 2011: Fearless. Unable to resist the temptation to learn more, I surfed over to life artist Ali Edwards’ blog, and found a group of thoughtful women sharing their one little words for this year. Learn more about the One Little Word concept (OLW), Edwards’ one little word class, and see a gorgeous collage of words here.

The concept behind OLW is simple. Choose one word each year and invite it in. Let it sum up what you want for yourself. Meditate on it. Focus on it. Draw energy from it. Understand its meaning in your life. Let that one little word expand who you are or reconnect you with your authentic self.  

So I have been thinking about what my one little word might be in 2011.

Unsurprisingly, I have trouble committing to only ONE word. Create, connect, passion, focus, presence, productivity. Words rush into my head so fast I can hardly capture one on paper before another is pushing its way into my consciousness. And I am editing the list as I go, not content to let the words onto the page without judging, censoring, tweaking and twisting them into something else. I cannot let the words BE.

THIS is the essence of my experience – I simply cannot do one thing at a time. I sometimes blame it on the kids but that really isn’t fair. It isn’t them, it’s me. I need a twelve-step program. “Good afternoon. My name is Heidi. It has been three nanoseconds since my last mental distraction. Um. What was I saying?” Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was multi-tasking. Lost my train of thought. Just a sec, I need to send this email. Oh, you’re still there. Where was I again?

And so, I decided my One Little Word for 2011 is focus. FOCUS. I can’t wait to see where it takes me.

What’s your word this year?

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