Welcome to the Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources
podcast. I'm Tracy Chernoff, and I've
spent my entire professional career in HR.
Each week, we'll explore the delicate balance between people
and business with the aim to reconnect the two and create
meaningful outcomes. Listen in as I share my own
experiences, challenge the status quo, and chat with guests
from various industries about our mission to bring the human
back to human resources. Hi everyone, welcome back to the
Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources podcast.
Thank you so much for being here for another week.
We are back on the subject of working parents.
And so if you are not a parent yet, don't worry, that is OK,
because you might want to know why you should hire them.
And so we're going to talk a lot about that, but before we get
into the subject for this week, I'm going to introduce you to
our guest, Kelly McGinnis, who has a passion for helping
families, specifically moms. She's spent the last 20 years
educating, encouraging and empowering families to be their
best selves and trust their strengths.
She's a certified Gottman educator, emotion coach and
certified incredible family positive parents strengths
coach. She has a passion for supporting
parents, coaches and families through the various transitions
that take place along the parenting journey.
She's also one the founders and CEO of Incredible Family, an
organization committed to unleashing potential in working
parents and families through developing strengths.
Kelly, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being
here. Oh, thanks Tracy for having me.
I'm so excited to talk about working parents today.
Yeah, me too. And I think maybe we we can
start at the top, which is maybe why you're so interested in and
passionate about working parents and all that they bring to a
business or to an organization. Yeah, So that the answer to that
question stems back to when I became a mom.
So I have three teenage daughters.
My oldest is going to be 18 this Friday, actually Saturday.
I know it was so exciting. And then I have a 17 year old
and a 15 year old, all three girls.
And so my entrance into motherhood was a very abrupt,
like, holy smokes, hold on for dear life, here we go.
And in that transition, I learned a lot about myself
personally, myself professionally, and I was
challenged in ways that I did not anticipate happening.
And so that lit a fire in me to partner with other moms, other
working parents that maybe felt the same, similar.
Like, Oh my gosh, what did I get myself into that pressure to
have to choose? Like I really want to be a good
mom, but I also want to be a great leader in my company.
Can I do both of those simultaneously at the same time?
And for a while there, it was rocky from from my entrance into
motherhood until I decided, you know what, I'm going to lean
into this. I'm going to learn more.
I'm going to build an amazing toolbox that are based on who I
am and what my strengths are. And So what I learned is that we
can bring out our full potential.
We don't have to feel that pressure to choose one or the
other. Yeah, totally.
That's fair. And I.
Appreciate you saying that. Because I also am a working mom,
as you know, as the listeners know at this point.
And it is a really hard kind of crossroads to come to when
you're like, oh, can I do both? Because I want to do both.
And how do I do that? And you know, it's we all
always, well, maybe don't, we don't all.
But I always hear, you know, conversations around the mental
load and how women generally are the ones kind of carrying the
torch at home. And then they have these, you
know, work obligations. And we don't really live in a
society that a can, generally speaking, support single income
families anymore. And aside from that, there are
women who obviously want to maintain their careers.
And there are all of these studies that show when women do
leave the workforce, and they often are the ones to leave the
workforce to child rear or bring up their families, that that
then has not necessarily significant, but significant,
but some impact on their future careers when they either want to
get back into whatever career they were in before and how all
of that works. Because at that point, they've
obviously been out of the industry that they were in.
They've potentially lost some of the traction that obviously you
gain when you're in it, so to speak.
There was a whole show on this called Younger, which I loved.
I loved the show. I don't know if you watched it.
It's a great show. I can't remember.
Maybe it's on Hulu. Great show.
And it's, it's all about how this woman left the workforce.
She was in a, she was an editor for, you know, books like a, an
editor at a publishing company. And she left in order to to
raise her family. And then she went back and she
had to pose as a 20 something just in order to get a job,
obviously in the show. And so it kind of is a play on
and a mirror into or a window I should say, into what can
sometimes happen when someone feels that they have to pick one
over the other. You know, it's interesting
we've, you know, I've used this phrase motherhood penalty and it
really is when you unpack all the realities that happen at the
same time that we are biologically like ready to have
kids. You mentioned a few of them, but
there's a couple more. Like you mentioned the fact that
often times when we're ready to have kids, it's in a crucial
scalable part of our career. So those two are in opposition
already. You mentioned the need to have
dual incomes. That's increasingly becoming
more of a like a thing in houses across America.
Another thing is that the school day, I know you have littles,
but you know, get ready for this.
The school day doesn't align with the work day.
So like kids need to be at school.
I don't know why they come up with this like 8:30.
Well, that is really problematic for a lot of people.
And they get out at 2:15 or 2:30.
Well, the work day doesn't finish until 5:00.
And so there's a misalignment there as well.
And so it just continues to add on to we're already behind the
game if you just look at the facts of like entering the
motherhood space. So I kind of wanted to shift the
perspective because it's already, the odds are already
stacked against us. So what, what could we do to
kind of flip the script and think about it differently so
that it's not all these negative things, but it's more how can we
do both in a really, really positive way?
Right. And yeah, all of that is a great
point about the school. I didn't even think about that
because as you mentioned, I have little.
Not yet. Yep, not not school aged yet,
right. But all of that to say, I mean,
I'm curious in in the work that you've done, what you've seen in
terms of like, what works, like how, how do we shift the
narrative and how do we help parents become maybe not more
successful, but maybe happier in the workplace?
Because it is really hard. I can only speak from my own
experience. It's hard to find the same
satisfaction at work as a working parent sometimes as
maybe I once had, not because I'd rather be with my kids all
the time or because I, I feel, you know, my work is different.
I think it's kind of just everything that it's like you
have so much more on your plate and then as you increase in your
tenure or your scope, you have so much more on your plate.
And then it's like, well, how much more can my plate take?
And so sometimes that's the the thing and sometimes it is that
someone doesn't want to work, but they have to because of
these, you know, economic factors.
So I'm curious what generally you see with your clients and in
terms of what works. So it's interesting, two things
that you just mentioned that are really important to kind of
touch on. One thing is this idea that we
don't want to get stuck in the hard.
And I don't want parents or employers or anyone out there to
get stuck in the hard. I want you to know that there's
hope in there. There's a way forward, whatever
your situation might be. And one of the reasons we get
stuck in the hard is the way that our brain is hard wired.
We're we are hard wired as humans to focus on negativity.
Our brains are designed to kind of create this like security
system for us and give us these alerts like whoa, warning,
warning. This is not good.
And what we do in that moment is we focus on it more.
We try to fix it. We try to diminish it, whatever
our coping strategies are, we only see the hard.
And so in order to break that negativity cycle, we have to do
something different. And that's where what I have
found really works is shifting to more of a strengths
philosophy and really looking at, you know what, there are a
lot of things that we have. We all have weaknesses.
There are all hard things. But when we choose to find our
strengths, to learn about our strengths, to develop those, it
gives us this rush of energy that helps us push over and push
past the hard. And so that would be Part 1 of
the answer, Part 2 of the answer.
You mentioned happiness and it's so interesting in a lot of our
work that we do with organizations and the one-on-one
clients that I work with, it is a common values shared among
parents that that's what they want.
That's like if I asked you, Tracy, what defines being a
successful mom? Like, how would you define that?
That's a good question. I guess it within the scope of
the age of my kids today is maybe the way I'd answer this
verse. But as I say that, I'm also
zooming out a little bit, but I would say like happy, healthy
kids, you know, right. That is the common, Yep, those
are the common things. Like everyone I talk to their
measurement of like, am I being a successful parent?
Am I being successful in life is connected in some way to overall
happiness and well-being? And so I share with folks a
happiness curve study that was done several years ago.
And they measured people's happiness over the course of
from the age of 16 to the age of like 75.
And they plotted and I think they used over like 160
different countries. Like it's a global study of
people's happiness. And what they found is at 16,
those levels are really high. Happiness levels are high.
Think about like we all think back to 16.
I just got my license. I have some independence.
This is so exciting. Like I have my whole world in
front of me. And then what they found is as
the years went by, that happiness level decreased
significantly. And eventually you hit like this
rock bottom area and it starts to curve and it started to come
up on the back end. So I call it like EU shape
happiness curve. If you can envision that on
your, in your mind. And they, they did some research
and they're like, Oh my gosh, what causes this massive dip in
happiness levels? And it is twofold.
It's becoming apparent and work that caused the most impact on
people's levels of happiness. And so when you lean into what
that what that means, it's a very simple formula where as we
get older, our goals get obstructed by certain things.
One of the things that obstructs our goal significantly is,
Tracy, you have a smile on your face.
Yeah, it's kids. It's kids.
Like, think about like your kids, you are 19 months old.
Like you want to work. We were just talking about this
before we went on the recording today.
Like I have a recording today and now I have crying kids in
the background that are getting ready for nap time.
That is a perfect example of what causes that dip in the
happiness curve is frustration. Like I really want to, I set out
to do this goal for today and my kids are obstructing that they
they have a different goal for today.
And it and when you are able to take a step back and articulate,
this is my goal as a working parent.
But then you take the perspective of your kids too,
and you ask what are their goals in this moment?
It starts to become a little bit less frustrated.
We reduce our emotions a little bit and we're able to move
forward with some clarity when we think about, OK, how can we
manage the two goals at the same time instead of it being this
constant conflict, frustration and a negative impact on our
happiness and well-being. So interesting.
It has made me wonder if you've seen any significance in terms
of the number of hours or the type of hours that a parent
works when they, you know, when they are trying to find that
balance. I ask because I have friends,
for example, who either are stay at home parents or stay at home
moms most often, or they work part time or they have their own
business. So it's very flexible and I'm
curious if, I mean, of course with the caveat being that if
you have your own business that's a different type of
stress. But do you see any significance
in terms of or maybe in comparison between someone who's
working full time and someone who's working part time?
Or is it all really the same that they're the goals still are
the same? So it's the same and different.
Like bear with me. So I am the queen of dual
realities. I think that as a as humans, we
have a really really hard time embracing 2 concepts that are
contradictory of one another. But it is true that two things
that are contradictory can be true at the same time.
And so if that's the answer to your question is yes, it is the
same. Every person, every human runs
across like, what are my goals? And things are going to get in
the way of that, and that's going to cause me frustration
and disappointment. How do I deal with those
unpleasant feelings and, and really being intentional around
choosing to shift from a negativity bias standpoint to
replacing that with a different type of thinking.
And it's different because we are all different.
And So what works for you, Tracy is going to be very different
than what works for me because we have different strengths.
Our kids are different, our life stage is different.
We have different lived experiences, our childhoods are
different. And so it really truly is a dual
reality that it it's a yes and a no at the same time.
Very interesting and I love my one of my favorite and most used
phrases is 2 things can be true at once.
In fact, more things more than two things can be true at once.
And it's hard to reconcile for many of us, but it really is
true. So I appreciate that you shed
light on that. That, you know, someone could be
working part time, have the same needs and goals as someone
working full time and yet maybe have more balance or vice versa,
not feel as much balance because being a full time working parent
is quite the job to have. So, and it's not really the job
for everyone. Not everyone wants to spend all
of their time. You know, that's, it's funny
because I think it's very natural when you become a parent
that you're like, I want to spend all of my time with my
kids and then you spend all of your time with your kids and
you're like, Oh, I need a break just like any, just like any
job, frankly. But it's it's really an
interesting, it's not a conundrum, but it's just an
interesting like reflection point.
I think as a newer parent I know that I'm already like almost two
years into this, but as a newer. Parent.
It's an interesting thing because I want to spend all my
time with my kids and I also want to work.
And so it's like, well, how do you balance?
This comes back to everything that we just talked about.
How do you manage to get the best of both of those things?
This does lead me to something that I mentioned at the top of
our recording, which is why people should hire working
parents. Because you've talked about
strengths a lot in terms of what you all do at your company and
how you lean into strengths when it comes to helping to shift
this perception, perspective, and narrative.
And I thought maybe it would be a good idea to also share why
hiring and employing working parents is such a strong
strategy for businesses and organizations to lean into.
And obviously with that, there has to be some level of support
for those working parents too. So maybe you can weigh on on
both of those things. Yeah.
So the the first part of the question is really like leaning
into why should I hire working parents?
Like what about being a parent adds value to the companies?
And I would say hands down its leadership strategies and
qualities because the more that I've developed my parenting
skills and the more that I've worked with lots of different
corporations and companies, parenting and leadership run a
very, very close parallel. And so I feel like if you want
to elevate leaders and if you want to develop some of those
very like valuable skills in your workplace, working parents
are already doing that at home and they don't even know that
they're doing it. And so it's a very easy
connection point for them to start to see how some of those
leadership skills are being utilized at home and then
implementing those in the workplace becomes just a really
good connection point. So that was Part 1 of your
question. Remind me of Part 2 of the
question. I got so excited about.
I, it's OK, it's OK. I was excited about the
leadership part and I completely forgot Part 2.
It's really. Important.
No, it's OK. My, my second.
I can't even remember that. I I can't even believe that I
remember the second part of my question because usually once I
ask it, it's it's gone out of my mind.
The second part is how do we best how do organizations really
best support their working parents?
I have some thoughts on this too, but I'm curious to hear.
Your perspective yeah, so my my answer there I love one word
answers and then I can elaborate on it is community.
Hands down, the best way to support working parents in your
organization is allow them time to connect with other working
parents in a community setting. I love that I, you know, it's,
it's interesting because it's true, A, it's true obviously,
but B, it's so it kind of feels very simple, like not in a, not
in A to, you know, to boil it down.
But it's like, OK, well, if you give these people resources,
these working parents more resources, yeah, you can do
that. But how do you maintain it?
Whereas when you give someone access to other working parents
who have, I've done it for years and years and years before them,
or who are just, you know, kind of walking into their parenthood
as a new parent, it could be, I see it as almost like a built in
mentorship. So it's really an interesting
response to that. And the research supports it.
Like I could show you so many different studies around like
how to feel, how to improve your engagement, how to improve
productivity among your employees, you know, how to
improve their overall well-being and happiness.
And it boils down to what we talked about multiple times
already, this idea that we want to create a sense of belonging.
And immediately when you enter parenthood, you understand
without even saying a lot of words, you have an A sense of
empathy around what other parents might be facing.
And you feel like this sense of belonging.
You feel like, you know what? These people understand me and
I'm not alone. And when you feel like you have
that sense of belonging, you're not alone.
You have a support system built around you.
You're hearing tips and tricks and strategies and you're,
you're really developing yourself into creating your, you
know, developing your strengths and creating that balance,
focusing on what you value, increasing your happiness and
overall well-being that transfers.
So that little 40 minute group that you meet once a month has
this like I call it a Pebble in a pond impact.
So you toss a Pebble into the pond and you get all these
ripples out. That's what that sense of
community does within organizations.
I love that. That's a great visual too.
My, I literally just drew that image in my mind and it's, it's
actually really true. I mean, This is why employee
resource groups and things, you know, like what you're sharing,
creating these additional resources and areas of support
for people can have a huge impact.
And some of the best parts of that is that they're employee
driven. It doesn't have to be something
that is so, you know, taxing programmatically because when I
one of my initial thoughts, especially because I'm in HR and
it's just kind of the way that my mind works is how do you
support people coming back from leave?
Because that is I think the hardest part.
I had a very smooth transition, which I do credit to actually a
former guest of mine, Lori Mahalik Levin, who came on the
podcast and she has this mindful return like book and process and
program. And I went through it and I felt
really prepared for coming back, which I felt like really helped.
However, most people don't really get that and they don't
get that experience. And beyond that, even if they
do, it's just a very difficult transition.
You go from being completely consumed into your child, in my
case children at once, and then you go back into work that never
stopped. Like it just kept going while
you were away. And then you have to pick up all
those pieces. You have to, I always joke I had
to learn how to speak to adults again because it just wasn't so
I was used to speaking to two infants, you know?
And so that's something in addition to your point, I'm
building community that I think organizations sometimes forget,
which is totally not. I don't think it's intentional.
I think it's actually symbolic of where companies tend to
struggle, like they tend to struggle in those transition
periods. Like, OK, you know that
someone's going to be hired and you know that once they're hired
they're going to need these things.
But what happens in that pre onboarding stage?
So it's like the same thing with parents.
They know, we know that people are entitled to leave depending
on the states that they're in and all that.
So we help them go out on leave and then they come back on a
day. What happens between those those
two periods? Right.
Yeah. Well, and you bring up a really
good point about transitions. And I wanna like empower people
to think about the parenting journey as a multitude of
transitions go returning to work after your your twins, you know,
or returning to work after that first baby.
That's the first domino in a string of dominoes when it comes
to transitions that parents are experiencing.
And so how cool is it to have like some kind of framework?
That's why I love strengths is if you can like learn your
strengths early on, you continue to leverage and lean on that at
all the transitions. And it gives you just this
solid, sturdy foundation to stand on as you navigate not
just that return to work transition, but a multitude of
transitions. In fact, one of my like most
recent memorable examples with a client that I was doing a return
to work. She did her strengths
assessment. And we were talking about when
when we look at parenting and how to be a successful parent,
you need two things. You need structure.
Kids need structure, rules, expectations, and you need that
warmth. You need the tenderness part of
parenting. And those two in balance are
what creates resilient kiddos and successful parents.
And so we were looking at her strengths, and one of her
strengths was tenderness. She was like the second
strength. And she got really emotional on
the phone call. And I asked her, you know,
permission to like, kind of lean in and talk a little bit about
that. And she said, you know what,
Kelly? I've been working, she's a late
mom, so 20 years in my career and I've done every assessment
under the sun in the business world, and I've never had
someone acknowledge this side of me before.
And it's a big piece of who I am.
And so it was interesting because in her business world,
that tenderness side, the warmth that's a necessity in parenting
was not allowed to come up. And so we, my next question was,
well, So what, how could you leverage that strength that
you've now developed as a parent in the workplace?
And she goes, you know, I really want to be a mentor.
I would really love to create a mentor program in our company.
And so we talked about, you know, what, what, what would it
take to do that? She took some action steps and
we are still in contact today and she is really leveraging
that side that was unlocked when she became a mom and now she's
able to use it in both places and feel valued and validated.
And so it's just an example kind of of how the all these pieces
get put together. That's a really great example
and I could imagine that it helped her to find so much more
satisfaction in work because if something is such a big part of
who you are and you don't get to put that on display or you don't
get to use it, then you are kind of leaving a part of yourself at
the door that doesn't feel so great.
So that's how that's pretty. It sounds kind of life changing.
Not to be like corny about it, but it sounds like, you know, it
sounds like that probably did really change the course of her
career, probably. It did, and she was
contemplating leaving. And so here's this valuable
employee that has really given a lot to this organization.
The organization wasn't aware that she was even thinking about
leaving, but this one little shift created again that ripple
effect that gave a mentorship program to a company that didn't
have it before, gave the opportunity for people to
connect. And all of a sudden, 10 years
from today, what will that impact of that little Pebble in
the pond be? And so that's kind of a just a
neat take away for folks as they're thinking about like,
what are your next steps as a working parent or as a company
supporting working parent, as an HR leader?
How can you? What's your Pebble going to be?
I think that's a great question to leave with everyone and for
everyone to think about and reflect on.
I certainly will. And it's again, a great, a great
visual and and example for the impact that we can have on the
people around us and our organizations, wherever we may
be. So Kelly, thank you so much for
this discussion this today and for this week's episode and for
all of the insights you shared. And also ending us on that note.
I mean, there's no better way to close out an episode than with a
story like that. So with that, tell the listeners
where they can find you and we'll be sure to have everything
in the show notes as well. Yeah, for sure.
So incredible. Family.com is our website and
you can, if you're interested in unlocking your strengths, Tracy,
this is for you too. You can just shoot me an e-mail
and I'd love to send you over a code to take your parent
assessment and just start to unlock your own personal
parenting strength so that you can start to make that impact
for yourself, your family, and within your organization.
So kelly@incrediblefamily.com, shoot me an e-mail and I'd be
happy to send you a free code. Amazing, Kelly, thank you so
much for offering that to everyone and for your generosity
and in that and also in all of the knowledge that you've
shared. So thank you so much.
Thank you. Hey, just before you go, don't
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Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you next week.