Getting Back to Work

I’m back from my parental leave! I had a wonderful 10 weeks off and began working part-time in September. Now I have a 12-week-old baby who's the best ever. And I also have this business, which is the best ever. 

With all of the “coming back” to things, especially with it being the fall, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to come back to something after you've taken time off from it. And that could be for a reason like mine, taking a parental leave or a similar sabbatical, or it could be after you've taken a week-long vacation and now you need to get back to the workweek. It could even be after the summer ends, where we have a feeling of “OK, it’s fall. Time to get back into work mode.”

There are some things that show up that are usually very performance-based when it's time to get back to business. I’m going to share a little bit about the really important things to put into place once you are coming back or returning to something. 

“Back to Basics” Practice

The first idea is what I like to call a “back to basics” practice. Most of us make the assumption that if we take a break from something, we need to return back to it at 100% of where we were before we took the break.

While that's great in theory, I find that expectation that we place on ourselves leaves us open to failure, burning ourselves out really quickly, and judging ourselves when, predictably, things don't go that way. 

A “back to basics” practice helps you create that runway to get the plane back into the air. 

For me, it looks like re-empowering my calendar, sorting through my inbox, eating well, sleeping well, and making time for myself in my day. I’m trying not to pile on the work to compensate for the break that I just took because I don’t want to set myself up for failure. 

“Back to basics” looks different for everyone, but start with things like integrity items, well-being items, your calendar, your organization, and how your office feels. 

Vocalize Your Needs

The second idea that I recommend putting into place is the practice of vocalizing your needs. I find that with leaders, this can be a bit of a dubious suggestion. It's dubious because as leaders, we've trained ourselves to be needless at times, and we try to be seen like we always have it together. 

We also feel like our needs aren’t something that can be supported, so we don’t vocalize them. 

Your needs could look like needing more sleep since you have a new baby, or reassurance that you will be able to take another vacation in the future. It might feel like those needs can’t be supported by your team or colleagues because they can’t easily solve those problems for you. Yet it's still really powerful to get into the practice of vocalizing the needs anyway because those people who are there to support and co-create with you can help brainstorm solutions. 

They can ask questions like, “Do you actually need to be at the meeting this afternoon? Or can we lead it and you read the notes afterward?” or “Do you have to be the one showing up for all your clients right now? Or can you delegate it to some of the other coaches that you work with?”

Let the people around you be brilliant for you and work for you. 

Have Grace for Yourself

The third idea should be something you always have in place, but especially during this time: Tons and tons of grace for yourself in your process.

This could be for that short-term period, such as when you took your first vacation in a while, and now you're judging that you already want to go on your next one. 

But it can be during one of those more long-term changes, such as adding a new family member, adjusting to the loss of a family member, or moving into a new home. These big changes cause you to have to reinvent what “normal” looks like. It’s not fair to assume that while you're re-inventing normal, your work needs to be 100% back to the way it was before. 

So the most important practice to put into place is lots of grace and compassion for where you're at, for what you need, and who you're going to be in this process. This is going to sound crazy, especially for my high-performers out there, but it’s actually OK if you never get back to 100%. 

By empowering the new life that you have, whatever it looks like from this break that you've come back from, you're going to redefine what 100% looks like for you.

You’ll start to fit inside the life that you've created for yourself, not just the work that you've created for yourself. 

I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog about getting back into something after a break. If you want more wisdom like this on a regular basis, sign up for my email newsletter by taking my Leadership Gremlin Quiz!