Women at Work - Introducing a Pick-Me-Up for Moms and Dads

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Amy Gallo introduces Erica Truxler and Kevin Evers, two HBR editors hosting a series in which they confront the challenges of managing everything and everyone.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. Hi, it's Amy Gallo. This spring, we're going to put our regular programming on hold while we do some special projects. We'll be back in the fall with a regular season. In the meantime, I want to introduce you to two of my colleagues who are hosting a series that we're going to be running in the Women at Work feed very soon.

Kevin, Erica, tell our listeners who you are and what this series is all about. I'm Kevin. I have two kids, Maisie, who's four years old, and I have Willie, who's 15 months old, and I'm an editor at HBR. Right now, I'm struggling to balance work and life, which is exactly what the show is about. Erica? Hi, I'm Erica Truxler, and I am the mother of a three-year-old, Claire, and an eight-month-old, Mark. And I, too, am right there with you, Kevin. I am trying to figure out how to work and parent at the same time. As a fellow working parent, I am really excited about this series called Family Management.

You know, as you both know and as many of our listeners know, I have a teenage daughter, and working parenthood, I'm sorry to say, doesn't really feel like it gets easier. It just continues to get more complex, especially at this moment in time. Kevin, why are we tackling this series right now? Well, I think as working parents, we don't always have honest conversations about our struggles. So that's really our aim for the show. We really want to have real and honest conversations about what it's really like to be a working parent.

Yeah. Working parenthood has always felt like a lonely endeavor. And right now with the social isolation and people not being able to have, you know, grandparents come to visit and everything, it just feels like every working parent around the world needs a bit of a pick-me-up. And that's what we're hoping to accomplish with this show. Yeah. I mean, that's something we've talked about on Women at Work a lot. I mean, this past season, you know, we had a guest who talked about how the system feels rigged against working parents, and that was pre-pandemic, right?

And it's just gotten worse and worse. But this show isn't just about how hard it is, right? You also are given solutions. Oh, without a doubt. Yeah. We don't want this to be an exercise of commiseration. As Erica said, we really want this to be a pick me up. And so we'll share stories of our joys and we'll also bring in conversations with other working parents so they can share their joys as well. Yes. And we're really hoping people will identify with the stories and hopefully laugh a little bit along

the way. And I also hope that we help people feel more resilient and able to be a little bit kinder to themselves as well. One of the things that makes these episodes so delightful is that we hear what your home life sounds like. Yeah, there's never a dull moment over here. There's a lot going on, as you can hear. Yeah, same's never a dull moment over here. There's a lot going on, as you can hear. Yeah, same over here. There's a lot of crying, but there's also a lot of fun moments, too. Oh, no! Wee! Wee! Wee!

Yeah, you both are brave for bringing the mic home, I have to say. I think it may get to our daughter's heads, though. I think they're going to negotiate for a tougher contract. They're celebrities. They're little divas already. We're doing four episodes in this series. And Kevin, our producer, Amanda, let me listen to your interview with Amy Hsu. Amy is a leadership development coach who's been a guest multiple times at Women

at Work. I have to say her insight on the complexity of being a working parent I found so useful. Becoming a parent, I think, brings the full paradox and wide range of human emotion where how is it this joyful, wonderful being in my life, which is also true, is equally true that I'm more stressed, more frantic, you know, more upset than I've ever been as well. And I can remember, you know, when I became a parent and even now as a parent, trying to hold all of that and to realize that I'm not alone in holding that is so important. So spot on. Yeah. I remember when I was pregnant thinking, I'm just going to be tired all the time, right? That's what it's going to be like. But I don't think you realize it's tired plus every emotion

you could possibly feel. Speaking of being tired, I would love for you to talk a little bit about how long these episodes are, just because as a working parent, one of the things that's totally fallen off my regular schedule is listening to podcasts. So how are you thinking about length for our listeners? We are keeping them short. We know nobody has time right now. So we're aiming for about 20 to 30 minutes and no longer than that. Erica, Kevin, thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives to make this series. Thanks, Amy. It's been really fun and rewarding to work on the show. And I'm excited to hear what people think. Me too. I'm excited

to listen. Family Management starts right here in the Women at Work feed on Monday, April 5th. Oh, wow. The people downstairs love us, don't they? Yeah. Who loves us? Well, I was just joking because you

and Willie drop things all the time, so they probably hear it. And they love it? Probably not.