Mom and career woman: This is how you master the balancing act

Get children and yet be professionally successful: the compatibility of family and work is still a very difficult topic. Many people learn how difficult a coexistence of these two areas can be. Fortunately, there are also more and more women who show: You can have both. Companies are also increasingly promoting them and are working on creating the appropriate framework.

In this guest contribution, Annika Milz, head of the institutional business at the Fondsgesellschaft Fidelity International and Mother of two children, illuminates the topic and shows how the balancing act between job and family works.

Life as a manager with children is exhausting. Many things happen at the same time - a lot comes out of the blue - at work and privately. When my next career step was going to be in my children's birth, I asked how many women: Which workload can I do? How much time do I want to spend with my children? What happens when the children are sick or have vacation? The new position really irritated me. I also asked myself the question of my stress limits.

So before you speak to your employer, you should honestly ask yourself the framework under which a re -enema is realistic and know your own wishes and ideas exactly. Honesty is the key here. If you agree with your employer, things that you can often not meet in reality, do you bring neither your employer nor you.

Be brave and make active suggestions for the compatibility of family and work. Despite modern work models such as home office or flexible working hours when the wish is. One thing is certain: If you want to bring the job and family under one roof, you need a specific plan.

To do everything a bit often means not realizing anything. It is therefore important to me that I can fully concentrate on the job on my working days. Then my husband or grandparents are responsible for the children from getting up to homework supervision and to bed.

On the other days my family and I are on. Even if our solution works well, Corona, admittedly, presented us with a challenge. Only the realization helps here that sometimes you have to let five.

In the male -dominated financial world, I never wanted to play the role of a "better man". However, I always analyzed what makes people successful. To network, to be seen, talk about what you do and what you stand up for may be less in the blood than men, but is extremely important. The higher the career ladder you get, the more important good networks are even. You should also search for suitable mentors who can support career and personal development.

Ideally, a mentor should not come from the direct work environment to avoid conflicts of interest. However, he or she should have already mastered a similar situation and should be able to assess the challenges well. In addition to the question "with whom", "how" also plays an important role. How is I perceived better? How do I achieve presence and gravitas in important conferences?

The financial world is extremely exciting for me. Around the clock and around the globe, the stock exchanges reflect entrepreneurial and economic trends. The fact that the financial markets never sleep also shows that you cannot follow every development and have to set a focus. In my position, you should basically stay on the ball for economic events, but must z. B. do not know every detail about a single share.

In today's information society, it is a Herculean task to distinguish the important one from the unimportant. Another art is to concentrate his working hours on really relevant tasks and throw unimportant things overboard. Phamen in which one can escape the operational hustle and bustle of the "Daily Business" and re -evaluate tasks are helpful.

During a training session, it was shown that I could delegate more tasks, but I often “quickly” do it myself. Partly out of consideration to colleagues who also have a lot to do, and partly because I spared the effort associated with delegation. Experience also shows that delegation is usually an opportunity - to give others an opportunity to prove themselves or to basically rethink tasks.

Many people are reluctant to help because this can also be seen as a form of weakness. I also learned not to always want to do everything perfectly. Then the laundry stays for a day or for lunch there is sometimes pizza. In the long run, everyone is more relaxed and happier.