Читать книгу The Parental Leave Playbook - Sue Campbell - Страница 34

In the first transition phase of the framework, you are still working and focused on career stability while you make preparations—both at work and at home—to welcome your new child. You are starting to feel the shift in your roles already, and you are working to figure out how this new parenting role will fit into the current picture of your life. Practically speaking, at home you are preparing for your child’s arrival. You may be rearranging your space or even moving to a larger home or to be closer to family. At work, you are trying to wrap up projects and create documentation for a clean handoff to whoever is covering your duties during your leave. You are also considering how to do everything in a way that makes your manager and team happy. If you have any extra headspace, you might be using it to think about setting yourself up for a smooth return.

The first mile marker or touchpoint we will go into for this phase is your announcement at work that you are expecting a child. This sounds simple enough, but in many workplace cultures an announcement can be tricky and expectant parents are often surprised by the way other people react. Even if you have already made your announcement by the time you are reading this book, we will explore ways you can look at the impact your announcement had and be creative about positive ways to talk about the arrival of your child going forward.

The second touchpoint of Phase 1 is about how to assess your transition. I'll show you how to look at your transition from some specific angles using a tool we call the 6-S System for Transition Success. This process will help you identify everything working in your favor as well as anything working against you, in order to actively make the most of resources you have available to you and plan for mitigating challenging circumstances.

The third touchpoint has to do with leave planning and communication. I will walk you through how to create a comprehensive three-phase leave action plan that includes how best to get all of your stakeholders the information they need. You will use what you've discovered in your transition assessment from the second touchpoint to create a plan (and a backup plan or two!) for work and home purposes.

The fourth and final touchpoint of Phase 1 is to acknowledge the transition to parenthood. This section will help you understand why it is important to make time in your hectic schedule to soak in the enormity of the life transition you are embarking on so you can prepare emotionally and find ways to celebrate that feel right to you. Busy as you are, it's tempting to skip this part, but that never ends well. On a practical level, it pays to spend time thinking about the kind of parent you want to be and what your new life will look like so you can build it into your plans and goal setting. On an emotional level, giving yourself the room to truly acknowledge and embrace the magnitude of your new life path will help you develop and practice the self-awareness and emotional intelligence required of all working parents (and leaders).

I will give you tools and resources to handle the practical and emotional sides of the touchpoints in this phase, as well as each of the touchpoints in the next chapters.