Work. Mother.

The innocuous term “working mother,” descriptive of me for 22 years, still leaves me feeling pushed up against the wall, it’s metaphoric hand on my throat. Inherent in the expression is the profound double bind that I, and many (white*) women, feel at the exact intersection of two of the most vital roles of our lives.

Balance is a Croc

The phrase “work-life balance” is such a croc.  Maybe for a few (rare) people, the equation that adds up to harmonious unity between when and how they work and when and how they live is a lovely thing to behold. In my minds eye, these precious few have a life like this:

Research confirms that women earn less money than men.

Despite equal opportunity legislation, assertiveness training, and increased transparency about pay scales to ensure equality, women consistently earn less per hour, per week, per month for the same work, than their male counterparts. Many point to women’s hesitation to ask for a raise as a key cause of their generally lower starting and regular earnings.

Can we please just talk about my hair for a minute?

Let’s about appearance at work, or, my hair.  See, I got a Mohawk in April (wonderful work by Crystal Tesinsky at Azura´ Studio in Bend, OR).  I was seeking something fresh and dynamic for my role as emcee/host for TEDxBend. To go alongside my new haircut, I wore a pair of loud, red, Fly London™ shoes. My fashion choices (my drag, as Judith Butler calls it) were for me. It felt like a bold move from feeling middle-aged and frumpy to feeling more dynamic and current. My garb boosted my confidence, but I also worked hard to be a good emcee. In the various discussion sessions after the speakers and performers, my hair and my shoes were the most talked about aspect of my performance.

I rock(ed) the Mohawk, but it isn’t always easy.

“What matters is on the inside.”

My young daughter said this aloud as I was fretting about what to wear for a recent public speaking event. Her off-the-cuff encouragement reminded me what my talk was about but also led me to recall a dynamic I often see play out within organizations. In marketing and creating their culture, companies focus on the outside and neglect less tangible but more impactful assets.

As a group of senior leaders of a (newly) global company discussed their 2016 plans, it was quickly evident that their lack of visibility into cultural differences across geography was a factor in the planning they shared.

A leader in Europe raised differences in norms about reporting relationships as a factor in their new “matrixed” leadership plan. A leader in Mexico brought up the lack of women leaders in his organization and wondered if diversity training would help. And a US based leader interrupted a Japanese colleague 3 times before getting feedback that culturally, this was seen as impolite.

Increasingly, clients, colleagues, and associates ask about how best to manage the unique dynamics of remote workers—employees who are not co-located to the company’s main headquarters. Distances vary from two buildings a few streets apart to offices in three or more continents.

Company culture can look very pretty from the outside but it is what they do on the inside that matters.

When people describe employee/employer pairings that fail, they often say, “S/he wasn’t a good fit.” And people who leave companies often say simply, “I didn’t really fit in there.” When the culture of your workplace doesn’t work for you, it is easy to feel like the awkward kid who just can’t find the right crowd to join in middle school and lies awake at night dreaming of simply and completely fitting in. But fitting in is not the answer when it comes to finding the right place to hang your star.

What you do matters. For many years, we used this as our tagline for our firm, and while our tagline has changed, the sentiment remains strong for me. The feeling each of us gets when we are contributing at work, being seen, and making a difference is essential to our humanity and our sense of well-being.

Meaning is increasingly named by job seekers as one of the things they hope for the most when they look for an organization to join, and it is one of the things people name out loud when they love their jobs.