the Justin Brady Show

 

work pause thrive lisen stromberg
Work. Pause. Thrive. By Lisen Stromberg

 

In a compelling discussion on Justin Brady’s podcast, Lisen Stromberg, an award-winning journalist and author, delves into the intricate balance of career and parenthood. Her book, “Work Pause Thrive,” offers an insightful look into how successful women manage their careers and family life, challenging the conventional linear career path.

Women’s Career Pauses: Challenging Long-term Impact Myths

 

Stromberg highlights that a staggering 72% of women she surveyed had paused their careers, predominantly for family reasons. This phenomenon, largely unspoken, reveals a non-linear path to success that many women embrace. The data further suggests that women who took a break of two years or less from their careers faced little trouble re-entering the workforce, debunking the myth that career pauses inevitably harm long-term career prospects.

 

Adapting Workplaces for Modern Parenting Needs

 

The conversation shifts to the changing workplace dynamics, particularly the rigid work cultures that fail to accommodate the needs of working parents. Stromberg emphasizes the necessity of a 21st-century leadership mindset, advocating for adaptable, results-focused work environments over the traditional ‘ideal worker’ model.

Stromberg’s insights are particularly relevant in the context of millennial women. She notes that this demographic, despite being highly educated, often prioritizes family over career, signaling a significant shift in workforce expectations. This trend places increased pressure on employers to adapt and offer more flexible working arrangements.

 

Promoting Work-Life Balance for Enhanced Productivity

 

The discussion also touches on the issue of productivity, with Stromberg arguing that a well-rested and balanced workforce is more productive. She underscores the importance of empathy and compassion in team dynamics, advocating for a work culture that supports employees’ needs and personal goals.

Through her research and experiences, Stromberg paints a vivid picture of the evolving work-life balance landscape, challenging traditional notions of career success and advocating for a more holistic approach to professional development and personal fulfillment.

 

Learn More About Lisen Stromberg

 

Check Out Lisen Stromberg’s website.

Buy Lisen Stromberg’s book Work. Pause. Thrive here >

Check out the 3% Movement website

 

More Interviews From Ultra-Succesful Women

 

There are dozens of great A-List podcast leader interviews to listen to on The Justin Brady Podcast. Listen to Soulaima Gourani a TED Talks coach, Colleen Crivello from Ralph Lauren, or Cortney McDermott, who was a “miserably successful” exec at Vanity Fair Magazine.

 

 

 

 

Full transcript:

 

Justin Brady: [00:00:00] My name’s Justin Brady. Let’s talk about turning your business, your team, and you into a creativity cultivator. Okay, so, if you live in the USA, I know not all of you do, but in the USA, my god. Oh my goodness. We’re all workaholic. We’re crazy workaholics and the USA absolutely sucks when it comes to life work balance.

That’s why I’ve asked Lisen Stromberg to come on the podcast today. Lisen, thank you for joining us. I appreciate it.

Lisen Stromberg: It’s my pleasure. Happy to be

Justin Brady: here. This is interesting. You’re, you have written, you have a lot of experience, but you’ve written, well, you know what we should do? You, you spoke at South by Southwest, TEDx, the 3 percent conference.

And of course you’re an award winning journalist. Your work can be found in the New York times, fortune newsweek, salon, and a bunch of other places. That’s, that’s pretty cool. First of all, that’s awesome. Yeah. [00:01:00] I got to let people know we don’t just podcast. Exactly. So you have written work, pause, thrive, and the whole idea of this is kind of centering around work life balance, but the subtext is how to pause for parenthood without killing your career.

And I think this is really interesting because if the data is right, we have a lot of people, a lot of moms and a lot of women that are very concerned about this very subject. So I mean.

Lisen Stromberg: And a lot of men actually, Justin, it’s a rising issue with millennial men. So, well, that’s,

Justin Brady: and see, this is why you’re here because I have no clue what I’m talking about, but let me back up just a little bit though, is what is the whole general idea about in this book?

If you could get a really quick synopsis, what would that be? You got

Lisen Stromberg: it. Look, Sheryl Sandberg came out with Lean In, and of course now Michelle Obama’s debunked Lean In. But the answer really came out, for me, [00:02:00] was the question is, I knew so many successful women who’d had these incredible non linear paths.

Many of whom would actually downshift to either leave the paid workforce or take part time jobs. Sure. On their, kind of, march to their success. But those narratives, those stories weren’t being told. So I literally started interviewing people just out of my own curiosity to find out how are highly successful women doing this, how does she do it thing, right?

And I was astonished. I ended up interviewing 186 highly successful women and I was astonished to find out that 72 percent of the women I interviewed and then I surveyed 1500 more, 72 percent had actually somehow downshifted or paused their careers. Which is just a story we never hear about. No. We do not hear that there’s this non linear path and yet we also know millennials are just, you know, doing this already.

So I wanted to get the story. I kind of wanted to say, Hey, there’s a new way that actually is not a new way that’s been going on for years quietly and you can do it too. So you

Justin Brady: said about 72 percent of women have [00:03:00] taken that downshift or they they’ve stepped out and stepped back in and everything was fine.

Lisen Stromberg: Well, not everything’s fine, let’s be clear. So what happened was I, uh, surveyed 1, 500 women and the, the only requirement was you had to be a mom and you had to be college educated. And it really, I broke it down to that because I wanted to find out why weren’t, you know, it was answering that question of why weren’t there enough women at the top?

Where’d all the women go? And, um, I didn’t realize that that many women, 72 percent of the respondents of the survey, actually had downshifted or left the paid workforce. Now they only did it for a period of time. The most successful ones never left the paid workforce and just downshifted for a few years.

Those who left for two years or less had no problems reentering. And those who took longer than two years struggled a little bit to get

Justin Brady: back. Because we hear that all the time. And we hear if you step out of the workforce. at all. I mean, this is the image, right? If you step out of the workforce at all, your future career, your future salary, and your future promotion [00:04:00] opportunity, they’re gone.

They are gone. Good luck.

Lisen Stromberg: Yeah. Well, let me, don’t bleep me now, but that’s total BS.

Justin Brady: That is absolutely not. You don’t have to worry about it. We don’t bleep for

Lisen Stromberg: BS. No bleeping me now. Yeah, that’s just boulder dash. It’s just not happening. The reality is that people take, make changes all the time. They get laid off and they’re job hunting and they transition to new careers and new paths.

They pivot. Um, they take time off to care for dying loved ones or young children or whatever. Um, you know, I interviewed one young woman who actually took six months off to sail around the world. Look, so we do this all the time, right? But oftentimes we don’t talk about it because we’re afraid of the narrative that says, Oh my gosh, if I pause my career for something that isn’t apparently professional, then my career is dead.

And it’s just not.

Justin Brady: But why aren’t the women that are doing this really well? Why aren’t they talking about it? Is it just because once they get back in the workforce and they hit it? You know, and they, and they get on, uh, [00:05:00] they get to a job they enjoy. They just kind of forget.

Lisen Stromberg: Well, it’s so funny. You asked that the answer is yes, yes.

And yes, um, some women are trying to hide it. And I was, here’s a hilarious story. One of my college friends who had a very successful or has a very successful career in the luxury good business. I, she had had this amazing career, two kids. I was always wondering how the heck did she do it? When I started researching the book, I interviewed her and she said, well, I never told you the real story.

I actually worked from home two days a week and only four days fully, meaning she was actually home a couple of those days. But she didn’t tell anyone. She and her boss actually had a quiet secret deal and they did that for five years. Now, of course, everyone in the company probably knew about it, but they just didn’t make it out, out and proud.

That kind of hiding happens all the time and that doesn’t benefit anybody. Anyone when we’re hiding our truth. Um, other people actually truly did just forget about it. I had one CEO I spoke with and she said, Oh my gosh, I forgot. That’s exactly what I did. I paused my career [00:06:00] for two years when her third child was born and he’d had some health issues.

She paused her career, took a leave from her company, went back and then continued to rise to the top. And she never spoke about it. Not because she was trying to hide it, but because it was just like something that had happened a while ago. So I’m just encouraging people to really own their journeys and, and share their journeys so that the rest of us can learn

Justin Brady: from them.

It’s, you know, it’s the, the big flaw of people that are constantly looking forward and pushing. They often forget what was behind them and they often not only, not only forget it, but then it’s hard for them to truly communicate it as well. Why? I think

Lisen Stromberg: it’s true. We’re, and we’re also afraid sometimes. Am I going, particularly women, am I going to not look ambitious if I wasn’t, you know, head down the entire time?

Sure. Are they going to think that I wasn’t sort of dedicated to my career? So. You,

Justin Brady: you touched on something briefly and I want to go back to it a little bit because it was absolutely fascinating. You, and I think it’s, I, I think this is packed with a lot of data that maybe [00:07:00] even you take for granted.

Maybe not. Maybe it’s a whole, maybe there’s a whole chapter in your book devoted to it, but lots of data in the book, the, you mentioned that there were these secret deals between, uh, women and their bosses. Why? Why is this a thing? I don’t, I don’t understand these secret. Why would anybody want to hide the fact that someone’s working from home or something like I don’t understand that at all.

Lisen Stromberg: Well, so you’re, you’re. You’re asking a great question. And remember, most of the women I interviewed were Gen Xers. Um, uh, not, I interviewed millennials who are currently in the workforce and trying to navigate this, but most of the women I surveyed for the book were, um, Gen Xers and, and maybe younger boomers, if you will.

The technology, when their children were young, didn’t exist to be able to work from home necessarily. So we have a whole different dynamic now and what’s available to us now wasn’t available to us. 15, even 10 years ago. So that’s one thing. The second thing is there is deeply rooted motherhood bias and flexibility bias.

[00:08:00] We, as a, you know, we’re trained to believe the ideal worker is that person who’s available 24 7 has no home obligations and so forth can travel with a drop of the hat. That ideal worker model is what’s embedded into our workplace cultures. And in fact, if you don’t. really look like the ideal worker your employer might perceive you as not being committed and ambitious so there’s reasons to hide it both on the individual side and then the company’s like oh my god people are going to be hard working which is of course boulder dash More BS for the

Justin Brady: story and before we continue the interview.

I have a really quick message for you

Hi guys, it’s me Justin Brady way too many leaders are struggling with ultra low engagement and really high turnover not to mention that familiar scenario Where you have a great brainstorming session and then nothing goes anywhere. They’re really And I’ve written about it in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review and others.

But sometimes a written piece isn’t good enough. I can help you. I’ve interviewed hundreds of top leaders. I’ve [00:09:00] done thousands of hours of workplace research, and I’ve worked with some of the most amazing companies in the world. And I want to work with your team to put these.

So, some bosses may be afraid that people draw parallels from these secret deals to their own life. Well, someone sows a mother and that’s great and all, but I have a sick, I have a sick daughter. I have Uh, parent, so I should be able to work from home too, or someone else is like, well, I have a, I’m engaged to someone who lives on the East coast, so I should be able to.

So is this what they’re kind of, what bosses or leaders may be scared of? The fact that this will just open up the floodgates and everyone will want to work from home.

Lisen Stromberg: Oh, Justin, you just nailed it. It’s so fascinating. It’s so old school 20th century thinking, right? It really is. Has to be butts in chairs.

If you’re not butt in chair, you’re not productive. But we have all the tools available [00:10:00] to us to now to actually have what I call time mastery, the ability to own our time and deliver and high quality in a way that works for our families and ourselves. But many leaders, many company managers are afraid of that because they’re afraid if they don’t see.

See your face. They don’t know that you’re doing good work. And I think that is a fundamental flaw in our construct. The smart companies and the smart leaders who understand that employees want time mastery and give that to them and help them maybe as a team figure out what works for everybody. Hey, I might have kids at home.

You may wanna run marathons, somebody else may wanna volunteer. How can we as a team figure that out? And that’s really what I think is the wave of the future, but a lot of companies aren’t there yet.

Justin Brady: Well, and so 33%, you, you, you mentioned 33 percent of adults were working on weekends and holidays for crying out loud.

Oh, that’s it? That’s

Lisen Stromberg: all? I would think it’s much higher than that.

Justin Brady: And you know, that’s, I don’t, it’s, it’s obvious. Well, is it, is it higher than that? Is it not? [00:11:00] Is

Lisen Stromberg: that wrong? I think it’s, I think it depends on if you’re talking about college educated people versus not. Oh, sure. There could be, okay, got it.

It depends on what, what, what career you’re talking about. So that number is actually all Americans. But if you’re actually talking about, um, professionals, college educated professionals, they’re actually probably working more

Justin Brady: than that. So it’s actually, so that’s kind of the base

Lisen Stromberg: number. 55, 55 hours per week on average for college educated professionals in the United States.

Okay.

Justin Brady: So it’s really Have numbers, have work hour numbers just been creeping up in the United States then?

Lisen Stromberg: Absolutely. Um, what’s fascinating is, and I’m sure you know about this, that in other countries, Japan, for example, has recently instituted a 40 hour required work week. What? I remember I didn’t know that.

Yes, right? Required. 40 hour work week. Same is true of many European countries and of course people would say well That’s what you know, their economy is flailing and all that stuff and I just don’t see that’s true I think we in America the United States, we really believe this work at all costs [00:12:00] You know, the only way to be truly successful is to be that, you know gung ho person I think that’s a recipe for life poorly led and regrets and death Well,

Justin Brady: I mean, and the data supports you because the, the data is, uh, points the direction of the harder we work people, the worse they are.

They’re not productive. They don’t do good work. They don’t do educated work and they make more mistakes.

Lisen Stromberg: Absolutely. I write about that in my book. Um, but if you don’t want to pick up a copy of work positive, literally pick up this week’s or this month’s Harvard business review. The first article that they have in there talks about the different ways our mind, our brain works.

And most of us are forced to a certain kind of thinking called networking thinking, which is we and control, sorry, control thinking. And what that does is it forces us to constantly be thinking about, I’ve got a deadline, I’ve got an email, et cetera, which doesn’t leave room for that creative thinking. If you can back off a little bit, they find that groups who are allowed to back off a little bit are actually more [00:13:00] productive, more engaged, more satisfied.

Isn’t that what you want from your employees and your teams?

Justin Brady: No, no. Who invited this person on this podcast? That was me actually. Um, why? So, There’s something you mentioned earlier as well, and I want to go back to that as well. You mentioned millennial women, as if they’re a little different than the Gen Xers.

They’re making some different decisions. Maybe it is technology based, but you said they’re choosing to pause their careers. And this is kind of a, maybe a rise or a different kind of pattern, but they’re, they’re choosing to pause the career careers and they’re wanting to come back to work when they’re ready.

Is this, is this a new kind of trend or is this just a recycling of an old trend? What is

Lisen Stromberg: this? No, Justin, thank you for asking. It’s so fascinating. When you do generational studies of college educated women, you’ll find in fact, if you compare boomers to Gen Xers to millennials, you find in fact that millennial women are much more willing to say, family comes first.

I’m deeply ambitious. They’re [00:14:00] the most college educated generation of anybody. Right. And in fact, millennial women are the most educated people in this country, but these highly educated people are telling us, I value more than just my career. I want a full rich life. And many of them are saying, look, I’m going to downshift for a period of time, which doesn’t mean I don’t have a.

You know, deep ambition to be successful. So you employers better figure this out.

Justin Brady: I mean, so the pressure from, yeah, like you, like you just said, the pressure for employers to figure this out is pretty high because we already have a trend of millennial, uh, it’s now it’s, it’s millennial women and they’re not, and they’re not waiting for permission.

They’re basically saying, this is my priority. I’m going to do it regardless. You better keep

Lisen Stromberg: up. Yeah, well, that’s one group. Another group literally cannot afford daycare, and when they have, millennial women also have the highest amount of school debt of anyone in this country. Sure. Because A, they’re the most [00:15:00] college educated, and they’re much more likely to take student loans.

And so as a result, they end up saying, I can’t afford both my school debt and child care. So they’re being forced to stay home. So we have two dynamics happening right now. Oh, sure. So, and neither of them are great, right? I mean, the first one’s great if it’s empowered and it’s a choice, but the second one, when you’re forced, that’s not what we want.

So, we’ve got to change some things in this country, and it’s really concerning to me that if we’re not focusing on this and not recognizing this, we’re going to have a generation of women who are actually doing worse than boomers and Gen Xers.

Justin Brady: So, are there companies that are doing this right? Are there companies that are seeing benefit and are there companies that are just seeing the floodgates of innovation and productivity because they’re making these decisions to help um, in this, in this capacity, with that, with that?

Lisen Stromberg: It is such a great question, and I used to, until recently, say, gosh, I’m pretty darn impressed with Google and its book and so on and so forth, and then come to find out that newer research and newer insights are [00:16:00] showing that, in fact, they’re really good with parentally, they give it to men and to women, and if you take it, they support you.

But as you get farther in your career, i. e. you’ve got a couple of kids and, you know, you’re trying to juggle it all. They’re a lot less flexible. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg was just literally called out this fall by a woman named Eliza Kuner, who was a data scientist, a data scientist. Hello, unicorn. She had three young kids.

She said, I want to work full time. I don’t want to work part time, I just need to work from home two days a week. And her boss said no, his boss said no, Mark Zuckerberg said no, and Zuckerberg said, I just have to have you working full time. They’re, you know, the trade offs are just too great. And that is a major fundamental misstep on his part and other employers who are not seeing that this is going to have to change.

Well, and say you lost her. She quit.

Justin Brady: She quit. That’s, that’s exactly what I was going to say, saying something to that who is a unicorn or who is a valuable member of the company. That’s the [00:17:00] one guaranteed way to get rid of them. And exactly. And even if they stay, even if they choose to stay, you’re certainly going to cut their productivity in half because they’re going to be bitter and angry the whole time.

Lisen Stromberg: You nailed it, Justin. You just nailed it. You know that the U. S. productivity is now at an all time low for college educated workers because we’re so dissatisfied and so frustrated? Gallup just came out with that research. So the point is we’ve got all these people working their butts off, but they’re really unhappy.

And they really, they’re also saying they want to work hard. They’re not saying they don’t want to work hard. They just don’t want to be sitting in the chair all the time. So we have to empower them with time mastery and accountability along with that. Right. Yeah.

Justin Brady: I mean, what it comes down to, we talk about a lot.

Uh, we talk about this a lot on the podcast. It comes down to gimmick mentality and love mentality, gimmick mentality. I think you just called out earlier, like a couple of minutes ago, Facebook and Google, how they have parental leave is, is it Facebook and Google? Cause we started with Google, went to Facebook.

Okay, cool. Great examples. Okay. So they start, they have like, Oh, they have great, uh, parental leave for women and [00:18:00] men. And that’s great. But then when it It comes time to just logical discourse talking with someone saying, Hey, can you just help me out here? Uh, I’m going to do the same work. I just want to do it from home.

Then they shut down. It’s, you know, it comes down to, they read something in a book that, or they heard a good idea at a, at a conference room that says we should give people more leave. That’ll make more employees flock to us. But it was just an idea on a piece of paper. It didn’t come out of love for employees.

Is this, is this a fair distinction? Well, I can’t speak to Mark Zuckerberg’s heart, of course.

Lisen Stromberg: I think it’s not that they don’t love employees. I think they’re, I actually don’t. I think, and by the way, they’re desperate for employees. We’ve got what, a zero percent unemployment rate for college educated people and people in technology.

It’s, you know, it’s just incredible, right? So it’s not that they’re not desiring these employees. It’s literally that they’re rooted in old school thinking about what success looks like and what a successful team looks like and how to make it happen. And it’s hard to [00:19:00] transition out from that. I think it’s, it’s, they’re a case study right now and I cannot wait 10 years from now for us to get it on our next podcast and be having the conversation about what’s happened.

The average age at Google, LinkedIn, Apple, actually Apple’s got older, but basically Facebook, et cetera, average age is about 30 right now. What happens when you’re 30? You marry, you have babies, like that’s what’s

Justin Brady: happening. And so they’re starting to feel that pressure. Totally.

Lisen Stromberg: But how are they handling it?

Not well.

Justin Brady: But you make a good point. It’s basically comes down to, well, this is the way we’ve always done it. You know, we’ve always had butts in seats and it didn’t really help, frankly, that IBM, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but IBM made a mandate that everybody could go home and work and then they kind of rescinded that and say, you know what, actually everyone come back and if you don’t, we’re probably going to let you go.

That was kind of the synopsis.

Lisen Stromberg: Thanks. Thanks. It’s not interesting. What do you think happened there? What’s going on? I

Justin Brady: have no idea. Yeah,

Lisen Stromberg: I think they were just cutting for a layoff because they had a couple of down. [00:20:00] Oh, sure. That’s interesting. It was a way to get people to lay off people. But

Justin Brady: it’s funny how the American workforce goes.

It goes in these just bizarre cycles and you know, like workspace where everyone’s Everyone was obsessed like four years ago about the open office plan, and now they hate it already. And if you look back through the culture of American workplaces, we go from private to open to private to open about every five to ten years.

It’s absolutely hilarious. Oh, that’s

Lisen Stromberg: interesting. I’ll have to check into that. I didn’t realize it, but it makes a lot of sense. You’re probably absolutely right. By generation, right? Yeah. By each

Justin Brady: generation. Because we’re constantly looking for those new things. Yeah, I did a whole Peace on it. It sounds really boring.

I thought it was interesting, but I didn’t do it. So here, here’s the question. Everybody wants to know is what practically without falling into one of those cyclic gimmicks, what practically can work? Can leadership do? What are they supposed to do? Are they just supposed to say, okay, everybody work from home wherever you want, whenever you want.

I [00:21:00] mean, What’s the solution here?

Lisen Stromberg: Well, you’re asking a question I think is so fascinating. We’re in this beautiful transition time where we’re going from what I call sort of the 20th, 20th century leadership mindset to a 21st century leadership mindset, right? Part of it’s generational, but not really. I actually know quite a few 30 year olds who think this way, I either hierarchical secretive, it’s a culture of, because I said, so they’re inflexible, they’re always about, you know, FaceTime.

That’s kind of what I call a 20th century mindset. Um, Often, boomers have it, some Gen Xers, um, but, you know, it doesn’t, it’s not exclusive. Um, what I think about the 21st century mindset is someone who’s more democratic, much more transparent, operating from a culture of why, not a culture of because, they’re adaptable, they’re focusing on results.

Not focusing on FaceTime. So that’s kind of a leadership mindset. And if that is part of the company DNA, and it floats itself down to your team, then your team can be saying as a [00:22:00] team, Okay, we’ve got Project X to get done. How are we as a team going to do it? You know, John, you’re running a marathon. Jill, you love horseback riding.

You know, Janie, you got a new kid. Joe’s on paternity leave. What do we do, right? And it’s the, it’s the working in the collaborative team environment where we’ve got each other’s backs. And we’re trying to support each other’s in the whole, and it kind of as a whole person, I think we’re going to start seeing changes around that.

And I’m hearing about that a lot, actually, that people are starting to do this more and more.

Justin Brady: And, you know, I think a lot of people, well, I think some people listening, maybe short circuiting in their, their face might be going into odd contortions. Because, because they want, what they want is, well, how, how on earth am I supposed to track productivity?

Like, I’m paying, I’m paying my employees and I expect a return and the only way I know I’m getting that return is by having them at the office and guaranteeing they’re working. I think that’s the misconception that a lot of people have and I, of course, you know, usually tell them, well, okay, great, you have them at your desk, but are they on Facebook or their [00:23:00] cell phone?

I mean, they’re good. They’re going to put in, they’re going to put in the work they want to put in. Yeah,

Lisen Stromberg: exactly. Right. Yeah. I think there was a piece of research, um, that said that we are productive. We can be productive for five, highly productive for five hours, somewhat productive for six. And after six we basically lose productivity.

So, you know, and I know in my own life, I’m really great for about three to four hours. I, or maybe five hours, let’s say I can go, but after that I need a break. And that means I need to go out for a walk. I’ve got to do something to get myself out to train, change where I’m working. So that fresh ideas come and I have a downtime for a period of time.

I think we lose that. Might we lose the, you know, we’re not RoboCops or whatever. Autumn automatons, right?

Justin Brady: Autotons. Yeah, there you go. Or robots. What? I got it. Everyone gets it.

Lisen Stromberg: Yeah. And if we can treat people that way, what a difference it would be. Well, I

Justin Brady: remember how I, I remember how I was working by [00:24:00] myself for a while, then I worked in a small office with two other people.

We just shared the office space. We bought it together and then I got a job in a company and I just remember thinking, holy cow, no one works around here like this is crazy. They spend all their time and you know, if it’s not a useless meeting, which You know, counts around here as work. They’re just walking around chatting, water cooler, wasting time on stuff.

I was like, I felt the, the pull to be lazy for the first time when I actually went to a corporate environment. And then when that didn’t work out, which I is a shock to everybody, I’m sure I went, I went back to a coworking space where all of a sudden everyone was working their butts off and I’m like, Whoa, I need to work hard to keep up with all these people.

Lisen Stromberg: It’s so funny you say that. When I, when I interview, um, new parents, dads and moms, they’ll, they tell me, I’ve never been more productive. What the hell did I do with all my hours? Like, did I play ping pong all the time? They suddenly have this forcing function, which is, I’ve got to pick up the kid from daycare [00:25:00] by 5 whatever it might be.

I have to get my stuff done, right? And so they find themselves much more productive. It’s fascinating. If you look at longitudinal research about who’s the most productive employee, guess who it is. Oh, working

Justin Brady: mom. There we go. I was going to say we’re all on the edge of our seat right there. Yeah. Right.

It’s

Lisen Stromberg: a working mom. Specifically, the working mom is the most productive in the course of her lifetime. Now, unfortunately, she’s, she’s, she, her productivity lowers just after having a baby. Gee, you kind of think that makes sense? Does to me. I wonder why. But over the whole. Arc of her lifetime. She’s the most productive because she’s got to get her

Justin Brady: stuff done.

Interesting. So I, we, you know, obviously we appreciate you coming on here, Lisa. And we asked two questions to everybody who comes on. The first is name a spectacular time you face planted some, you know, a moment of darkness. I think a lot of people out there that are trying to just get it like you. Just think, Oh, you know, people like Lisa and don’t understand they, you know, things just worked for them.

But I, you know, I have failure. Things have been ripped from me. I’m never [00:26:00] going to make it. So what’s the time you failed and how did that make you into the person you are today? Well, I,

Lisen Stromberg: you and I spoke a little bit earlier and I’m like, I can’t, there’s one type you’ve got to be kidding me all the time.

So let me take one that I actually write about in the book. So there was a moment I’d been on bedrest for four months. with my second child and I need my nanny quit literally. And I needed a little bit of flexibility before I reentered the workforce. So I could, uh, at my employer, at a job I loved and they wouldn’t give it to me.

It was like, sorry, it’s not going to happen. And to me, Instead of being smart and doing the best I could to kind of navigate my career, I just quit and frankly quit in a huff. And I think of that as a failure because as I write in my book, being strategic about your career, being smart about the wins and losses and what you need and building your foundation and being, you know, and not just being reactive, [00:27:00] but being proactive is the number one thing I wish I would done.

The other flip side of that is. I didn’t understand at the time that there was a system around me that said working mothers aren’t as ambitious, uh, you’re not really committed to your career, flexibility make means that you’re not, you know, committed, et cetera. I didn’t understand there was this Uber narrative.

So I thought it was my problem and my fault. And if I could do anything different, I’d go back and give. Kindness and love to everyone saying we’re all operating within a system. And if you understand the narrative, the meta narrative, the meta system, you can make smart choices based on that to meet your own personal needs.

Justin Brady: So a lot of visionaries have trouble with that because they’re like, no, this is possible. It can be done. Come on everybody. Keep up. But you have to read, but you have to realize you’re within a system.

Lisen Stromberg: Exactly. It’s not, I call it not muscling through. It’s a mulling it through, you know, like you’re, you’re, So, that would be one big fail.

That paints a

Justin Brady: really many [00:28:00] others. Well, we don’t have time for all of them. So the other question we ask everybody is, you know, when you’ve worked with teams before, you have some really cool experience. So we like to squeeze that out of you. What is kind of your go to, your trustworthy thing that you do to get teams kind of unstuck?

Lisen Stromberg: So, you know. I often find that we get stuck when we’re operating from a place that isn’t a place of compassion and empathy. My best experience on teams is when I’m comfortable enough to be able to be honest to say, I’m confused, I don’t understand this, or, you know, or team, we got to get this done, or, you know, we’re able as a team to collectively and collaborate together.

And so for me, I always, when I’m working with my team, say, what can we, what do we each need here? What does success look like for each of us? Does, you know, and that might be today, you [00:29:00] need to go home because you’ve got to run your marathon. Well, what time do that? It’s really about trying to bring our authentic selves, I mean, it’s such a cliche, but to bring what it is that you need and how can we as a team help amplify what you need today so that we can all be productive to achieve our goal together.

It’s coming with humanity. I

Justin Brady: don’t think it’s cliche. I think what that does, when people feel they’re cared for, when people feel like their team has got their back, then they’re not thinking about the stresses in life and they are thinking about solutions to problems. So I think that is a really excellent way to leave this.

Leeson Stromberg, Work, Pause, Thrive, How to Pause for Parenthood Without Killing Your Career. Leeson, how can people buy that thing?

Lisen Stromberg: Well, the good news is it just came out in paperback, so they can go to Amazon and search under Work, Pause, Thrive and they’ll find it.

Justin Brady: And what is a website if people want to connect with you?

Do you have a Twitter handle? What can you give out so people can look up and find you?

Lisen Stromberg: Thanks for asking. So my everything is [00:30:00] L-I-S-E-N-S-T-R-O-M-B-E-R-G. So I’m at Leason Stromberg. Uh, my website is lisson stromberg.com. Uh, I’m on Instagram, Twitter, and all the rest. Facebook

Justin Brady: Lisson Stromberg. Thanks so much for your time.

Appreciate it

Lisen Stromberg: Justin. It’s a pleasure. And thanks everyone for listening.

Justin Brady: And thank you to you for listening. I’m amazed at how many people listen to this, and I’m also amazed at the high caliber of guests we get on here. If you enjoy the podcast, please, please, please do me one little favor. Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or Google.

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