“I’m leaving for the day. I’ll be offline until tomorrow.”
“I’m leaving for the day. I’ll be offline until tomorrow.”
I was working at a startup. The company had less than 100 people. And I was one of the only people in the company (of any gender) who had a kid.
I had a relatively young kid, and I was leading a team. And I shifted my schedule to come in early and leave early on Wednesdays so I could spend the afternoon with my kid. It was lovely - it gave me a little mid-week boost of quality time with her to get me through the weekdays of being away.
And the first few times I did it, I would say things like “okay, I'm heading out to be with my kid, but I’ll be online later, after she goes to bed” or something like that. Almost apologizing for my time away.
And then one day I said to myself, wait a minute. Everyone on this team knows how to reach me if it's a true emergency. And true emergencies happen maybe a couple days a year. They can call me. They can text me. They have my information.
I don't need to be on Slack. I don't need to be on email. I don't need to be on my computer.
What I really need is to have this quality time with my kid.
And PS, I actually need to make it more clear to people at my company that this a thing you can do, that you should do. As long as you're taking care of your work, delivering on the outcomes that I'm expecting of you, then you can adjust your schedule in a way that works better for you.
So I started saying, much more loudly and clearly to everyone. “I'm leaving the office to be with my kid. I will be offline until tomorrow morning. You know how to reach me if it’s a genuine emergency.” The end.
I was the first person at the company openly doing this “balancing life with a kid” thing, and I realized I had an opportunity to not just set up what I needed, but open the door for people after me. Break down barriers for people who came after me. I knew I had privilege as a leader (and let’s be honest, a relatively outspoken and pushy human 😉), and I saw I had a chance to use that privilege to open doors for other people.
I know I’m not the only one opening doors. What have you done at work to try to make it easier for people who came after you?
Image: Me years ago getting quality time with my kiddo after leaving work early on a Wednesday. 😉