Louise Donaghey FRAeS - How to Lead with Strength and Vulnerability as a Breadwinner Parent

Welcome to the Big Careers Small Children Podcast. My name is Verena Hefti. I believe that no one should have to choose between becoming a CEO and enjoying their young children for much too long. Amazing people like I'm sure you listening right now have found themselves stuck on the career ladder when they have children and that leads to gender inequality in senior leadership because those people don't progress to senior leadership and the same stale, often male middle class people leading our organizations.

We must change this together and I hope that many of you listening right now will progress to the most senior leadership roles that you like where you can make the decisions that make our world a better place. Outside of the podcast. I am the CEO and founder of the Social enterprise Leaders Plus. We exist to help working parents progress their careers to senior leadership in a way that works for you and for your families.

We have free events and resources on leadersplus.org where you can download helpful toolkits such as on returning from maternity leave, share parental leave, securing a promotion, dealing with workload challenges, or managing as a dual career couple. We also have an award winning fellowship community which is global for working parents who have big dreams for their careers but don't want to sacrifice their family. You'll join an absolutely wonderful group of people, a very tight knit, supportive group of parents who have your back together.

You'll explore what your career aspirations are and you'll get advice from senior leaders who are also working parents about how to achieve those aspirations. You'll get new ideas to combine your hopes for your careers with your hope for your family and you are supported by people who are experiencing what you're experiencing yourself. I'm really delighted that a larger majority of our fellows have made tangible changes following the program, be that becoming more senior in their role, working shorter hours, having better flexible working arrangement.

They always impressed me so much with the courage that they instill in each other to do what is right for them without apologizing for having a family or apologizing for wanting that top job. Details are on leadersplus.org/Fellowship. In this week's conversation I'm chatting to Louise Donaghey, who soon will be one of our senior leader mentors about being the main breadwinner in the family, how to deal with judgment from others, what she has learned about practical strategies for staying present with her family, and also her learning around being vulnerable.

I have really enjoyed her frankness and found the conversation very inspiring for me personally. I'm sure you will do too. A very warm welcome Louise to The podcast. It's great to have you with us.

Why don't we start with you introducing who you are, what you do for work and who's in your family. Thank you, Verena. It's a pleasure to be here. My name's Louise Donaghey.

What I do for work currently is I'm the group head of engines for International Airlines Group. That is the parent company for a number of airlines, probably the best known of which is British Airways and, and Iberia. It's a very recent change for me. I joined that organization just three months ago.

My career is 30 years in aviation with 20 of those years being in Rolls Royce. So Rolls Royce engines rather than Rolls Royce cars. And I spent 10 years in the civil business. So that's engines that power airlines, aircraft and airlines.

And I spent 10 years in the defense business. So engines that power fighter aircraft, transport aircraft, helicopters. So 20 years with rolls Royce engine manufacturing. Before that, I actually spent some time serving in the Royal Air Force as an engineering officer.

So that's my last 30 years of my career. In my family, I have two teenage children. My son is 19 and my daughter is 16. She'll experience her GCSEs this summer.

And I've been the primary income earner, the sole breadwinner actually, since my children have been born. And I found that to be in equal parts extremely rewarding and extremely challenging and sometimes utterly heartbreaking. But yeah, in my family, a 19 year old son and a 16 year old daughter and two dogs to just complete the family picture, very important. The dogs are very important.

And it sounds like you've been working quite a male. I mean, I might have the wrong image here, but I'm picturing it's a lot of men in the industries that you've been working in and you've learned to clearly thrive and excel in that area really. Well, your picture's entirely accurate. I've always been in a very male dominated environment, right from my degree.

So my degree was aeronautical engineering. To put it into context, in my first year there were 150 students on the course, five women, and only three of us made it through to graduation. So it's been very male dominated since the early part of my career and I've made some huge mistakes in that environment. So I don't mind sharing that.

When I first entered a very male dominated engineering environment, my only role models, Roena, were men. So when I looked at a senior level in the organizations back 25, 30 years ago, I thought that I had to behave like A man in order to actually progress and succeed. And I didn't really have female role models. I had role models within my own family, my mum, my nana, my mum's mum.

But in the professional environment in which I found myself, I didn't have those female role models and I didn't really have role models that showed me how best to balance a young family with actually progressing at pace through your career. So your insight's really accurate. I'm glad to say that I've noticed positive changes through the 30 years that I've spent in aviation and predominantly engineering, but certainly it nowhere near represents society and I find that an ongoing challenge and a challenge that I'm tackling head on where I can in the organizations where I work.

But yeah, it's very male dominated. And that's some of the stories I want to share with you today, actually is the stuff that I've felt I've had to keep hidden in order to not be judged differently from my male colleagues. Interesting. And there's always such a tension.

I mean, nowadays if you look at LinkedIn, there are quite a few people who are shouting about how they're working parent and there are even some influencers who are in senior roles in the corporate sectors, but then are also blasting out pictures of how they're breastfeeding during a business call. And how have you found combining your mother identity with your professional identity? Did you feel you had to keep the mother identity hidden at the start of your career? I absolutely did.

And I'm not saying that that was right. That was just the way that I felt at the time. And having gone along that journey and matured through experience, I reach out now and help others not to feel that way because I certainly felt. And my son was born in 2005, so he'll be 20 this year.

So it's. It's been a journey that I've been on for quite some time, but I was a relatively young parent and I was quite senior in my career already at the time. So my son was born when I was a sales director for the Rolls Royce Civil business, so selling engines and engine contracts to airlines, traveling the world at the time. I was 27 when my son was born and I felt that I couldn't share the challenges that I was having as a parent because my colleagues would judge me differently and would find me somehow lacking in my dedication to my sales director role and my career.

And I say this with a smile now, which is hard to see when you're only hearing audio. I say it with a smile now, because I realize how foolish that assumption was, but I don't think I'm alone in making it. And I was very reticent, particularly when my children were young, to talk about the fact that I had children and I was trying to balance my commitment to them as a mother with also being competitive and viewed as credible in my professional space. And I deliberately now, and it wasn't an easy lesson for me to learn, I deliberately merged the two in my conversations with my team and my peers and my senior leadership team.

Today I do that. I did not do that when my children were young because I felt somehow that I should not. And I wouldn't, for example, have a picture of my children on my desk at work 20 years ago. And that in no way meant that I was ashamed of being a mother.

But I struggled to present that personality and get that personality to integrate with this competitive, ambitious, career driven professional. And I really don't think that that should be the reality now. But I suspect, Rowena, that it is still some people's reality. And I was very reluctant to talk about my family at work in case I was judged as being less than committed.

And yet I would see male colleagues being judged positively for having a picture of their family, their partner, their children, their dog. It almost provoked the opposite reaction to the reaction I thought that I was going to have if I shared about that openly so very much. When my children were small and I wanted my career to be big, I tried to separate the two. And I think the tension that I caused personally was actually unhealthy.

So what do you know now that you didn't know those 20 years ago? If you started again, I know you shared in an earlier conversation we had that you weren't one of those women who said, oh, I always will have a baby, and yes, it's part of my life plan, but you decided to have children. And then if you now look back at that moment, what would you advise yourself? So many things.

It's a great question. What would I tell myself then, knowing what I know now, I would do so many things differently. I think one thing I would encourage myself 20 years ago to embrace is the power of vulnerability. And I've learned the lesson, particularly through the last five to eight years, that as a senior leader now, when I show up and I am vulnerable, it not only gives everyone else permission to also be vulnerable, but it inspires others that you don't have to have all the answers and you don't have to have everything together all at Once.

Because guess what? Nobody does. And we've got an even bigger challenge right now in 2025. When I look at my daughter growing up, currently 16, you've got all of the social media posts that just present what they want you to see.

And nobody's life is perfect. We're all perfectly imperfect. We're all messy, we're all vulnerable. We all get stuff wrong probably more often than we'll ever admit to anyone, not even ourselves.

And so I think one of the things that I would tell myself 20 years ago is there's a power in your vulnerability. And the more that you share without oversharing and getting to a place that you're comfortable with, actually, the more other people are encouraged to share. And it creates a really inclusive environment in which people feel safe to say, do you know what? I'm not on my A game today.

I got four hours sleep last night because my son was sick through the night, and I'm feeling pretty frazzled, and I'm not sure I'm very prepared for the next meeting that's happening. And 20 years ago me, or even 15 years ago me, when I had a toddler and my daughter was born, I would have felt that that was somehow weakness if I had said that very openly to my team, my peers, maybe even to my manager. But actually, what I've learned more recently is that is a strength, being bold enough to say, I am not on my A game today.

I am human, and I am suffering with sleep deprivation. I'm worried about my child because they've been sick during the night and I'm going to need a bit of support today. And I really like. It's not my concept.

A concept shared by Brenny Brown, who's one of my favorite writers, is that a relationship is never 50 50, because fundamentally at work, it's all about relationships. So if you ever see Brene Brown talking about this, it's the concept of a marriage, but I like to apply it to a professional relationship or the relationship with my manager or the relationship with my leadership team. It is not every day that we all bring 50 50. And it's being psychologically brave enough to say on those days where you don't quite have 50% to give to the relationship, whether that's to your customer, whether that's to your leadership team, whether that's to your peer, where you're working on a project together, it's feeling okay to say, do you know what?

Today I've got 20%. And they can rock up and be like, well, that's okay. I got you covered. I got 80% today.

We can make this work. But if they rock up and say, do you know what? I've only got 30% today. I've got a lot going on at home.

I've got some challenges with my children, you say, let's be kind to each other today. Let's not tackle the big, hard stuff. We're both having a rough time, so let's leave that to a day where we've got more to give. So I think it's the power of vulnerability.

It's role modeling to others that it's okay not to have it all together. And it is talking about the stuff that unites us as people, because that is authentic. Right? Take any CEO of any organization, regardless of their personal circumstance, they will have days where they're not at their best.

And I would love for everybody to be in an environment where people can just say, when they're not at their best and get the support that they need. And I probably just wasn't brave enough to do that. When I started out with small children and I wanted this big career, I almost thought the two were mutually exclusive. And I don't believe that now for a minute.

Verena. And that was why it was important to connect with you on this podcast. Absolutely. Thank you for being so open.

One thing that struck me when we first spoke was that you were okay with being ambitious, and that's. I think that's quite a rare thing. I feel there's almost a bit of a backlash. Yes, we do all need work, life balance.

I certainly do. And we do want to be present with our children, have good relationships, but actually, I also want to. To be ambitious. And we're recording this now as I'm pregnant with my fourth.

And I just mentioned to you that actually there is still this moment where you think, oh, my goodness, is it okay to want more? Or should you just relax and stay at home? Which is absolutely fine choice for some people if that's what they want to do. But I'm interested in what's your relationship with ambition?

Have you always wanted to be with your kids, or did you ever think of giving up work? It's a great question because you said it exactly right. It's a different answer for everybody. And I think as working women, as working parents, we should just stop trying to find the magic formula, because, spoiler alert, there is no magic formula.

It's different for absolutely everybody. For me personally, having children actually increased my ambition because I wanted to Prove for myself. I suffer with anxiety, I suffer with a lot of self doubt. I was bullied throughout my childhood for the way that I looked and for being different.

And that gave me an internal voice that always says, you're not good enough, you're not pretty enough, you're not sporty enough, you won't succeed. And I've battled with that. I've embraced therapy, I've embraced life coaching. I still struggle with it, but having children actually increased my ambition.

And again, that is not the outcome for everybody. And I respect that. Everybody makes different choices. But for me, from the moment my son was born, my husband and I, we don't have any family support.

Our families live quite far away from where we've chosen to be for work. My husband made the commitment to give up his work and he was a martial arts instructor. He was one of those people that was doing for a career what they were passionate about. And he gave that up to care for our child.

And it was his personal choice. And we said, if it doesn't work out and it drives you up the wall because you really want to be doing your martial arts training, then we'll do something differently. We will make it work. Whatever the Excel spreadsheet says about our finances, we'll find a way to make it work.

That was our commitment as a partnership. But from the minute my son arrived and my husband gave up his passion for martial arts and for teaching others, particularly women and children, so he was teaching women self defense courses and confidence classes for children in how to defend themselves in difficult situations. From the minute he gave that up, I felt I was working for three people. And nobody said that to me, that that was the expectation.

That's the expectation I put on myself. And I wanted to show my son what was possible when you really went after goals, you know, meaningful goals. And I wanted to show my son how it looked to fail and that failure was okay. And I wanted to make my husband proud that he was going to be a full time carer for a baby, which at times can be the most beautifully rewarding thing and at times can drive you absolutely batshit crazy.

Right? He was willing to do all of that. So I doubled down on my efforts at work. I wanted to fundamentally make them proud and prove that you can have everything, not all at once.

Not all at once. I think that's a complete fallacy that you can have everything all at once, but that following your dreams was possible with the right support network. And my support network at that time was a slightly terrified husband. Who had no idea what it meant to look after a baby full time and a beautiful baby boy, who was completely oblivious to all of the decisions that were being made on his behalf, but has thanked me later, as he's progressed into adulthood, for all the lessons he learned as a result of how we set up.

So my relationship with ambition is very healthy, but I have faced massive criticism for it. And again, what would I say to my younger self? Those people's opinions really didn't matter. They hurt.

At the time, I had judgment, particularly from other mothers. When I would, for example, take my son to a party the weekend because I was around and I wanted to spend time with him. I would show up at these parties and it was predominantly mothers, and they would say to me, where's John, my husband? And I would say, I'm giving John a break this weekend.

I'm here. I'm going to spend time with my son. And they would say, well, you're the one that travels all the time. What does it feel like to be away from your child?

How do you cope with that? And I really took that judgment to heart, like somehow I wasn't doing what was expected of me as a mother. And when I stepped back from it, Varina I thought, my child has everything he needs. It's just mainly coming from his dad.

And that's okay because I'm enabling that to happen. And his dad is there at every important event of his life. And it would be the same if it was a grandparent, a carer, a family friend, it doesn't matter. But yet I feel like society, and I'm talking Western society.

So I was based in the US when some of this judgment was happening. I've also been based in the UK and had similar judgments. So maybe I'm talking about Western society, but I feel like there's a harsher judgment on mothers who are ambitious than there is on fathers. And that's not okay, is what it is.

And life's not fair. I get it. But my relationship with ambition is almost in spite of all of the judgment that I've encountered, almost to prove the doubters wrong. But that's where I'm at.

And I can only tell you where I'm at personally, and that land with some people listening, and some people will hate that as an answer. But for me, my ambition increased. I wanted to prove a point. I wanted to set a great example to my son and later my daughter.

And I also wanted to show a family setup that maybe still is not stereotypical, but that can work if you will sign up to the same outcome. I think it is so important to do what works for you and what works for your family. We have this community of leaders plus fellows, so working parents who want to progress their careers but also want to have strong relationships with their children. Some of them work part time, some of them work full time.

But I've heard from them a number of times that those who choose a shorter maternity or share parental leaves, that they get that judgment. And why are you doing that? And I think it's such a personal thing. I spoke to one person, one of our senior leader mentors, Joanna Santinon, and she said, well, actually, for me, it was much more important to be present with my kids when they were teenagers, and it was fine to hand over the baby when it was three months old because I didn't really like babies so much.

I couldn't agree more with you. It's so important to do it in a way that works for you. Is there anything that you've learned, I mean, it's easy, I'm sure, from hindsight to say that you learn to cope with the judgment. Is there anything else that you've learned in terms of responding or not responding to these comments or to their looks that you might get from other parents or perhaps even colleagues at the time?

Yes, I've definitely learned a great deal. And I love that you've got somebody within leaders plus that is brave enough to be honest and say, actually, I don't like the baby face. And I think you said it really well. You've got to select the solution that's right for you, regardless of other people's opinions and judgments, no matter how much they hurt.

And you need to play to your strengths. I'm very direct and very honest, and that's not always welcome in a female leader. I've been called aggressive rather than assertive when I know if I'd exhibited that behavior as a man, it would have certainly been celebrated. So what can you do to combat the judgment?

Well, a few things that I've done, and I think your other alumni also said the same thing. I compartmentalized. I am very present with my children when I'm with my children, and I am very present with my work when I'm with my work. And I don't try to multitask because, controversially, I am appalling at multitasking.

I just do everything quite badly when I try to do it all at once. So one of the things I did to combat the judgment is I would Always be fully present with my children when I was with them. Now, the fact of the matter is I chose an 8020 model. I chose 80% of time with my career in order to provide the lifestyle that I thought was what my children would thrive in and how it would support my husband.

Because, let's be honest, the reality of having a partner that gives up work is you go from two incomes to one. And so there was an ambitious part of me that wanted to provide the right environment and lifestyle for my children and my husband to thrive. And then I applied my 8020 rule. I said, 80% of my time, I'm going to be working.

I'm going to be fully focused on my work because my husband is fully focused on my child or my children, depending upon what phase we were at. But when I'm with my children, whether that's one or both, I will be fully present. I am not going to be that parent that is on the phone reading emails while having a half an eye on the football game or the gymnastics tournament or whatever it is that you're there with your child to do so. I would compartmentalize and I would engage with the parents.

Even if there was resistance and judgment, I would keep engaging with them. Whenever I took my child to a party or an event or around to another child's house for some time together, I would make sure to be absolutely fully present and focused in that moment. And for me, and this is only for me, having those fully focused moments of quality for 20% of my time, I feel was a better combination than being partially present for 80% of my time. And whenever I would travel on work controversial, I wouldn't call home because I would be fully focused on doing what I had to get done at work so that I could be fully focused on my family when I returned at the weekend.

And again, I would get judgments and comments. How can you not phone home? How can you not say goodnight? Well, at the time, if I think about my travel when my son was very young, that would have satisfied a selfish need for me to maybe hear his voice or hear the noise that he would make when he was not speaking.

And a little younger, but it would have disrupted their nighttime routine. And I just think the way to get around a lot of the challenges that we create for ourselves is clarity of expectations within the family unit. I would say to my husband, and latterly to my children, me not calling you at nighttime is not because I don't think you're important. It's because I'm putting your needs above my needs.

My husband could get that when they were really young because he's an adult and he would respect that. And that would be our operating model. And as my children grow older, I'd explain it to them directly. I'm not calling tonight because I want to give you and daddy time to do the bedtime routine and I'm going to be out in a business dinner and I would be calling later and it would be disruptive and it would be purely my need to hear your voice to satisfy how I feel and to maybe assuage that parental guilt.

So I think to combat some of the judgment, it's clarity of expectations in your personal unit, whatever that unit looks like, it's listening to the judgments but not taking them personally and continuing to engage. Because after that very first birthday party experience where they said, oh, you're the one that goes away, how do you do that? How do you feel an easy option would have been, well, I'm not going to those events anymore. I'm not engaging with that group of people.

But I continued to engage because there's ways in which you can actually demonstrate to people it's okay. And I apologize to you in my podcast because now my dog is barking in the background. Please don't apologize. I am delighted.

We've had a number of babies gurgling during the podcast and dogs and cats. So absolutely no, no need to apologize. No, I thought I'd set up for a very quiet, uninterrupted discussion with you, Barina, but that's a puppy. It's a new puppy.

And she was just trying to make her voice heard as we spoke about this. So I think it is clear expectations, compartmentalization works for some people. It certainly worked for me, but it's hard. I'm not going to pretend I spent some nights in hotel rooms when I was traveling in tears because I felt I was a crap mother.

But actually, I look at my children now as teenagers and their behavior and how they're finding their way in the world tells me I was not a crap mother and my husband is not a crap father. We created a balance that produced two relatively well rounded humans who are doing pretty well at life from my perspective, clearly biased and not backing away from the judgment, not being scared, not disengaging because it hurts. You kind of got to sit with the suck. And I know that's a horribly American phrase, but even when something feels hard and uncomfortable, you've got to keep going through it.

You've got to feel those emotions and You've also got to call out things that are not fair. Right? When these women would talk to me and they would say to me, you're the one that travels all the time. How do you feel?

How do you make this work? And I would tell them about the choices I had made and the fact that my husband was there to do things full time, caring, responsibility with my children, they'd say, oh, that's how you do it. Well, you're lucky then. And I took that a few times and then I started saying, hang on, no, I'm not lucky.

We made some deliberate life choices that cost us financially. My husband's income stopped, that cost us emotionally. It's hard work being a full time parent. I absolutely respect and admire anybody that has the patience, the persistence, the sheer humanity that it takes to actually engage.

Particularly when the children are very, very young and you can't have a reasonable, rational conversation with them, you are literally responding to their very basic needs. I know I would have found that a challenge and I would have been particularly stressed and not a particularly nice person to spend time with had I been doing those caring responsibilities. My husband gave up what he was doing in life to take that on. And yet people would say to me, oh, you're lucky.

That's how you do it. Someone else does it for you. And I started to push back on that. Not in a negative way, just hang on, this isn't luck, this is actually judgment.

We made a decision, we didn't know if it would work. It's teamwork. He does his bit, I do my bit. We do some very different things in life to make the overall equation work.

And we're very open with our children, particularly as they got older, about when we're struggling and when we find it tough and how our children, as they become teenage, can help us through some of that. So I think as well on the judgment, it's important not to just accept it, but to sometimes respectfully challenge somebody else's perspective because they're only giving you their view from their life experience. And I respect other mothers saying to me, I could never leave my child for that amount of time.

I'm like, that's fair. You've made that choice, I've made my choice. Let's both respect our choices, but let's not judge each other, because neither of us are less of a mother or less of a parent for making the choices that we've made. And don't get me wrong, I've pushed back on judgment and it's not been Very successful and I've had some particularly hurtful comments made as a result.

But I've done what I've thought is right and I've just wanted to help people see it from a different perspective. Thank you for sharing. I'm imagining that just a sheer financial pressure of getting the incoming must be quite intense at times, especially over 30 years. I'm sure you would have had periods where there is pressure on, you know, restructures and just as part of any normal career there are times where you're more at risk of losing your job.

And I'm absolutely fascinated in how you said you managed to be present with the children. So many of our leaders fellows say they are super dedicated at work, they really love the children but they think about their children all the time at work and I think about work all the time at home. And I'm just intrigued. Being a breadwinner, being under that type of pressure, how do you manage to switch off, especially in sales and big like decision, you could lose, I'm sure 100,000 pound contract if the meeting tomorrow doesn't go well or maybe even more.

Yeah, you're very intuitive. You're describing my life and we haven't worked together for a significant period of time. Discipline. And again, this isn't a magic formula.

I am terrible at multitasking. I don't mind admitting that now. I don't think that makes me a failure as a woman because I do think it's somewhat of a myth that we can all multitask at all times. I'll give you a practical example.

When I go on holidays with my children and that's when I've committed to be fully present for a week, I will get up early in the morning because that's my choice. I'm not forcing myself to do that. I am one of those really annoying people that's a morning person. So I utilize time that takes nothing away from my children to check in with work and understand what are the priorities for today.

Are they covered by my team? What is likely to be the risk today that I might have to intervene or that there's some kind of escalation that's necessary. And I will take. I'm smiling because people listening will judge this.

I will get up at five and I will take between five and seven because that's when I do my best thinking. Because you've got to be really honest with how you work work. You've got to learn over time that you can't do it all at all. Hours of the day, I'm wonderful in the morning at creative thinking, after 9 o'clock at night, I'm a little bit of a vegetable.

I can do transactional stuff, right, if it's necessary, but I don't think well in the evenings and I recognize that. So I play to my strengths. So on a holiday, when I want to be fully present with the children doing stuff during the day, I will get up at 5 o'clock. I will take time between 5 and 7 when nobody else in my family has any desire to be awake.

And I will do what I need to do to manage my anxiety for the day. Let's be honest, I will check in with emails, I will make sure the world is not ending, and nine times out of 10, it's not ending because people are replaceable at work. You're much less replaceable in your family. But for me, I don't feel any organization for whom I've worked has ever obligated me or expected me to do that.

It's a personal technique to manage my anxiety because otherwise I will get distracted. I will get major FOMO because I'll know an important meeting is happening or a negotiation is underway. But the way I find not to think about it is I'll check in for those couple of hours, understand the lay of the land for the day, make any inputs that I feel I need to make. But actually, again, the more senior I've got, the more I trust my teams.

You need to take time to verify and make sure that everyone is clear on expectations and doing what is expected. But once you've got that trust within a team, I'll check in, I'll make sure my team has the support they need from me, and I will put my phone in a drawer. And that's the honest, practical answer to your question. I wish for it to be more eloquent and meaningful, but I genuinely take a bit of time, figure out that the world's not going to end without me there, put the phone in the drawer, and that is almost a symbolic I am done.

I'm done with checking in at work. I've got a capable team, they know what they're doing, they've got the support they need. And I switch, I literally switch my focus. And again, it's not a magic formula.

It's not like I won't have a moment during the day where I think, wonder how that meeting's going, or perhaps we've actually got to that number in the negotiation. But it's not fair on my children. For me, to then take the phone out of the drawer and check in the middle of the day. I make explicit commitments to my family and to my work team and I get them to hold me to account.

So as my children got older, it's harder, obviously, when they're younger, but as they got older, particularly in secondary school, I would say to them, I'm going to come off my phone at 7:00, we're going to get out and do whatever it is we had planned for that day. I will not look at that phone again until after dinner. And I screwed up because we're perfectly imperfect and my daughter will call me out on it. That's the beauty of having teenagers.

You will get feedback. It is now. It is now. Like I say, I more relied upon my husband when they were younger because again, I'd declare my intent to him.

I'd say, I'm going to catch up with some stuff till 7am, then I'm all yours for the day. And if I inched towards the drawer to open it to get my phone out, because we all have that moment where you just, just, just let me check in, right? It's slightly addictive. He give me a virtual slap on the hand and obviously, like, ah, you said you wouldn't do that.

And. But I. Yes, fair, you're right. And it becomes habit after a while.

I mean, what is it? It takes 21 days to build a habit. It feels weird and awkward at first, but you have to set those boundaries and I've always found it's really helpful. Like when your children are young, so small children, more friends and peers, and maybe your partner can hold you to account.

What's really powerful when your children become older is get your own children to hold you to account to deliver on your promises. You know, we're going to go to the cinema today and I am leaving my phone at home and I am not going to pick up my phone until after we finish the evening meal or whatever my commitment is. I will make it verbally to my children now, now that they're older and have them call me out if I'm not meeting that. And again, I have the same expectation on them.

There are periods of the day where they put their phone away. No phones at the table is a rule. I think a lot of families try and enforce that rule. And again, we all call each other out.

None of us are allowed to have our phones at the dinner table when we do get to sit down as a family together. And I've heard my daughter criticise my Husband. I've heard my husband call my son out. You know, if anyone brings their phone to the table, it doesn't last more than about a minute before somebody calls them out on it and we get back to doing what we said we'd do.

That's fantastic advice. I'm interested in your decision making about career progression. Obviously, I have an agenda, as you know, that I would like more people who have caring responsibilities to be able to get to senior roles if that's what they choose to do. And I'm interested whether there was a decision that you've made either yourself or as a family that has been really instrumental to get to that level of seniority in a sector that isn't known for having tons and tons of women in senior leadership.

Yes. I mean, the decision that I made early in my career, around the time my son was born, was to always go for jobs that terrified me. I made a decision to be scared. And what I do now is I encourage other leaders to do the same.

And this applies to most men and women. But actually I found it much more powerful with female leaders who are having doubts. And you will know, you will know more than me. There are so many studies done on the different approaches that men and women take for applying for roles and then for interviewing.

I have tried. I made a decision to try and approach applying for roles like a man. And that is not to say that applying for roles like a woman is wrong. I actually support the approach that women take, which is they wait till they can do 98% of the role before they'll put themselves forward as ready.

But I decided a long time ago that why would I ever do a job that I think I can do? And that sounds completely counterintuitive, but if I apply for a role that I know I can do, yes, that's safe and yes, I'll deliver and I'll be credible and I'll receive positive recognition and feedback and it's much, much less scary, don't get me wrong. But where is the learning and growth? So I made a decision back in 2005 because I was terrified by the prospect of being a mum.

It wasn't part of my life plan, it was very much part of my husband's life plan to have a family. And it is something to which I agreed on the basis that I could still pursue my career. So we did have that conversation before starting a family together. And again, I almost felt braver once I was a parent because I had so much more to prove and I had some at a human, and then several years later, two humans watching me live my life.

Because your children don't go by what you say, they learn by what you do. And I made a fundamental decision, and I've kept to it for almost 20 years, to always go for a job that terrified me. And I've done that repeatedly. And I've gone for jobs where maybe it's 50, 50.

It's never mathematical, but I know that there's a core of the role where I've got some expertise. So I'm not gonna make an idiot of myself. I know enough in order to be able to deliver. But there's enough in the role that I've either never experienced or is much bigger than I've done before or takes me to a level far outside of my comfort zone.

And if a job has all of those elements, stereotypically, you'd find a candidate going, well, I won't do that, because that's too big and scary. I basically choose to terrify myself. That won't be for everybody. It absolutely will not be for everybody.

But I've made those decisions, and every job that I've done, I'm like, is it scary enough? And there was a recent role. So I've been in sales or business development or strategy for the majority of my Rolls Royce career. And there was an opportunity in 2021, just as we were coming out of lockdown, to move from a business development role.

So I was a senior vice president for India and Southeast Asia at the time to a delivery role. So moving from winning deals and campaigns into running engine programs. And I remember getting a phone call and being asked to come and do the role. And I said no, because it was far too scary.

And then I literally had a word with myself that evening. I literally took myself into the corner and talked to myself and went, you've just gone against your principal rule. You've said no, because this is too scary. And I think lockdown fundamentally changed our view on life.

And my husband, particularly early on, suffered terribly with COVID And I'd had to take quite a bit of time out, caring for him and reassuring our children at the time. And I'd actually done less work through 2020 than typically. And for a moment, it had not my confidence. And so when this call came in 2021, I went, no, no, I can't do it.

It's too scary. Fortunately, they didn't take me at my first word. So I called back the following day and said, I don't know why you've asked me to do the role. I don't think I've got the right experience and there are far better candidates in the organization.

But given that you have belief in me, I have chosen to have belief in myself. And yes, I will do this big, scary role. And it was terrifying. For the first six months, I was overwhelmed.

I asked myself on a daily basis, what are you doing? They're going to find out very soon that you really weren't the right candidate for this role. But it actually, and I know this sounds really trite, it's not meant to. It actually turned out to be the best role of my career.

Thank you for sharing that. That's very inspirational. Is there any final words that you would like to share with our listeners? If nothing comes to mind, that's absolutely fine as well.

I'd love to share that we're all enough at whatever stage of life we're at, whatever we're trying to balance, whether we've chosen to work part time to be more present with our children, or whether we've chosen to work full time and have our children supported in other ways, whatever you're doing, you are enough at that moment in time. And I think the people that really worry about whether they're getting it right are the people who are getting it right at the end of the day.

Well said. Thank you so much, Louise. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you. You're welcome.

It's been a pleasure to talk to you. If people want to find out more about your work, where should they go? LinkedIn would be a great place to start. I'm currently working with IAG.

I've got an updated profile on LinkedIn and I'm hoping Varina to do a lot more work with leaders plus. So I think LinkedIn would be a great start and I'll share my handle as we promote this podcast. Thank you so much. And thank you for volunteering to be a senior leader mentor to someone in our community.

It's much appreciated that you're paying it forward also through this podcast. Thank you. You're welcome. And I think that's a really good place to end on, actually, because we've all received help and I've never had anybody that I've asked for help say no.

And so we all succeed together. So we're all there to lift each other up. And it's been a real pleasure talking to you. I appreciate you taking the time today.

Likewise. I really appreciate you listening. Thank you so much. And I always love to hear from our listeners.

If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, just go to Verena Hefti and I'll be delighted to hear your feedback and your suggestions or just have you say hi. Likewise, if you do feel passionately about gender equality and you want to support a female led podcast, then please do leave a review and share it with a friend. Just because at the moment, podcasting is still a very, very male dominated environment. Most of the top charting podcasts are led by men.

I really love all the people who've joined from the podcast our Fellowship program and if you want to do the same, then please head over to leadersplus.org/Fellowship i order to get access to a community of support to help you combine an ambitious career with young children together with people who have your back. See you next week.