Professional success can be a funny thing for a mother. Now, that I had carved out my career and had my first promotion, somehow there seemed to be a division from other moms in my son’s class. It is one thing of having to work full time to support the family however it seemed to be quite another to be a woman with ambition!
As much as I would have liked to be involved in my child’s environment, I was always rushing off to some important meeting. Once promoted into a field sales position to continue building strong relationships with customers I had acquired through my telesales activities, I would now have to spend days and weeks travelling around Germany to visit clients.
At this point 50% of my time was invested into travel and soon this would be getting more and more difficult to manage without any outside help.
I would continue to compensate for lack of quality time through amazing presents and lavish outings.
Anyone who has worked in the corporate world will know that you do get recognized for the amount of time you are prepared to invest. If you are there before your boss and leave hours after he has gone, well, you are considered potential for a management position. Strangely, productivity is measured in man hours more so than results.
Of course, it is wrong to assume that you must work at least 12 hours per day to be considered a committed employee. But I didn’t make the rules, I just followed them same as everyone who wants to get ahead in business.
So I continued to do my very best and was rewarded with more responsibility and expensive training courses in London in preparation for my promotion to Sales Manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
To be continued…
I once read that the best parent is a parent who is doing what they love and their children will learn to do what they love.
ReplyDeleteLead by example. Good for you : )