My day as… Deloitte Director and Mother of Three

Posted on by IPWA ADMIN

Alison

What’s a regular day like for working mother of three Alison Weyland? Here she explains how she balances being a Director in Consulting at Deloitte with raising three boys in Santiago.

About me…

I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. I graduated as a mechanical engineer and worked in manufacturing, but ultimately I didn’t see it as a long term career so after a few years I decided to do an MBA and then change careers into consulting. I started working at Deloitte after finishing my MBA in 2005.

I came to Chile…

…at a time when the stars really aligned for both me and husband with our respective employers. We were both looking for new challenges and managed to secure a transfer to Chile at the same time, so neither of us had to take a “step back” to allow for the other to have the exciting professional opportunity working in another country. We arrived in September 2010 with a master plan of staying here for two years. But after 18 months I was only just  starting to feel that I was making progress and seeing an impact of my changes, so we decided to stay for another year, which has now turned into staying for the longer term.

My experience as a working mother…

…has been one of self-discovery. I had my first child in my first year working at Deloitte, and when I returned to work from maternity leave I realised there were no women more senior than me who had children, which made me think that because there was no role model there, other women probably thought they couldn’t do it either. So I got together with a colleague who also saw a future for herself both as a mother and as someone who is successful in her career, and we started a group called Career Moms to create a critical mass that can support other women at Deloitte get through the temporary challenges of being a working mom.

Most women face the really difficult work/life balance challenges only in the first five years after their children are born, and it’s been shown that if employers support their female staff during those difficult decisions, then they get a high degree of loyalty from them at the other end.  Career Moms actually still exists today, 10 years later, and continues to help women at Deloitte have the difficult conversations with their bosses about salary, hours and work-life.

Personally, my biggest learning from having children is becoming more empathetic to others and realizing that I’m not in control of everything, especially not my kids. I had to learn how to ask for help as well. It’s very similar to learning how to delegate at work, you have to step back and trust that even though you aren’t doing a task yourself, you know it will get done well. Everyone has their own style of doing things, it’s not right or wrong, just different. When my husband looks after the kids they’re happy but the house is a disaster!

A typical day for me…

…starts with breakfast as a family. On Mondays and Fridays we drop kids off at school as a family, which is a bit of a scramble! On the other days the kids take the bus. At work I usually have a full day of meetings, which takes some careful calendar and some important trade-offs about what is valuable for me to go to. Actually my day is full of trade-offs like that, I know that if I don’t leave work at a certain time then I won’t be able to have dinner with my children, or perhaps even see them before they go to bed. It’s made me a lot more efficient!

I try to have lunch out at least once or twice a week so that I’m not always eating at my desk. I haven´t adapted the “Chilean way” of having 1 to 1.5 hour lunches every day, as I just don’t want to sacrifice that time that I could otherwise spend at home. When my husband isn’t travelling I’ll run home from work at least 3 or 4 times a week, which is something that’s really important for me to do, both for the exercise and my mental state of mind. As soon as I get home we usually sit down and eat as a family, which my husband or our nana usually prepares. My husband and I actually have a pretty fairly balanced set of responsibilities at home and we each play to our strengths, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we fall back on gender stereotypes. He’ll usually prepares breakfast while I get ready in the morning, for example, and then I make sure the kids get washed up and prepared for school while he gets ready.

After the children go to bed, I try to pick up a book or catch up on personal emails. I try not to take my computer home with me. Our day is organised but I don’t really enjoy being overly organised. When the routine does get totally disrupted, like if one of the kids gets sick, I actually enjoy the spontaneity!

My flexible working experience…

…I negotiated based around the amount of maternity leave I would have had as new mother in Canada. I worked 7am-2pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays for eight months.

Most challenging part of my day…

…is guarding what I care about, especially time. I really don’t want to compromise on the “bookends” of my day because I want to make sure I see my kids in the morning and at night, even though the guilt of leaving work before others can be a bit much sometimes. Part of the issue is the focus on face time in the office – people take pride in being seen at the office late into the night and even leaving at 7pm produces sideways looks from colleagues.

Most rewarding part of my day…

…is switching between intense ‘mommy moments” to intense moments of having my own thing, and doing something that really fulfils me as a professional. Too much of either sets off an imbalance that I don’t like, so it’s definitely rewarding to be able to switch between the two.

My hopes for the future…

…is to continue to find ways to guard my family time and grow as a professional.  I also hope to be recognized and valued for my skills and contributions, and my leadership style, which is different than my male bosses and colleagues. In such a male dominated business environment in Chile there is the constant danger of abandoning key leadership characteristics such as empathy and honest communication to conform to the definitions that male leaders have of “good leaders”. Being emotional to some extent makes you human. You can’t have passion without emotion. The business world needs to understand that women lead differently and that the diversity is good for business.

 

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