How Becoming a Father Impacted me Professionally

My wife and I were extremely fortunate to welcome into the world a healthy baby girl. I’ll save the details of that experience for my other social media—but suffice to say, my wife and I are both absolutely smitten by our daughter. The one thought I will share from my experience at the hospital, is that when the nurse passed Isla to my wife and I saw Isla open her eyes for the first time and the first thing she saw was her mother—I was a crying mess. The thought most prominent in my mind was that I never knew I could be so happy—and every day since I have been continually amazed by how that feeling has stayed with me. What I wanted to discuss in this article, however, was how being a father has changed me professionally (or at least the first 5 months or so of being a father, I expect many more changes to come as we enter different stages in parenting).

A disclaimer—being a new parent, I know ALL TOO WELL about preachy, unsolicited advice. This is not intended to be that. In fact—this is just a sum of my thoughts and experience. Maybe some will resonate with you, maybe some won’t—and that’s fine. Not everyone will feel the way I feel, and I’m not going to be so presumptuous to believe that how I feel is the 'correct.' This isn’t a shaming or preaching article—simply a reflection.

Importance is more grounded:

If everything is important then nothing is important. Importance is relative—and when you’re dealing with time, which is the very definition of a zero sum game, importance should be more considered. Prior to being a dad—I let everything be too important. I didn’t pick and choose my battles. I filled up my plate, and worked all hours to get it done. Thinking back on it—I probably made too many less-important (or unimportant) things become distractions to my teammates and colleagues. In my role—my inability to delineate what’s important actually hurt other people, because they got sucked into having to review my work, meet an unreasonable deadline, or put 20 hours of work into something that won’t see the light of day.

Becoming a parent has given me a very potent baseline to compare important tasks to: my family. Business travel is a good way to evaluate this. Before I had a daughter—business travel really only effected me. I could go on a bunch of trips, I’d be tired sure, but it only impacted me. Now if I go on a trip—I’m leaving my wife, who works a very demanding job, in a position where she now has to take care of Isla by herself. Our daughter doesn’t yet sleep through the night—so my wife would have to do all the wakeups to help calm Isla when she cries. Then, on very little sleep, she’d have to get everything ready to drop Isla off at daycare. Change the diaper. Give Isla a bath. Get her dressed. Clean the bottles. Pack the bag. Get her loaded into the car and checked in. At the same time, she still must get ready herself. She then will go and work a full day in a job which requires extreme attention to detail and managing a team, to come back, pick Isla up, and then do it all over again. The moral of this story is—the trips I go on better damn well have a lot of value—if they don’t, then I’m needlessly putting a tremendous amount of pressure on my wife, which isn’t me being a good partner in my life’s most important partnership. All of these same considerations also come into play when I ask others to travel.

Because I have a clearer view of what’s important—I’m now able to be both more effective and more efficient. I’m also able to be a better teammate—because I’m randomizing people less, and I’m able to think more empathetically—which leads me to my next thought. Kindness.

The importance of kindness:

I think, by and large, I was extremely desensitized to what I read in the news, or how I witnessed interactions or even interacted myself before becoming a parent. Becoming a parent has made me significantly more empathetic (read between the lines, I get choked up during TV shows and humanitarian aid commercials).

I see the way people on TV discuss human centered topics devoid of any compassion or humanity. This is a graphic example, but an important one—I saw a picture on the news from the border / migrant crisis. It was a picture of a man drowned in a river while holding his daughter who also drowned—they were washed up on the bank of a river. I can’t get this image out of my head. Regardless of your politics on this—this is absolutely heartbreaking. I cried. I cried because I’m now a father, and I know how much I love my daughter, and it breaks me to see that kind of hurt. What could drive this father to risk his child’s life? What were they escaping? How scared must they have been in the river? Were there others? Hundreds of questions raced in my head. What then became apparent, however, was that the pundits weren’t discussing any of these. They politicized these deaths. They were crass. Devoid of kindness. Devoid of any form of pathos. I thought to myself—this can’t be the way to do things. This doesn’t help.

I think remembering that everyone is somebody’s daughter or son humanizes them. I think knowing that many of the people I’m interacting with are parents who are doing the best they can to provide for their family is humanizing. This has certainly softened some of my harder edges. It’s made me more patient. More understanding. More humble. It’s also made me much more considerate and concerned—do I ask this person to fly out for this meeting? Or can they take it via teleconference. Do I schedule that call at 6:30PM EST when someone is trying to get home for dinner and be with their family—or do I schedule it the next morning. There are hundreds of these little decisions every week—and I now view them with a much kinder lens.

Importance of maternity and paternity leave:

I’m very happy that our society is becoming more progressive towards these policies—and the stigmas around paternity and maternity leave are softening. It’s my belief that there is a strong business case for this as well as a personal one. Let me first start with the personal case.

Speaking as a father—the whole pregnancy and birth thing… yeah, we got it really easy as men in this. I suppose I was lucky—because my wife really didn’t have weird cravings sending me to the store at 2AM to grab a pint of ice cream and a jar of pickles (ironically enough, she craved kale and leafy greens… go figure?). My only inconvenience was having to get up 40+ times per day to get her water, which all things said and done—is getting let off pretty easy. Mothers, however, do not have it easy. They hurt. They get sick. Their body changes. They’re lugging around a significant amount of extra weight (imagine carrying a 40lb rucksack with you everywhere you went, it’d be exhausting). Then they give birth. Which my goodness—having witnessed that, there is no more powerful force on this earth than a woman. It still shocks me that after 10 difficult and painful months, and the brutal process of birthing—that as soon as that baby pops out, the mother loves it unconditionally—I’m sure there are some Darwinian genetics that made that possible.

Why do I bring all this up? It highlights the necessity of fair family leave. I get sore from sneezing wrong—could you imagine the soreness of a 20 hour labor? I won’t go into all the kinetics or physiology of birth—but needless to say, there is a lengthy recovery process that is needed. Family leave is just as much about taking care of your partner, as it is about forming a bond with your new child. That recovery is both physical and mental. Post-partem depression is really brutal—and its even more brutal if its experienced alone.

Recovery aside—I just spent 10 months being extremely excited to meet my child—I needed to get to know her. I also needed to learn how to be a parent. Fortunately, Isla gave me a lot of parenting experience in the realm of changing diapers and soothing her every hour or so at night. She was the queen of the 30-40 minute powernap—which is exactly enough time as a parent to do just about nothing. I was able to take 4 weeks off—I wish I could have taken more. I never thought staring at a baby for 20 hours per day would be so amazing, but it was. Was I ready to go back to work after 4 weeks? I don’t think so. From a sleep perspective, a 4 week old is substantially better than a 1 week old—so at least I was getting 4-5 hours of very interrupted sleep per night. I can’t complain, however, because one thing I didn’t realize was how painful and difficult breast feeding was—which once again, is proof that woman are the most incredible things on this planet.

Now for the business case for fair family leave policies—distracted employees can do more to hurt production than help it. Fathers and mothers need to be at a stage where they can functionally be productive again. Meaning, they’re getting at least a reasonable amount of sleep. They have their child care taken care of (which where I lived, there was an average wait list of 1.5 years for an infant to get into daycare… fortunately my wife is a really good planner and we were on those lists before we told anyone she was pregnant). They have had enough time to bond with their child to develop a far greater exigency to be productive than any company mission statement could ever provide.

Companies that have outstanding family leave policies—I’ll use Microsoft as an example—also retain their employees because of it. I know quite a few people who would have left Microsoft if it was not for their family leave policy. Whether in anticipation of their first child or staying around another 2 years because they knew they were going to have another—these policies serve as a huge differentiator in an incredibly competitive market, and routinely allow companies to retain employees for much longer than the average 2.5 years.

Finally—I don’t have any data to back this up beyond a hunch—but I think pay inequality between men and women is also significantly impacted by family leave policy. I don’t want to oversimplify this issue. There are thousands, if not more, variables that go into this—some are societal, some are economic, some are cultural, you name it—but the bottom line is, I believe there are many women overlooked for promotions or more equal pay because there is this terrible belief that maternity leave is too disruptive for business as usual in the “important positions.” I believe if family leave was more equal—this excuse wouldn’t be applicable. My company offered 1 week of paternity leave—I was then able to find another program that allowed for 3 more weeks. If I decide to start a family—that only impacts about 2% (~8% with the additional 3 weeks) of my year. Women are allowed 16 weeks by law—which impacts above 30% of a year. I believe this perception is shifting, but not fast enough. There are 25 women CEOs in the Fortune 500. To give perspective, there are 166 million women in the US compared to 159 million men… yet only 25 out of 500 (166:159 ≠ 25:475)—and I would argue the greatest bosses and leaders I’ve worked for and with have been women… so where is the disconnect?

Okay, I said I wouldn’t get preachy, and I got preachy—but seriously… it blows my mind.

Value of time:

One of the biggest adjustments in going back to work was realizing how inefficient I was while at work. Now when I get home from work, I only have a couple of hours with my daughter before she goes to sleep for the night—that time is sacred. Once she goes down at around 7:30-8:00—that’s time to go to the gym, spend time with my wife, and eat dinner. One thing I learned quickly, with a baby going through sleep regression—the idea of going to bed at my historically more usual 11:00 or so became unthinkable. If I go to bed at 9:30—chances are pretty good I’ll get around 6-7 hours of sleep, albeit interrupted sleep. If I go to bed at 11:00—which is the beginning of the witching hour, I’ll only get 4-5—which is not enough. I say all this to point out—I don’t have the luxury of being able to casually work until midnight the way I used to. Fire off a few emails while watching TV? No problem. Work on a presentation after dinner. Par for the course. My work day used to be filled with endless meetings, calls, etc—I then did my “real work” at night once I was home. That is not sustainable with a child. And mornings you may ask? Yeah, I haven't figured out how to do anything but scramble to get myself and Isla ready, so working before work isn't much of an option.

The first few weeks back were stressful. I realized how much I wasn’t getting done during the day, and I felt like I was dropping the ball and missing deadlines because my entire way of working up until this point no longer was effective. I had to learn how to be much more protective of my time, which meant I needed to unlearn 10 years of bad habbits. If I’m being honest, I still struggle with this. I’ve still been up till 2 or 3 in the morning working on a proposal, or putting together a presentation—but whereas before it was the norm, now it’s the exception. Hopefully I continue to improve here and it becomes a very rare exception.

The end, for now:

If you’ve stuck with me this far, you’re a trooper. Being a dad has changed me, and I’m really proud of that change. Like any new parent—I’m exhausted, worried, dropping balls left and right—but I can honestly say I’ve never been happier. No matter how crappy of a day I’ve had at work, which in my line of work, there are a lot of them—coming home and holding Isla and seeing her toothless grin makes all the wrong in the world right again. She has given me a far greater purpose than any strategic initiative or company mission statement ever could. Being a father has made me a better husband, son, friend, and employee--and I'm thankful every day to my wife and daughter for making that happen.