“World of the female” supported by leadership
At Publitas, the company I work for, we place heavy importance on iterating on personal performance and development regularly. We do it by having bi-weekly personal coaching sessions with your direct manager and with the coach, in our case, with our own head of people Ali.
I have known Ali for almost 3 years. It has started as mentee-mentor relations. One day, Ali headhunted me for his company Publitas. And a result, I joined Publitas in February 2020.
Happy ending? Not yet!
For the first 7 months in Publitas, during my personal development coaching sessions, we talk about my consistency. For some reason, I’m consistent at being inconsistent. If that makes any sense… My consistency/inconsistency has 4 stages and each stage last between 5–7 days:
- I’m on top of things with an ‘enthusiasm and everything possible’ attitude
- I’m on top of things with a ‘do you wanna hear about it, let’s talk’ attitude
- I’m on top of things with a ‘grumpy, don’t piss me’’ attitude
- I’m on top of things with a ‘leave me alone, I’m really tired’ attitude
However much I try, I cannot crack this rollercoaster. And as every ambitious woman, I would beat myself for it. But at the same time, I would feel like the consistency that people preach, just isn’t designed to support who I am at my core. That in order to succeed I have to shut down my intuition, my emotions, my body, and other parts of myself. Be more like a man!
And we would discuss this with Ali over and over. Trying to find the root cause.
One day, he asked me: “How is the ‘consistency project’ going? Maybe we look at it from the wrong perspective?”
And the week after he sent me this:
On a side note: I opened the podcast and listened for about 7 minutes, paused it. I didn’t know if I should laugh if it was a joke, I didn’t know if this was serious… I was so confused.
“Do you see what I see? A man-boss researching the “world of female”, listening to a podcast about female energy and period cycles to understand his female colleagues so he can help her?” I have NEVER met a man, in my whole business life, neither my father, a classic Eastern European iron man with a soft heart, who would not think it’s gross, weird, who would open up to this topic.
Personally, until now I didn’t have the most positive experience I’ve seen colleagues walk away from the topic, because they are physically uncomfortable by the conversation. Once a manager I worked with told me: “I don’t have time for this woman bullshit, deliver deliver deliver”. The other day I could hear “I don’t care about your emotional period, pull your sh*t together” and “stop pretending the woman period crap, you women are just too weak” and similar …
Sharra Vostral, associate professor of history at Purdue University and author of Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology lays it out as follows: “If men are held up as the norm, then the assumption is you should be able to work all the time. And so there’s a lot of pressure, either to have women cover and hide their periods and just keep moving or to say, ‘No, women are special and they need rest and protection so that they can take care of their bodies and their periods.”
I called Ali and asked him about it, and he said: “If that’s how the female body works we have to understand it so we can work it and make use of it. It’s important that we are aligned with our bodies and nature as much as possible. I’m happy that you, Eva, are going to dig into it because this can help so many people.”
Inspired by his words, I jumped straight on the podcast, downloaded a book to my kindle. Read it. And it relieved me that my “consistency project” could be solved.
Here is a summary of Kate Northrup, ‘The Upward Cycle of Success’ (adapted from her book Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time and Energy Management for Ambitious Women)
First, you need to understand that people work in cycles. All people — cis, trans, men, women, nonbinary.
Typical work is set for 24-hour rotation and so you know a man can go through all of the phases in a day, but women go through them in a month. We cycle on a roughly 28-day rotation with four distinct phases.
Each phase has its own unique gifts and opportunities if we pay attention to them. And each phase literally and metaphorically holds critical ingredients to complete a full cycle of creation.
Fast forward, it means that my body works in ± weekly cycles and I try to push it during my daily routine. AHA, now I see why my “consistency project” is failing. I need to be consistent in a different way.
Author Kate wrote about ‘The Upward Cycle of Success’: “the foundation is always where your body is — which, of course, you can begin to feel whether or not you’re having a cycle. Then the other pieces become additional flavors that you can add to how you invest your time and what you do during your work (or play) day.
The Upward Cycle of Success is designed to help you feel more relaxed and in sync with your own creative process instead of trying to work against yourself and your own creative flow. Instead of the incessant need to be doing something all the time that’s become normalized in our “crazy busy” culture, the Upward Cycle of Success reminds us that every phase is productive, even if we’re not technically “doing” anything.”
To shortly summarize the cycles:
- Follicular: Planning, brainstorming, and new beginnings (‘enthusiasm and everything possible’ attitude)
- Ovulation: Communicating, collaborating, attracting, being out there (‘do you wanna hear about it? let’s talk’ attitude)
- Luteal: Focus, details, finishing projects, putting in the work (‘grumpy, don’t piss me’’ attitude)
- Menstrual: Rest, reflection, and evaluation (‘leave me alone, I’m somehow tired’ attitude)
This is exactly how I work, how I feel.
In my mind, there was one more key question: “Should I share with my male boss such intimate body-related information? Would be he open to it, willing to switch to such mode and try to adapt to it or at least work with it?”
Well YES, he is, because that’s what the leadership in Publitas is all about: embracing people to reach their full potential! That’s our mission in the end:
“We are on a mission to help as many as possible individuals and organizations achieving their goals”
And I truly wish more leaders would support their employees by designing such an environment where people can make the money they need to take care of themselves and their families while also having the time and energy to take care of themselves and their families, as Publitas does.
Happy ending? Not yet!
I rearranged my calendar, put my cycles with descriptions into the calendar, and invited my boss there, so he knows in which cycle I’m. To understand it, I would need to be a bit extra conscious of my energy and activities. I have started a daily journal to track it, I switch from a daily to-do list to a weekly to-do list. I rearranged some tasks of the projects. I’ve been playing with this for over 5 months now, and I must say it works great for me! My experiment still continues, there is much more to explore to understand further. I got another great read “Period power” by Miranda Sawyer thanks to which I’m bringing my “female” time management to the next level.
Final thoughts: According to research, the number one regret people have in life is: “wishing they’d had the courage to live a life more true to themselves rather than the life others expected of them.”
At Publitas, we believe that old leadership ways need to be challenged. I believe in it! We believe that putting people first results in a healthy culture is the most important foundation for creating an everlasting business. At the end of this will make women more productive then the business gets their profit from it too. Win-Win. Simple as that.
As dear Albert Einstein said: “nothing happens until something moves”…. so … while the best time to start would have been yesterday, the second-best is always today.” (Kate Northrup)
Let’s start here and today! Let’s not be shy about topics such as femininity… There is nothing to be shy about in the first place!
PS: if you have any questions, ideas or you would love to share your own experience with me I would love to hear from you! Because as one of my favorite quote says:
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African proverb
