HOW FEMALE BUSINESS LEADERS MAKE IT WORK
Journalist shares relationship advice for working women
Mutual support, plus a well-coordinated calendar, help career couples succeed in work and marriage.
So writes journalist Joann S. Lublin in her new book Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.
Lublin describes a promising young tenor who gives up opera for his wife’s hotel career, a biochemist who becomes a stay-at-home father after his wife’s promotion and a neurosurgeon who moves his practice cross-country when his wife becomes head of eBay.
While very much a management book, Earning It also covers women’s relationships at home and at the office.
Lublin, management news editor for the Wall Street Journal, interviewed 52 American women aged 33 to 79 who lead such companies as IBM and GM.
The New York-based Pulitzer Prize winner was recently in Toronto for a networking event co-hosted by a Bay St. law firm. The Star later spoke to Lublin on the phone.
You and your journalist husband signed a contract in the 1970s agreeing to alternate cities for your careers. Fast forward to 2014, when the Harvard Business Review found half of millennial males expect their careers to take priority over their spouses’. How should ambitious young women negotiate with their partners?
When the relationship turns serious — living together or getting married — that’s the time to have a serious chat. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea to have a marriage contract. It can be informal. The tag-team approach works: One partner’s career surges for five years, then the other. But you have to be flexible.
When it comes to child care, you say “Plan B is rarely enough.” This is in relation to the former DuPont CEO whose nanny went into premature labour. Many mothers work from home when child care falls through or their second-grader is sick. Isn’t that solution enough?
Sure, if your child is sick for a day or two. My son and his wife tag-team (he’s in government, she’s an attorney). But what if both parents have to be somewhere? Some well-meaning employers will arrange to have a child-care provider come to your home. One woman set up a childcare centre at company HQ and had a nurse on the premises in case a child got sick. It was the best retention tool she had — for men and women.
You title one chapter “Managing Men Well.” One of the trickier relationships is with male mentors. Besides avoiding joint business trips, how can women prevent misperceptions of romantic involvement?
Meet only in public during office hours. This protects against sexual harassment as well, even if that means leaving the door open during the meeting. A lot of men are afraid to mentor young, attractive women because they don’t want it to be seen that way.
One CEO cites “honesty, fidelity and habit” in making her marriage work. What other values contribute to successful relationships between career couples?
You have to have tremendous respect and admiration for your spouse’s career. You need to be your spouse’s biggest cheerleader and best sounding board. Compromise. You’re not always going to like the way your spouse squeezes the toothpaste. Get your own tube.