Pregnant, unhappy, lost? A personal ‘board of directors’ can help, no matter what the situation - Women's Agenda

Pregnant, unhappy, lost? A personal ‘board of directors’ can help, no matter what the situation

When Vicky Skipp was six months pregnant, she took an international role with LinkedIn building a large Asia-based sales team.

She says the impending birth gave her an excellent deadline: Once settled in, she had less than three months to hire the team and get them settled into an extensive training program.

For Skipp, it was a dream job that she at first thought impossible. When the recruiter first contacted her about the opening at LinkedIn, she initially said no, thinking it’d be dishonest to pursue such an opportunity while pregnant.

The recruiter contacted her again, and she decided to at least check out what was on offer. “I walked into LinkedIn. The people were wonderful. But I do remember holding my tummy in case anyone saw a bump that hadn’t been disclosed!” she said. She eventually revealed she was expecting and that she’d have to turn the opportunity down, thinking that would be the end of it.

Instead, she received a call back with a message from her future employer: People have kids, women have kids, it happens. Come in anyway.

It was a very different experience to how her previous employer reacted to the news she was pregnant. “I couldn’t wait to tell my then boss that I was pregnant,” she said. “I arranged a video conference, he was in Japan, and said, guest what? I’m pregnant! You know what he said? That’s terrible!”

Skipp was devastated. But the experience taught her that she didn’t love the company as much as she first thought. Then she got the call from LinkedIn.

Skipp, South African born and now based in Singapore where she serves as LinkedIn’s Director of Sales Solutions for APAC, shared the story at LinkedIn’s Women Connect speaker series, at the company’s new office in Sydney on Tuesday morning.

She said a couple of personal stand-out traits helped her take on the significant responsibility while pregnant – her ability to “get shit done” and to develop and nurture great relationships.

But what also helped has been the “personal board of directors” she’s been developing her entire career. These are the mentors she taps for guidance, advice and ideas on what to do next. They’ve helped her make significant career transitions, find great employment opportunities while overseas, and enabled her career to evolve with her changing life needs.

Skipp believes such a board is essential for managing career transformations – something we should continually be pursuing in order to progress. “All of us are on a transformation journey,” she said.

Skipp shared numerous times throughout her career that she’s called on various supporters for guidance on her next move. At one point, she took a great job in Sydney Australia, only to discover the move wasn’t working for her and was making her unhappy. She recalls one of her personal ‘directors’ explaining that things don’t always go according to plan, find something else and move on.

Later during a panel session, Pandora managing director Jane Huxley backed the need for a ‘board of directors’ – although she likes to call her personal advisory resource her “smorgasbord of mentors”.

She recalled learning an important lesson from one such mentor, the former managing director of Microsoft Steve Vamos, who urged her to keep her emotions in check.

Huxley admitted she’d regularly take things personally at work, and could often feel herself getting angry and emotional during meetings. “One particular night I went back to my office and I sat there with my head in my hands, feeling the tears. The door flung open and there was Steve Vamos.

“He said, ‘You have a lot of potential, but this is going to stop you. This will derail you. I believe in you and I’m going to help you deal with this for your career’.” Vamos hooked Huxley up with career coach and the former MD of Apple, Diana Ryall. After meeting regularly with Ryall to learn strategies for managing her emotions at work, Huxley says she now knows to never take things personally.

The LinkedIn event brought together more than 70 industry leaders from a wide range of sectors to discuss “personal transformation”, including former CareerOne CEO Karen Lawson and IBM General Manager Jo Dooley.

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