The Agile Executive. Marianne Broadbent

Choir through high school.

      She loved the choir and singing and wanted to join more of their specialist groups. The problem was that rehearsals were about eight kilometres from our home, with no easy public transport access. One of us could usually pick her up in the evening but getting her there by 6pm was a challenge.

      The deal became that if she could find another family who could get her there, we would bring her and the other chorister home. This meant that on her first rehearsal she always had to find out where everyone lived and then negotiate some car pool arrangements.

      She was good at this and I don’t think she missed any sessions in which she really wanted to participate.

      Don’t make a habit of bringing home gifts

      In all my travelling for work I never felt obliged to bring home a gift for our children as a matter of course. If I saw a T-shirt or a CD or something that one of our four children would love, I might buy it. But that didn’t mean I bought something for the other three.

      Our kids understood that (I think!). I am aghast when women or men rush around buying presents on work trips. What this often conveys is that idea that, ‘I am away therefore I am being neglectful/not a good parent. I am buying you something to compensate for that and make me feel better’.

      Often all it does is set up a situation where your kids expect to be compensated because you are doing what your role requires. My perspective was to get them accustomed to the way the world works.

      Having said that, I should add that my frequent commitments to be at Gartner Headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, meant regular trips to New York City, a 45-minute commuter train ride away.

      This often meant a weekend afternoon pouring over the stock at the iconic and rambling Colony Music store near Times Square. Many (many) dollars were spent in that store over the years for two children in particular—one who is the professional musician (­trumpeter) and music teacher, and the other who is a performer, music theatre actor and musician.

      The Colony Music staff there were the human embodiment of what Amazon does today, ‘If you like this then you will like that’.

      I would sometimes arrive with a list from the two performers in the family and the staff would be impressed with my knowledge and taste for the latest in jazz and Broadway or off-Broadway’s ‘hot’ new songwriter/musical team. Maybe that was partly why the kids were ever so understanding of their mother’s wanderings.

      Our kids knew that someone might get something that Mum had seen and thought was a good idea at the time, but they would not all get presents just because I had been away doing my job.

      When travelling for work, enjoy the surrounds

      One of my other insights was that, if you travel, don’t rush home with things half-done. Stay another day, or whatever it takes to arrive home with the work done so you can be fully present (at least for a while) or take some downtime. Go visit a gallery or museum, walk around whatever city you are in to soak up the atmosphere, go do some shopping, watch a play or a sports game. If you do that you are more likely to be more relaxed as well as more interesting to talk to when you get home!

      I have to confess that Robert was not fully aware of this policy of mine until quite recently. A couple of years ago, I led one of those lunchtime sessions with a ‘Women in Technology’ group. Also on the platform was a Human Resources Executive of one of Australia’s largest companies. After I made my comments about the value of taking some downtime, she came up to me to thank me for the advice and told me she was going back to the office to redo her schedule for her London trip the following week to include an extra day out.

      She ran into Robert and me in the foyer at an event a little while later, where she commented to Robert that he was clearly a very understanding person. I then had a little bit of explaining to do.

      As a friend of mind is fond of saying, ‘Not everyone has to know everything all the time’.

      The caveat: we each have different drivers, different comfort levels

      Each of us is different. My purpose here is to illustrate how we deal with ourselves, using some of my journey, and that of some other women, to provide context and learnings.

      I don’t expect others to copy the way I have approached things, and I expect not many would want to!

      As Jody Evans indicated, there is no one right way. We each find ourselves in different circumstances, we were brought up differently, have varied experiences and different levels of tolerance for ambiguity and stress. What is really important is for each of us to understand our own motivations and strengths and play to those.

      The leading Company Chairman and Director, Elizabeth Proust put it this way, ‘Women need to work with each other, build great networks, take a few career risks, and also ensure that at least one domestic skill is a major deficiency. Mine is cooking. I don’t and won’t cook’.