Motherhood: The ultimate unwritten leadership development manual

It's Mother's Day on Sunday, 15th March – a time when we say thank you to the mother figures in our lives. Many of them are leading people functions across UK plc, having perfected the art of pivoting from the school run madness and toddler tantrum negotiations to leading board presentations and delivering on HR strategy. What lessons have they learned from their own motherhood journey? Many, and multiple.

Here, three senior CPOs share what "motherland" has given them in the way of transferrable work skills.

Conventional wisdom tells us that leadership is forged in boardrooms, built through qualifications, and proven in high-stakes meetings. But ask any working parent, and they'll tell you a different story. They'll tell you that some of the most profound lessons in resilience, empathy, and strategy aren't learned in the office at all – they're learned in the chaos of the kitchen, on the school run, and during those 3 a.m. feeding sessions.

From plates of little things to negotiating with logic-proof toddlers, this is what happens when the ultimate leadership development programme comes without a manual.

Louise Atkinson, Chief People Officer, Babcock International Group – ‘If you want to do a lot of things – learn to love the little things!’

I got promoted while I was on maternity leave with my second baby. It was a career shift for me and I was keen to prove to myself (and everyone else!) that I could do it. My husband worked away a lot and with no family nearby it was a tough time. And of course, I wanted everything to be perfect – the perfect professional at work, the perfect wife and mother at home. A home-cooked dinner on the table every night. Happy, washed children in bed by 7pm, ready for a story. That was the dream.

Louise Atkinson

Chief People Officer, Babcock International Group

But sometimes after a long day when my husband was working away, I would come home with absolutely no idea what to make for dinner, and with bedtime looming I didn’t always have time to cook the healthy, wholesome dinner I thought was necessary to prove I’m a good mum. The sort of dinner my mum put in front of us when I was growing up. On those days I would get some small plates out and create a “plate of little things” – a handful of cheerios, some raisins, a few pieces of cheese and some crackers, slices of apple - whatever I could quickly put my hands on. Those were the days I felt like a failure. I beat myself up for being disorganised, not planning well enough, and sometimes I’d put them to bed and cry thinking what a terrible mum I was.

Some years later when the kids were older, I asked them one afternoon what they fancied for tea. Their answer - “A plate of little things”! It turns out that even now they are grown up that’s their favourite dinner – and one of their fondest childhood memories, because they got to snack on all their favourite foods and eat on the floor, picnic-style. My guilt-fuelled failure was actually a win in their eyes.

That moment was like a lightning bolt and shaped so much about how I now operate. We don’t have to conform to some image we have of what motherhood, or work, looks like. There are nights when my kids have cereal for tea, and mornings I have to miss a meeting to make the school assembly. I’ve had to cancel presentations because a child is poorly, and there are days my son ends up without his raincoat simply because I had to leave the house in a hurry.

And it’s all ok – we might think it’s a failure, but someone else might be looking at it thinking how fantastic it is! If we want to do a lot in our lives; work, family, hobbies, friends, then it’s going to be a mess sometimes. And that’s ok.

So let all those limited expectations on yourself go – and eat dinner picnic style!