A woman can approve a six-figure budget at 3 p.m. and be standing in her kitchen at 6 wondering why she can’t get it together.
That disconnect has been on my mind because the skills didn’t disappear on the drive home. She still knows how to make decisions, manage money, prioritize, communicate, solve problems and notice when something isn’t working. She knows how to lead.
And yet home can be the one place where capable women stop giving themselves credit for any of that.
When something keeps falling through the cracks, we usually make it personal pretty quickly. We tell ourselves we need to be more organized, more consistent, better with routines, better at remembering. We start looking for another planner or another way to squeeze more out of ourselves.
Sometimes a better system really would help. Sometimes the answer is a conversation, a decision or finally writing something down.
Other times, there is simply too much sitting on one person.
I think that gets lost when we talk about leadership at home.
Leading your home well cannot mean becoming exceptionally good at carrying everybody else. I have no interest in turning women into more efficient family project managers who can anticipate every need before anyone else notices it.
You can be an excellent leader and still need help. You can be very capable and want real partnership. You can know how to delegate and still want to live with people who notice, contribute and take ownership without waiting for you to manage them through it.
That matters to me because I never want “home leadership” to become prettier language for asking women to do more.
At work, leadership includes discernment. You decide what belongs to you, what belongs to someone else, what needs a process, what needs a conversation and what needs to stop happening altogether.
We’re allowed to use that same discernment at home.
Sometimes the most useful question isn’t, “How can I manage this better?”
It’s, “Why am I the one managing this in the first place?”
That question is part of why I created Bring Your Leadership Home, the seven-day mindset challenge we’re starting this week. I’d love for you to join the challenge! 7 days audio training lifetime access.
It’s for women who already know how to lead somewhere in their lives and want to examine what changes when they stop treating home as the exception. We’re talking about capacity, delegation, standards, control, shared responsibility and the beliefs underneath what we’ve accepted as normal.
I don’t think most women in this conversation need another reminder that they can handle a lot. We have plenty of evidence for that.
I’m more interested in what we’ve made that capability mean.
Have we decided that being able to carry something means we should? Have we confused being needed with being valuable? Have we gotten so used to being the dependable one that support now feels like something we have to earn, request perfectly or go without?
That’s the work I want to start with.
Before we change anything about how our homes run, I want us to look at the beliefs we’re bringing into the room.
For paid subscribers, this week’s Guided Implementation is a lesson on exactly that. We’re going to look at the story you’ve attached to being capable, where it may have come from and whether that story still fits the life you’re trying to create.
There’s nothing to organize when you finish. No chart to make. No family meeting to schedule.
I just want you to see what you’ve been assuming.
Paid subscribers: your Guided Implementation is below.
Guided Implementation: What Have You Made Your Capability Mean?
Before you change anything in your home this week, spend a little time with this question:
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.