Mother’s Day 2013: Tame your EGO, woman?

True love: Men helping wife to carry the load.

 Guest post by @angieweinberger

In light of Sheryl Sandberg’s book „Lean In“ I recently pondered about the question of my ego. I have always been ambitious and had targets in my professional life. I still do. Ms. Sandberg inspired me to write down „I want to be the #1 expert in my field Global Mobility.“ Basically I want the world to think „Angie Weinberger“ when they think of Global Mobility / International Assignments and expat issues.

This is a high ambition. It is almost ridiculous and totally against my values and education BUT I can see a point in telling myself that if I do aspire to be #1 I might have a chance to end up in the Top100.  My area of expertise is a niche and rather specialized. Many HR Professionals avoid Global Mobility as if it was the holy grail of doom.

Well, it is actually because every case is different. With international assignments you get the variety of humankind. Every expat struggles in one way or another but usually they all have a different story. Some patterns are similar, some processes can be aligned but you deal with every single expat at a time.

In my view it is a wonderful profession and it requires a lot of different skills. So assuming I am rather good at this (which is already hard to write) why do I still tame my ego and tell myself: „You will never be #1. There are so many other GM Professionals out there who are a lot better than you are.“ Why do I already limit myself? According to Ms. Sandberg it is because of my gender. So it is a mental or biological barrier that can be overcome through coaching for example.

In a discussion with a friend and other women I currently often hear that they gave up on “being successful” or “managing it all”. So are we going back to 1950 now? Women can have a family and shall be happy with that.

Why are we not allowing ourselves to be successful and at the same time have children? What are we waiting for?

“Like, share, RT” this post if you think women should allow themselves to be ambitious and help each other achieving their professional goals!

Happy Mother’s Day

Angie

PS: Thank you Mama for having shown me how to be a mother and still work. Thank you for showing me that even in tough times you can be the breadwinner and educate a daughter to be creative, resourceful and intrinsically motivated. Thank you Grandmother for having worked while raising six children after the war. Thank you Auntie for helping out when Mama was too busy to take care of me.