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Did you ever sing “Happy Birthday” during a Town Hall?

I have recently published a post related to labels used when addressing working parents. Today, I want to applaud to all who are managing the juggle between parenting and professional fulfillment, who don’t forget their priorities no matter what situation they are in.

Watch Pete Poul-Graf, my husband and VP in DHL IT Services, make more than a hundred of his colleagues including the management team sing during a Town Hall in Prague today at the occasion of our daughter’s second birthday.  I am grateful that Pete brings the human angle to any situation he is in and also that he is not exploring a career as a cameraman.

 

 

What is your trick to make your child’s birthday special while you are on a business trip? When did you last time witness a colleague in the office become creative in solving a family situation? How did the rest of people around respond?

Thanks to all those amazing DHL colleagues singing today and you can count on me, if you ever need me to return the favor!

Dana

 

 

working father
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Please stop calling me a “working mother”. Labels and the damage they cause.

Do the words “working mother” bother you? If not, they should.

Recently, someone called me a “working mother” in a professional setting.

It felt uncomfortable because I’m a non-native English speaker who hears individual words as opposed to culturally known expressions.

The first word is “mother.” I’m the mother of two amazing little people. The second word is “working.” I’ve chosen to stay on my professional path, so technically I am a perfect representation of those two words.

It shouldn’t be a big deal.

The problem is that those two words are exactly that: just two words.

Continue reading → Please stop calling me a “working mother”. Labels and the damage they cause.

Dana with wine
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From boring to meaningful: How revisiting my purpose turned a dull business trip into a meaningful one

Earlier this year, I visited one of our company’s locations to deliver training and leadership workshops. As always, I was excited to get into some real conversations and learn with and from my colleagues.

On my first day there, however, the office was half-empty because many people in our Americas region enjoy the flexibility of working from a home office. I couldn’t help but to think, “Was it really worth coming here? Was this well-invested time and money for our organization?”

Then I wondered further: how would one decide whether a trip belonged in the “waste of time” bucket, meaning you’d never do again, or in the much more satisfying “worth it” bucket? Both buckets mean we wake up at 4 am, leave families behind, endure crazy security procedures and return to an even fuller inbox

Continue reading → From boring to meaningful: How revisiting my purpose turned a dull business trip into a meaningful one