3 Tips for CEOs Looking to Take Maternity Leave • InNewCL
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My company just had its best quarter ever. As the founder and CEO, I’m proud to say that I wasn’t there most of the time.
But I had a good excuse: I was on maternity leave and I was raising my first child. Since starting this business I had not taken more than a week off which included marrying my very patient husband. When I tried to plan a sales pitch for the same day we had our civil wedding at City Hall in San Francisco, he rolled his eyes.
Needless to say, I was worried about taking some time off. Baking this little muffin wasn’t an easy task and I wasn’t sure how I would react if she were on earth. But I wanted a real break and a chance to get to know her and me in this new role.
I reached out to several of my investors and asked them to put me in touch with CEOs who had taken maternity leave and was introduced to several male CEOs who embarrassedly told me it only took them a week or two.
Eventually I got a tip on a CEO who had taken some time off but to no one’s surprise was too busy to talk to me. Fair enough! However, I have received good advice on taking time off while running a business. Here are a few things I’ve learned:
We were new to this level of planning, but this was an excellent opportunity to mature our process and give everyone a sense of purpose and direction in my absence.
Tell people you will take more time than you intend
You’ll want to let people know that you’ll be typing emails and answering phone calls from your hospital room while breastfeeding. “You won’t really be able to take a step back,” a lot of people told me.
My wise friend and Mindset Ventures investor Jules Miller advised, “Tell everyone it will take you 12 weeks and if you want to come back sooner, great. But you never know what that experience will throw at you.”
She was right. When my daughter was 28 days old, our house was flooded. We had to pack everything up and move three times in three weeks. Not fully recovering, I threw my back out of the move and couldn’t even hold my baby. I was grateful to Jules for her wise advice and flexibility to really examine and take control of my life.
