Maternity leave for managers
September 30, 2016 11:07 PM Subscribe
Managers of Metafilter, how did you handle coverage for your maternity leave? If all goes according to plan, I'm going to tell my boss that I'm pregnant next week, and I'd like to have some ideas/suggestions for her when she starts wondering how to handle my leave.
If a member of my team were going to take a leave, I would have her list all her tasks, and then we would figure out who could cover them while she was gone (bringing in a temp or an intern, reallocating things across the team, etc.).
My job as a manager, though, seems significantly less task-based, and my projects and goals more long-term and amorphous. My list of tasks would range from "make sure team members are getting progressively more challenging assignments as their skills grow" to "attend lots of meetings about various company-wide initiatives and synthesize what you learn into a specific strategy for our department" to "be sitting in my office to answer random technical questions." (I'm sure much of this is egocentrism, but it's hard for me to imagine anyone else doing these things!)
When I take a week of vacation, no one covers most of my job, and that works out fine. If I left permanently (not going to!), they'd hire someone new who would figure out their own, very different way of doing the job. But I'm sort of at a loss to recommend how it should be covered for my medium-length leave (planning on a standard U.S. 12 weeks off).
(Bonus question: Anyone have experience turning a leave into a better job when you come back, a la Lean In? My pipe dream would be to turn this into an opportunity to promote a couple people on my team who are ready for more responsibility and to have some new challenges for myself when I get back.)
If a member of my team were going to take a leave, I would have her list all her tasks, and then we would figure out who could cover them while she was gone (bringing in a temp or an intern, reallocating things across the team, etc.).
My job as a manager, though, seems significantly less task-based, and my projects and goals more long-term and amorphous. My list of tasks would range from "make sure team members are getting progressively more challenging assignments as their skills grow" to "attend lots of meetings about various company-wide initiatives and synthesize what you learn into a specific strategy for our department" to "be sitting in my office to answer random technical questions." (I'm sure much of this is egocentrism, but it's hard for me to imagine anyone else doing these things!)
When I take a week of vacation, no one covers most of my job, and that works out fine. If I left permanently (not going to!), they'd hire someone new who would figure out their own, very different way of doing the job. But I'm sort of at a loss to recommend how it should be covered for my medium-length leave (planning on a standard U.S. 12 weeks off).
(Bonus question: Anyone have experience turning a leave into a better job when you come back, a la Lean In? My pipe dream would be to turn this into an opportunity to promote a couple people on my team who are ready for more responsibility and to have some new challenges for myself when I get back.)
That's what understudies are for.
If you don't currently have one (or a lieutenant/leftenant by any other name), offer to bring/train one up.
posted by porpoise at 11:58 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
If you don't currently have one (or a lieutenant/leftenant by any other name), offer to bring/train one up.
posted by porpoise at 11:58 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
I just bought and read the book sesstaaak recommended. It's really good. Nthing.
I am a C-level executive at a startup managing about 50 employees, with a new baby, and I did a couple of things:
1) I left a detailed action plan. I wrote a chart of all my major areas of responsibilities, and identified who would be in charge of that while I was gone, and who would be playing a supporting role. All the other executives and my team got a copy of this chart before I left. I also left personalized notes to each of my direct reports about what I expected of them while I was away.
2) Time for your deputies to step up. This has been said, but my leave has been a wonderful opportunity to see junior folks step up and take on more decision-making responsibility. The business is thriving right now, so they've done a great job with things like running meetings, hiring, and making calls on new products.
3) I'd recently promoted my former executive assistant. That person, who is a total star, kind of knew my brain inside and out and they were able to be a sounding board for the rest of the team who sometimes "wanted to know what Yearly thinks..." I trusted them to interpret my general approaches and they've done a great job guiding mid-level execs with how I'd approach a given problem.
4) I was able to hire a near-replacement 3 weeks before I left. This was tricky, because we had virtually no overlap in the office, but it was key. I had left some room in my staffing budget in 2016 for this pretty senior hire — and we were able to get somebody in right before I went out on leave. She turned out to be fantastic and really stepped in in a few areas where my existing deputies couldn't.
Good luck to you! And do check out that book.
posted by yearly at 3:19 PM on October 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
I am a C-level executive at a startup managing about 50 employees, with a new baby, and I did a couple of things:
1) I left a detailed action plan. I wrote a chart of all my major areas of responsibilities, and identified who would be in charge of that while I was gone, and who would be playing a supporting role. All the other executives and my team got a copy of this chart before I left. I also left personalized notes to each of my direct reports about what I expected of them while I was away.
2) Time for your deputies to step up. This has been said, but my leave has been a wonderful opportunity to see junior folks step up and take on more decision-making responsibility. The business is thriving right now, so they've done a great job with things like running meetings, hiring, and making calls on new products.
3) I'd recently promoted my former executive assistant. That person, who is a total star, kind of knew my brain inside and out and they were able to be a sounding board for the rest of the team who sometimes "wanted to know what Yearly thinks..." I trusted them to interpret my general approaches and they've done a great job guiding mid-level execs with how I'd approach a given problem.
4) I was able to hire a near-replacement 3 weeks before I left. This was tricky, because we had virtually no overlap in the office, but it was key. I had left some room in my staffing budget in 2016 for this pretty senior hire — and we were able to get somebody in right before I went out on leave. She turned out to be fantastic and really stepped in in a few areas where my existing deputies couldn't.
Good luck to you! And do check out that book.
posted by yearly at 3:19 PM on October 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
Great advice above. I was unable to get support for a temp to help handle anything for my team while I was out, so I tapped one person specifically on my team to step up and spent around six months prepping them to handle day-to-day team support. When I came back, we promoted her based on the work she'd done and I was able to elevate in my role. Didn't know this was a Lean In thing, but it worked for me.
For strategy stuff, I did my best to look at the LRP and make sure I had a plan for the things we knew were coming. The rest fell to my boss while I was out.
And then for having a "seat at the table" for meetings & initiatives - manager peers from my department were a huge help here. Most had kids, had been through this themselves, and understood the need and so were happy to fill in for me, so ymmv here.
posted by marmago at 6:48 PM on October 1, 2016
For strategy stuff, I did my best to look at the LRP and make sure I had a plan for the things we knew were coming. The rest fell to my boss while I was out.
And then for having a "seat at the table" for meetings & initiatives - manager peers from my department were a huge help here. Most had kids, had been through this themselves, and understood the need and so were happy to fill in for me, so ymmv here.
posted by marmago at 6:48 PM on October 1, 2016
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Create a plan to go over with your boss when you tell her about your upcoming leave. The plan should include slowly ramping up delegation of your typical work (even though it's not task-based) to those team members who are prepared to step up. Work out with your boss when a team member might start shadowing you in meetings. After those meetings, you'll work with your team member -- ask them what they heard/understood, what they thought about it, and what actions they would take, and then tell them what you heard, what you thought, and what actions you'll take. If there are major differences, hash it out with them.
You can probably split your work between two different people -- the idea/leadership work vs the "answer technical questions and make sure assignments are appropriate" work.
Is there a manager on a similar team who you could tap to be your stand-in if your team is lost on an issue? Or would you boss be filling that role?
Forget the Lean In thing unless you know your boss had planned to promote you soon anyway. Your priorities may change for a while -- wait and see. I thought I'd do something like that, and instead I just held steady for a year in my role and then moved onward and upward to another company.
posted by erst at 11:23 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]