Summary

Executive career coach and mentor Eric Woodard explains why you may not want to apologize for your life at work, especially in the Age of COVID!

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Full Transcript

Recently, as so many of us now often are in the Age of COVID, I was on a zoom call with a variety of important colleagues talking about important things! It was very high level!

Like so many, I’ve been working from home for the last thousand months, which has required some skillful dodging between work calls and hungry kids and barking dogs, etc.

On this particular zoom call I working away being my super professional self when one of my 9 year old daughter decided to ask if I’d eaten some of the cake she’d made the day before. I tried to wave her off but she was very intent on getting to the bottom of who had infringed upon her baking.

I was forced to apologize to those on the call so I could turn to my daughter and explain that I would talk to her about it later.

But, after the call, I got to thinking: WHY did I find it necessary to APOLOGIZE to my colleagues about my daughter? After all, a huge part of the REASON I was on that professional call doing all those professional things is to support my daughter and the rest of my family in the first place.

It occurred to me that my daughter is actually my real boss. Didn’t want to waste my colleagues valuable time and wanted to be respectful - but occurred to me I probably shouldn't’ have felt the need to apologize for my daughter. To me, she was actually the most VIP person of the whole scenario.

I think a lot about the difference between professionals and amateurs and I could do like a 15 hour talk about it. But I owe my daughter a thank you because her interrupting me like that helped me learn that maybe being a true professional doesn’t mean that one ignores their personal stuff. On the contrary, it means that one keeps their game face to make things happen like professionals do - but that’s because of the things they value personally.

Before COVID many of you likely saw the clip of the guy on BBC offering his expertise about North Korea when two of his kids decided to roll in. That guy is famous now and got more attention and air time not because of what he knows about Korea, but because of his kids. 

Maybe in this post-COVID world with so many working from home there is more recognition that professionals have families and personal priorities. If, in this new era, you catch yourself apologizing for your dog barking or your kid bouncing in or whatever it is, I hope you’ll catch yourself. I hope you’ll consider that you may do the work you do to support the personal, not the other way around.

Because, if you do, I believe it’ll help you reach your most truly authentic self and empower you to unleash superpowers towards you winning at work. 

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