In honor of Women’s History Month, I’d like to share the insights from one of our country’s leading women-making history, Marissa Mayer. Marissa is brilliant, compassionate, generous, and astute and she graciously wrote the introduction to Leadership & Life Hacks for me. Part of that introduction is below:

 

In modern storytelling, one-dimensional female characters are everywhere, creating the sense that women can’t be two seemingly opposite things at once.  Are you efficient or nurturing?  Honest or nice?  A leader or a helper?  Career- or family-minded?  These false dichotomies do a disservice to women by presenting these traits as binary choices.  They aren’t.  In fact, in many cases, they actually represent positively correlated traits.  You have more time to be nurturing if you are efficient.  You can always deliver an honest message with kindness.  A leader’s role is, by definition, to support the team.  Career experience often yields the creative inspiration that gives rise to better parenting. 

Marissa also inspired two Hacks from Leadership & Life Hacks:
 

 

When I was faced with the decision about walking in to lead a firm that someone else had founded in an industry I knew nothing about, Marissa’s guidance was hugely instrumental. She was endlessly generous, spending time with me to analyze the opportunity and a few others, particularly in terms of compensation structure as a percentage of valuation, how to manage one’s household support team when taking on a new CEO role, and in overall empathy and encouragement. 
 

I’ve always said I’m a slave to a routine, not a schedule. I have my morning time with Audrey and Hettie, take them to school, and then the childcare provider picks them up while I’m at work. They have their snack, then go to their afternoon activities; once they’re home, they have some free-choice time, then dinner, then a bath. I either give them the bath or I’m back at the tail end of the bath. Then we lay out two to three books, depending upon length and energy levels, and share our daily “Peaks and Pits,” something I learned from my friend Marissa Mayer. Marissa and I have children around the same age, and I was inspired when she told me about doing Peaks and Pits with her kids at the end of the day. I adopted the idea to use with my daughters. Peaks and Pits gives them an opportunity to say what the high point of their day was, what the low point was—and for me to hear it.
 

Share the gift of Leadership & Life Hacks with women you love and admire this women’s history month — find it here.

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