second cup of tea

I think I need a second cup of tea this morning. I deserve it, for dreaming stupid tedious dreams about work - and not the fun part of work. My work is normally fun, these days. I posted a link over in the sidebar to one of the two projects I spend my time on. For that research project I'm currently doing three main tasks - looking up the different ways that countries measure diversity in terms of "race", reading and summarizing interviews from France and Brazil, and setting up a new round of interviews and surveys in France (through an external person we found to work with us over there). For the other project I work on, I'm supervising a business school intern from Senegal and researching information that will help global leaders (who manage people in several different countries) be better leaders. Aside from those two projects I've been writing a summary of the history of research at CCL. My co-author is based in Singapore and that's been interesting (I knew her here before she moved there). The time difference is easy to remember - they are 12 hours ahead.

Last night as I tried to relax and ward off mastitis with alternating hot and cold compresses, I read a few essays in the book Mommy Wars. It's about women's experiences/choices with the work-life balance thing and child-rearing. So far I haven't read a single story that I'd like to replicate! But I tell you what: I'm grateful for the women who led the way for me and my generation. My parents, both of them, set great examples of combining career, grad school, and family - without (apparently) driving themselves crazy or making us feel deprived. It's acceptable now in many organizations for women to request private space for pumping milk for their babies, and for parents to leave work early for the school play - things like that. I feel for the women whose "choices" don't feel so good: the ones whose breast pumps drown the sound of their crying on business trips, the ones who feel like they're losing IQ points by pushing a swing and talking baby talk all day every day, and the ones who suffer from constant partial attention problems by trying to work at home while watching the kids. (The Mommy Wars writers do a vivid and entertaining job of describing such situations.) And here's a research nugget for you. My boss and a colleague did research that found that having "multiple roles" outside your job (i.e., wearing several "hats" like Parent, Volunteer, etc.) actually improves your effectiveness as a leader. At least that was true for women. I think they were going to do another study to see if the same is true for men. One of the Mommy Wars writers wrote a poignant sentence about how the only place she really felt like herself was in the car on her 90 minute commute, "bareheaded between my two hats, neither here nor there".

Time to get ready for work....