Comeback Coach – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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Hello Bright Minds, I am really happy to be back with a very vibrant episode to kick off season seven. We ended season six with an episode on the psychology of focus and attention and how to adapt your day when you wake up absolutely shattered. And you loved it and you told me so and I’m so thankful that you did because my brain runs on little drip-drip doses of positive feedback. 

Today I’m bringing you a conversation with Ramona Aning, a coachee of ours from Ketchum, the PR and marketing communications consultancy. She returned to her role as an account director after maternity leave earlier this year and we go into depth on:

• Holding boundaries at work, and how Ramona became adept at this.
• The signs Ramona spotted during the recruitment process for her role at Ketchum that told her it was going to be a place where she could be herself. 
• How she found people to connect with on maternity leave via the Peanut app and how helpful those friendships have been as she returned to work
• Plus Ramona’s wobbliest moment as she returned to work.

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

Ask me a Q

Hello Bright Minds, I hope you’re on good form and by the end of this episode got a better sense of how you can help yourself find focus, sustain your attention and experience traction. I'm Jessica Chivers, a coaching psychologist, author and developer of the Comeback Community employee experience, of which this podcast is a part.

The idea for this episode has been stirring in mind for some time because focus is a frequent source of conversation with coachees who are returning to work from maternity leave with less time on their hands than they had pre-baby. If you’re not a new parent or a parent at all I think you’ll get plenty from listening to the psychology and my personal hacks that I’m going to share with you. 

REFERENCES

• Ficca, G., Axelsson, J., Mollicone, D. J., Muto, V., & Vitiello, M. V. (2010). Naps, cognition and performance. Sleep medicine reviews, 14(4), 249-258.
• Leroy, s. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109 (2) 168-181: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597809000399

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

Ask me a Q

Hello Bright Minds, my guest today is Ros Kwok, a woman I was introduced to after asking one of the wonderful Partners at our past podcast sponsor, Rayden Solicitors if she had a client who had had to return to work due to a change in financial circumstances following divorce. Thank you Emily Watson for coming up trumps in less than 24 hours! And you’ll also hear from Emily at the end of the episode where we talk through several questions about divorce, spousal maintenance and arbitration.

**LINK TO "MOTHERS WALK" on 8/3/24 for International Women's Day**

Ros is originally from Singapore and came to study in the UK. She became a stay at home mum after she had children and when her youngest went to nursery she took a part time job in a nursery and after four years became a freelance photographer. When the divorce happened she was told to get a proper job, was forced to sell all of her photography equipment and then made 50 applications for jobs, and got only one interview. That interview was with John Lewis – I love JLP sooooo much – but even that didn’t work out. Fast forward to today and Ros IS working for John Lewis and she’s worked her way from an entry level role to being a fashion merchandiser and instagmmer for JLP. 

Today Ros is thriving and this episode talks about how she got there. I think many employers are recognising just how destabilising any big life can be for their people and divorce is right up there. If you’re going through divorce or it’s on your mind I’m sending you all the love because I know how hellish it can be. I’m a child of divorced parents and I have people around me going through divorce at the moment. To you all I send love and hope, more of which at the end of the episode.

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

Ask me a Q

Hello Bright Minds, my guest today is Andrea Byrne, one of the faces of ITV News and a past coachee of mine.  She anchors the BAFTA award-winning daily news programme Wales at Six, as well as ITV’s national bulletins. This includes ITV Weekend News, Lunchtime News, Evening News and News at Ten and Prince Harry is among the many high-profile names she has interviewed.

Andrea also presents the current affairs programme Wales This Week; hosts her own fertility podcast ‘Making Babies’; and is a Tedx speaker. She has recently been nominated for several broadcast awards for her documentary work.

She is an ambassador for ‘The Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme’ and a Non-Executive Director for Hockey Wales. Andrea is married to Wales and Lions legend Lee Byrne.  She is passionate about wellbeing and pioneered the introduction of Mental Health First Aiders in ITV’s newsrooms.

Away from the newsroom, she is a keen yogi, a novice stand-up paddle-boarder and a budding novelist!

In this conversation with Andrea you’re going to hear about:

• Remembering how good you are at your job before you start back.
• Why it’s a good idea not to expect too much of yourself when you first return to work.
• It not being selfish or wrong to want to have time to yourself or not liking every moment of parenthood even when your child was very hard ‘won’ as Andrea’s daughter Jemima was.
• Pitching to be involved in projects and activities that are outside of your role.
• The time it takes to adjust to working parenthood.
• And a few random bits about the psychology of perfume and what wearing stretchy clothing does to our minds.
• We do also talk about baby loss and miscarriage towards the end where Andrea shares something harrowing that happened to her when she was about to do a very significant day of broadcasting.
• And as always you’ll get to hear the wobbliest moment and peak moment of my guest’s return to work experience as well as her three top tips for returning to work after a break.

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

Ask me a Q

Hello Bright Minds, and welcome to the start of season six of COMEBACK COACH. I am so pleased to be back sharing stories and coaching sessions about returning to work and onward career development after a break. My guest today is Joanna Jacobs who took a career break straight after maternity leave from Vodafone. Prior to that she was living in Shanghai and working for Sainsburys, sussing out whether China would be a viable market for them and now she’s the HR Director for UK Twinings Commercial. In between Vodafone and Twinings she experimented with a few things including the library assistant role (which wasn’t for her!)

If you are thinking about taking a career break or you’re on one now you are in for an energising treat because this is a conversation that shows it IS possible to have a gratifying and stretching career after a significant career break.

You’re going to hear about:

• A useful way to think about your career break when you describe it to recruiters and potential employers.
  
  
• The power of experimentation and doing dramatically different work to what you used to do.
  
  
•  How to set about finding a new role in the sector you were in before.
  
  
•  Also Jo’s wobbliest moment when she returned to work and her top tips for coming back from a career break.

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

Ask me a Q

Hello Bright Minds and welcome to another JUST JESSICA episode of COMEBACK COACH where I’m reflecting on three things that have been top of mind for me lately that I think could be useful to you too. I’m a coaching psychologist, author and founder of The Talent Keeper Specialists which is home to the Comeback Community employee experience of which this podcast is a part.

A few weeks ago I went away for three days, two night by myself to my favourite hotel in Cornwall.  It’s something I booked in September – when they were doing an offer - in anticipation of needing a break from home. None of the girlfriends I asked to go with me could commit and so I decided to book to go solo. And this solo trip brings together three things I wanted to mull over here:

• Knowing your needs
• The power of a solo trip to develop your intuition 
• How to focus on your career as well as your job

In this episode I mentioned an article on Psychologytoday.com and our COMEBACK CONVERSATION live Q&A listings.

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

Ask me a Q

Hello Bright Minds, my guest today is Phil Bush, a Credit Control Manager for Euromonitor International in London where he’s worked for 17 years. He responsible for managing a department that collects unpaid debt for the business and minimises financial risk to the company. He lives in Brighton with his partner Jo and their 15 month old daughter Sadie. He’s a runner who has been very keen to do the London marathon and finally this year got to do it after applying and being unsuccessful for the previous 8 years. He’s also a community-minded man who volunteers for the charity Fairshare.

We talk about:

• Why he took a sabbatical not Shared Parental Leave.
• How he supported his partner's return to work (to a new job).
• The difference having a supportive partner makes to a woman's return from maternity leave.
• Coping with hospitalised baby.
• What a 'supportive' employer looked like for Phil.
• Volunteering whilst on sabbatical.
• Feeling strange separating from family to go back to work after intense months together.
• Finding a new normal as a family.
• Deciding to have counselling to deal with the shock of an ill child.

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

Ask me a Q

Hello Bright Minds, my guest today is Gemma Hill, a Heart FM radio presenter whose maternity leave was covered by non other than the formidable Anna Whitehouse AKA Mother Pukka but even still she says, maternity leave was still pretty terrifying. 

We talk about:

• Not being instantly delighted that you're pregnant
• 3am worries about going on maternity leave
• Having a bl**dy brilliant maternity leave cover
• Miscarriage
• How staying in touch with work can reduce anxiety about going back

Gemma started on air age 20 on stations around the Midlands and the North, before hanging up her headphones to pursue what she calls “a real job.” She was a national sales manager for a construction company for 6 years living in London with a stable job, a pension, maternity pay, but binned it off to chase the dream again when she was offered a job in Birmingham on the Free radio Breakfast show (for which she did her demo in Pat Sharp’s towel cupboard.) After a couple of years she made her move to Heart, where she did the breakfast show across the west midlands for 3 years before moving to Drive. That’s where she is today and where she was when she found she was having a (surprise) of a lock down baby. 

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

Ask me a Q

My guest today is Andy Lancaster who took three months leave for planned eye and shoulder surgery from a job he loves at CIPD Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. We count CIPD among our clients and love working with them.

Andy champions and leads the vision for innovative workplace learning and has been at the heart of CIPD's transformation to digital and self-directed learning, with its professional development opportunities now accessed in over 180 countries. 

He has more than 30 years’ experience in learning and organizational development in a range of sectors and has a research Masters' degree in instructional design. He regularly speaks at conferences, writes, and contributes to research in evidence-based learning. His award-winning book “Driving Performance Through Learning” is published by Kogan Page and he is currently working on a new book on social collaborative learning called: “Organizational Learning Communities” which is due out in 2024.

In this episode:

• How to prepare for leave as a leader of a big team.
• Why being vulnerable is good for us and the people we lead.
• Coping with brain fog and pain management.
• Three aspects of returning to work: the physical, the mental and the social.
• The unexpected good that can come out of sick leave.
• Why we shouldn’t rush to pick up exactly the same job we had before we went on leave.
• The difference between being resilient and being a hero (and why none of us should be heros).

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace

Ask me a Q

Hello Bright Minds, my guest today is Kerry Hickman, a past coachee of ours at Ramboll. Since qualifying as an Accountant at 21, she’s had a very broad commercial career in Accountancy, Audit and Financial Management before landing in roles that manage Sales & Customer Insight.  She’s travelled across sectors including consultancy, media, FMCG, currency and public sector, and worked both in the UK and internationally.  

We talk about:

• Being made redundant when you've just come back from maternity leave.
• Working with a career coach - why, what, how?
• Using LinkedIn to find openings. opportunities, learn and expand your network.
• How to set about landing a quality PT role.

Live Q&A tickets mentioned in the episode for 31/10/23: HOW TO HOLD YOUR BOUNDARIES AND WHAT IS A GOOD ENOUGH PARENT?

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace