Good Leaders: How does your family help you be a better leader?

You are in for a real treat. If you make it to the Good Leadership Breakfast next Friday, April 21, you will discover the irresistible mystique of Alex Steinman: “I started the Strong Like Mama blog for working mothers,” Alex explained. “I don’t talk about crafts and new cooking ideas. I talk about real stuff working moms understand…like what to do when your kid craps in the tub while you are on conference call trying to fix a product launch,” she laughed. See what I mean?

Tickets are almost gone for the Good Leadership Breakfast next Friday, featuring strong mama Alex Steinman – she will be sharing her insights about how family helps her be a better leader.  Get tickets here to join us.

Strong Mama

Alex has a strong voice about the power of “Family” in how the Seven Fs come alive in leadership. Professionally, she is the Communications Director at the global advertising firm Fallon. I like her story because she is bucking social norms: she married her high school sweetheart at a very young age by today’s standards. “We decided to have kids young, because we liked the idea of being empty nesters in our 40s,” she explained. “But I was really surprised that people in my professional life treated me like a teen mom. That was something I didn’t expect.”

Away from work, Alex is also the vice president of a non-profit called Mpls MadWomen, where she speaks to industry leaders working to close the diversity gap in advertising and creative fields. With two kids under the age of three and a fast career she is finding ways to make it all work.

What Really Works for Building a Career

Writing the book What Really Works about Blending the Seven Fs: faith, family, finances, fitness, friends, fun and future created a new lens for my life. It’s been transformational for me – and some of our clients – to look at leadership through a lens of “who we are” instead of “what we need to do.”  It’s a fact that 4 of 5 leaders we survey are the most satisfied with “family” on the Seven Fs. But what I find fascinating are the unlimited ways for “how” they arrive at that satisfaction.

“Is it OK if I talk about race?” she asked me in our interview. “Because I married a white man, and we have children that don’t look anything like me,” Alex smiled. “That’s opened a whole new set of doors for us, and think I should talk about that.”

We Live on the Internet Today

If you want to get to know Alex better, I suggest you spend 10 minutes reading her Strong Like Mama blog: she’s a witty and courageous writer with a very wide filter!  Titles like Big Trouble, Potty Break, and Sisterhood of the Traveling (Breast) Pumps will pull you into her mystique.

We chose Alex as our speaker because I grew up under the care of a working mom. My wife Melinda worked outside the home while raising our three children. My colleague Erin here at Good Leadership Enterprises is a working mother of two. In getting to know Alex Steinman, my confidence is higher now that the future is bright for my own two daughters and the world is headed in the right direction.

Good leaders make a habit of embracing the idea that our families help us be better leaders. And we share our stories because it empowers others to be real.

Please share with me: how does your family help you be a better leader?