• Newsroom
• Member News
• Business Library
• Starting or Growing a Business
• Purchase Member Lists
• Publications

• Home

Begin Site Content

"Mother Nurture" and the Exiting Worker

-- contributed by Linda Rendleman, Indywomenconnect.com

A couple of weeks ago I was on the Michael Gerber Radio Show. We all know Michael, don’t we? He’s the author of The E Myth, an incredible book about small business, why they don’t work and what to do to fix that! If you’re not familiar, you must RUN, not walk, to your local spot and get his book. I’ve had my copy for about 10 years now and have re-read it for guidance and direction more than once.

Anyway, I’ve been chatting with all of you through women’s groups, television interviews, our radio show and over many cups of coffee and lunches. It’s been clear to me that one of the things we women as employers struggle with is the “exiting” process. As females, we are nurturers, and if you’re like me, we extend more of ourselves than just the business relationship to our employees. We have a tendency to want to “mother, befriend, and adopt” those who work with us. This is fine when each person keeps up the contract of agreement, does his/her job as expected, and stays in the relationship. But when one or the other wants to terminate, it can be difficult.

Have you ever had an employee go to another place of work and you took it personally? Asking yourself why he/she left my company, department, office (you fill in the blanks.) Or have you been needing to let an employee go because the job is not getting done satisfactorily and it’s practically impossible to do because the relationship you’ve developed with has included watching her kids in a pinch, driving her to the doctor, helping her through her divorce…get my point?

So the question I asked Michael Gerber for not only myself but so many of us who struggle with what I call the Mother Nurture employer style is this. How can we be our nurturing selves with our employees yet do not allow that to get in the way of our business goals and growth of our company when it’s time for the exit.

Michael believes that what we bring to the table of the work world more wonderfully than any of our other attributes is our femininity. It is the most powerful thing we have and men could only wish they could contribute the caring and sensitivity that we can to our employees. The difference is in setting boundaries. Yes, it’s that boundary thing again, amazing how often it shows up in our lives, isn’t it?

So for us to set boundaries in the world of work, we need to start the relationship out correctly with an agreement that both parties understand. Your relationship must be articulated in the onset. As Michael Gerber says in his book “…the key is to plan, envision, and articulate what you see in the future both for yourself and for your employees. Because if you don’t articulate it, I mean, write it down, clearly, so others can understand it—you don’t own it.”

So by starting out clearly about our work relationship, our boundaries, our “agreement’ is set in place to move forward to develop the rest of the relationship. And because we have also discussed the exit strategy in our initial work agreement, we are in a much better position to end the partnership on a positive note and preserve the relationship even after the work is done.

Linda Rendelman
www.indywomenconnect.com