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The coaching of She does it:
- Supports you in 4 phases: working during pregnancy, your maternity leave, return to your job and after the first 100 days.
- Offers positive energy, empathy, clarifying questions and challenges.
- Is personal and customized (not according to a standard rigid roadmap).
- Is both explorative and action oriented and therefore also practical.
- Is also possible in the evening (via Skype, phone or face to face).
You are pregnant and you fully enjoy it. You also have a great job and you want to continue to challenge yourself professionally.
But there are so many questions running through your mind:
- Can I be a good mother if I continue doing this job?
- How can I deal best with the last months before my maternity leave?
- How can I share the responsibilities with my partner at home?
- How do I deal with the perception in my environment that, as a woman with child, I would have less ambition?
- What does my team think when I have to leave at 5pm to pick up my little one from the nursery?
Just a few questions that can give you a feeling of stress and uncertainty, which can even make you start doubting whether it’s the right thing to stick to your career.
Cultural explanation
Research (Bierings & Souren, Statistics Netherlands, 2011) shows that women in The Netherlands choose to work fewer hours after the birth of their first child. This is not the case for men.
The fact that women make this choice can, to a large extent, be explained culturally.
In our society it is still natural that a woman takes on more care and household duties than a man. The general view is also that women with children would have less ambition.
“What are you going to do with your job?” colleagues asked me when I was pregnant with my first child.
My husband didn’t get this question when he told his work he was going to be a father.
Do you recognize this?
No obstacle to your development
Getting a child is one of the most beautiful moments of your life for many women, but it also has a great practical and emotional impact.
And don’t forget the physical changes.
This brings feelings of uncertainty, doubt and guilt, both at home and at work.
But the fact that you have a baby doesn’t have to be an obstacle to your professional development.
However, it is very important that you have the right support in this life-changing phase.
Proactive approach
With She does it coaching you prepare yourself, from your pregnancy, proactively for working motherhood.
The coaching supports you in the following four phases:
- Working during pregnancy
- Your maternity leave
- Return to your job
- After the first 100 days
The coaching is ‘transformative’. We focus on how you as a person can grow towards your authentic self as a working mother.
That may sound a bit ‘wishy washy’, but it is anything but.
The coaching of She does it is both explorative and action oriented. Regularly you will be busy with challenging assignments.
It results in you trusting yourself more.
Regardless of new challenges, which will always keep coming, you know how to keep your course and give direction to your life.
You can combine your professional and personal ambitions in a way that suits you.
“I didn’t really know what coaching meant. I have had counselling before, but I didn’t find that very useful. I think I wanted something more concrete, with actual strategies to help me with the issues I was experiencing.
I’ve found that in the coaching with Eefke. She put a great structure around it. I really liked that we worked with practical activities. They made a difference to my day right from the very first moment I tried them.
It was easy to connect with Eefke. She is vibrant, chatty and sociable. She is a working mum too, so understood where I was coming from.
I was worried about coming back from maternity leave. Would I have the same level of skills? How could I do everything to the high standard I had previously? It paralysed me and meant that my workload continued to build as I wasn’t completing any one task.
The major thing I learned through the coaching is that my work doesn’t have to be perfect. I just need to make a start and send it. It’s good enough. That ‘good enough’ has made such a difference and I find myself, in everything I’m sending now, saying to myself that it is good enough. It has become my new mantra for when I feel stressed.
This means I’m getting through my workload far more easily and I’m even wondering what I was worried about before. I feel a sense of balance now.
I think the coaching is not just for mums who return to work after maternity leave, but for all mums with young children who are struggling to balance any type of work. I think it’s immensely helpful to have this type of support in these intense years.”
As a mother a better manager
If you work within an organization, you know that you need to align a few things around your pregnancy with your manager.
I was a bit nervous to tell my manager that I was pregnant. No idea why, because I had a good rapport with her and I knew she was a mother herself. Still I was sitting in front of her with sweaty hands.
When I said it, she congratulated me immediately. She told me that I would learn a lot from motherhood and she added that I would even become a better manager. We also immediately discussed the possibilities for flexible working.
Wow, what a confidence.
And yes, after my maternity leave, I thought I was a better manager.
I was able to empathise more with team members who also had children and I worked more efficiently because I couldn’t stay in the office until 7 pm.
I wish everyone could have such an experience.
But unfortunately, women regularly experience stress around their maternity leave and are uncertain about going back to work.
This kind of situation can be prevented by good alignment with the manager. That is why this is such an important part of the She does it coaching process.
With She does it coaching you are well equipped to have successful conversations with your manager. As a result, you can optimally enjoy your maternity leave and start your jobagain full of confidence.
A win-win for you and your manager.
Good rapport
I have personally experienced how effective it is to work with a coach at crucial moments in your life.
Despite all the fuss, it helps you to stay in balance and to discover new possibilities.
I compare a coach with a sports trainer. Sports helps you to stay physically healthy. A coach helps you to stay emotionally fit.
You work intensively together with a coach. Therefore, you also want to have good rapport. If there isn’t a good chemistry then the result will be disappointing.
So, orientate yourself well!
Here you can read more about my background and in this video I give you more information about how we work together.
I’ve read enough and think we could build a good rapport!
Of course, this session would be both confidential and entirely free of obligation.
Steps forward
I regularly get the question: “What exactly do you do as a coach?”
I understand that the term coach and, for example, a therapist are sometimes mixed up.
As a coach I take the present as a starting point and from there we make steps forward. A coach works therefore future-oriented.
A therapist focuses on solving problems that arise from the past and that hinder one’s functioning in the present.
“Beforehand, I was sceptical, because I find the term ‘coaching’ a bit vague. In addition, for me, as a working woman with children, these are hectic years anyway, so I wondered if I could improve anything at all.
What I quickly noticed was that I got energy from the coaching. If I was tired beforehand, I always had more energy afterwards.
To anyone, who thinks life is just so hectic and you can’t do otherwise, I want to say that I’ve experienced that there is much more to be gained from life. By working with Eefke, you bring out the best in yourself, you realize that you really want to pay attention to that and you make conscious choices.”
Internationally recognized
Nowadays everyone can call themselves ‘coach’. Coach is not a protected profession. If you go to the doctor, you know what you can expect in terms of quality. Unfortunately, this is not the case with coaches.
How do you know that you make a good choice? In addition to a good rapport, you can pay attention to the education someone has followed and the quality labels you see on a website.
Unfortunately, nowadays there is a proliferation of quality labels and that is why I wanted to follow a course that is internationally high regarded and guarantees quality within the professional coaching world.
I joined the Co-Active Training Institute and got certified as a Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC). I’m also a licensed Firework Career Coach.
Excuse me for the following boring piece of text, but I would like to share it with you.
Co-Active Coaching is the largest personal (so not online) coaching training programme in the world. It is considered to be the most rigorous program available for professional coaching development, given the many training and practice hours.
Both the Co-Active Coach training and the Firework Career Coach program are accredited by the International Coaching Federation. This international organization focuses on promoting the quality of the coaching profession by setting high standards, offering independent certification and building a worldwide network of trained coaching professionals.
The offer from She does it
Every woman is unique and that is why my coaching is personal and customized.
I do not follow a rigid roadmap.
I offer everyone a free coaching session of 1 hour. Based on this you can see if you have a rapport with me or prefer to work with another coach. This session would be both confidential and entirely free of obligation.
Then you can choose from two packages:
- RePower basic
- RePower extra
- RePower Basic
- Discovery session of 2 hours
- 10 coaching sessions of 1 hour:
~ Working during pregnancy (2 sessions)
~ Your maternity leave (2 sessions)
~ Return to your job (3 sessions)
~ After the first 100 days (3 sessions) - Unlimited support via email and app
- Total of 12 hours
- RePower Extra
- Discovery session of 2 hours (50% discount)
- 15 coaching sessions of 1 hour:
~ Working during pregnancy (3 sessions)
~ Your maternity leave (2 sessions)
~ Return to your job (5 sessions)
~ After the first 100 days (5 sessions) - Unlimited support via email and app
- Total of 17 hours
Curious what coaching can bring you?
Just make an appointment for a free coaching session, after which you could immediately take a step in your work-life balance.
Of course, this session would be both confidential and entirely free of obligation.
Connect
