Isobel Kerr-Newell, CEO of VideoTaxi and founder of Artemis Communications. Photo / Supplied
OPINION
I remember my breaking point - or as I now think of it, my breakthrough point - in the last few years. After months of being locked down and isolated, but still managing to launch a business for a global network while having my second child and then what felt like every winter illness imaginable, I returned to the office for a transtasman leadership meeting.
Part of the agenda included a photo shoot for the long-separated team, and as I readied myself alongside the other female leaders, chatting about the constant juggle, being stretched beyond thin at work and feeling like an absent parent at home, tears started flowing from my eyes.
Whether it was the relief of being around like-minded people again or the moment of self-reflection it provoked, when the tears stopped falling and the camera stopped clicking, I had a moment of complete clarity.
The current system I was part of no longer worked for me. It had, for many years, been an incredible place of support and growth, and I am so thankful to everyone who was part of my journey there. But just like a piece of clothing I wore in my 20s that looked great at the time, it just no longer fit me – or at least, didn’t fit me right now.
As a mother of two small children, living in a post-pandemic world where I had been asked to re-examine every facet of my being, forced to the edge of my resilience and then pushed further again, I realised I could no longer be the cog in the machine I had once felt such comfort in.
One of the key HR terms forged in the fires of the post-pandemic experience was the “great re-evaluation”, or the “great resignation” as it was for some - a recognition of the seismic, irreversible changes we had all been through and the subsequent clarity the Covid years delivered.
While some of us moved to the country, quit jobs that didn’t fulfill us, and finally left toxic or just pedestrian relationships, for many, the great re-evaluation was a general awakening to the fact that the way we had all been living and working for so long didn’t work anymore.
Jacinda Ardern’s resignation earlier this year and her very human admission that she just didn’t have “enough left in the tank” demonstrated not even those in the highest positions were above wanting to live another way.
And while not every woman’s moment of realisation comes through the dreaded show of office emotion thanks to post-pandemic traumatic stress or leading a country through one of the most tumultuous periods in memory, it is a pattern we continue to see repeated.
Women leaving a system that is no longer fit for them, or arguably, fit for purpose, and forging a new path. The “great re-evaluation” has in fact been taking place for women many years before Covid was ever in our consciousness.
The chokepoint of children and careers in one’s mid-30s or early 40s isn’t the only exit ramp. Increasingly, women in their 50s and 60s are leaving the system too, finding the changes of menopause and incompatibility with the traditional working world means they again need to find a new road, which is of course increasingly harder to do closer to retirement and a perceived “expiry” date.
The “menopause penalty” is a real prejudice women in this age bracket are facing, and one all organisations need to think harder about if we are to successfully navigate the changing demographics of our workforces in the coming years.
More broadly, when we examine the other causes of women exiting the system, it can also be connected to the unconscious biases we all hold around leaders and what they look like.
While many organisations are consciously working to override these, there is still a sense that you need to fit within a certain leadership mould to be in charge.
Having always known I wanted to take a leadership role, as an extroverted introvert, I have sometimes felt as if I might be on the B-team of the leadership bench – never quite loud enough, tall enough or hard enough to make it to the head of the top table.
My quiet style of calm, conscious connection had got me so far, but in assessing my pathway to the next level, I have wondered: will I have to change to make it all the way?
While there are absolutely exceptions, the reality in many large corporates remains that for a woman to get to the top, they generally have to take on more masculine characteristics. Not having children, or at least outsourcing their care to a nanny or partner, is still a real benefit.
Height, volume, physicality, self-confidence and self-promotion all still play a role in the selection processes that begin when we first enter the junior ranks. Ultimately, being one of the boys (or acting like one) is still the surest route to the C-suite, and we need only look at the consistently low representation of women among the NZX50 CEOs or on boards to see that.
But it’s not the only path, and increasingly, organisations are recognising the other styles of leaders out there – like myself – who have great value in shaping and leading the modern workforces of today.
Looking up at the “super-women” ahead of me in leadership roles, I have also questioned whether the feminist dream of “having it all” we’d been sold at school in the ‘90s was actually achievable. In all the excerpts from Success in (High) Heels our shoulder-padded all-girls school principal had read us, they had never covered how to choose between a board meeting, your own health and whether your child is sick enough to stay home again; how to negotiate with your husband about your management meeting being more important than his, or how to carve out some desperately needed moments of self-care.
Skip forward a year from that photo shoot, and my great re-evaluation led me into the world of a growing, locally owned private enterprise where I have been authentically empowered to lead, with greater agency and autonomy, in my own style.
More recently, I’ve also launched a new enterprise: Artemis Communications.
While our company will still face the same challenges as every other business trying to keep the revenue ticking along, where we are really striving to do something different is in the architecture of the system – to genuinely care for and put people at the centre of everything, while still building a successful and sustainable business.
I can almost hear the eye roll - that’s a nice sentiment, but what does this look like in practice? For us, it is about consciously addressing and challenging every aspect of our corporate muscle memory and asking, ‘Is there a smarter, more productive, healthier way to do this?’
The juggle for me today is still a challenge - the pressures are immense and the winter bugs are still around - but I have been refueled by a fresh challenge and renewed purpose. Throughout our construction and beyond, I am committed to challenging the deep-rooted biases and systems that push women (and men) to the point of re-evaluation. To try to stem the flow of the women disappearing from our workforce and hold tight to the precious taonga our organisations and Aotearoa are losing. To build and shape things differently – for myself, the women around me and for our daughters looking upwards, so that we really can have it all.
Isobel Kerr-Newell is Group CEO of VideoTaxi and Artemis Communications. She is a member of Global Women, a Champion for Change and a mother to two under-fives.
The event is described as a series of aggressive sales pitches.